I have this blog… maybe you heard something about it, despite the fact that it’s been deeper in disappearance mode than Lamar Odom.
Ba-zing.
Anyway, some thoughts on what’s been going on in my absence. Let’s see, uh, we’ve been to the moon….
Seriously, the Lakers have been so bad through four Finals games that it not only calls their team into question, but the supposed awesomeness of the entire Western Conference. LA is soft, mentally untough, limited and dysfunctional. Despite the media narrative that led to the MVP award, Kobe remains an awful teammate, but he’s so good a player that everybody on that club has to defer to him, and that’s just a fatal flaw. Are you telling me the West is monstrous when nobody in it could expose that flaw, but a team that needed seven games to subdue the Atlanta Hawks can?
I was planning to do a lengthy Kobe-MJ riff, but ESPN.com’s Bill Simmons emerged from his self indulgent Boston fan ranting to sum it up in five sentences: The Kobe-MJ thing … done. Over. Jordan never would have let that happen in the Finals. Ever. Under any circumstances. Nobody is ever allowed to bring this up again.
I’m at the Big 33 game, which is humming along at about one snap every nine minutes. New wrinkle this year- when either side manages to get 11 players on the field (not 10 or 12) a time-out is called so everyone can savor the accomplishment. There are actually 34 players on each roster including the kicker - the Big 33 refers to the numbers of time outs each side gets per half. The opening kick was at 7:05 p.m. It’s 8:33 p.m. and according to the stadium sundial there’s 4:09 left. In the first half.
I remember when you could play a 60-minute high school football game in less than four hours, but of course I’m an old guy.
