Tag: cleveland

What Time Is It?

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Game Time.

It’s that time of year again.  The leaves are changing.  The wind has that crisp, cool feel in the morning. ???? ??? ?????   Football is reestablishing itself as the premiere American sport.  And baseball playoffs have begun.  Per the usual, there are grumblings about the scheduling of the opening round of the Major League Baseball playoffs.

Imagine that you are baseball.  Not the commissioner, just a human embodiment of the sport itself.  You dominate the airwaves and sports talk shows with non-stop games since the Warriors upset the Mavs in Round 1 of the NBA Playoffs.  There are games every single day and five out of seven days a week, every single team is playing.  Regular season scheduling can take place whenver you want. ????? ??? ????   Day Game? Sure.  Night Game? Sure.  Doubleheader? Sure.  Games in April with the potential for snow in Boston, New York, and Cleveland? Sure.  West Coast game the day after playing on the East Coast in Sunday Night Baseball against your biggest rival? Sure.  You have no limits, no rules, no regulations when it comes to scheduling.

That’s why it is no surprise that when baseball sells its opening round of the playoffs, it gives the broadcaster full reign to schedule the games whenever they want.  Well, the broadcaster has very different goals than baseball or its fans.  Thus, conflict.  The broadcaster (this year it is TBS, but ESPN has been just as guilty if not more so of this kind of chicanery) wants to maximize revenue, particularly catering its big games to the big markets.  But beyond that, it wants to make sure that televisions are turned to TBS for the maximum amount of time.  The result is our incredibly stretched schedule, where everyone is scrambling home for the early games, while no one is watching the prime-time games. Read More

Don’t Blame LeBron, Blame the Funk

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So, the Cavs went and got swept. ???? bingo Watching game 4– no, wait, I don’t want to lie, I (like most of the American people) failed to watch any of the NBA Finals, or, well, any of the semis, or in fact, any basketball since they cut away from that Knicks-Rockets game for the OJ chase. Where was I? Oh yeah, I forced myself to watch the last 2 minutes, in adherence with my long-held belief that the last 2 minutes of any given basketball game is the only part worth watching. Impressions: walked into a low-scoring game, Spurs playing well, Varejao’s hair is outstanding, these guys have spent an awful lot of time in the tattoo studio. ????? ??? ?????? 1.9 seconds left: Manu Ginobili is not who you want to be putting on the line. Nice pair of threes at the end, that’s a tough beat for LeBron and Co.

And holy shit, I cannot get that fucking filet-o-fish ad out of my head.

Well, cheer up Cleveland, neither the McDonald’s ad nor the Cavs’ truly pitiable performance in this series is LeBron’s fault. It’s tough to carry an entire team, let alone the hopes and dreams of a championship-starved city, and I’d imagine the pressure could get to even the most super of heroes. And to go up against Duncan, Ginobili, and that guy who’s marrying the slutty desperate housewife, well, that’s not gonna help matters any. ??????? ???????? But to LeBron’s credit, Tim Duncan had nothing but praise for the ‘kid’ in his postgame interview. Indeed, I think it’s safe to say the finest thing that can be said of an NBA player in regards to LeBron James: that he never fakes the funk on a nasty dunk, to wit:

Badass.

But the “Cavs Scream Team?” Well, they faked the funk. They popped and locked pretty well, but I think history will show that they faked the funk with a …purple …thingy. And that left the Spurs a cakewalk to the title, free of possible interference from the funk.

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Gameday Report: May 13, 2007/May 29, 2007

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A month ago today, fellow blog conspirator Willis invited me to the Mother’s Day game at Fenway Park. I gladly accepted; in addition to the opportunity to watching the Sox play, I would get to watch players use pink bats and start rumors that those who used the regular bats were in favor of spreading cancer.

scoreboard.jpg

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Cleveland over Detroit in 2OT

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So I watched a basketball game last night.

I was out with a crowd of friends at a bar in Watertown and the last quarter of the Cleveland/Detroit game was on. Between speculation as to which upcoming films based on Marvel properties were going to suck (Transformers, probably; Fantastic Four 2, certainly), we watched some postseason basketball.

Things I Still Don’t Like About Basketball:

  • The inordinate influence held by one or two players. “Name three Cleveland players other than LeBron James,” a friend observed. I’ll bet all the plays in Mike Brown’s playbook have four squiggles for the other players and a gold star for LeBron.
  • The repetitive dynamic of play. The most crucial plays in a game of basketball will alter the score by no more than 3 points for either side; in a 100-point game that’s meaningless. Basketball’s more Mozart than Beethoven – too many notes to follow.Rasheed is charging up his attack
  • Courting fouls. As one girl at the table pointed out, Rasheed Wallace is particularly operatic in his play, clutching at wounds real or imagined and shaking his fist at heaven if a foul isn’t called. He’s an understudy for the Fisher Theatre’s production of Twelve Angry Men this fall.

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