What a great day in sports history. Our Pau finally arrived all bundled up in a navy suit, and we've been practicing our Pau, Pow, Popozao dancing skills for his debut, and we won while he watched. Then, the Giants handed the Patriots their #### on a shiny silver platter.

Admittedly this was the boringest SuperBowl ever. The score was the same for what seemed like 3 or 5 hours. I literally took a nap and woke up to the exact same thing on my screen. But then in the last 3 minutes, the game came alive! I don't even care about the Giants (*didn't), but it's kind of amazing that the Patriots are sooooo perfect and couldn't finish it up. Nice way to ice, or not ice the cake, as it were. Watching Belichick almost cry on camera is making me giddy.

Now, I'm moving to New York so I can marry every single person, male, female, animal, that has anything to do with the Giants.

A word before the game:
Man! It feels like it's been fooooooreva since the Lakers have played! Here's hoping the time off did them some good. We are Lakers through and through, but come on people... Lamar deserved the suspension, he was being a tad bit out of control, let's stop pretending it was innocent? Welcome to 2008 boys.


Tip Off
Derek, Wally Pip Luke, New 'do Ronny, Andrew, Kobe


1st Quarter
11:25 The bench looks mighty thin tonight.

11:12 Shirtwatch: Luke Walton

Dalembert - we just like saying that out loud. Typing it doesn't have the same effect =/

9:30 Andrew "Hustleman" Bynum!

7:48 Bye Luke.

6:36 RONNY!!!

Not to be haters or anything buuuuut, how many times are we gonna discuss the development of Hustleman?

5:01 The Extra Pass always works.

4:28 Unless that happens?

2:40 Shirtwatch: Andrew Bynum - but he gets a free pass for that throw down a second ago.

This may be the earliest we've ever ever seen Javaris. Woohoo!

34-26 Shotblockers


2nd Quarter
Celeb camera time... hey, wait a minute, where's Britney?

11:30 Jordan with the gold touch. We have no idea what that means, we just like talking about Jordan.

10:09 Phew! That one was close like 4 times in a row.

Woah! J.Critt, we weren't ready for that! Do it again... do it again!

8:57 Ronny?

What are the chances the shoes and the floor were intentionally manufactured to make that squeak-squeak sound as often as possible?

7:49 The Trev brings it home. Gosh he's good!

6:19 Looks like Kwame just bought himself a break.

5:54 "####!" Don't be mad Jordan, you're still our Hero.

5:33 J.Critt gets Ronny into his first dance routine of the night.

3:56 We shan't comment on Luke's play so far - no need to curse it.

3:36 Someone tell Derek this is not the place to practice daddy and me ballet moves.

3:17 Round of applause for Mr. Crittenton!

64-40 Lakers!!


Half Time
We don't really have much to say, the game has spoken for itself so far. Brilliant. Let's hold on for the rest of the night okay? On a different note, some people have come to view us as alcoholics, so this year we've resolved to drink less... in 2009. We need wine refills.


3rd Quarter
11:14 Kobe isn't napping after the break.

10:07 The Sixers should probably learn how to babysit the Lakers a little better.

8:56 Semi-circle ball passing, our favorite!

6:37 Someone must have taken a match to D.Fish.

Nutmegged! Ultimate humiliation.

3:41 Luke and Vitti chatting... that can't be too good.

3:08 Andrew? We were gonna call this a shirtwatch until he pulled down his shorts on the court for a tuck in.

Mihm makes his traditional game day appearance.

1:13 J to J and everyone's smiling tonight.

1:00 So yeah, people are getting dinner tonight. No doubt.

Jordan plays volleyball?

96 -68 More of the same


4th Quarter
12:00 Ladies and gentlemen say hello to Coby Karl!

Hmmmmm?

Trevor is like our own personal janitor.

6:32 Jordan Farmar will you marry us?

4:35 J.Critt!

Smart ball playing all around. "What a start to the weekend."

3:22 Damn, we thought Karl was gonna get himself a 12 trillion tonight. We're not really against him, we just thought it might be so - and we don't like being wrong.

1:23 Coby is a bit over-eager to do anything and everything all the time.

