Magic trick Green; headlines reign supreme

I’ve been a bad sports fan this past week. The NBA and NHL are playing thrilling playoffs, baseball is just starting to heat up, and college lacrosse playoffs are on TV, yet I’ve probably only watched an hour of sports in the past seven days. Even ESPN Classic, my favorite boredom buster, has received little love from me.

I don’t have any substantial input to make right now, but saying nothing this morning would be a shame, considering the Celtics were eliminated last night, so I’ll just discuss one fringe benefit of the game last night: reading a cornucopia of ridiculous headlines from the clever to the painful. When you have a reigning champion, big-time program, lose to a team named The Magic, headline-smiths around the world get excited.  Here are a few column and article headlines:

• Celtics disappear
• Cruel trick
• Turkoglu reappears just in time for Magic
• Green done in by lanky point forward
• Helpless against this firing squad
• Alpha-Bits and empty tanks
• Stars not aligned for C’s this time around
• No. 18 will have to wait
• Orlando Magic make history with rout of Boston Celtics
• In game 7, Celtics run out of Magic
• Van Gundy, Magic make naysayers disappear
• Magic show: C’s run finished
• Hounded by Magic defense, Pierce is unable to deliver
• Celtics fall for Magic tricks
• Two of Big Three not enough
• Superman Dwight Howard comes to Magic’s rescue
• Allen gave it his best shot

But, once I saw the Yahoo Sports headline, I knew we had a winner:

• Magic to appear at King’s court

Congrats, Yahoo! Your prize is being an increasingly irrelevant Internet corporation.

Arbitration Celebration!

That title really should be: Celebrating Arbitraryness, but that doesn’t rhyme and arbitraryness isn’t a word. Anyways, these days people love making random lists, pointless lists of things nobody cares about, and here at We Talkin’ ‘Bout Practice we don’t like to disappoint. So I have created the most random, most likely grossly incorrect, only according to my opinion, crazy list of best teams to not win a championship in the last twenty years. The best part? I’m considering teams from every sport. Not make any sense? Good.

So here we go: Best teams that didn’t win a title in the last twenty years, and yes, I realize that some of these teams weren’t favored to win the championship. Remember when I said this was very arbitrary?

10: 2006-2007 Mavericks

Ok, this team gets a lot of crap from people claiming that they weren’t really that good. You have to be good to win 67 games. They kinda sucked in the playoffs against the Warriors, but this was a very good team. No one showed up in the playoffs except Dirk Nowitzki. They could have done better; they should have done better. Flukyness at its finest. (fluky will be a common theme in this post- be prepared)

9: 2006 Detroit Tigers

This team had awesome pitching, but somehow couldn’t overcome David “Sac-bunt personified” Eckstein and the St Louis Cardinals. Flukiness is big in baseball and if David Eckstein hits over .400 in a series then you can be assured it’s fluky. Justin Verlander had lots of trouble in game one and it was all downhill from there. St. Louis pitched surprisingly well, and the tigers gave up a few unearned runs that cost them. An 83 win team won the World Series, awful.

8: 2002 Oakland A’s

This team won 103 games but didn’t even make it out of the ALDS. They lost to the twins in five games, the second year in a row that the A’s had won over 100 games and not made it out of the first round. Miguel Tejada was crushing the ball, and Barry Zito’s curveball was actually working. This team had good pitching and good hitting, but succumbed to random chance.

7: 1994-1995 Orlando Magic

The only team to beat Michael Jordan in the playoffs after he had won his first championship, this team had its share of stars. Shaquille O’Neil was playing some of the best basketball of his life. Penny Hardaway called out Jordan in the semi-finals and was able to follow through. Does anyone remember how good Anfernee was? Horace Grant also contributed. Nick Anderson blew a few “clutch” free throws in the Finals against the Rockets, and the Magic were swept 4-0 by Hakeem Olajuwan and Houston. I’m not gonna blame this one on flukiness, but this team should’ve done better.

6: 2001-2002 St Louis Rams

Yup, they were better than the Patriots this year. The Rams had one of the highest scoring offenses in league history, but had trouble scoring in the Super Bowl against the Patriots, and of course gave up that winning drive to Tom Brady. This was a little fluky, but blame Mike Martz who didn’t want to run the ball to Marshall Faulk, one of the best running backs in the league at the time. The Pats were selling out to defend the pass and were able to hold the Rams to 17 points.

5: 2001 Seattle Mariners

Should be higher? Maybe. Ichiro Suzuki took the MLB by storm and had over 200 hits at the top of the lineup (.381 OBP), and he won the MVP and Rookie of the Year awards. Bret Boone hit a steroidy 37 home runs. Freddy Garcia was a solid ace for this team that won 116 games, tying the Major League record for wins in a season. They lost to the yankees in the ALCS. Another one to chalk up to baseball being random. The yankees were good, but not this good.

