Can we find this guy a team?

I know an NBA team in Texas that could use a point guard.  “Shammgod finished with a light 38 points.“  How has he not made an NBA camp?

YEAARARARARARAAAAAAAAAARGGH!!!

I’m sorry. I couldn’t resist.

Those fightin mountaineers

Saw this article on espn.com today. Players face underaged drinking, resisting arrest charges. Not really that big of a story (sadly), since these incidents seem to be very commonly reported during the off-season. The players involved though? Joe “he’s like Jason Kidd” Mazzulla and Cameron Thoroughman.

In other news, Nadal’s roll just keeps on going. He started off the hard court series with a great win at the Rogers Masters Tennis tournament in Toronto. What makes this tournament interesting is that Federer lost in the 3rd round of the tournament. The ATP tennis tour has really got to change its ranking system. Federer’s still ranked #1 in the world, even though Nadal has only won the past two grand slams. Most experts think that hard courts are Nadal’s weakest surface. But there aren’t that many other legit contenders out there. I’m not sure if you can still pencil Federer in as the man to beat, especially if he has some more early exits over the hard court season. Djokovic would appear to be a contender, but it’ll be interesting to see how he regroups after his loss to Safin at Wimbledon. Roddick and Blake are the best hopes for the Americans, and I’m not sure if I even want to get my hopes up for them. Nadal might be able to continue his breakthrough year at the US Open.

oh yeah..omgz batman was awesome.

Let First Service

-Not sure if that pun works, but I don’t really care.

-This is hillarious.

-Not sure how I found my way to that site (just kidding, Indiaglitz is my homepage).

-No idea who the dude is. I’m sure one of us knows.

-I thought people in India only rode camels around. How did they get to Toronto?

-I can’t really do this story justice with my limited Bollywood knowledge.

-Another Bollywood tag. Nice.

-The end.

Pienette Pierson: No One Likes You

So the WNBA finally announced the punishments for the fight. Pienette Pierson got the harshest penalty, a 4 game suspension and a $1,500 fine, which is a lot considering ALL 1st round picks get less than $50,000 a year, most less than $40,000. Candace Parker ONLY GOT A ONE GAME SUSPENSION. I don’t see how Candace got a punishment different than Pierson, but the WNBA knows what’s best for them. They can’t have their most likable player not playing for an extended period of time.

Other hilarity, 3′6″ Shannon Bobbitt was suspended two games for coming off the bench. Yup, she was suspended for more games than Candace WHO TACKLED AND PUNCHED A GIRL. Bobbitt didn’t do much of anything. Rich Mahorn was suspended for two games, which is ridiculous because he was only being a “peacemaker.” Lisa Leslie fell and yelled at Mahorn for pushing her, even though the replays show he clearly didn’t. I have less respect for Lisa Leslie now (which is kind of impossible, like dividing by zero) than I ever have because she let this guy get thrown under the bus.

If I was Candace after this incident I would incite other players all the time. I would yell at the refs, “You can’t touch me!” and commit tons of flagrant fouls. She can do pretty much whatever she wants. I’m surprised she ever gets fouls called on her.

How bout a new slogan for the WNBA after this incident. They seem to hate the fight even though it’s seemingly given them more attention than ever.

The WNBA: We’ll Never Brawl Again!

Maybe them claiming to hate brawls would actually mean that they like them, like how their commercials now are about how sucky the WNBA is. The WNBA loves reverse psychology, like when they talk about their players being better at fundamentals. You can’t fool me, WNBA!

o shit! O Shit! (hand over mouth) O SHITTT!!!!

WNBA FIGHT!!!!!

props to yahoo, the AP, and Jerry S. Mendoza for this pic (and Candace too, for making this pic actually happen)

No highlights available yet, but we certainly will update when they are made available. The Sparks and Shock got into an intense girl fight today. So intense that MALE Rich Mahorn got involved and stumbled into 9′12″ Lisa Leslie, knocking her to the ground. O SHITTT! Craziness. Insanity. Crinsanity.

An unidentified Spark later punched Mahorn, and he didn’t notice.

The best part was when Pienette Pierson walked up to Candace Parker trying to intimidate Parker, and before Pierson could even say anything, Candace tackled her to the ground. Candace, as always, respect (pounds chest).

Postscript: Pienette Pierson, how does it feel to have EVERYONE against you?

Edit: Here’s the best highlight I can get for now.

Edit to end all edits: They say the players might be fined, normally no one would care, but it’s the WNBA.  Fines matter.  Candace will be ok, she’s got sponsership deals.  Pierson… not so much.

All of a sudden Eli Manning is indispensible?