9.3 Pretty sure they took a quick vote and gave that to Coby Karl. That's teamwork my friends. THAT'S TEAMWORK!

124-93 I love L.A.
Bake 'em away toys!



Final Comments
Did everyone get on the board tonight? Yep, these kids defined teamwork tonight by kicking their stars to the curb for the 4th quarter. Most importantly... tacos all around!

The "Who?" award of the night: Lamar Odom. The Lakers forgot to remember that he was missing tonight.

The You Kiss Your Mother With That Mouth? award of the night: Jordan Farmar for saying the F word on television (mostly we just want to point out that we saw it on TV cause that's funny).

The Interview Of The Night award: Ronny Turiaf because we love his accent almost as much as we love him begging for some tacos. Seriously? Give the men some tacos already! And Javaris Crittenton for being such a humble being.

Our player of the night: Javaris Crittenton: He pretty much threw his own 'Welcome to Los Angeles' party tonight during the most significant hardwood outing of his life so far. Welcome J, welcome.

There are a lot of teams in need of some help this season. If by "help" I mean, "they need to make some obvious personnel changes before this gets even further out of hand". Of course theres always got to be a loser in each game, but when it's you every night there's probably something wrong. After thinking about it for... not that long actually, it seems obvious that the Knicks would be the easiest to remedy given my current skill set. Not only are they failing terribly at the whole basketball playing thing, but they have a bunch of other problems, like coaches being allowed to address the media with reckless abandon, and well... you know....

At this point I'm pretty sure the Knicks should just let me coach.

-"But you're a girl!"
Yep.

-"You don't know anything about basketball!!"
I know that the ball going in that round thingy gets you points and stuff. And isn't it like whoever has the most points after 2.5 hours on TV that wins?

-"That's ridiculous $#$%&*^&*"
Probably.

I hear ya, but seriously, here's why you should vote for me to replace whatshisname :

They can hire me and I'll let you, Knicks fan, influence all of my coaching decisions. We can have weekly, even daily polls. What should the team focus on in practice tomorrow? Who should be in the starting line up on Friday? What's wrong with Q's game? Who needs a spot on the bench? Hell, if you've got some experience email me and I'll let you come in and run some stuff at practice (serious inquiries only). I'll even put your names and pictures up as "Coach of the Week" on my official coaches blog and comp you into the game. I'll keep my iPhone on the bench with me during games, you can IM me your commentary during the game, I'll make adjustments as necessary. Why not right?

My specialty in life happens to be event planning and my boss would agree when I say that I pretty much invented teamwork, in fact my team is working on a huge project while I'm typing this blog. I've spent countless nights containing the only people with bigger ego's than rockstars - wanna-be-rockstars. I could pretty much make Shaq and Kobe BFF's in a months time. I mean, I can't give away all of my secrets but I can guarantee after a few of my expertly "planned events" the Knicks will love each other enough to want to win a few games more than... 8?

Major benefits? I don't mind a little sexual harrassment. My sarcasm skills (that I'm not displaying here because this is not a joke) are fine tuned and professionally developed. Salary; Even though I'm gonna roll into New York and OWN, they are not (as I do not expect them to) going to pay me trillions of dollars to coach, imagine what they could do with the extra money! I like giving pep talks? I've never lost a kid I was babysitting, even when we went on field trips. I'm not gonna promise you a championship ring but I can promise you won't need to take any more days off work to picket the offices with pink slips already filled out with my name on them. Oh, and I know somebody down at MTV. I don't want to be too forward but this would be the best new pointless reality show out there.

And mostly, it really couldn't get any worse, so why not?

If you're still not convinced, I'll even offer you this guarantee: Bring your H.O.R.S.E buddies down to the training facility and if ya'll can beat the Knicks under my direction... you can have my job.

A word before the game
Where old rivalries finally come back to life!
There are so many decisions to make tonight, to watch FSN or FSNPT? To drink or not to drink? To be sad that Luke's not playing (likely) or to be happy that The Trev is kicking #### as a starter? It's enough to make your head hurt. Never fear, we're gonna be here doing what we do best... making stupid comments on the game that you probably don't even care about (but it gives us something to go back to and laugh about at a later date and time). This ain't your old high school rivalry folks... this is THE BUSINESS!
We flipped a coin and are going to watch FSNPT and record FSN for later viewing should we so choose!


