Derrick Rose is pretty slick

Derrick Rose had a couple of highlight reel plays yesterday

First check out his move on Andre Miller

Rose with the solid oop on the pass from Ben Gordon

And check out his block of Andre Miller, the top play from yesterday’s game (last highlight)

And that Devin Harris-Jason Kidd trade is looking worse every day. Devin Harris sliced up the suns for a career high 47 points yesterday (and recently macked the Lakers girls)

Shelden Brown Hates Running Backs

So apparently this blog hasn’t died yet. And apparently “dived” isn’t a word. Meh. I wasn’t always a noob at grammar.

Monday night’s game features another great NFC east clash, between the eagles and cowboys. It seems like announcers/analysts/random dudes are always talking about the great rivalries of the NFL. I dunno. I don’t really buy that stuff in terms of professional football – so many guys change teams and move around to the point where it becomes hard to form true rivalries. I can definitely see it in college football, but not so much in the NFL. I kind of wish this Eagles/Cowboys game was a bit later in the season. I feel pretty good about the Eagles right now – Donovan’s looking healthy, Desean “badly needs a nickname because fraction and action aren’t gonna cut it” Jackson had an explosive debut, and the Eagles D was solid in the 1st game. Then again…this was against the Rams. A Rams fan I know summed up their season very nicely: “we’re really bad.” Tony Romo and the cowboys looked great in their debut, although Cleaveland’s probably overrated too. What’s with his goofy smile at the end of this commercial? Why is he throwing around eagles player? It’s alrite though..Dawkins is there to get that sh@# out (btw..what’s convention for using symbols in swear words?).

But here are the main youtube videos for this post: Shelden Brown absolutely destroys Steven Jackson in last week’s game. Brown plays his zone defense perfectly, and I have no idea how Jackson held onto the ball.

So I’ve gotta link Brown’s huge hit against Reggie Bush in the playoffs from a couple of years ago. This was one of the first plays in the game (I think). Idk how the announcer kept his cool there…I would have exploded.

Moral of the story – good luck to Marion Barber and Felix Jones on Monday night.

Milt’s Miracle

All this talk of Palacio (even though I brought him up) got me thinking.  Why isn’t this on youtube yet???  Please someone.  Someone must have the footage somewhere.

Is Coach K reading this blog?

Some people dislike Coach K’s prominence in commercials for American Express and other companies and view it as an unfair recruiting advantage. Hey, whatever works. Check out this commercial for Cadillac:

Listen closely at the 1 minute 20 second mark.

“street cred”.

Coach K, you don’t have to admit you’re reading the blog. We know. My life is complete.

Links + Youtube

Here are some links from this week

First off, there were a couple of stories about Jonathan Papelbon, star closer for the Boston Red sox. The title of this article pretty much says it all: Jonathan Papelbon will sign a baseball in exchange for nude photos of your ex-wife.
Umm…that’s kinda disturbing on so many levels. Whenever the camera pans to the guys in the bullpen, they’re always 1) eating, 2) laughing, 3) talking, or 4) eating. Perhaps other things will be going on now, thanks to these “bullpen pics”. I can see it now: Red sox fans throwing hundreds of these ..umm..incriminating pictures into the sox bullpen for some autographs.

This second article’s about the apparent feud between the Red Sox and the Devil Rays. Papelbon says Red Sox still owe Rays for brawl.

I guess it doesn’t really matter that Papelbon’s openly making this threat. There’s no chance that he would go after someone in a save situation, but the red sox will probably go after Gomes, the Rays player who punched Crisp a couple of times while he was down on the ground. Probably the thing I hate the most about baseball fights is that they get broken up so quickly. Everyone clears the benches, everyone comes out of the bullpen, and they all break up the fight. I would have liked to have seen Crisp face that pitcher one on one. I think Coco would have absolutely destroyed him.

Here’s an update on the story about NASCAR’s lawsuit, as mentioned by capitalsports.

Looks like T.O.’s crying again:

Now this video definitely made my week. You really have to watch this. Don’t worry, this news piece is hilarious. Just wait for the interviews – classic. Whistle Classic

I think my favorite part was: Bub Rub: “It’s like an alarm clock: wooot wooo!”

I’m sure you guys have seen this already, but in case you haven’t, this is also essential:

Leprechaun video:

I really gotta start watching the local news more often. The amateur sketch in this video kills me every time. “Could be a crackkkkheeaaad”

And random oldish song that I considered the coolest thing ever at one point in my life. I actually saw the music video for it though for the first time today. Kinda random, but here it is: All Star – Smash Mouth

Barkley’s serious side

When I look back on this summer, I think I’ll remember one thing – me discovering the awesomeness that is Charles Barkley. I could tell you about the time I spent about 4 hours on youtube, searching for all of his highlights from inside the nba (note: the one where he kisses kenny’s ass is priceless; reggie miller’s analysis of the tnt vs. espn crew was also pretty sweet; and especially, the queer eye for the straight guy one. but anyway). I also watched some of Barkley’s highight mixes on youtube. Quality time wasted. Learned he was also known as the “the round mound of the rebound.” I gained a lot more respect for Barkley when I found out he’s actually like 6′4”. That’s crazy considering the way he played. But this week’s news about Barkley’s alleged gambling debt made me respect Sir Charles even more.

