A reminder...

"Just be yourself ... as long as that means that you are a successful person."



Three items, enbriefened:

- I can't think of a more magical moment than a team from California (Anaheim) beating a team from Canada (Ottawa) for the Stanley Cup. Hockey ranks slightly below eating my peeled, sunburned skin on a list of things I enjoy, but for the love of poutin.

Who deserves a Stanley Cup more?

Giant dogs

OR


Long-time Ottawa hockey fans, moderately to quite unattractive

- LeBron James didn't beat the Pistons, Daniel Gibson did. And Daniel Gibson only beat the Pistons because Flip Saunders let him. Do you still wonder why Kevin Garnett never went on a postseason run?

Spurs in 4, only because they can't win in 3. If Daniel Gibson scores more than 10 in a finals game, Gregg Popovich will slice the Achilles tendon of whoever can't guard him.

- Finally, I think I would really enjoy cycling and I applaud YELT's furthering of the two-wheeled cause. Now, if we could only create a bike seat that didn't cause serious distress to my junk.

Yankees Remain Under .500, The_H's Record Streak of Wet Dreams Continues

And other non-coincidences...

This is a sweet song. So sweet, the video is only of the first minute.

The National- Fake Empire


And if you're going to go to Limewire or Ares or whatever you kids use nowadays to download porn and the occasional song, I have a message for you. Download Red Hot Chili Peppers songs, the only thing you're doing is keeping Anthony Kiedis from buying a ninth Land Rover. Don't download semi-obscure bands that don't get airplay on Bob FM or whatever cookie-cutter "70's, 80's, 90's or whatever!" garbage filth they play in your town. Download Air Supply. Those guys suck.


What they're really out of is musical talent.

Other thoughts:

Thank God the Brewers only have to beat teams in the NL Central to get to the postseason, because a lineup with Tony Graffanino and Craig Counsell is complete balls. Being fundamentally sound while striking out doesn't mean a whole lot.

Oh my God, we're having a fire! .. sale.


If Greg Oden goes to Portland, you'll see him overwhelmed ... you know, beard-wise.

And now, this particular member of YELT is going on vacation this weekend. Peace out, players.


/drinks body weight in jager
/throws up
/gets in fight
/has unprotected sex with fat girl
/happymemorialday

YELT Guarantees*: The NBA Conference Finals

We do things a little differently here.

We (by that I mean I) didn't watch an NBA game until April, yet still feel caught up enough to rationally discuss the NBA playoffs. Nothing of extreme importance happened before then, except I remember some talk about the basketball giving players paper cuts.

Also, when we preview a basketball matchup, we don't do it on a position-by-position basis (Like Scouts, Inc. at the World Wide Leader). Comparing Michael Finley to Derek Fisher and awarding a team an advantage based on that is completely irrelevant, calling Ginobili a member of the Spurs' bench (when he plays 33 minutes in Game 1) borders on the ridiculous.

Basketball hinges on the outcome of several key matchups. For the most part, we know what these guys are capable of, but some things remain in the air as we try to determine a winner.

San Antonio vs. Utah

Important thing #1: Tony Parker vs. Deron Williams
I look a lot more intelligent saying this after the first game of this series, but anyone who thinks Parker is the better player here reads Sports Illustrated (It's like Joe DiMaggio and Marilyn Monroe!). Just because you engage in cloitus with a bad actress doesn't make you a first-rate point guard.


If Deron Williams was hitting this, you'd know he's a badass.

Parker was decent in the Suns series, but Williams was better against the Warriors. Williams still tends to have a couple stinkers per series, but so does Parker.

And then there's what they did in Game 1:
Parker- 8-15 FG, 5 FTM, 6 AST, 3 STL, 6 TO
Williams- 13-23 FG, 2 3PM, 6 FTM, 7 REB, 9 AST, 1 TO

Advantage: Jazz.

Important thing #2: Can Carlos Boozer come close to producing like Tim Duncan?

Before Game 1, there may have been the shred of hope that if Boozer could score, rebound, pass and block near to what Duncan does for the Spurs, the Jazz supporting cast could get them a series win.

It doesn't look like that's going to happen, as Duncan looked like Duncan in game one and Boozer looked like a more coordinated Rafael Araujo.

Advantage: Spurs.

Important thing #3: Is Manu Ginobili going to be the second-best (hell, or the best) player in the series?

By the end of the Suns series, Ginobili was having more of an impact on the result than Duncan (Game 6: 33-11-6-4 stl). If he continues to play at that level, the Spurs are the champions. The Jazz were so good against the Warriors because they had four guys playing at a very high level (Kirilenko, Okur, Boozer and Williams). Through one game with San Antonio, it looks like Duncan and Ginobili (and Oh Boy! Fabricio Oberto!) are the hotness. Deron Williams matched them in this one, but he needed Okur, Kirilenko, Fisher or Boozer to help out. They didn't and that's a bad sign.

Advantage: Spurs.

Prediction: Spurs in 7.

Detroit vs. Cleveland

And now, the least awaited conference final since the NHL conference finals started:

Seriously though, watching the Detroit-Cleveland series won't make you go blind.


Don't worry, your mom was lying about that other thing, too.

Since it's an overwhelmingly negative focus here, we'll follow suit. In doing this, we hope to find the second least worst team.

Important thing #1: Who is Cleveland's second-best player? (Express your answer in tears.)

It's probably Zydrunas Ilgauskas, but only because it can't be Drew Gooden, Aleksandar Pavlovic or Larry Hughes (Have you ever gotten a fourth-grader drunk and then made him/her take 17 jumpers during an NBA playoff game? Then you have an accurate frame of reference for Larry Hughes.)