I fully expect the media to show lots of love to the defending Super Bowl champs, whoever they may be on any given year. But I think it’s time to chill out a little bit on crowning Eli Manning as such a great QB. Whether it be madden ratings or this “indispensible players” article, it’s well out of hand. We’re talking about a guy who’s regular-season QB rating last year was 73.9 and has never had a season-long rating higher than 77.0.

But, of course, everyone will point to his amazing playoff performance where he had a 95.7 QB rating. However, if you look into the stats, it seems that he plays worse when the Giants depend on him more. Take his 4 playoff games:

Game	Attempts	QB Rating
Divisional	18	132.4
Wild Card	27	117.1
Super Bowl	34	87.3
Conference	40	72.0

His rating drops alarmingly quickly when he attempts more passes. If he truly were “indispensable”, I would expect that his rating would at least be close when he has to take the team on his shoulders. It’s great that he had a rating of 132.4 against Dallas, but are you going to tell me that a guy who only completed 12 passes in that game was indispensable to the team? Certainly being a great football player is about more than just stats and a QB rating, but it seems to me that his new reputation is living too much on one timely (clutch?) drive in the Super Bowl than on actual evidence.

If we want to talk “indispensable”, we should be talking Michael Strahan. In 2006 the Giants went 6-3 in games where he played, and 2-5 in games that he didn’t (I feel like everybody knows that stat already). Justin Tuck is a great player, but he isn’t going to fill the huge void left by arguably the best defensive end in the game. Looks like it’s time for Eli Manning to step up for real.

Final thing – I can’t write an Eli post without including this unforgettable picture from a few years ago. Yep, good luck Giants.

I don’t want to mention any names…

but this post might strike one of our contributors the wrong way.

ESPN has released some sort of list ranking the top college hoops programs since 1984. Their “formula” (I love when these ranking systems create some sort of arbitrary scoring system, and then justify the legitimacy of their rankings by pointing to these scientific scores) can be found here. They even say, “But with ESPN’s Prestige Rankings, there is no such argument. We let the numbers do the talking.” Sure thing.

But here’s what really caught my eye: Plenty of big names turned up small.

Regardless of the hmm..factual basis for these rankings, Providence ranked a paltry 111. Yes, the Providence that contributed L.O. and Shammgod.

In other basketball news, the Redeem Team opens with an exhibition game this Friday at 8 PM against Canada. Dwight Howard’s been cleared to play, although it’ll be interesting to see how the team’s supposed lack of size will hinder them. I don’t really buy that argument too much – feeding the ball to Tim Duncan, probably one of the greatest big men of all time, didn’t save us last year. I like our chances with a smaller, faster line up. And I’m not really sure how much “smaller” our line-up would be if Lebron James (6′9ish, 250ish) was our 4. U-S-A!

I can’t believe I forgot about this

July 1 2008 was the four year anniversary of the greatest fielding play ever.

Derek Jeter- "If he only had some range"

I forgot to do anything about it, so next time I play a game of basketball (I don’t play baseball much) I vow to catch the first pass someone throws to me, run out of bounds and dive into the closest spectator, all in the honor of Derek “the winner” Jeter. Then people will say I made a great catch and they won’t care that I could’ve caught the ball normally if I had any defensive/catching skills at all. If I had the range of a 10th grade jv player I could’ve made that catch with enough time to be running the other way.

Then after that, I will flip the ball underhand (I laughed very hard at the title on that page, also I still am not sure he’s actually out, but whatever, back to this sentence…) to a teammate who will make a nice shot and people will say I was awesome because of my great flipping skills even though I may not have had to touch the ball at all, I just wanted to pick up an assist. Even if I did have to touch it, anyone who was backing up the play properly could have done it just as well, probably wouldn’t have had to come flying in, but hey, right place right time, it makes my sport IQ that much higher, that’s why I’m a winner and won 4 world series. Um, I mean that’s why I win basketball games.

This is confusing. Forget I said anything.

I wanted to put this as a tag, but it was too long so ill put it here: Derek Jeter is great at defense- except that he has no range and makes a decent amount of errors- but he has mad gold gloves and those are always handed out to the most deserving people like Rafael Palmeiro so I guess he actually IS good. Derek Jeter is baseball’s Forest Gump, he just happened to be there.

Olympic heart

So whenever I see an olympic athlete interviewed, they are always asked something like, “what separates you from everyone else?”

And they ALWAYS answer with something like, “I think my heart.  I just want it.  I’ve always wanted to be the best.  My friend David, he’s 3′ 4″ and wins every limbo contest by just walking normal, but he hasn’t let that or his limpid, melanin free skin stop him from trying at other sports too.”

It’s pretty annoying.  The only reason I’m not playing on the US basketball team is because of my heart.  I have heart problems.  It runs in my family.  My cholesterol is like crazy.  It’s so crazy, I didn’t even get to grow up to be 6′6″, black, ridiculously athletic, and good at jump shots.

Oh well.  I’ll still watch.