4: 1994 Montreal Expos

This one is painful for Expos fans, which was most of Canada at the time. The Blue Jays were a few years removed from their word series, so Canada could switch to the Expos for this season. This could be one of the most unfortunate ones because the Expos didn’t lose. The owners locked out the players and there was no World Series played this year. The Expos lineup was daunting, Cliff Floyd, Moises Alou, Larry Walker, and the Expos had Pedro Martinez anchoring a great pitching staff. Really just too bad these guys didn’t get a chance.

3: 2007-2008 New England Patriots

Not number 1? Hey man, I’m not biased. Give me a little credit. Well, you all probably know the story of this team, but just in case you’re reading this in the year 2030, because We Talkin’ ‘Bout Practice is up for some lifetime blog achievement award, I’ll write a brief description. Pats went 16-0. Made the Super Bowl. Flukily lost to a team they had beaten before. Oh well.

2: 1998-1999 Minnesota Vikings

Oh My Goodness was this team good. During the Patriots run this year I would say that the only team I’ve ever seen that was better was this Vikings team. They had Randall Cunningham at quarterback, Robert Smith at Running Back, and Cris Carter and Randy Moss as receivers. It’s interesting that both the Patriots and the Vikings had Randy Moss on their teams. He’s the common factor in both record breaking offenses. This teams offense was deadly, but the defense was amazing also. John Randle anchored a defense that allowed under 300 points for the year. The Vikings only had one fluky loss to the Bucs during the regular season, and suffered an even more fluky loss to the Falcons in the NFC Championship game. Gary Anderson missed a 38 yard field goal that could’ve sealed the game (or almost) for the Vikings with only a few minutes to play. This was the same Gary Anderson that missed NO field goals the entire regular season. The Falcons went on to tie it and win in overtime. Jamal Anderson and the Falcons were then destroyed in the Super Bowl by the Broncos. Everyone wanted the Broncos-Vikings matchup that year. I’m still disappointed by this one.

So who’s the arbitrary number 1?

1: 2001-2002 Sacramento Kings

They just had soooo many good players. Chris Webber was finally being the player everyone thought he would be. Peja Stojakovic was hitting huge shots, Mike Bibby was leading the team (though I still wish they kept J-Will). Doug Christie played great defense (although he killed them in game 7 of the WCF). This team was beaten by a little luck, and a very good Laker team (but yeah socal, there was a little luck). In game 4 of the Western Conference Championship game, the Lakers were down two points with a few seconds left. Kobe missed and the ball was tapped back by King Vlade Divac (watch it here). The flukiness is that Divac was the one that tapped it. Robert Horry, for a reason I’m still not sure of, was standing 30 feet away. He ran up, got the ball at the three point line and made a huge shot for the Lakers to win that game. I’m happy to say I saw that game live, but for some reason I can’t remember, I only listened to game 7 on the radio. I remember the announcers talking about some bad calls that hurt the kings, but again I was only listening. You can watch some of game 7 here. This kings team was so good and would’ve destroyed the New Jersey Nets in the Finals, just like the Lakers did. I had forgotten that this was the same year the Celtics made it to the Eastern Conference Finals. The Nets and the Celtics were awful compared to the Lakers and Kings that year. I still think the Kings were better.

So there ya go. Disagree? Didn’t read it but just want to yell at me? Put it in the comments.

I wish I could have the last 45 minutes of my life back.

This Is a Big Deal Yes?

Does the NBA usually admit when it is wrong? I was pretty shocked when they did the replay of that heat hawks game earlier this year. And now the NBA comes out with this.

“After reviewing the video of last night’s Pistons-Magic game, we determined that the play that concluded with Chauncey Billups’ 3-point field goal at the end of the third quarter took approximately 5.7 seconds,” the statement read. “Because there were only 5.1 seconds remaining in the quarter when the play began, the shot would not have counted had the clock continued to run.”

Even though the magic lost by more than three, the game was certainly close enough for magic fans to be angry(at least the shot clock worked). And now the Magic are up like 20 points in the first quarter in game three. I thought the NBA didn’t want a Spurs-Pistons finals. But after the Billups play, and some questionable calls (Duncan tripping on his own feet, Bowen knocking the ball out of bounds) in the spurs suns series, Im not so sure. (Here’s ginobili doin what he does best)

Somewhat of a live blog.

Charles Barkley – Great Analyst, or the Greatest Analyst?