Tip Off
KB, LO, AB, TA, DF


1st Quarter
9:15 D. Fish with some free throws in his hot pants - we're pretty sure his are the shortest out there - we just now recovered from them taking off the warm ups.

7:14 Lamar we can't have this tonight.

Aaaaaaaaaand we just saw Trevor's socks. Could this get any better?

5:17 Speaking of Trevor - he's a little ball of energy tonight isn't he?

4:29 The free throw line needs to be examined tonight - there's clearly something wrong with it.

2:54 Did Perkins just get a T for staring at Drew? Awesome!

Even the Laker Girls are in the 80's spirit tonight.

1:08 The refs are handing out T's like they are going out of style.

28.5 They are playing hard tonight judging from the sweat dripping from their faces.

5.9 Every time a new guy gets off the bench we start our laughing all over again at the "shorts".

0.0 Ronny doesn't always do a lot but when he does do what he does do it's brilliant!

30-23 Celtics


2nd Quarter
10:41 J. Critt is in already? Could this mean no more human victory cigar status for him?

9:35 Just call Trevor The Hustleman.

6:55 JORDAN! No pushing!

6:36 Scalabrine just checked in... now we're not really up on other teams and their players but we read enough to know that this guy should make us laugh and um, we did.

5:35 We've got the spirit, but somehow we're just not following through :(

Kevin Garnett doesn't look like a dude who would be named Kevin Garnett.

4:46 How long has Radman been in the game? He's already racking up non helpful stats.

It feels like Kobe's already turned to desperation shooting.

3:13 We all know that was a total make up call for not fouling Drew on making KG bleed... such transparency.

Luke gets to play after all, let's see if our theory about his bounce back efficiency** is true...

2:15 So far it's a yes for the Walton Theory.

23.8 If we have to see one more dude "adjust his shorts" we're gonna fall over.

Not quite as awesome as an 0.4 but D.Fish just brought it with the 1.4 or whatever it was to bring us to...

53-45 Capris


Half Time
Ask (complain) and ye shall receive - Hot Pants > Capris. Always. Period. In fact, we're so amused by the hot pants that we aren't even mad that we're losing (yet). The whole court side view concept is interesting but boring as hell. It's not "just like being at the game" for a few reasons. 1 being that we didn't interview any celebrities last time we were sitting court side at the game - even though, ironically, we were standing in the media section. 2 being that there's actually much more to look at when you are there. And 3 being that while you can hear the fans screaming on TV it's way off in the distance making the broadcast eerily quiet. We do want to say one thing and then forget we ever even thought it - we wish we were Celtics fans because their fan apparel is cute and fun/easy to accessorize. Maybe the boys will pat each other on the #### a few times in the locker room and they'll get over their fear of being in public in the shocker pants/ man panties/ whatever else you wanna call them.
27,000 people in downtown Los Angeles right this very moment.


3rd Quarter
They changed! With this development we're not going to be happy if they lose. Losing is only acceptable if they are wearing the man panties.

11:29 So far the long shorts aren't helping... pretty sure they just didn't bring their A game with them to STAPLES.

10:02 Shirt watch on Lamar.

9:55 Trevor "The Slasher" Ariza according to Joel and Stu.

7:32 Aaaargh!

6:22 Ronny workin' the DDR off the bench. We seriously hope he goes to his local arcade and schools all the little Jr. High School kids who think they're hot ####

5:10 Did Luke hear us talking about him and his bounce back efficiency? Holler!

3:17 Doc better call a time out cause the Lakers are about to start steam rolling his boys.

2:11 Are you kidding???

1:30 The losers at the Special Olympics could officiate this game better than these refs.

12.0 "Indecision by Luke Walton".

We're not down by that much - we have 1 quarter to clean this #### up.


4th Quarter
9:36 We saw that coming from the 1st quarter... night night Andrew, sleep tight, don't let the bench bugs bite.

8:49 Some of the things (including that miss) we've seen tonight from the boys in our favorite colors are just unbelievable.

7:57 J. Critt leaves teenageacy behind tomorrow.

