Once again... I do not endorse binge drinking. But the NBA Draft, much like the NFL Draft, follows an unwavering pattern of canned comments and predictable events that I find highly amusing. And since this draft class is relatively weak, I figured that I had to come up with some way to kick it up a notch. So on that note, I present to you... the Official NBA Draft Drinking Game.
One drink for each time:
- Someone's mother is shown crying - A player wearing a bad suit is selected - David Stern or Russ Granik completely butcher a player's name - Someone from your alma mater (or current school) is selected - The last player in the green room is shown on his cell phone, trying to hide his disappointment - Grainy, convenience store-quality video camera footage of a non-American player is shown - Any player forgets to put the requisite curve in his hat brim before putting it on - Jay Bilas (or anyone else on the broadcast) uses one of the following words "Long" "Explosive" "Wingspan" "Upside" "Motor" "Tweener" "Reach" "Unlimited range" "NBA-ready body" "Jumps out of the gym"
- Stephen A. Smith says any of the following (or a variation thereof): "That's horrible!" "That's terrible!" "However..." "Oh my goodness..."
- The Stephen A. Smith/Tim Legler ESPN Mobile commercial is shown.
Two drinks for each time:
- A foreign-born player uses a translator in the post-pick interview - There is a trade in the first-round (finish your drink if it involves either a lottery pick or your favorite team) - A player is selected and, instead of emerging from the green room, he comes straight out of the crowd - Someone compares Andrea Bargnani to Dirk Nowitzki - Someone compares Adam Morrison to Larry Bird - Someone compares Tyrus Thomas to Shawn Marion - Dick Vitale raves about a Duke player - Dick Vitale rips a team who takes a foreign-born player over an American player (finish your drink if he says: "That is a joke. That is an absolute joke.")
Finish your drink if:
- A "Fire Thomas" chant breaks out - Stephen A. Smith mentions Scott Layden - A player is drafted and there is no video footage whatsoever - The last player in the green room begins to cry - Adam Morrison begins to cry - A clip package that highlights the worst suits in draft night history is shown - Someone who is at least seven feet tall pats David Stern on the top of the head
- All have shown the ability to take over a game, with Bryant and Wade doing it on the biggest stage of them all.
- All posess remarkable body control and are excellent finishers around the basket.
- Wade clearly makes his teammates better. LeBron, not quite so much. But Kobe will never be mistaken for one who "plays well with others."
- Of the three, Kobe is the best defender, LeBron is the most physical, and D-Wade is the fastest.
- LeBron's court vision is incredible for a man of his size, Bryant is an explosive scorer, and Dwyane's recent exploits have many conjuring up the name of the newest minority owner of the Charlotte Bobcats.
- Kobe will be 28 in two months, Wade is 24, and James is 21. With age comes experience: while LeBron and Dwyane have just completed their third seasons in the NBA, Bryant is already a 10-year veteran. - Kobe has 3 NBA titles, Wade just captured his first, while LeBron has yet to led his Cavs to the Eastern Conference Finals.
It's not an easy call by any stretch of the imagination, but regardless of the choice, it's impossible to make a mistake. Not even Isiah Thomas could mess this up. Personally, I'd go with LeBron James for two specific reasons.
For starters, he's the youngest of the three. It's amazing to think of it in these terms, but as good as James is right now, he may very well be six or seven years away from his prime. Barring injury, LBJ will be an incredibly productive player for the next 15 years.
Secondly, he's the most physically imposing member of the group. Everyone falls in love with guards, but make no mistake - the NBA is a big man's league. 14 of the last 16 NBA champions have been led by a player who is at least 6'6" or taller - the only exceptions are this year's Heat squad and the 2004 Detroit Pistons who rode the team concept to the Larry O'Brien trophy. And if I have the choice between a 6-4 guy, a 6-6 guy, and a 6-8 guy, all of whom are all-world talents, I'll take the biggest player every single time.
This is just one man's opinion, however. Kobe, LeBron or Dwyane - you make the call...
I had planned to start a semi-regular post on all things sports, and now that I have been kicked off the island, I have plently of time to do just that. As such, I'd like to dedicate this first edition of The Baker's Dozen to a few post-NGS2 thoughts...
- Special thanks goes out to my two editors: without you, I wouldn't have made it this far.
- Of course, I would be remiss if I didn't thank everyone out there who read crazydelicious and voted throughout the competition. HiPlains and MooreSports have been the judges' favorites since well before the finalists were announced. The fact that two relative unknowns such as Josh and myself were able to hang with them for so long speaks to the power of the voting public.
- Thanks to Dime Magazine for that 81 cent subscription offer you had a while back. I wanted to mention this earlier, but I didn't want to be seen as trying to curry favor with the judges. It's the best sub $1 subscription I've ever had, even better than the deal for the free year of GolfWeek I found online.
- Congratulations to all of the finalists: I think we represented well.
- When I got the e-mail saying that my run was done, I think I pushed my keyboard farther than Dirk Nowitzki pushed that exercise bike after losing Game 5.
