I just heard the strangest comment I have ever heard in my life.  They said "the way Kobe is playing in the first round (team first basketball) is showing his true character."  I was stunned, and disappointed.  I want to preface this with the fact that i'm not a Lakers fan, never have been, never will be.  I'm not a Kobe fan, never have been, definitely never will be.  I agree that it's a shock the way he's changed his game, and bought into the team system, but it's only been 5 games!!!!  And it shows his true character???  This is the same guy who alledgedly assaulted a 19 year old girl in Colorado.  The same guy who, admitted to cheating on his wife. The same guy who, as an NBA superstar, was dating a highschool girl.  No, not his highschool sweetheart, but a girl he met as a member of the Lakers.  I've never heard the story of how they met, I bet it's a good character kind of story.  This is the guy who single handedly forced Phil Jackson to retire, and Shaq to demand a trade.  The fact is, i've never seen him doing anything that remotely symbolizes good character.  I've never heard of the community service he does, he's suprisingly absent from the NBA read-to-achieve program.  Why is that?  Because nobody wants their kid to grow up to be Kobe.  I agree with Raja Bell that he thinks he can do whatever he wants.  That Kobe walks around with an ego large enough to fill the LA coliseum.  But he's a joke, a ticking time bomb.  He gets under people's skin, and that's what he's best at.  Overall he's a pretty darn good player, and thinks he should be considered the next Jordan.  Changing numbers justs adds to the drama that surrounds him.  The bottom line is, he'll never be in the same class as Michael Jordan.  With Michael you had a classy individual who knew that the game of basketball is what made him great.  Kobe thinks that the game of basketball is great because of him.... What does that say about "character"?  How soon we all forget.

I just finished watching one of the worst 1st round series in NBA history.  Not only did the Denver Nuggets not show up for the second half of any game, they forgot to play in the first half a couple of times.  As a true fan, I still had a glimmer of hope coming into last night's game 5.  "Hey, if they can just win this one, then we come back home and tie it up, then we have all the momentum going into game 7!"  Alas, that didn't happen.  So I took a moment and reflected on where things went wrong.  How did the Clippers, of all teams beat the nuggets.  Was it Sam Cassell?  Nope.  Was it Elton Brand and his dominating inside play?  Nope, Camby shut him down after game 2.  Maybe Shaun Livingston or Chris Kaman?  No, and No.  I came to the conclusion that it was Earl Boykins, and a little George Karl. 

Let me start by saying that I used to love Earl.  I actually thought about naming my dog after him.  Until I found out she was a female.  But I liked him. His little legs running all over the court, quick like a little water bug.  He's definitely a fan of the ladies, every girl i've gone to a game with always says he looks so cute out there with all the big oafs.  "He's so little."  Truth is I used to agree, but this season I started to change my tune.  He started overdribbling, taking crazy shots.  He'd dribble into a corner and let 2 guys trap him.  In other words he was over aggressive.  Last season that worked, he energized the team, they ran and got dunks.  But this wasn't the same team.  It became obvious in game 1, that this was going to be a problem.  Not only was he destroying any offensive flow that they had, he couldn't guard anyone either.  This is where I blame George Karl.  Playoff basketball is about matchups, and you can't leave a 5'5" guy on the floor to guard a 6'8" player, period.  I don't care how much he can bench press (as we were told many times on tv).  Watching Shaun Livingston, of all people, back him in and shoot 7 foot jumpers over him got ridiculous.  How did Karl not see this.  You might be thinking, well nobody can guard him at the other end.  Normally, that might be true.  But with Earl, as soon as he'd beat one guy off the dribble he'd move over to the corner, or side and allow himself to get trapped.  Just bad basketball.

I didn't realize until the end of game 3, why Earl was so detrimental to the team.  He was starting to shoot better, and made less dumb decisions, but there was still something wrong.  Then it clicked, he's not getting the ball to his superstar (Carmelo) where he wants it.  I watched as possession after possession Anthony got the ball about 5 feet further out then he wanted it.  Now was that because of good post defense?  No, it was because Earl couldn't make the entry pass.  His short little arms couldn't get around Livingston or Mobley's long reach.  So he'd dribble around until Carmelo came closer to him.  It was then that I started wondering what happened to Howard Eisley.  You could see on Carmelo's face that he was frustrated by this.  It got so bad that while in the stands at Game 4, my fiancee actually said, "Would you quit complaining about Earl?"  So I did, but I realized that there wasn't a chance the Nuggets would win another game.  This organization has a lot of questions to answer this summer, let's hope that they don't think Earl Boykins is the answer to any of them.