6:27 We're not really sure what just happened in the past couple of seconds. We're almost ready to turn this game off.

5:18 Okay so it's only charging if the Lakers do it, if the Celtics do it it's okay... is that how this works?

2:57 Yeah Lamar you guys aren't gonna win this now so you may as well go start some ####, just don't turn it into The Malice @ The Palace okay?

2:22 They are trying to kill Jordan.

Can the Celtics stop making out with each other on their bench please? Or can FSN at least stop airing it?

46.6 Can you guys please just clean it up so we don't get bent over the knee and spanked?

31.1 I guess that's a no?

110-91 Meh!


Final Comments
Okay, we're only half pissed that we didn't win this one. At least we got a hearty laugh throughout the first quarter? Actually watching the "highlights" right now we're still laughing hysterically. If Jesus loved us like they said in that song we sang in Sunday school years ago, he'd make the shorts come back at least once this season, just cause.

** The Luke Walton Bounce Back Theory is that it takes him an average of 4 games to bounce back (to being an effective player) after missing any amount of games with his ever present ankle injuries. He usually just goes out on the floor and puddleducks around during his first couple of games back.

Award time:
The "Hey, there's that guy" award of the night: Rick Fox steals it from Mihm in part because... seriously where has he been? Also because we didn't even get a screen shot of Mihm tonight so we couldn't effectively say, "Hey! There's that guy..." about him.

The Shortest Shorts Ever award of the night: Derek Fisher. Dude! Those things were teener.

Comment of the night: Joel or Stu (we forgot already): "My ankle's sore but I can stroke it." Providing us with the thoughts in Luke's head after a big 3, but read it out of context and you'll understand it better.

Our player of the night: The Hot Pants. No joke, those things were awesome. They are going to keep us giggling all night long and the reaction from the crowd was just enough to make us wish this was college ball so that we'd get a true celebration. Plus, we no longer have to wonder what Jordan looks like in man panties we can call them real throw back jersey's now.

A word before the game
We've done our fair share of internet trolling today to pass the time at work - er, we mean to uh, ####.. the boss won't be reading this right? We came across a few things that bring smiles to the faces. This quote, "...and losing track of starting point guard Stephon Marbury for a couple of days in November." about Isaiah (who doesn't even need a last name any more because you know who we're talking about) pretty much makes us want to high five America.
Surely by now everyone has seen "Before The Bigs" the Luke Walton episode, but we felt like watching it anyway (it's all we're gonna see of him tonight anyway)... we almost forgot how much he is his fathers' son. Read that again.
Looks like Kwame gets some play tonight... this ought to be interesting... it's Friday and a holiday weekend so we'll be drinking!


Tip Off
Kobe, Andrew, Derek, Lamar, Trevor we forgot to look at who controlled the tip because Ronny was warming up - for Dance Dance Revolution, not that we mind but shouldn't he have been paying attention to the game?


1st Quarter
10:17 Here's a joke for the evening, "How many Lakers does it take..."

9:23 The Trev may just push his way into our hearts if he keeps it up!

8:06 SHOTS (though we admit Drew has been controlling his foul rate these days)

7:35 Kobe for the em ephin steal and the pass to himself. Who cares if he didn't make it, it was still quite awesome.

5:52 THAT'S ####' TEAM WORK! Funny how you can use the same joke from earlier and it's awesome this time.

5:28 Oh Andrew!

DWCC (Dwyane Wade Commercial Count) I

Kwame! Makin' a difference right away.

3:13 We weren't going to embarrass the Jazz by bringing up the "class" of their "fans" but since the announcers brought it up... we'd like to point out that we haven't booed them so heinously tonight in retaliation. That, "dear" people of Utah is how class sounds. (Booing at free throws does not count against your class rating).

1:31 That was smooth!

17.6 Kobe this isn't baseball - nobody's measuring the speed of your pass.

Useless stat alert: We just got a season high for points in the first 12 minutes.

38 - 23 Lakers


2nd Quarter
11:09 Ronny might make a name for himself in shot blocking in one game. Dare we say "Got Them Dos!"

8:53 Jordan and Ronny are having a back and forth love fest tonight. Can we join?

