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At the Intersection of Sports and Culture

Photo Credit for Header: Alex Foucre-Stimes

Fire Extinguishers Make For Bad Sparring Partners

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Amar’e Stoudemire may or mor not have ended his participation in the 2012 playoffs after punching the glass encasing around a fire extinguisher in the Knicks locker room following a demoralizing defeat to the Miami Heat in game 2 of their first round playoff series. At this point in his decorated/profitable career, the savvy veteran Stoudemire has got to know better. As a team leader with several years of playoff experience already under his belt he should have known that the dirty clothes hamper in the middle of the visitors locker room was the best outlet to physically vent your frustration while at the same time avoid season ending butterfly sutures. Fire extinguishers are not fit to be punching bags. Great for putting out fires but not an ideal sparring partner. Same goes for metal lockers and tiled shower stalls. Amar’e should have chosen something with a little more give which is why the linen cart makes so much more sense. Adding to its utility, the dirty uniform receptacle is low to the ground meaning Stoudemire could have resorted to an English Premier League style drop kick because he was better off using his feet anyway, especially if he was still wearing his size 15 Air Force Ones.

Bottom line Amar’e is that we all get “Heated” and want to take our exasperation out on inanimate metallic objects. At this point it’s important that you are able to learn from your mistakes. Forget for a second that your childish behavior was simply a case of misplaced anger directed at that ball hog Carmelo Anthony and focus all your energy on keeping your hand elevated and wrapped in a plastic baggy during bathing.

view from the Knicks locker room courtesy of @WindhorstESPN

The NBA All-Star Break Means It’s Time For The Academy Awards

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This is a big weekend for both the NBA and Hollywood. As basketball enjoys its All-Star break Tinseltown gears up for the Academy Awards this Sunday night. Now is as good a time as any to predict both the winner of the Best Picture Oscar and the NBA Championship.

Outside Looking In

New York Knicks/Extremely Loud And Incredibly Close: After last night’s humbling loss to the Miami Heat I have some serious reservations about even including New York on this list. But the Knicks still deserve mentioning in large part because these past few weeks of Linsanity have been much too captivating to at least not consider a title run for this team. The Knicks will probably not get past either the Bulls or Heat but their presence in the Eastern Conference playoffs will do wonders for the television rating, that is of course if you are a Time Warner customer living in Manhattan.

Movie buffs aren’t quite sure how Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close ended up being nominated for a Best Picture Oscar with some reviewers calling it “self important” and “crass”.With Tom Hanks and Sandra Bullock leading the cast, EL&IC boasts an impressive starting lineup but much like Knicks, the movie’s crunch time lineup includes crucial performance by supporting players like Max von Sydow and Viola Davis. But can you really win a championship wtih JR Smith launching 3 pointer after 3 pointer?

Dallas Mavericks/War Horse: Can’t discount the champs, even if free agent acquisition Lamar Odom has spent more time worrying about how to fix his sex swing than trying to figure how to help the Mavs win another title. You have to wonder whether or not this team has the drive again this season to push themselves all the way to the NBA Finals or maybe they are just satisfied to wait a year until they can go out and sign both Deron Williams and Dwight Howard this summer.

Speaking of running on past laurels, War Horse, directed by Steven Spielberg and based on a famous play, is the story of a boy and his horse and World War I. In other words, how did they ever turn this into a Broadway show? This film, much like the Dallas Mavericks, is on this list because of the past successes of Spielberg. And just like Dirk Nowitzki, it’ll take a whole roster of thoroughbreds for this director to win the big prize on Sunday.

Los Angeles Lakers/The Tree of Life: The Lakers have no point guard, zero depth, and are rumored to be shopping Pau Gasol. However, as long as they have Kobe Bryant they remain a threat to win the Western Conference, even if he is surrounded by a group of ripening corpses and Andrew Bynum’s fragile skeleton.

The Tree of Life is very very hard to understand, which is probably exactly what director Terrence Malick was shooting for. Is it about a middle class family in Texas during the 1950’s or the end of the world as we know it? Does Malick really believe that dinosaurs will inherit the earth once again or was he simply trying to make a statement about the ephemeral nature of human existence? Either way, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that The Tree of Life is much too ambitious to appeal to the average Academy voter. And like the Lakers, it’s really hard to win a championship when your roster is full of lifeforms from the Cretaceous era.

The Darkhorse

Denver Nuggets/Midnight in Paris: The Nuggets are an incredibly entertaining basketball team. They get up and down the court, defend, and take boatloads of threes. They also have the depth and athletic ability to match up very well with the Clippers and Thunder.