- FoxSports easily could have picked 32 finalists. There are a number of writers whose work doesn't get the credit/exposure it deserves. Speaking of which...
- Now that I'm out, I have more free time to post about all those athletes that don't get enough shine, in my opinion: Ruben Boumtje-Boumtje, Kevin Maas, Dan McGwire, Tim Cheveldae and Rich Beem.
- This is the first week I get to vote on a blog other than mine. I guess I could have voted all along, but personally, I couldn't give the other finalists bad ratings when their work is better than that. I respect them and the competition far too much to go around giving people one star, even if it means the difference between winning and losing.
- I finally have time to go to the gym again. Too much snacking at the computer while working on assignments has turned me into the sportswriting version of Ronaldo.
- After nearly two solid months of blogging, I still only have a vague idea of what the judges want. In the past three weeks, they've given the following critiques to my submissions (in order): "too funny", "too long", and "too much Hasselhoff." I can deal with the first two, but "too much Hasselhoff" is like saying there's too much beer in the refrigerator - it's just not possible.
- Despite the incessant advertising, I've still never had a Spicy Chicken Sandwich from McDonald's. I'm more of a McRib fan, actually. But let's not forget - the McDLT remains the greatest sandwich in the McDonald's pantheon.
- I'm funnier than that Fox_Funhouse blog. I tick off less people than Elizabeth Bennett. So who do I need to pay in order to be the three featured/popular blogs of the day? I think I may have been the only finalist not to make it on there. So for anyone out there who wants one of those spots, do the exact opposite of what I did, and you're golden.
- All in all, it's been an incredibly rewarding experience. I hope to continue to build on the relationships I've made these past few weeks - this is a very talented community and I'm pleased to be a part of it.
The Larry O'Brien trophy was being polished, Dallas city officials had finished planning the parade route, and Kobe Bryant had already ordered a case of Moet from his local wine and spirits store.
Down 13 points with 6:34 left in the 4th quarter, many believed that it would take no less than a superhuman effort to save the Miami Heat from an insurmountable 3-0 deficit in the NBA Finals.
Make that, a superhero's effort.
Mild-mannered Dwyane Wade - Sean John model by day, all-world shooting guard by night - completely dominated the final six-and-a-half minutes of last night's contest, leading the Heat to a 98-96 win over the Dallas Mavericks in Game 3 of the NBA Finals. The man who is affectionately known as "Flash" finished with 42 points, becoming the youngest player to drop 40-plus in an NBA Finals game since Magic Johnson in 1980.
"He just rises to the occasion," said Heat coach Pat Riley, following the game. "You just couldn't stop him."
Of course not, especially on a stage such as this. The NBA Finals has historically been a place where stars are born, legends are made, and superheroes do exactly what we expect them to do. Take the big shots, make a statement on defense and dominate every facet of the game. Last night, Wade did all of that and more.
Despite drawing his fifth foul with 10:56 left in the game, Wade played the fourth quarter with reckless abandon. A jumper with just over six minutes to go cut the Mavs' lead to 11. A three-point play 40 seconds later made it an eight-point margin. The comeback was in full swing.
Wade brought the Heat to within three with 3:36 left in the fourth quarter. After Dallas' Dirk Nowitzki knocked down a pair of free throws, it was time for another superhero to make his presence felt.
Shaquille O'Neal, an imposing figure who refers to himself as "The Big Aristotle", had previously pulled The Big Disappearing Act in the two games in Big D. But even Superman knew that he needed to come up big at the end of Game 3. After he was fouled by Erick Dampier with just under two minutes left in the game, Shaq, who had gone 2-for-16 from the charity stripe in Games 1 and 2, channeled his inner Calvin Murphy and calmly knocked down two free throws. The Miami crowd responded in kind.
This series of events was in sharp contrast to a third quarter in which the Mavericks outscored the Heat 34-16, turning a 52-43 halftime deficit into a nine-point lead heading into the fourth. Dallas shot 70 percent in the third quarter, led by Nowitzki, who finished the game with 30 points on 9-for-20 shooting. Mavericks' forward Josh Howard had a stellar performance as well, chipping in 21 points in his best game of the series. When all was said and done, however, the Mavs wound up on the wrong side of the ledger.
Not to be discounted in the Heat comeback is the play of Udonis Haslem, who collected 8 points and pulled down 13 boards in 34 gritty minutes. But there's no question that the night belonged to The Flash. Yet despite Wade's heroics, the game-winning shot came from a Finals veteran who had scored only one basket in this year's series.
These days, the Glove fits more like a mitten - Gary Payton no longer has the Doberman-like intensity he used to possess on the defensive end of the court. But when crunch time rolls around, ice water still flows in the veins of the Heat's 37-year-old point guard. With the score tied and less than 10 seconds to go, Payton's 20-footer that gave Miami a 98-96 lead seemed to be the coup de grace.
One small problem: the villains weren't quite dead yet.
