The easy part about the Beijing Olympics is that if you live on the east coast you know the games are exactly 12 hours ahead in time.  That means the television is on live coverage of the Olympics as we speak and it sure beats the hell out of watching reruns of Melrose Place.  Although seeing a young Heather Locklear is great, the Olympics are more fresh.

I'd like to congratulate Canada on their fine showing thus far.  If we really are America's dandruff then someone toss us some Zest fully clean (not sure if you guys know Pert Plus so I used Zest instead).

Now on with the blog...

- A rare hockey spot to start; in my city the hockey fans are amped up over the possibility of Brian Burke becoming the GM of the franchise.  Known as a genius, Burke truly is not.  He has simply taken credit for teams he never put together and has portrayed the arrogance of a legend before he could build himself as a legend.  Though he finds the time to rip other General Managers in the league he simply hasn't understood that he's not as big as he thinks he is.  Toronto Maple Leaf fans will find that out quickly and will want him shipped out of town.  I'll save you guys the trouble by telling you to hold out for hope that they don't overpay for the gravy-training GM who's bark is much bigger than his bite.

- Don't buy into the new headline involving Brett Favre; this is all head games.  He probably feels tired after the first few days of practice but don't buy into "arm fatigue".  Last year he was throwin 90+ MPH bullets to his receivers.  This is just a way for people to doubt him going into the season, only for him to emerge a hero.  There is no arm fatigue, just head games with the rest of the league.  He's back, his arm is back and this is classic Brett Favre setting himself up to be the feel-good hero for mankind.

- I haven't yet seen the US Olympics team's basketball highlights from their last game against Angola but if they can't blow them out by 40 and if Dwight Howard is jawing with any Angola player then there is a problem.  Any game against Angola should be a friendly ####-kicking.  Canada's lack of medals thinks that is poor.

- What Michael Phelps is doing is nothing short of remarkable and if you are a sports history buff you may want to take notice and start watching his incredible display in the pool.

- If people think the New York Yankees need to pack it in I have news for you: Tampa Bay is reeling.  Losing Carl Crawford for the rest of the season is a killer.  Add Evan Longoria into the mix and you have 2 of their 3 best players out of the lineup.  The spread may say 8.5 games but bigger leads have been blown this late in the season.  Then again, Detroit is only 9.5 games out and they seem to have packed it in.

- Dear St. Louis Rams: Steven Jackson is your best player.  SIGN HIM.

- With all the condoms being distributed among the athletes you can bet that all the athletes you have found hot on TV is getting some. 

I can't top that last point so why try?  Let's call it a night...

Yesterday I took a road trip with my brother and his friend down to Ann Arbor, Michigan to catch the Wolverines and Indiana Hoosiers. The game was at 4PM so we knew what was expected out of us to catch the slam dunk contest later on in the evening.

Rewind it back to the night before as I tried to watch the Rookie v. Sophmore game as it was simply a David Lee dunking contest of his own. The game was quite sloppy and it reminded me of intramural basketball from high school, with the exception that kids weren't throwing it down. Tough to watch so about 15 minutes is all I gave it. Pretty bad when a rerun of "Footballers Wives" takes precedence.

Though the College game was close, both teams should have stayed on the court after the game was over to work on their free throws and jump shots. The sounds of bricks being layed was deafening. It was a hideous display of shooting from both teams that it was unfortunate that there was a winner in the game. The game could be summed up on the very last possession of the game where Indiana had no timeouts left and had 17 seconds left to play. Michigan, who had 2 timeouts left, decided to use one of them. Why? Why give Indiana a chance to draw up a play? That was ridiculous. Nonetheless, Indiana could not capitalize. Why is that? Well after a missed 3-point attempts they grabbed the rebound and the same player went all the way to the 3-point line only to fake the shot, pass it inside with 1 second left on the clock to lose by 3. Yeah, makes perfect sense to try to get 2 points with one second left when down by 3. The Hoosier fans behind me, to my left and in front of me showed their displeasure. And to the guy on my left that kept whacking his hat on the vacant chair beside me: You are 5 foot 5 and with that nose of yours have probably started many fights. Might want to ease up as nobody is intimidated by you or your friend that was a light-skinned Herm Edwards.

After the game the road back home had to be quick. We knew we'd have to stop so we hit up London and watched the 3-point competition and the dunk contest. The 2 reasons why the 3-point contest was better were 1) The dunk contest really wasn't that good and 2) The 3-point contest could not be fixed. Time to indulge.

I am not sure what contest you were watching, but not only was it a weak showing of the dunk contest but what was going on with the judging? Did someone take the 5 ex-dunk champions into a room and say, "Gerald Green has to win the competition and Tyrus Thomas has to be eliminated in round 1 without question". I am not here to say that Thomas should have won. That first dunk wasn't spectacular. However, Green's dunks were completely overshadowed by the great passes performed by Paul Pierce.  The first dunk by Green was average, but the pass made it look great.  Thomas's second dunk was the hardest and best dunk of the night, not to mention breaking the net.  However, he got #### by the judges.  Perhaps Thomas's comments prior to the contest made him a target.  Because he had to jump over a guy over 6 foot, barely grab the basketball and slam it home just for a 43 while Green had an easier catch jumping over a guy who's 5 foot 9. He gets a 47. Makes sense to me! (sarcasm). 

But jumping over a 4-foot table gets him a 50. Explain that bullcrap to me.

Dwight Howard perhaps had the funniest spot when he jumped as high as he could to put a sticker of himself on the backboard. Jameer Nelson pulling out the measuring tape proved to make that dunk a near-50. If you give Green a 50 for originality of jumping over a table then give Howard a 55 for jumping higher than anyone else for the sticker. And he was able to keep it up there! That's much harder than what Green had to do. You telling me a 4-foot table is tougher to jump over than Ben Gordon or Nate Robinson? Who are we kidding?

There are only 2 possible explanations for the final dunk results from last night: 1) The NBA wanted Green to win in order to hype up the next big dunking machine or 2) The judging was just brutal. Dominique Wilkins and Vince Carter weren't that good yet were the best judges of the night. The other 3 were awful.

Goes to show that I got home in the wee hours of the morning because I sat down for 90 minutes for an unspectacular event.

This is not an accusation of event being 'fixed' despite the word being mentioned earlier, its merely a question of why this was poorly judged? We won't get the answer because what goes on in Vegas, stays in Vegas.