The Arbitrary ChuckJerry

My confession is that I'm routing for the Lakers to beat the Suns in the first round of the playoffs. I know I can't claim to hate the Lakers and then turn around and route for them, but I do and I am. It's great to watch a team come together like that for a playoff run. How is a team that was so Kobe-centric for 82 games making this fantastic team effort all of a sudden?

Lamar Odon is great, and I've said since he was on the Olympic team that he's really underrated. He's got phenomenal skills and is 2000s version of Grant Hill or even Scottie Pippen. Kobe is Kobe. The rest of the guys are the ones I enjoying watching right now, though. Kwame Brown actually playing with some skill and intensity. Smush Parker carrying the team in game 3, and making 2 of the biggest plays for the team in game 4. Luke Walton, Devean George, and even Sasha Vujacic (I think I butchered that name) making contributions.

I mainly hated the Lakers because of what Kobe did in destroying the 3 time championship team. He pushed out Phil Jackson and Shaquille O'Neal, arguably the best coach and the best center in the last 15 years of the league, just so he could go and average 35 points a game on a wack team. But they've turned that around. And Phil Jackson is back. And Shaq and Kobe made up. And fucking Kwame Brown is playing like he might actually be an impact player in the league.

This kindof goes against my earlier claim that The first round of the playoffs is useless, but at the end of the day we're looking at Spurs/Pistons no matter what as best I can tell. Even though there are several good series right now with upset potential, Nets/Pacers, Bulls/Heat, Suns/Lakers, Cavs/Wizards, and teachnically Clippers/Nuggets, the second round will play more closely to form. If there are major upsets in the second round, then I'll take back my statement about the 5-8 seeds in the East and West being capable of making playoff runs.

Incidentally, we all knew that he had the talent, but how does Tim Thomas, who couldn't secure a roster spot on the Knicks or the Bulls over the last two seasons, become not only a starter, but a huge impact player for the 2nd ranked Suns? He honestly could not have sucked more when he was on the Knicks, and he was cut by the Bulls in mid-season this year. If he absolutely needs to be on a serious contender just to realize his potential, then he's wack.

Nash is the lynch pin, but I really think Phoenix is just a system team, like the Denver Broncos of the NBA. Shawn Marion is seriously underrated, as well. He puts up MVP type numbers, too, even to a greater extent than Nash does. Numbers like Garnett put up in his MVP season. Nash is definitely not doing it by himself, and if Marion were out for an extended period of time that team would be absolutely lost.

The answer, of course, is the NFL draft. I mean, outside of the executives and so forth, and people involved with the league, there really isn't anyone who should care so much about this draft in any year. The only reason people are even remotely interested in it is because ESPN et. al. hype this thing like it was the April version of the Super Bowl. The draft hype is really inescapable for even a casual sports fan. It's not possible to watch PTI or SportsCenter (or any of those other similar shows) in the month before the draft without having to listen to this stuff. The SportsCenter thing where they spend at least 5 minutes per team putting each team "on the clock" has been going on for at least 16 days given the 32 teams and two teams a day. It's just asinine in my opinion.

It's not possible for any football fan to know about all the draft picks beyond the 5 or 6 best guys. Of course you're interested in who your team drafted, but shit, read about it in the paper the next day. Wait for SportsCenter to come on. Is anyone watching the NFL draft from 12 noon until 10pm, because that's how long it's on television today? There's also coverage tomorrow on some ESPN iteration of the later rounds. This is just more self important than anything I can think of.

On a related note, I was really hoping that the Jets would pick Matt Leinart. The guy they picked, D'Brickashaw Ferguson, aside from having one of the best names ever, apostrophe and all, is by all accounts going to be a great tackle and will protect whatever QB the Jets have back there for a while to come. Really, though, to pass on Matt Leinart when he falls into your lap is unreal to me. You're always taking a chance on a QB, but this guy is as close as you can get to a sure thing since Peyton Manning (and Ryan Leaf?).

