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Feb-10-23
 | | HeMateMe: Too arrogant for me. I loved the Showtime Lakers, always rooted for them against Boston. Never liked the Kobe/Shaq Lakers or these LeBron Lakers. I remember seeing the Wilt Lakers on TV as a little kid. I thought they had an aura of cools. Under Kobe it was just a "me" aura, same with LeBron. |
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Feb-10-23
 | | saffuna: Over twenty years LeBron certainly has made errors, does things I find irritating. His attempts to play GM, while running from his mistakes saying "Who me?". (Second Cleveland stint in particular.) But he's now scored more points than any other player in history, without any big scandal. That's a great accomplishment, even greater because he has never been a score-first player like Kobe, Iverson or Carmelo Anthony. But yes, I did like watching the 80s Lakers. Just that short clip <unferth> posted was a pleasure to watch. |
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Feb-10-23
| | HeMateMe: No question LBJ is a great player, made the finals 8 years in a row. His being the most visible athlete in an era where players can jump ship at will, force a team's owners or GM to do things, make more money on endorsements than salary hurts his image before the casual sports fan. I think tiger woods had similar problems, great but not likeable. Of course LeBron and tiger don't give a rats ass if we like them, so it's a moot point. |
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Feb-10-23
| | saffuna: <I think tiger woods had similar problems, great but not likeable. > I'm not claiming any great significance for this, but in 2020 when I went to a practice round before the PGA tournament in LA, people were going crazy for Woods. I got caught standing between Woods and the crowd at one point, looking the other way, and nearly got run over by rampaging fans. |
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| Feb-10-23 | | unferth: saw Tiger at some tournament at the Riviera course in L.A. twenty-odd years ago. I was parked by one tee, maybe the third, but of course he brought a huge crowd with him. as soon as he hit his drive--not sure he'd even finished his follow-through--some fat nerd with a booming voice screamed "loose the hounds!" the guy was following him & probably doing that on every non-par-3. if I were Tiger I'd have had him quietly killed, |
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Feb-10-23
| | saffuna: Right. People yell out the phrase of the day or year ("You da man," "bababooey") milliseconds after players hit their drives. I'd think it would drive the players nuts. I think this week's Phoenix tournament is much looser, with a lot of yelling and drinking. But the players know that's the way it's going to be this one time, and can skip the tournament if it bothers them. |
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Feb-10-23
 | | perfidious: <saffuna: Over twenty years LeBron certainly has made errors, does things I find irritating. His attempts to play GM, while running from his mistakes saying "Who me?". (Second Cleveland stint in particular.)....> You make the mistakes, own up to them--hard to recall someone so controlling who has been so unwilling to take the heat for anything. |
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Feb-11-23
| | HeMateMe: Jeanie buss is probably dumber than LeBron. How many owners, in ANY sport have been smarter than experienced GMs? Pretty short list. Maybe Buss Sr., maybe al Davis, George halas. |
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Feb-11-23
| | perfidious: James is one smart sumbitch. |
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Feb-11-23
| | HeMateMe: And yet people don't want to come to L.A. just the other loners, like rondo and Westbrook. |
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Feb-11-23
 | | plang: ...and Davis |
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Feb-11-23
| | saffuna: <Check out the Netflix film <Bill Russell : Legend>> Just started, and the usual ridiculous hyperbole begins after only two minutes. "Every team and every player in the league tried to bring down the dynasty. Only one ever came close." Only one did it (ignoring St. Louis in 1958), but several came close. The Lakers took them to a 7th-game overtime in 1962. That wasn't close? The Sixers had them down 3-1 in 1968. Others took them to seven. More accurate would have been, "Several teams came close, but only one did it." |
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Feb-11-23
| | plang: Bill Russell was 10-0 in Game 7's. He averaged 18.6 PPG and 29.3 RPG. |
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Feb-11-23
| | saffuna: I know. But "Only one ever came close"?
The point is not that the Celts were totally dominant. They weren't. But they always (1967 excepted) won when the chips were down. I really really wish they'd counted blocks back then. |
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Feb-11-23
 | | chancho: I wasn't so much into the sporting accomplishments (they speak for themselves) but his life growing up and how he dealt with some of the racism directed at him in his youth. <White Student: I'm going to give you a nickname.Russell: If you do, I'm gonna knock you out.> |
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Feb-11-23
| | HeMateMe: I've read of NBA players saying that even in the mid 70s when the NO jazz was a first year expansion team some black's had to rent apartments there under different names (have a white person rent it in their name) just to get decent housing in the area. |
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Feb-12-23
| | saffuna: No doubt. Probably in Atlanta as well when the Hawks moved from St. Louis. Around 1960 there was talk that Willie McCovey was having difficulty getting a home in some particular area near SF. All of us kids in our largely-white suburb said "He can live here!" |
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Feb-12-23
| | saffuna: <In 1959, Elgin Baylor sat out after he and his two Black teammates were denied hotel rooms and restaurant service in Charleston, West Virginia, on the night
of their game.44 Two years later, five Black Boston Celtics players,
including league MVP Bill Russell, were denied restaurant entry in
both Lexington, Kentucky, and Marian, Indiana on their way to an
exhibition game against the St. Louis Hawks.45 The Black players on
both the Hawks and Celtics refused to play that night, but their white
teammates played the game.>
https://scholarship.law.vanderbilt.... |
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Feb-12-23
 | | WannaBe: I guess, PHI is guaranteed to win tomorrow.
https://www.yahoo.com/sports/super-... |
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Feb-12-23
| | HeMateMe: I read in Bob Cousy's auto bio of an incident, probably the one mentioned above, where two black Celtics were denied hotel rooms with the rest of the team. Under protest they refused to play--I think it was an exhibition game/series, probably the same one mentioned above. Cousy said that Auerbach told him, Cooz, to take the train back to Boston with the two players who refused to play. He wanted some team unity, so had a major white guy on the team (bob cousy) escort the guys back, try and keep the team together, in a sense. |
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Feb-12-23
| | HeMateMe: It's kind of fun reading the auto bios of players from that era, how many of them spent the summers (as young guys) up in the temperate resorts in upstate NY, the Catskills, where they worked but also played basketball. There was Grosingers but also other resorts. Sometimes the best future NBAers from one resort would play an all star team from a resort ten miles away. Red Auerbach was up there a bit, helped organize some of those games and some primo scrimmages. IIRC, there would actually be tickets sold, for at least some of the games, and the guys would get some of that ticket revenue. Even Wilt was up there for a year or two. As I've read it, the patrons were mostly really nice to the college stars/young NBA guys who were in a sense doing menial labor. The middle class/wealthy patrons would hand out handsome tips. Wilt was driving a nice car around in Philly that he said he bought just from the tips he made during the summer. |
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Feb-12-23
| | HeMateMe: New Mexico State's basketball program has been shut down. Details are sketchy, somehow related to one of their players being involved in the shooting of a player at a different school. |
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Feb-12-23
| | perfidious: There is a bit more to it than that; the shutdown was brought on by allegations of hazing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022%... |
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Feb-12-23
| | HeMateMe: James Harden is bad mouthing the Brooklyn Nets, saying he's not surprised that Durant and Irving left, saying it's "a dysfunctional place." Pretty funny. He's been on 4, 5 teams and hasn't won anything. It's dysfunctional because clowns get signed who aren't serious about building a winning team. |
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Feb-12-23
| | saffuna: <"a dysfunctional place."> Who made it dysfunctional? Didn't Kyrie say "I don't really see us having a head coach"? |
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