Nowitzki was fouled by Haslem on a drive to the basket with 1.4 seconds left, giving the 90 percent free-throw shooter a chance to tie the game. The German-born forward - with strains of David Hasselhoff's "Looking For Freedom" running through his head - inexplicably missed the second free throw, and the rebound was corralled by Dwyane Wade, his 13th rebound of the game. After Wade was fouled and split two free throws of his own, Dallas had a chance to either tie or win the game on an inbounds play with one second left. Once again, the Flash was heroic, knocking away an alley-oop attempt by Howard as the buzzer sounded.
Last night was the first time in 26 games this year (including the playoffs) that Dallas had lost despite Howard going off for 20 points or more. Now, instead of holding a commanding 3-0 series lead, the Mavs' only have a 2-1 advantange, with the next two games in south Florida. The 2006 NBA Finals is a series once again, thanks to a league of extraordinary gentlemen who never lost sight of their goal.
"We don't like to lose but again give the Heat some credit," Dallas coach Avery Johnson said. "They made some nice adjustments. They played hard. They didn't quit."
It's happening all around us, yet many are still blind to the fact. You can't find it on any calendar, although it should be formally recognized in some fashion. It's not a single event per se, but more like the dawn of a new day.
Yes, ladies and gentlemen - fantasy football season is upon us once again.
As you're reading this, the first fantasy guides are hitting shelves at a bookstore near you. Mock drafts are available all over the Internet. Even the sports shows are running the occasional piece on fantasy sleepers and studs. For diehards such as myself, it doesn't get much better than this.
I'm married to this game they call fantasy football. I started playing during my high school days, settling down in homeroom with the Monday edition of the Philadelphia Daily News and calculating the scores by hand. At some point after that, Al Gore invented the Internet and the various online leagues kept the stats automatically. My friends and I have since graduated to the Web sites with the slick interfaces and live stat-tracking. But since we're scattered throughout North America, we've never been able to get together in a single room for a draft.
The ultimate plan is for us to meet up in Vegas one late August weekend, rent out one of those high-roller suites in the MGM Grand, hook the laptop up to the TV and project our picks onto the plasma screen. After which, we'll lose ourselves in a Red Bull-and-vodka-induced haze as we make our way across The Strip for a late-night Fatburger run. But that's a few years off. There are more pressing matters at hand, namely, this year's draft.
When it comes to fantasy football, I'm that guy. You know who I'm talking about. Every league has a guy who not only groups the players at each position into separate tiers, but also charts it out in a color-coded Excel spreadsheet. The guy who does more pre-draft research than anyone else, yet still winds up frantically searching through one of the three fantasy football magazines lying in front of him when it's his turn to pick. A guy who talks more trash than anyone on the league's message board, yet consistently finishes out of the money. Yeah... that's me.
According to an MSN/FoxSports press release from last summer, about 12 million Americans participate in fantasy football leagues. If you were to rank those 12 million in terms of skill level, I would probably come in at about the 11 million mark. To be honest, I'm probably overstating the case somewhat - last year, I actually won a Yahoo! public league for the first time ever. But in my primary league, with actual money on the table, I come up smaller than Nick Anderson in the '95 Finals. But I still do it anyway.
There's something about a draft - whether it be the NBA draft, a fantasy draft, or draft beer - that appeals to the inner player personnel director in all of us. Nearly everyone has second-guessed a draft pick of their favorite team at one point or another. Most sports fans have sat around a bar and concocted wild trade scenarios that actual general managers would never agree to. A good number have even called/written/accosted the GM of their local team and asked why he didn't sign a particular free agent.
While the majority of us haven't been blessed with superior athletic ability, every sports fan has an opinion on whether or not one player is better than another. But you know what they say about opinions - everybody has one. And all of us are geniuses until the games start...
*****
Last year, I was the Elgin Baylor of fantasy football. My #1 RB was Deuce McAllister. My starting WRs were Andre Johnson and Darrell Jackson. My QBs were Aaron Brooks and Brian Griese. In case you were wondering, our draft occurred AFTER Hurricane Katrina - I actually defended the McAllister and Brooks picks by saying that the Saints would rally together in the midst of the crisis.
Needless to say, I only won four games.
A 4-9 record last year means the second selection in my league's draft this year. Which poses a dilemma. Which member of the beastly RB triumvirate do I take with that #2 pick? Larry Johnson is ridiculously good, but he has a new coach with a new offensive philosophy. Shaun Alexander set the NFL single-season TD record last year, but one would think that losing a Pro Bowl guard in Steve Hutchinson would mean a hit to his numbers. LaDainian Tomlinson is a do-everything back, but with Philip Rivers under center, defenses could very well stack the box against LT.
Truth be told, I probably shouldn't be fretting all that much over which stud RB to take at that spot. But there are decisions like that all over the board this season. Is Carson Palmer going to be 100% going into the season? Is Mike Shanahan going to pick one running back and stick with him for an entire year? Is Adam Vinatieri even more automatic now that he plays in a dome? And how many games will T.O. get through before he starts doing bicep curls on his front lawn?
These are just some of the issues that will cause millions of aspiring GM much distress as they're pressed to make their picks come draft day. And they'll love every minute of it.
There's no mistake about it - if you're a fantasy football player, life as you know it is now over.
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