This really speaks to my point, however. Obviously the guys who are in charge of the Jets know a lot more about football than I do, and they think that D'Brickashaw was the way to go. Has anyone outside of a real tight football circle even heard of D'Brickashaw Ferguson before a week ago? The only three guys I could name with certainty in the draft this year were Matt Leinart, Reggie Bush, and Vince Young. The first overall pick, Mario Williams, I had never heard of before maybe 3 or 4 days ago. This guy is the best availbable guy, and I've never heard of him because he's not a QB, RB, or WR.

My opinion aside, if I was Matt Leinart I would be ecstatic today after being given the chance to throw to Anquan Boldin, Larry Fitzgerald, and Edgerrin James, and stay relatively close to LA in Phoenix. The Cardinals now have all the flashy guys in place to make some noise in the league and are just an offensive line and a defense away from contending. Yes, I realize that's the understatement of the century.

It's cool that people want to represent their hoods and become rappers. The problem isn't that you need to come from the streets to rap, you just heed to be a good rapper. This guy is the complete opposite of what a rapper is. Not because he's white or middle class, but because he just doesn't get rap. You don't have to be of a specific culture to represent their music, take Matisyahu for example, but you should at least understand what the message of the music is. Also if you want to be a rapper, you should know how to rap.

I'm going to go out on a limb here to confirm a suspicion I have of just about everyone. If I'm not right, then all I've done is just embarrass myself to a certain extent, but I'm willing to live with that.

My assumption is that if no one else is looking, then just about everyone picks their nose. I mean, I know I do. Sometimes the only way to get the relief from a stuffy nose is just to get up in there and pull out the blockage. And once you do you're more comfortable and you can breathe more easily. It's an all around good thing. Nose blowing doesn't always do the trick.

The problem is that no one wants to watch anyone else pick their nose. But I assume this is similar to everyone wiping their own ass in that everyone does it, but no one talks about it. I don't want to watch that either, even though I know it's a necessity of life today. So people, please confirm my suspicion and let me know that you pick your nose, too. If you don't and you think it's disgusting, I guess let me know that too. I can't imagine that the world is full of non-pickers, though. It would just go against everything I believe in.

I'm losing interest in the NBA because the regular season means absolutely nothing. Aside from a very good reason to play fantasy basketball the NBA regular season is just useless. All it does is weed out the absolutely terrible teams from the half decent teams. what the NBA needs to do is change its playoff format.

At the moment 16 of the 30 teams make the playoffs. So more than half of the teams in the league are going to get a shot to win the damn thing. Only we all know that there aren't 16 teams capable of winning the chanpionship this year. The playoffs should be made up of the teams who are capable of winning, not just any team who finished at or near .500. This year there are three teams, Milwaukee, Chicago, and Indiana, who whill make the playoffs and will probably finish below .500. And Washington will likely finish right at .500. These teams do not have a chance to get past the Pistons, Heat, or Nets in the first round. We all know that Memphis and the Lakers and Sacramento don't have a shot in the first round against Dallas, Phoenix, and San Antonio respectively.

This isn't the NCAA tournament where you can win one game, score a huge upset, and advance to the next round. You have to win a 7 game series to advance, which is nearly impossible for a team that is clearly just not as good. This brings me to my next point. The NBA season runs for 5.5 months from November through half of April. The NBA playoffs runs for roughly 3 months, from April through June. I'm exaggerating a little bit, to be fair, as it's really half of April. My point is that the playoffs takes forever. By the time the finals get around I'm no longer intersted unless the Knicks or Nets are in it. Last year we knew that the Pistons and Spurs would be in the finals back in March and we had to wait until June to watch the damn thing. This year we can assume the same matchup and we're going to have to wait for it again. Let's not short shrift Phoenix/Dallas or Miami/New Jersey, but outside of these 6 teams it is literally inconceivable that any of the other so called playoff teams make the finals.