A Las Vegas Casino sued Barkley for him to repay $400,000.

That link has a video of Barkley while on Inside the NBA. I think it’s actually a pretty interesting video to watch. I thought it was big of him to talk about this issue so publicly. Barkley admitted that he had the debt and took full responsibility for his mistake. Barkley also said that he would attempt to give up gambling because of this incident.

“For right now, the next year or two, I’m not going to gamble,” he said. “Just because I can afford to lose money doesn’t mean I should do it.”

Barkley acknowledged that this would be a difficult process: “It’s like a fat person on a diet. This sucks.”

Damn. Charles Barkley…you are the man.

Houston Rockets 07-08 Season Wrapup and Other Equally Depressing News

So T-Mac and the Rockets’ first round woes continue into 2008. Luck wasn’t on our side, as almost all of the Rockets starters (four out of five) were injured to the point of needing surgery:

Battier had a procedure to remove bone spurs from his left ankle, while Alston had ligament and tendon damage repaired in his right ankle. Dr. Tom Clanton, the team physician, told the Houston Chronicle that no structural damage was found in the ligament or cartilage of McGrady’s knee. Loose particles were removed from both the knee and the shoulder. And of course, Yao continued to be plagued by foot injuries for the last three seasons (after an initial 3 full injury-free seasons). He was out for the last two months of the season with a stress fracture in his foot, fixed by putting a screw in the broken bone.

Anyways this year the Rockets saw significant improvement in the PF position, switching from a super-old Juwan Howard and Chuck Hayes to a prime-age, Euro-superstar flopper-machine Luis Scola and a young gap-toothed spring-stepped Carl Landry, with Chuck Hayes backing up Mutumbo at center after Yao went out. Aaron Brooks showed some flashes of promise, hopefully next season he can be a reliable backup point guard who burns people on the offensive end. Its going to be really hard to improve his defense though, since he can’t really work on his height or size. Novak went through some significant development, ending up with really solid shooting numbers while still remaining trashy on defense. I’d really hate to see him get traded to a team that doesn’t play defense because I can really see him dropping 20 ppg on a trash team.

Midseason and midstreak we saw Mike James and Bonzi traded for Bobby Jackson. I really liked the trade salary wise, since MJ’s contract was huge and he is hugely washed up now. I really hated to see Bonzi leave even though he has lots of haters who say he’s a locker room cancer. Bonzi was a far superior backup 2guard for TMac because he altered the look of the offense by providing offensive rebounding (which we sorely missed against the Jazz) and mismatches by posting up smaller guards. BJax also shouldn’t be getting major minutes. One of the reasons we got badly burned the first two playoff games: BJax is too old to play consistently or to run the offense.

Anyways off season and next season to do list for the Houston Rockets:
1. Add a third scorer, even if it means trading Battier or going over the salary cap.
2. Get a reliable backup two-guard instead of Luther Head
3. Stay healthy.
4. Stay healthy.
5. Stay healthy.
6. Keep Yao’s minutes low, so he can stay healthy.
7. Get a backup PG if BJax and AB aren’t cutting it.
8. Increase size in lineup.
9. Convince Deke to stay another year.
10. Stay healthy.

In other news, top prospect out of China (the best since Yao), Xu Yong, a 6-8 200 lb athletic (actually athletic, not like Yi or Yao) swingman was recently diagnosed with a rare, life-threatening form of bone cancer, so he is likely not going to make the jump to the NBA anymore. He’s also probably going to stop playing basketball. That really sucks.

Some Youtube videos:

Charles Barkley has a fat ass, and the changing of the coaches

Hey guys, first post. Been busy so haven’t had much time to drop some lines.

Also, if you haven’t seen this already take a look. Charles describes how he was so successful in the NBA, his fat ass:

So D’Antoni to the Knicks is a done deal today, and Carlisle to the Mavs was locked up and confirmed by Cuban a while ago. I know these all seem like improvements for the teams but I don’t really see the Mavs noticeably improving under Carlisle. Everyone thinks that the Mavs had their one shot against DWade and the Big Cactus and I’m not one to disagree. Their window of opportunity is pretty much closed. After two more seasons it will probably become painfully clear that Avery was doing a really good job of shoring up whatever holes that ship had.

D’Antoni has a far more favorable position in New York: even if Zach Randolph and Eddy Curry can’t run and gun like he likes, he still gets paid big bucks. Also, he’s lucky because the Knicks have been so bad that it’s really hard seeing them get any worse. Hopefully the team is improved to get some more balance between the conferences. I’d also like to see Avery end up in Chicago, just to see if he can turn that team around.

I’m wondering who the Suns are going to pick up to replace D’Antoni. Steve Nash will have a hard time playing a half court game and his defensive flaws will be really exposed under a slower, more methodical coach. The man may be a machine, but he’s a really old creaky one too.