Midnight In Paris is a whimsical tale that brings us back to the Belle Epoque of Woody Allen’s illustrious career. But just like the Nuggets, the most entertaining movie doesn’t always win the Best Picture Oscar. (see 1997)

The Contenders

San Antonio Spurs/Moneyball: The Spurs have always spent their dollars wisely, acquiring a valuable stable of role players like Matt Bonner, Gary Neal, and Kawhi Leonard to compliment veteran stars Tim Duncan, Tony Parker, and Manu Ginobili. Once again the issue for the Spurs will be the health of their aging nucleus. If any of their stars are unavailable or hobbled for the playoffs then it becomes next to impossible for the Spurs to keep up with the younger legs of the Western Conference.

The Oakland A’s, like the Spurs, have a history of cobbling together a starting lineup by signing other teams castoffs. Moneyball is a baseball movie about the island of misfit toys with Brad Pitt at the center of a statistical revolution that transformed professional sports. The story ends in defeat which may be an ominous sign for Spurs fans.

Los Angeles Clippers/Hugo: Hugo is a movie about the magic of movies. (Go figure. Scorcese going the PG route.) There’s a lot of magic taking place at the Staples Center this season and for once it’s not just the Lake Show. Blake Griffin continues to defy gravity and Chris Paul has established Lob City as more than just a passing fancy. It will be interesting to see whether or not the Clippers can carry this mystique into the second half of the season. In either case, it wouldn’t be a surprise to see either walk away with big prize.

The Favorites

Oklahoma City/The Descendants: OKC is young, energetic, and most importantly after last season’s playoff run, experienced. The Thunder certainly have the young legs to outlast their Western Conference competition but the question will always be, who takes that final shot: Kevin Durant or Russell Westbrook?

When it comes to Hollywood, there is no doubt that George Clooney is the man in charge. However, his character in The Descendants is very un alpa dogesque. The Descendants is two hours of scowling self loathing woe is me catharsis. In other words, a typical night in the life of Thunder center Kendrick Perkins.

Chicago Bulls/The Help: It was unfortunately only a matter of time before Derrick Rose broke down. His bad back is asymptamatic of his relentless style of play and effort on both ends of the court. Bad backs are really hard to overcome, just ask your dad.

Rose certainly could use a little help in Chicago but he has recently denied reports that he was asking the Bulls front office to trade for Pau Gasol. The Help is riding waves of momentum and it would make a lot of people smile to see the feel good movie of the year ride away with Hollywood’s biggest prize.

The Winner

Miami Heat/The Artist – The regular season does not matter because this Heat team will be judged by their performance in the playoffs. However, if recent games are any indication, LeBron James and company are motivated and capable of eviscerating any foe in their path. Silence has never been the answer for the Big Three but it could be the gimmick that pushes The Artist over the top. But, as with the Heat, there will be a lot of people rooting against it on Sunday night. If the past is any indication then Harvey Weinstein will not mind that there are a lot of movie fans out there who don’t like him. Unlike LeBron James.

 view from American Airlines Arena courtesy of @PLRLifestyle

 

Monday Morning Musings: Mavericks Edition

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Congrats to Dirk Nowitzki and the Dallas Mavericks for ending our season long nightmare by defeating the Miami Heat in the NBA Finals. LeBron James will have to wait at least one more season before claiming his first championship. On the ABC postgame, Jeff Van Gundy tossed out the notion that the Miami front office would possibly entertain the idea of trading LeBron or Dwyane Wade for either Chris Paul or Dwight Howard this offseason because, in his mind, the pieces just might not “fit” as currently constituted. Don’t you have to wait at least one more year before blowing the whole thing up?

For me, the arithmetic just doesn’t add up on this one. LeBron will be back. Dwyane Wade will be back. Even Chris Bosh and Coach Spoelstra will return for another season in South Beach which is what we should all want, another opportunity to root against the Miami Heat.

As the curtain falls on an incredibly entertaining NBA season, and the Stanley Cup Finals stare down a Game 6 tonight in Boston, MLB is about ready to take center stage for the long summer months. And who knows, if the billionaires and millionaires that operate the NFL don’t get their s*#$ together soon, we could be looking at nothing but baseball chatter for the foreseable future.

A Quick Trip Around the Bases

1B – I guess we all spoke too soon about the Cleveland Indians. Losers of 9 of their last 10, the Tribe are starting to play like the team we all thought they were going to be before the 2011 season began. And now here come the Detroit Tigers and Chicago White Sox ready to make a race of the AL Central. Two questions: can the Indians hold on a little longer, say until the all star break or are they in the midst of a total free fall? Second, the Twins have won 8 of 10 and sit only 9 games out of the division lead. With a healthy(?) Joe Mauer returning behind the plate this week, does Minnesota make their traditional run to the top of the standings or are they simply snake bitten this season?

