Monday (night) Musings
*So, official Dave's World Tennis Correspondent Bucknell Jared checked in via email. Bucknell Jared is a pretty cool customer, but he's all bent out of shape about my posting on Shaquille O'Neal last week, in which I sung Shaq's praises and expressed my desire to see him go nuts and whale on someone just once in his NBA career:
While I'm with you on the NBA being a mostly useless league, I'm gonna
have to T you up for being a Shaq fan. The Diesel (there we go again
with nicknames) epitomizes my dislike of the NBA. Maybe it's my little
guy point guard mentality showing through, but I respect and enjoy
watching players that use real basketball skills to play the game. Shaq
uses his girth. That's it. We all know he can't shoot free throws (an
embarrassment for an NBA player), and once defenders push him away from
the basket, his shooting percentage plummets. He has no touch and only
a few basic post moves. He barges through people. He backs defenders
down, gets them off-balance and then flops his way to the basket. And
since the defender is moving, recovering from the initial bump, he is
called for a foul. NBA officiating is abysmal. I don't know how they
sleep at night. Do they watch videotape of Shaq and see the freedom
they give him? And all this supposedly makes Shaq the best player, the
most dominating player, etc. Thankfully, Steve Nash--who can actually
dribble, pass, and shoot--won the MVP award. Dribble. Pass. Shoot.
Those seem like the central tenets to basketball. Shaq dunks and
bullies the opposition with his size. The NHL is trying to promote its
fast and skilled players with new rules; the NBA should start making
Shaq use skill to score.
Dude … Shaq is 7-foot-1 and about 340 pounds. We're supposed to punish him for taking advantage of his strengths? Is he supposed to run the point just to satisfy the purists? And that doesn't even get into his work starring in Shazzam.
Incidentally, Shaq isn't the only generally good-natured person I want to see snap. Just once I want to see Joe Torre explode into a rage. Maybe in a press conference. He could get asked the same question over and over and finally lose his temper and scream something like "Hello?? I won four freakin' World Series and managed 20 future Hall of Famers, and you're questioning me about Tony freakin' Womack???" and maybe slam his microphone off the podium or something. Then he'd calm down and say something like "I'm sorry fellas, what where we talking about? Oh yeah, Chien Ming Wang" and go back into his droning monotone like nothing ever happened. Just once, I want to see this.
*By the way, Mariano Rivera still hasn't blown a save since Red Sox fans gave him that serenade at Fenway before the home opener in April. He's converted 30 in a row. I used to kid around with my friends about how Rivera was often called the greatest closer of all-time, but now I'm starting to believe it. Can you name one other closer who got torched in such a high-profile manner like Rivera last fall and into April who has bounced back the way he has? Of course, the Yanks haven't been winning as much this year, so he's been getting more rest, but still, 30 for 30 at the age of 35 after a decade of top-quality performances speaks for itself. You can hate the Yankees but you gotta respect Mo.
*On the other hand, Ron Mahay was designated for assignment by Texas, with the intention of sending him to the minors. I'm guessing chances are 50/50 he gets claimed by the Yanks and is starting for them by Thursday.
*It is actually sort of disappointing that Ty Law didn't head out to the Official Patriots Old Age home in western New York and signed with the Jets instead. The Pats didn't miss a beat without him last year and still won't, but Law still has something to give.
*All I can do is sit back and shake my head when I see some folks' hysterics about the intrusion of blogs into the marketplace of ideas. Arrogant dismissals have given way to child-like petulance, the substance of which can be translated roughly like this: But we've been around forever, and they haven't! Listen to me! (stamps feet for emphasis).
I saw one story make the rounds last week that trumpeted the notion that according to one study, only two percent of Americans read blogs on a daily basis. Another way to look at it is, if two percent of Americans are reading blogs regularly, that's roughly six million people, and how many were regularly reading blogs two years ago? I know I wasn't. I'm sure in 1981 or so, there were stories discussing why only two percent of Americans own VCRs and how the movie theater industry will never be impacted because VCRs will just go away.
I've said this before and will say this again: Blogs are far from perfect, there is a lot of garbage out there. There are a lot of very good ones out there, too, and readers are adding the best of them to their daily reads along with their mainstream sources. A good blogger is no more or less tainted by a bad blogger than a good newspaper reporter is tainted by Jayson Blair. I'm not stupid enough to proclaim the downfall of traditional media or anything close to it, but, again, the outlets -- and reporters -- that figure out how to adapt a tool that can potentially be quite an added bonus to existing coverage are the ones that are going to grow and thrive. Which is what happened when Hollywood synergized VCR-related business into their fiscal model.
*You didn't think I wasn't going to forget to follow up on Saturday's CMLL main event, did you? Bad, bad times for the people's champion, Mistico. In the third fall of a tag team match, rival Ultimo Guerrero finally cornered Mistico, stretched him out on the mat, and elbowed him in the head about 30 times. UG was disqualified (apparently for being way too vicious -- I never saw the Macho Man DQ'd for his big elbow off the ropes, but then, I don't remember him wrestling in Mexico either), and the team of Mistico, Dr. Wagner, and Dos Caras Jr. were victorious. That puts UG at 0-3 vs. Mistico in various singles and tag team matches over the past three weeks, and all because he couldn't hold his temper, apparently having trained at the Bobby Knight School of Lucha (now I'm cracking myself up picturing Knight wearing a colorful mask of some sort). Then to compound matters, as Mistico was carted out of the ring on a stretcher, Dr. Wagner (it is unclear in which discipline Wagner received his doctorate) kicked the crap out of UG and ripped his mask up.
*We'll have feedback tomorrow on the latest Dispatches from Iraq, and anything else anyone in Dave's World wishes to discus. So, since DFI was posted yesterday, we've had 4,206 page views. Either a. this is entirely from word of mouth, or b. the link has been posted somewhere big and I've yet to figure out where. If you're a Dave's World newbie, can you drop me a line and tell me where you found out about the site? Thanks.
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