Back at the Jordan Classic in April, in what was either a personal highlight or lowlight — I’m still not sure which — I had an interview hijacked by none other than Drake.
Basketball
The Wedding Shoes
It takes an incredibly special woman to not only condone, but suggest that her husband-to-be wear sneakers to their wedding. Continue Reading
Making the most of the Dunk Contest
![ced_thumb[1]](http://sportsangle.truthbegins.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/ced_thumb1.jpg "ced_thumb[1]")
When Cedric Ceballos showed up out of nowhere on Saturday night, it instantly took me back to a point in time when the Dunk Contest actually could work.
Tempering my Linsanity
Jeremy Lin’s done some amazing things the past two weeks, including making me not hate the Knicks quite so much. Make no mistake, I’m a Knicks fan, have been since I was a kid. But I’ve also spent the past year largely detesting the team because there was so little to like.
Darryl’s room
I still remember like yesterday the day Darryl Strawberry left the Mets for the Dodgers. I was waiting to get a haircut in fifth grade when the news on the television at the barber shop told me Darryl had jumped ship. I melted out of my chair and sank to my knees.
Straw was my first sports love; it was as if my best friend had moved away. (That actually happened a couple years later, and I don’t recall it hitting me nearly as hard as losing Darryl.)
Going through that was rough when I was 11, but it was a necessary lesson about two years into being a sports fan: Nothing lasts forever. Players leave, teams change, eras come and go. I eventually came to grips with it – years later, I even bought a Dodgers Strawberry jersey.
Now somewhat jaded at 32, with Dan Marino and Patrick Ewing and LeBron James the Cavalier in my rearview mirror, this sort of thing honestly doesn’t faze me anymore. Our teams are inextricable parts of our identities, but the players on them shuttle in and out like friends from various chapters in our lives.
As such, I always just have to shake my head at people’s knee-jerk reactions when a star player leaves for another team. If you’re 12, sure, it’s a crushing blow. But if you’ve been watching sports for any legitimate portion of time, how can’t you know by now this is the way it goes?
The Afternoon After: Paint it black
As evidenced by my relative lack of activity here, November didn’t turn out to be as placid as I would have liked. I make my living in baseball, and it seems to never really shut down at this point between awards, transactions and the new CBA being announced. In addition, my fiancée has moved into my apartment, so a lot of my time has been spent making sure this place is inhabitable for someone other than me. I’d characterize all of this as the good kind of busy.
After Thanksgiving dinner, my fiancée dozed off at around 10 p.m. while I watched episodes of The Walking Dead – pretty standard.
Amazingly, she still insists she intends to marry me after I woke her up at 11:30 to drag her to Wal-Mart.
The Afternoon Before: Tying up the loose ends
Some random thoughts, starting with a series finale I just watched five months after it happened.
Working nights, I pretty much only watch television with DVR, and there are two types of shows for me: the ones I can watch any old time just to keep up with and get out of the way, and the ones I save for when I can truly enjoy them.
Law & Order SVU minus Christopher Merloni has become a show I can shoehorn in while I’m eating my cereal in the morning, or getting ready for work. Boardwalk Empire, on the other hand, requires my full concentration.
This dynamic was the reason that despite airing back in May, I only watched the final episode of Friday Night Lights last night, tempering my curiosity with the desire to watch it at exactly the right time.
Word is bond: The gospel of the Oak Man
Charles Oakley said a lot of provocative things in his one-hour media session at K1X on Saturday, most of which have already been printed elsewhere. (I’m sure you’ve already heard his take on the current-day Knicks, Amar’e Stoudemire and Isiah Thomas.) Transcribing an hour of Oak was a bear, but I enjoyed every minute of it, and I wanted to share some more of his comments after the jump, along with my take, after the jump.
Tough love: The enduring relevance of Oak
The narrative after Charles Oakley’s tour de force at the K1X store in Soho on Saturday was that he’s a loose cannon, not afraid to speak his mind because, well, who messes with Oak? I was there for Dime Magazine, and that was the angle we took. It pretty much had to be.
If you paid close attention, though, there was one topic Oak wouldn’t talk about even when prodded: the NBA lockout. Logically, that’s because it’s the one thing he thought he might actually get fined for speaking his mind about.
But there was also a hint of underlying sadness – perhaps Oakley couldn’t talk about the lockout, but it also seemed as if he simply didn’t want to, since it didn’t come close to representing the ideals he always applied to his chosen profession.
The Afternoon Before: Joining the chorus
A couple of basketball lockout notes this week. So yeah, I’m just like everyone else.
I make a living in baseball, and though I’m not crazy about everything the sport does, the power brokers behind the game have been able to learn from their mistakes for the sake of the big picture. The labor situation in baseball is about as good as it’s ever been, resulting in business as usual, even during a recession. They have a good thing going – no need to trip over their own feet.
The NFL gets it, too. Both sides were looking pretty bad for a while during the spring and summer, but when it came down to it, they knew they couldn’t miss any regular-season games. You barely even hear their lockout referenced now. They realized they had a good thing going, and worked things out during the window they had to not mess everything up.
Conversely, everyone involved with the NBA lockout can only be described as clueless for letting things get to this point.