2B – Good for you Atlanta! At least we have one team willing to hang in there in the NL East and not allow the Philadelphia Phillies to sit back and map out their postseason pitching rotation starting in August. Is Brian McCann the best catcher in baseball right now? With Posey and Mauer both injured, and my main man Matt Wieters quietly emerging but not quite yet ready for prime time, McCann is probably the gold standard right now.

3B – The Chicago Cubs are not a good baseball team. Whenever Lou Montanez is batting 3rd in your lineup you know you have issues. Not only are the Cubs struggling on the field but now Peter Gammons, MLB columnist and baseball emissary especial, has called Wrigley Field a “dump” and mentioned how the new ownership group in Chicago, the Ricketts family, is not prepared financially to handle the cost of essential ballpark renovations.  Of course, take anything the Boston based Gammons writes with a grain of salt. If Larry Lucchino or Theo Epstein were to go to the bathroom in the middle of Boston Common Gammons would find a way hail the masterpiece as an important work of impressionist art.

HR – Derek Jeter is now 7 hits away from 3,000 and unfortunately for Yankee fans it doesn’t look like the Captain is going to reach this milestone in Yankee Stadium. I guess it’s possible, 7 hits in 4 games at home this week, but in all likelihood Jeter will reach 3K in Wrigley Field over the weekend in front of 40K over served Chicago Cubs fans. Ahhhh the memories.

view from American Airlines Arena courtesy of @marcus_hammond

3 Reasons a Hockey Fan Should Watch Game 6 of the NBA Finals

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I had an interesting conversation with a friend on Friday night. We were talking about the NBA and Stanley Cup finals and he was arguing that the fans of these two sports are mutually exclusive. In general, his point as a hockey fan was that they don’t really care about the NBA Finals and vice versa. As an NBA fan, I felt that his argument was incorrect and incredibly shortsighted.  If there were ever a time to care about both, now is that time. Even I can acknowledge the incredible cross continent fight taking place between the Bruins and Canucks.  So to all those hockey fans out there who are unwilling to give the NBA Finals a chance, here are 3 simple reasons why you should care about Game 6 tonight between the Dallas Mavericks and the Miami Heat.

Reason #1: The superstars play the hardest. It’s true. The best players in the game tonight – Dirk Nowitzki, Dwyane Wade, and LeBron James, are also the hardest workers.  A lot of non NBA fans are turned off by the perception that all NBA players are self promoting, narcissists who thump their chests after every made layup. And although this may still be the case for some – see Chris Bosh – the majority of NBAers today genuinely care about giving their best effort.

Reason #2: For hockey fans that appreciate a good rivalry, this series has all the essential ingredients . The Dallas Mavericks and the Miami Heat do not like each other. The James and Wade video mocking Nowitzki’s illness is just the latest in a long line of competitive animosity between these two sides. Wade and Nowitzki have had a rivalry since the Heat beat the Mavs in the ’06 finals and the style of these two teams couldn’t be any more different. The Heat are South Beach glamor personified while the Mavs have come to symbolize veteran savy and work ethic.

Reason #3: LeBron James is the most polarizing figure in professional sports today. Picture the amazing physical skills of Alexander Ovechkin coupled with the disdain for your least favorite politician. This is the complicated formula that besets LeBron as he prepares to take the court in Game 6. Publicly vilified for “The Decision” but universally lauded for his amazing basketball ability, LeBron has been unable to come through in the 4th quarter of this series when it matters the most. All of the pressure rests on his shoulders tonight. Will he help the Heat stave off elimination and send the series to a game 7 or will he head into another offseason in pursuit of his first, elusive NBA Championship?

Stay tuned hockey fans, there is something for everyone in the 2011 NBA Finals.

view from outside the American Airlines Arena courtesy of @aguilaruben

Wednesday Worries

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I’m worried that…

Dirk Nowitzki can’t carry the Mavericks to a series victory. Last night, the shots Dirk was hitting vs OKC weren’t falling and down the stretch, the Jason’s, Terry and Kidd, went into early hibernation mode. Now reports out of South Beach have Nowitzki playing with a torn ligament in his finger. Already down a game to the Heat, let the excuses begin!

Scottie Pippen was right.

traveling is no longer part of a NBA officials vernacular. I understand LeBron is a once in a generation athlete but even Jim Thorpe took less than 7 steps when driving to the basket.

I’m not paying enough attention to the Stanley Cup Finals between the Vancouver Canucks and the Boston Bruins. Two hockey hot cities longing for a championship. Unfortunately for the NHL, it’s June and the only ice I want to cozy up to is resting comfortably at the bottom of my mojita.

view from American Airlines Arena courtesy of @ngobrolNBA