Here's my proposal. Change the playoff format to the one baseball has adopted. Granted, when baseball adopted their playoff policy they were actually expanding the number of teams to make the post season and basketball would be cutting it, but to change it would possibly diminish excitement about the regular season, but really build excitement about the playoffs.

Baseball has 6 divisions, 3 a piece in the National and American Leagues. Each division winner makes the playoffs and the one non-division winner in each league with the best record wins the wild card. Realistically, these are the teams in the league with a chance to win the title. If basketball were to allow only 8 teams into the playoffs by adopting this policy, it would eliminate a whole round of playoffs, which is less TV revenue, but would increase the ratings by getting rid of the unbearable first round series and making it not boring by the end of the thing.

Assuming basketball had this policy this year then the 8 teams in the playoffs would be San Antonio, Phoenix, Denver, and Dallas in the West, and Detroit, Miami, New Jersey, and Cleveland in the East. This would be a great playoff run. As it is we have to wait until the middle of May to see something like this pan out assuming no major upsets in the first round. We have to sit through the God awful first round of the playoffs where maybe the Clippers beat Denver, which isn't an upset since they have a better record, or maybe Indiana challenges New Jersey or Chicago challenges Miami. Even given a first round upset, there's no chance that a team can get through all three dominant teams in eaither the East or West to make the finals. It simply won't happen.

David Stern, do us a favor. Let's get everyone in the league office to stop sucking each others' dicks and thinking about how great your league is and fix the playoff structure. I will be very bored come June 15th when the Spurs and Pistons are playing in the finals. I won't watch this year, the same way I didn't watch last year. Get rid of the teams that don't have a shot. Shorten up the playoffs. Make it interesting for the fans.

PS - could you also exercise some kind of executive power to fire Isiah Thomas and maybe convince James Dolan to sell the Knicks?

My opinion really matters, especially when it comes to language usage. I'm like the William Saffire of the blogosphere. So here are two words that need to be used more often.

Penultimate - the phrase "second to last" is used often enough that people really should be aware of the one word, penultimate, that would replace those three words. It's also much less bulky to say penultimate rather than second to last in most cases. The latin roots, incidentally, paene-almost and ultimus-last, make the literal translation "almost last" which is cool too.

Biotch - really any time you oppose someone's opinion either on a serious level or in a jocular way if you add "biotch" to the end it really adds emphasis. For proof of this declaration watch the next episode of 24 on Monday night and every time there's a confrontation of big egos who know what's best for the country just add "biotch" to the end of their little speech. It really works. Other acceptable forms would be "bee-itch" and an occasional "bizz-natch", though the latter should really be used sparingly.

I just finished reading "The Count of Monte Cristo", by Alexandre Dumas. It's regarded as the quintessential novel about betrayal and revenge and has been the inspiration for lots of movies and plays and what not.

I decided to blog about it mainly because the book was kindof disappointing. The main plot outline is that this guy, Edmond Dantes, is a sailor who everybody loves and the owner of his ship wants to make him the captain and he's about to get married to this great girl. These three guys are jealous of him so they frame him for being a supporter of Napoleon and he gets trhown in jail. While he's in jail he meets this guy who teaches him all sorts of crap and gives him a treasure map. Edmond escapes from the jail, gets the treasure, and then plots his revenge against the guys who framed him. The rest of the book is about how he gets his revenge.

The first part of the book is really engaging. The whole part of him getting framed and being in jail and meeting the guy and finding the treasure is page turning stuff. After that, though, the book really lags. The revenge is not particularly fulfilling and the ending doesn't really have anything to do with anything. I was pretty let down by the whole second half of the story.

From what I understand the recent movie that was made eliminates a good portion of that second part of the book and is probably worth seeing as a result. If the revenge part is just an afterthought or the third act of the movie with the framing and the jail part being the first two, then it's probably a good movie. I must say, though, that if this novel is the quintessence of revenge stories, then we gotta find a new one.