6:35 The do-over play for Radman..

6:08 Holla for J.Far. We should mention that we mostly just call him Hero after the end of the Knicks game the other day.

Oh hey, Luke will be getting some air time tonight after all, nice suit. We'll drink to you!

DWCC II

4:52 T for Sloan! Woohoo!!

4:14 I think every single person in Championship Gold touched that one.

We just gave them the T and they missed as well... can we insert a useless stat for this somehow?

1:15 Damn that one would have been sweet...

47.5 MVP MVP MVP

75 -48 Lakers of course.


Half Time
With the team playing so well we haven't gotten our drink on quite as much as we'd like. This concoction of Pumpkin Schnapps and Orange Juice is delightful, we might just have to drink to excellence. We are gonna go work on our "#### ####" dance (see Kobe highlights from the first half) and pray to the rain Gods that we keep up the show in the 2nd half.

DWCC III


3rd Quarter
11:10 Over the glass for Kobe. That's hott!

10:42 The Trev needs to work on his free throwing lest we push him to a stat sheet with Geriatric-Diesel.

10:12 It's been 30 seconds since we last commented on the free throwing of The Trev and it still stands...

9:54 He does make up for it quite a bit with his anticipatory skills though. Round of applause for that steal.

8:07 Phew! (That one barely went down)

DWCC IV (We abso-####-lutely hate this stupid commercial. Make it stop!)

4:19 Ariza had the smoothness to Fish who missed.

Girls wanna know: Why is every little thing a stat. Seriously? Should we also figure in bounces per game when averaging things? I mean, if you look at the ratio of baskets made vs. # of times the ball was dribbled per game it's gotta further prove the conspiracy theories surrounding the Lakers. I'm not a mathematon so I couldn't do this myself but I know it'll work out in the end.

3:44 What the hell is wrong with Hero's shorts as he's entering the game?

3:14 Time for Drew to calm down and tuck in his shirt.

We're gonna leave the C-note mark in the dust in 3 quarters time.

2:47 Andrew! =(

2:30 Lakers with the "around the world" pass. How many times can we go around the world in 24 seconds?

1:47 Tender Ronny with The Towel.

My god Hero looks short out there.

0.1 Hero for the not even necessary trois at the end of the quarter to make it:

106 - 74 Even though it's pretty early on, we're guessing Taco Chants will be starting very soon, and tacos are looking like a serious reality at this point.


4th Quarter
10:44 Trevor! We really want to vote for you for player of the night... don't #### this up!

9:28 Dear Radman, What the hell was that?

8:37 Holy #### how many fouls does Kwame have now?

7:44 Don't start falling apart now...

7:17 Nice recovery for Hero.

Looks like the tacos might be going bye-bye?

J.Critt, Criptonite, Javaris in the game

5:59 PB&J has been pretty quiet tonight until now...

33 assists!

3:47 It's hard not to notice how much Ronny likes taking credit for fouling people. We're pretty sure he'd take credit for other people fouling people if he was anywhere near the action. Actually, he'd probably even try to take credit for fouling people if he was still sitting on the bench.

2:42 Take down a jersey number and beat him up 'cause there goes your tacos LA fans.

Ronny with the finger lickin' goodness and there's a pan of the bench... all the starters went on early vacation tonight. And once again "Hey, there's that guy..." Chris Mihm.

This game is so far over FSN has taken down the shot clock, game clock, scoreboard et al on the screen.

57.5 (We can only tell by looking at the in house time clock) They think they can still win this?

123 -109 4 in a row!


Final Comments
Holla atcha boys! We even got a smile from PB&J. We won't bother getting as excited as the Lakers did - oh wait...
We do actually understand the non-victory like attitudes they displayed, they pretty much let it go in the 4th. Good call. We got the W and that's what counts in the end. Anyway on with the awards of the night:

The Thank God He Didn't Choke On His Comeback Game award of the night: Kwame Brown. It's so easy to just go out there and chalk a #### game up to being rusty and he didn't.

The "Hey there's that guy" award of the night: Defending title holder Chris Mihm. Seriously, Javaris got off the bench and this guy didn't. Yeah we know he played a game or two ago and didn't completely suck but seriously?

