A "BOWLING FOR SOUP" NBA FINALS?

It was a Pyrrhic victory of sorts, though. Not because anyone from Rome or Epirus was involved, and certainly not because Plutarch had a great column in the next days Athens Globe. Okay, maybe it wasn't even a Pyrrhic victory. What did occur was this: the humiliation stirred a part of the Laker beast that I'm not even sure they knew was within them. Boston would win one more game that series, but L.A. pretty much dominated it after that embarrassing Monday afternoon (that's right, they played an NBA Finals game on Memorial Day afternoon....so cool!).

Which leads me to a conversation I had with my alter-ego (Gray-Dub) yesterday:

J-Dub: "Who do you like in the NBA Finals?"

Gray-Dub: "Celtics in four."

J-Dub: "In four?!? Why four?"

Gray-Dub: "Because the NBA won't hand them the trophy after three."

 This is not going to be a Bowling For Soup NBA Finals, people. The boys in Bristol may attempt to reincarnate Bird and Magic as Garnett (or Pierce) and Kobe, but KG and PP are not in Bryant's class. And the Celtics are only in the Lakers' class the way Spicoli was in Mr. Hand's, which is to say, purely spatio-temporally (when he remembered to make it on time), despite what the regular-season records might insinuate. It's going to be LA, easy (I may cede one game to the Celtics), in a walk. To quote a band that actually existed in the 80s, "Nobody walks in L.A....", but this time, they're wrong. A few thoughts:

--It will never happen--even though Phil Jackson has an enmity toward the Celtics back from his playing days with the Knicks--but I'd love to see Phil start his second unit (Turiaf, Walton, Ariza, Vujacic and Farmar) and play them  an entire quarter. I don't doubt they'd be up at the end of that period.

--Only six off days between the last conference final and the NBA Finals? Somewhere Gregg Popovich is saying, "Hey, thanks a lot, Commish. We play six games in eleven days in order that the Lakers and Celtics can have a week off between series? Yeah, that makes sense. And thanks for Joey Crawford, too, by the way."

--Six days off between the Finals. I think we're all going to be sick of  the Celtics and Lakers a long time before the Game 1 tip-off in Boston.

--Mike Gorman has been calling Celtics games for three decades now, and he's a great guy. His daughter, Kristen Gorman, was a terrific point guard for a high school team I coached a decade ago. Not for nothing, but I just thought I'd add that.

--If I'm Phil I drape Gasol all over KG, have Sasha annoy Pierce as much as possible and give Odom lots of freedom to double-team people. Dare Kendrick Perkins to beat you. Kobe, well, he can just whisper sweet nothings to Ray Allen to (further) shake his confidence.

--I was listening to Steve Somers on WFAN yesterday and heard some fan say that he was just happy for the NBA that it would be Celtics and Lakers. Wha?!?!? Why does any fan give the proverbial rat's ass about the welfare of a pro sports league? I mean, it's the NBA; it's not Darfur. Listen, as Stu Jackson and David Stern wait for their personal drivers pull up to their Westchester mansions to take them to work each morning, I doubt they worry all that much about whether or not they'll be able to pay the mortgage.

Kaitlin Cochran

You probably don't know the name, and before three days ago I did not, either. Kaitlin Cochran bats leadoff for the Arizona State Sun Devils softball team, who play at noon today in the Women's College World Series. Cochran is batting .448 this season, and opposing coaches are so afraid of the Yorba Linda, Calif., native that they intentionally walk her all the time

So?
So, on Friday night UCLA coach Kelly Inouye-Perez had her pitcher intentionally walk Cochran leading off the game. Leading off the game. Cochran, who has hit 13 home runs this season (and who batted .492 last season as a freshman!), was walked three times intentionally against the Bruins as ASU won 4-0. Two of those three free passes came as she led off an inning. Which is just a ridonkulous defensive strategy, I'm sorry. Even as hot as she is, she still gets a hit less than 50% of the time she bats.

The previous evening, versus Alabama, Cochran was also intentionally walked three times. The last time came in the seventh inning. The Crimson Tide led 1-0 in the seventh and Cochran, leading off for the Sun Devils that inning, was shown first base. ASU rallied for three runs that inning and won.

Stupid, stupid, stupid. When do you ever want to issue a lead-off walk?

UCLA and Alabama both fell into the loser's bracket with their losses to ASU. Which is where they belong for that strategy.

Here's why: Not only is it cowardly from a competitive standpoint, but here ESPN gives your sport a one-week showcase to lure new fans. And here is Cochran, softball's Ty Cobb, and you are depriving fans a chance to see her hit. If I were ESPN honcho John Skipper I'd be on the line threatening to run back episodes of  Bodyshaping unless softball gets it act together and pronto.

Sure, we all love the lingering dugout pans to ogle the players' lovely mugs (someone should do a comparison between the number of dugout panning shots in softball as opposed to, say, a Reds-Pirates game. But here's the most dynamic hitter in your sport and opposing coaches have taken the bat out of her hands the past two games, and worse, paid the price for it.

Yet Another Reason Why YouTube Rules

You cannot listen/watch Coldplay perform theirn new U2 song, "Viva La Vida", in full on YouTube yet ("now in the morning I sleep alone/sweep the streets I used to own"). That's because Chris Martin and the boys have an exclusive deal with Apple (the company, not his daughter). If you want the song, you gotta pay your 99 cents.

However, there is a Toronto-based Coldplay tribute band, Coldplayers, who are quite deft musicians themselves. And perhaps seeing an opening, or maybe it was just by chance, they hustled up and did a studio performance of the song that has already received 166,282 hits since it was posted 12 days ago. Shrewd. Very shrewd. How many years would it have taken for them to garner an audience of that size?

Fascinating, this. A Coldplay tribute band is beating Coldplay to the punch on its own song. That's funny. And these guys sound tight, even if none of them have Blythe Danner as a mother-in-law.

Here's my question: What's the worst tribute band out there? By that I don't mean that the band doing the tribute songs is bad. I mean the original band whose songs they are plagiarizing, um, I mean paying tribute to, was awful. For instance, is there a Leo Sayer tribute band? A Loverboy tribute band? Anyone?

Video of the Week

I was spoiled in high school (1980-84) because some of the best showmen in rock were around at that time. The very best, the very, very best, was Freddie Mercury, whom I saw with Queen on my 16th birthday at Veteran's Memorial Coliseum. The next best was this guy, here performing with his band on my favorite tune of theirs. Watch closely and tell me if the psychopath from "The Silence of the Lambs", Buffalo Bill, was not co-opting his entire act, from wardrobe to dance moves to hair style.

Quip of the Week ...

... comes courtesy of my friend Mark Mravic, a senior editor at Sports Illustrated. On Thursday evening I was out with four old SI cronies (and they are old, even Mark Beech, who still manages to look uncannily like Christian Bale) and recounting the whole Laura Lane (see past blogs) incident to them. Setting up the story, I was beginning to tell them that on our press row Mr. Arash "Guest List" Markazi sat to my right and Miss Lane to my left. This exchange followed:

Me: "So I'm sitting between Arash -- "

Mravic: " -- and a hard place."

Prettttty good, Mark. Prettty, prettttty, pretttttty good.