So it's about time somebody addressed the issue of the worst invention in sports history.  The thunderstick.  For those of you that don't know what those are, they're the annoying inflatable tubes that fans can bang together to creat noise.  I guess too many people were having problems hurting their hands by banging them together (clapping) to make noise.  My first encounter with these items was at a football game when I was in college.  I thought they were kind of cool, blew mine up and banged them together loudly.  And yes, if done right, they are very loud.  Problem is I had to leave that game by the end of the 3rd quarter because of an incessant ringing and major headache.  The increase in noise that they created may or may not distract the players, but I think they distract fans.  At the Denver Nuggets playoff game the other night, I watched as two kids smacked each other in the face with these things.  While the kids became wild and unruly, they weren't reacting to the game, but ignoring it.  I watched people throw the thundersticks from high up in the upper deck down into the lower area of stands.  They don't quite fly like paper airplanes or tortillas, but they can travel.  And then, when the game was seemingly over, there became a new noise.  I guess fans learned that when you pop these quasi balloons, they're even louder then banged together.  So I enjoyed the sound of gunfire throughout the arena for the final 6 minutes of the game.  These have replaced the foam finger as the worst item in sports history.  I for one, didn't even inflate mine and the drunk lady next to me looked at me like I was the idiot.  By the way, she accidentally hit herself with her thundersticks about 37 times by the end of the 2nd quarter.  Don't get me wrong, i'm not asking for quiet, like I was at home watching on TV, but it's 2 days later, I can't talk, but the ringing is still in my ears.  Lets get rid of these glorified balloons and hand out "brick" signs, or towels, or something fun and new that nobody's thought of yet...until that becomes the worst invention ever.

The NBA playoffs have started again, which begins the end of my favorite 6 months of sports.  Starting in January with the NFL playoffs, right through March madness, into what now should be called April Madness (nfl draft), and on down until there aren't any legitimate sports to watch by the end of June.  Now, some people might argue that baseball is a legitimate sport, and i'm not going into the reasons it is not, right now.  Let's just suffice to say that i'd rather spend a day watching re-runs of the 1997 F-1 race from Germany then I would watch a baseball game on TV. 

So back to the NBA playoffs.  Growing up in Sacramento during the Waymon Tisdale/Mitch Richmond era, we didn't get to see much playoff basketball.  Much is a liberal term I guess, maybe I should have used the term "any".  That didn't keep me from being a fan.  I had lived in Portland during the Clyde years and went to a game or two the year Isiah and Laimbeer beat "my" Blazers.  The back story to all this is that even when the Kings were bad, Arco was always loud, crazy, fun.  Just like the two years in Portland.   So I was used to the wild loud atmosphere.  Flash forward to April 27th 2006.  I'm now in Denver, and somehow have become a Nuggets fan.  I know there are some people who will call me a traitor, but the Kings still have a place in my heart.   I've spent the last 3 seasons rooting for these Nuggets, the Carmelo Nuggets.  I've been to countless games, and haven't missed a home playoff games the last couple years.  I'm like the Kenyon Martin of fans, I do my best cheering in the playoffs.  So, that being said, Thursday the 27th of April 2006 was the worst atmosphere at any NBA game that I've ever experienced.  Yes, it's fun to boo Sam Cassell.  It's fun to wonder who style's Chris Kaman's hair, is it the same guy that does Dirk and Nash's?  I sometimes wonder where a guy like Mike Dunleavy get's that snazzy pinstriped suit, or how long it took Shaun Livingston to braid his hair.  I guess what i'm getting at, was I didn't really wonder about basketball.  Now, perhaps it was because the Nuggets shot 38% and were 0-11 from the 3 pt line.  But I think the real reason was the crowd, and those lousy thundersticks.  The atmosphere in arena's just isn't what it used to be.  Are people not excited anymore?  Has the NBA lost the  "it's Faaaantastic" appeal?  Maybe it was just one game, but I expected the Denver fans to scare the daylights out of all the playoff rookies from LA.  But it never happened.  Maybe everyone was too worried about who the Broncos are going to draft to care.  I'm going back Saturday night to find out.