Elton Brand

Black socks in the hour of chaos

Esoteric 1 Comment

Contrast I watched ESPN’s Fab 5 Documentary the night before I left for vacation and very much enjoyed it, lamenting the fact that I wouldn’t have time to weigh in on Jalen Rose’s comments about Duke. Considering the instant-gratification Twitter-borne sports culture we live in, I assumed that by the time I got back a week later, it would be a non-issue.

It was to my surprise when I got back that it was even more a topic than it had been before I left. I still need a late pass, since the approaching baseball season has sucked up a lot of my time since then, but it’s still on my mind.

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Rearview mirror: Keeping Elton Brand updated at ESPN Zone

Esoteric 3 Comments

Heart of it all

So today is the first day in at least a decade that ESPN Zone in Times Square is shuttered, in addition to five others. I’m not particularly going to miss it – I don’t eat hamburgers, particularly 12 dollar ones – though it will be strange to pass through Times Square and not see it. I’m sure it’ll just be replaced by some other enormous theme restaurant or something.

I had a few experiences at these tourist traps, notably being harassed during a 2002 Duke-Maryland game in Washington, DC. But I do have one favorite moment when I think of ESPN Zone, which I’ve alluded to briefly, and it shows just how different things are a decade later.

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Rearview mirror: A decade’s worth of random “celebrity” encounters

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Even me, Skip? Even you, Dorn.

My friends over at Trumbull Island are putting together a pretty extensive and highly entertaining collection of Top Ten lists for the decade, and for the year. As I helped them save Christmas this year, they asked me if I had any contributions, and then suggested “Top random people I met in the ‘00’s.” In truth, I’m sort of like Forrest Gump: I run a lot, I’m decent at ping-pong and I often find myself meeting a lot of random “famous” people.

I think this is supposed to be a Top 10 list, but it looks like that’s not a hard and fast rule for Trumbull, as someone had a Top 71 list. So, I’m offering a Top 16 list. This is in no particular order. Most of them are athletes, but not all of them. Also, I have pictures with most of these people, but I don’t like anyone to know what I look like, so you won’t see any here.

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