The It's Gonna Be A Long Trip Home award: Jerry Sloan & The Utah Jazz who in addition to just getting their #### handed to them in a potpourri bag have to face the Celtics next and it's not gonna be pretty.

Our player of the night: Trevor Ariza. He threw it down. No, it wasn't a spectacularly amazing game tonight for him personally but combine this game with that famous dunk up/posterization on Grant's Hill and he's more than earned this, besides, when isn't it awesome to actually like the newbie?

The "Oh #### did he just say that?" award of the night: PB&J for calling Luke out on his pending Wally Pipp status. Though we're sure he was joking and really, nothing coming from Phil's mouth should be surprising.

A word before the game
Sunday was a crazy night at STAPLES right? Were you there? We were. Enough of that. Let's get this under way and see if it was a fluke, or if it was the real thing shall we?


Tip off
1st Quarter
2nd Quarter
Half Time
3rd Quarter
4th Quarter


Final Comments
Quote of the night (from a comment by Mhunt at forumblueandgold.com):

"I realized what it is that Kwame really brings to that first unit besides a big body on defense: a simple, almost childlike adherence to the offense. In a way, he reminds me of a kid in the third-grade, one of the slowest in the class, coming in for a math test furiously reciting the multiplication tables under his breath so he can remember them. Doesn’t matter what the test questions actually are: he’s going to write down his memorized tables and hope for a C- this time instead of a D or F.

When he’s on the floor with the first unit, the ball moves much better because Kwame is only capable of focusing on just one thing: moving where he’s supposed to as hard and fast as he can. He’s not really bright enough to think about anything else at the time. That’s probably a part of why his hands are so rubbery…he’s concentrating so hard on making the right cut, or setting the right pick, and suddenly someone passes him the ball and he’s thinking “What’s this? But I’m supposed to be moving! Not catching! Mongo no move and catch at same time!” Almost like a toddler, actually."

Pretty much sums it up, but you can read it all if you'd like.

Notice how it's all blank in the middle? Here's the thing: I'm here in good old San Diego. The game is on KCAL. KCAL does not exist in San Diego. Now you're thinking "what?". That's okay, there's a solution to this. Pay nearly $200 and get League Pass. Which means you can watch any game you want. Every game will be available in one of the following ways:
Local Broadcast (like KCAL)
National Broadcast (like ESPN)
NBATV (yeah it's the NBA's very own channel)
League Pass Broadband (view it on the internet)

Now, you can only get a game in one of those places. You're not gonna have it on multiple channels, bottom line. I'm fine with that. Really. I'll sit through crappy announcers so I can see the team. Tonight I come home, look up where I'm supposed to watch the game at, find that it's on NBATV and flip to that channel. Being that it's on NBATV it's available to any and everyone who's paid for League Pass on that channel... unless you have KCAL. I know you're still wondering why I didn't see the game. Me too actually.

Aaaaaaaaaaaapparently since the game is being broadcast locally (KCAL) it's blacked out in my area on NBATV. I'm not sure if I mentioned this or not but WE DON'T #### GET KCAL IN SAN DIEGO. Maybe this is a mistake DIRECTV made? It'd be a pretty big mistake - it's like going snowboarding during All Star Break and... woah, off topic - but just maybe. I call them, and of course get the pre-recorded run around, just what I'd hoped for, before finally getting to the bottom of things. Nope, no mistake. I can watch the game on KCAL this lady tells me. I ask if she can look at my account and tell me where I'm at on the planet earth. Yes, for the record the information is right in front of her. I asked if she's ever been to San Diego. Yes, she lives in San Diego. What? No way! I asked when the last time she watched KCAL in San Diego was... shockingly at this point there is silence on the other end of the phone.

There's no resolution to this because DIRECTV is still going to maintain that we San Diegans can just watch it on KCAL and I'm still going to be mad - except that I'm going to get my $200 back, they may not know that yet but I am. Thank god NBA.com doesn't block people from looking up scores of games they could be watching on their local channel because now I can look at the exciting white box and see that we won! That's pretty much all I can look and see. So, thank you DIRECTV for making me pay almost $200 for some free stuff.