First of all, I hope people had the chance to watch the inside the nba halftime show for the magic-detriot game. Poor Chuck had no idea what was going on – and this was for his special feature during the show. His own segment. I mean, if Charles has no idea what’s going on for his unique feature, is there any chance of him ever knowing what kenny and ernie are talking about? Unlikely. But perhaps it’s better that way. Let’s examine some of Charles greatest moments:

Charles Barkley learns about contractions

So ummm…yeah. Not really much to add to this. I think his frank admission about his attendance at class was the best part. According to a very reliable source (lisaleslieftw) indicated that Charles Barkley intends to run for governor of alabama sometime in the next decade. I mean, it’s Alabama and all, but still. It appears that Barkley might run for mayor. Shouldn’t there be some type of basic proficiency test for elected officials to pass? Isn’t basic elementary school grammar necessary for any government position?

SCREW IT. BARKLEY FOR GOVERNOR! YES WE CAN! YES WE CAN!

Next up, we got Charles Barkley, the donut connoisseur.

I think my favorite part was: “WE HAVE A WINNA!”

this one is for a certain contributing member of this blog. This certain member (I would like to protect his/her identity, due to possible embarrassment resulting from his blatant homerism bias regarding a certain college in a certain small state that may have produced a certain basketball player known for a certain amazing pickup game basketball move.) Lamar Odom = Not Good.

Phil Jackson’s expression is priceless. Absolute disgust. What I really want to know is if Odom tried to argue that call. What ref? What was wrong with that? are you effin blind?

And lastly, but certainly not least, Charles Barkley vs. the scale.

This one’s kinda long, but the payoff’s definitely worth it. Highlights = “Maaaan…this scale ain’t right”, barkley’s entourage as he walks to the scale (anyone figure out what they’re saying? i can’t really hear that), and of course…”SHUT THE HELL UP KENNY”, “I’m not gonna be fat anymore, I’ve been fat long enough”

ahh…classic. i used to switch to other things during tnt halftimes; i’ve definitely learned my lesson. inside the nba’s value sky rockets every time charles barkley offers us a nugget of information.

semblance of a live blog.

well…this post was supposed to be a live blog of the magic-pistons game. unfortunately, it looks like the wheels started coming off midway through the 3rd quarter. i like it though, magic are definitely showing some fight. not being intimidated by the pistons. i really hate the detroit pistons. i think the only way i can explain it is that they act/think they’re so much better than they actually are. you always hear about how the pistons turn on/turn off the switch, play down to their opposition. no. the pistons are just not that good. fact. WAIT….WHAAAAAT!?!?!? WE interrupt this post with a J.J. sighting. WTF!?!? ummm…whateves. and jj promptly picks up a foul in <2 seconds of playing time. Anyway, the best way to describe the pistons is that they’re like that one dude in a pickup basketball game at the gym – you know who i’m talking about. it’s that kid with the air jordan real basketball shoes, the mad cool basketball shorts, usually a sleeveless jersey of sorts. he acts like he’s really good, when in fact his game consists of continual isolations, falling away jumpers that always miss badly, and little to no defense. known for continually instructing others on the team on the finer points of basketball (Note – another jj miscue – completely disregarded his defensive rotation, allowing an easy dunk under the basket; great drafting magic, great drafting. franz vazquez and jj reddick = WHERE AMAZING HAPPENS); this player also likes to hold up random fists and call pseudo offensive plays, which somehow always end up with him hoisting up an off balance 3, and feigning absolute disbelief/flopping backwards and calling a foul when it invariably misses. (end rant).

so the point is = detroit sucks, they’re overrated, and i really want the magic to win.
eagles draft recap

well, the nfl draft just finished up last weekend. let’s recap the important events. and by important events, i mean one of the eagles’ draft picks.

First of all, absolutely swindling carolina, parlaying a few pick increase into several picks was huuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuge. but the pick i’m most excited about is the 49th selection of desean jackson. this pick was great, besides the fact that poor mcnabb has been asking begging for a wide receiver for what seems like forever. so what do the eagles do? answer his pleas by drafting kelvin kolb (random?) and trading for asante samuel. great job. gold f*#^*ng star for management. however, desean jackson is not projected to be a great wide receiver. he will provide immediate help for the eagles’ return game. here’s an artist rendering of our punt returns last year:

as you can see, things can’t get much worse.

(Final note – JJ’s unofficial line: <5 minutes PT, 0 rebounds, 0 assists, 0 points, 0/2 fg, including 1 jumper with <10 seconds in a blowout game, and a horrendous defensive rotation). it’s alrite, i’m starting to agree with shammgod’s prediction that we will soon see jj on the duke bench.