man stephen jackson is the best. did you know he put out a mixtape during the lockout with features from z-ro and scarface? Now you do.
According to the most reliable website on the Internet (the infallible MediaTakeOut), Kim Kardashian's publicist arranged a date for her with Knicks point guard and overnight sensation Jeremy Lin. This is all according to a friend of the E! reality star. A date with Kim? I think this means you are officially an NBA player. It's just probationary until she signs off on it. →
Jeremy, let me tell you a story. Prior to last season, Kris Humphries had spent 6 years in the NBA without ever really establishing himself. He was an end-of-the-bench guy, never averaging more than 17 minutes a game. Then, injuries and a shitty roster forced him into the action some more, and he responded well, starting in 44 games and putting up solid numbers including career highs in rebounds, points, blocks and field goal percentage, establishing himself as one of the league’s better rebounders on a bad team. It was a nice story, if one that didn’t get much coverage anywhere other than the nets pregame shows (cuz what else are they gonna talk about?) But that was enough coverage to draw the attention of one Kim Kardashian, who dated the formerly unknown forward. A brief courtship and briefer marriage later and Humphries is the most disliked player in the league, booed every time he touches the ball by opposing fans who wouldn’t know who he was were he to never have met Kim K.
Jeremy, save yourself from this fate now, while you still have the chance. You’re universally beloved, but that can change quickly if you become involved with this woman. Use that Harvard education, see the parallels between you and Kris, imagine that hate on a larger scale, and opt out now, before you turn into yet another cautionary tale.
He’s the type of guy who should wear leather pants, some nice shoes and change his fashion. You’re Jeremy Lin, for godsakes. You know what I’m saying? You know? Put down that law book, stop reading the New York Times and start reading the Daily News. Newsday, that’s the one. I like that one because there’s always color in that one. What else? Wall Street Journal. Get some swag. You’re in New York City. Put your hat to the back, too. Put your hat on backwards. Come to practice with your pants sagging and just tell them, ‘I don’t feel like practicing.’ Practice? You know? Practice? And wear an Iverson jersey. You know? Come to practice with a cigar. Lit. ‘I’m Jeremy Lin.’
All that versatility is great from an individual standpoint, but its real value is in how it helps his team. Because of [Blazers forward Lamarcus] Aldridge’s ability to shoot from deep, the Blazers can get away with starting two non-shooters in Gerald Wallace and Marcus Camby alongside him in the frontcourt. On another team, their lack of shooting range would be exposed. On this team, their other contributions shine. Aldridge’s ability to play center at an elite level allows Nate McMillan to play so many different lineup combinations. He can go small in the backcourt with offensive threats Raymond Felton and Jamal Crawford and not worry about them being exposed defensively. He can play Wallace and Nicolas Batum together to shut down teams with a top wing player just as easily as he can play Aldridge with either Camby or Kurt Thomas to shut down teams with a top post player. It’s no accident that Aldridge was fourth in the league in adjusted plus/minus last year, behind only Chris Paul, Steve Nash and Dwight Howard. His versatility is that valuable to his team.
I love this kind of analysis, where someone can explain why a basketball team is good, taking into account different players’ strengths and flaws and how they mesh together, instead of just relying on stats or literary descriptions of style. (Both are good and valuable, I just see a lot of both and rarely feel like I’m learning something, like I did when I read this paragraph.) The rest of this piece is a character profile, which is fine, but a lot less interesting, imo.
I have become obsessed w/this ad in a very unhealthy way. The youtube count claims this has 307 views and at least 200 of them are me. I dunno how it’s not yet a meme. The best is Battier, 2nd best is Kobe.
At some point later I’m gonna publish a huge post w/short reviews for every movie I saw in theaters this year, but really this is the unquestioned best film of the year.
Dealing With Your Own Cultural Irrelevance (at Age 28) - NYTimes.com →
this piece is like, “i no longer bother to try to be ‘cool’ for people who read tumblr — now i try to be ‘cool’ for people who read the new york times.”
also: the movie ‘Mulan’ came out in 1998, when a person who is now 28 would have been 15, not 8 or 9. Maybe Edith Zimmerman is a time traveler. Maybe Disney started marketing Mulan with happy meal toys 6-7 years before its release date. Or maybe it’s a mistake.
But there’s no reason to include a parenthetical as useless as “(A “Mulan”-related toy, if that matters.)” in the paper of record unless there’s time travelling or weird long-term marketing involved, so I think it’s gotta be one of those 2.
Moneyball (the movie at least) is a Really Weird Narrative
In 2002, the AL MVP was Miguel Tejada. The AL Cy Young was Barry Zito. Though awards are often misguided (MVP is a nebulous concept, and until recently ‘Wins,’ an imprecise metric for pitching quality, figured too prominently into the Cy Young award equation) one might think a movie focusing on the 2002 Oakland A’s would at least have a role for these guys in its narrative. But there isn’t. Instead the players ‘Moneyball’ focuses on are without question secondary guys picked up that off-season.
Why were the A’s good in 2002? Because the 3 starting pitchers (Zito, Tim Hudson and Mark Mulder) and 2 infielders (Tejada and Eric Chavez) they developed in their farm system had some of their best years. Their payroll was low because these guys were still in the early part of their careers and had yet to experience free agency.
But in the story of Moneyball the scouts who found the 5 most important players on the team were just a bunch of morons who Didn’t Get It, and the A’s were a collection of spare parts that no other teams wanted. In Moneyball, Billy Beane creates a team from scratch, instead of supplementing his core with capable, undervalued spare parts. (I’d be shocked if Beane thought Scott Hatterberg was more important than say, Chavez)
Look I’m not a moron. I get that baseball is a game of inches, and if your 9th best player is just a little bit better, that gives you a pretty decent edge. That’s what moneyball is about. But because I’m not a moron, I refuse to believe that say, Giambi, Isringhausen, and Damon were the only players depicted on the walls of the A’s stadium. Or see scouting ridiculed in the story of how a team whose 5 best players came up through its farm system was able to compete and keep payroll down. Or that anyone thought Carlos Pena had a shot at rookie of the year when he hit .219 in Oakland (ironically Pena is probably a guy who has benefited from the rise of sabermetrics, now that teams care more about his pretty decent .352 career OBP than his anemic .239 career average) Moneyball is part of the story, but not the whole story, something the movie does little to acknowledge. But I guess it’s just not much of a movie to say, “we completely changed the way we evaluate players, and that can be pretty useful when used to supplement an already strong farm system.”
Anyway look out for my upcoming screenplay on the 1998 Yankees, “Hideki and Chad Make Some Chili” a feel-good buddy comedy about how a high profile japanese pitcher, a journeyman outfielder and a DH in the last stop of his career lead the New York Yankees to what may have been the greatest season ever.
going to the us open tomorrow w/nothing to wear. someone make me a shirt of srdjan djokovic wearing a shirt of novak djokovic wearing a shirt of a giant eagle.