Disadvantage: Cleveland.

Important thing #2: Is one ever better than four?

Except for sexually transmitted diseases, I can't think of many examples (Although, a needle in the wenis is a needle in the wenis). LeBron is Duncan-esque in the impact he has on a game, but I don't remember a team winning multiple games on one guy's shoulders with little or no help from anybody. In game two against the Nets, LeBron had possibly the best individual game of the postseason (36 pts, 12 ast, etc.). Nobody else from the Cavs did anything. Enough to beat the Nets (greet the Nets), but not Detroit. Prince + Billups + Wallace + Hamilton > LeBron.

Disadvantage: Cleveland.

Important thing #3: Will there be a game where all the fans throw up like when Chunk dumped the fake puke in the movie theater in Goonies?

Yeah, probably.

Disadvantage: rods and cones.

Prediction: Detroit in 5.

*not a guarantee

The Mute Button vs. Tim McCarver

If you were watching the Cubs-Phillies game last Saturday on FOX, (and I was, when you don't have cable, you noisily devour any sporting event) you got to experience one of the most inexplicable phenomenon in recent history.

Tim McCarver, paid to explain the game of baseball to you.



If you imagine someone tuning in during the home half of the second inning without a great deal of knowledge about the game of baseball, here's what they were exposed to. With runners on first and third and one out, eighth-place hitter Carlos Ruiz doubled to center. Abraham Nunez tried to score from first on the play, and was thrown out by a light-year. Enter McCarver to explain the thoughts of the third-base coach.

"You have to send him," McCarver said. "Because the pitcher's coming up next."

Behind my TV, a poster of Jackie Robinson mysteriously started weeping.

I did not know that the third-base coach is required to check the on-deck circle before deciding whether to wave a runner in. I thought it was a less complex equation involving the likelihood that the guy running would get to the plate before the ball did. There was one out. If you don't send him, you've got runners on second and third with one out. (Freddy Garcia, the pitcher and next batter, doubled by the way. Eat it, Tim.). You don't run the guy into a sure out praying that the ball hits the mound or the center field accidentally throws it to third like in RBI Baseball.

This brings up an inherent problem, one that I've brought up before on this website.

These color analysts are expected to talk (a lot) during the course of a game. This means that roughly 80 percent of the time, they're speaking directly out of their hiney hole. Between talk radio, ESPN, ESPN2 and all that other sports garbage out there, discourse about sports has become whomever can yell the loudest or talk the most.


Colin Cowherd, world-class asshole

The problem is that people listen and take it seriously.

There's only one way to handle this, and that's mute the TV. Maybe you give them a half-inning, until the first TV timeout or the first segment of SportsCenter to somehow enlighten you. If they can enhance your experience with their words, leave it on. Most of the time, though, they don't. (Some do, like ESPN's Sunday Night radio duo of Dan Shulman and Dave Campbell. Others, like Jon Miller, pronounce every Latino name like he's in a mariachi band. Last time he did a game with Andres Galarraga, they had to hit control-alt-delete so he'd stop.)

You can tell from box score who played well (Carlos Boozer) and who didn't (Gordan Giricek. Forever, Gordan Giricek). You can watch the highlights to see Baron Davis de-flower Andrei Kirilenko.

You don't need some jerk yelling at you the whole time.

Five Things That Are Bad, But Not As Bad As Jeff Weaver

We've never had a baseline for incompetence. You could never look at something and say, "Yeah, that guy is the worst person at any job in the entire world."

Until Jeff Weaver put on a Mariners uniform.

Through 22 innings, he's allowed an average of 2.6 baserunners per inning, 1.6 earned runs per inning. Opposing hitters are batting .459 against him and slugging .725. He was recently put on the DL, more as a cost-cutting measure than anything, the baseballs he was throwing kept getting dented.

Jeff's done something selfless for the rest of the world, though. He's put everything in perspective. As bad as you might have it, you're not getting paid an exorbitant amount of money to get publicly humiliated (read: shit on by major league hitters) the way Weaver is.

Here's a list of people, places and ideas benefiting from Weaver's 76-mph frisbee slider, hanging in the strike zone like an eighth grader threw it.

1. Adam Morrison's rookie season. I remember there being something written in the middle of the season about him being awful, but I didn't think it was this bad. He didn't shoot well, didn't hit outside shots, didn't get to the free throw line, didn't rebound, passed decently, couldn't guard an NBA player with a chainsaw, turned the ball over frequently and got worse as the season progressed. I kinda hope he bounces back, because It has to start somewhere. It has to start somehow. What better place than here? What better time than now?

2. Kevin Kouzmanoff. His skill set's going to translate well in the National League! Or, you know, he'll be the worst everyday player in the big leagues. Whichever.

3. The homoerotic tension between my two roommates. "You know, this is the first of three conversations. The first is, that you really like hanging out together, go out on Thursday night and have a lot of weird faux-gay jokes, the second is that you know, you might want to try touching each other just to see if you like it and the third is that you definitely enjoy being inside each other and that you're getting a tiny dog."

4. Sidney Ponson. It must be comforting knowing that you sleep under the same sky as Weaver. Ponson doesn't have a choice though, they removed his roof because they need a crane to lift his fat ass out of the room like Bonnie Grape.

5. The Suns single-teaming Tim Duncan. Look, you're going to lose the series if you continue to play him one-on-one. Amare Stoudemire gets in foul trouble when he has to help after Kurt Thomas gets abused, just run another defender at him (Hell, if Jacque Vaughn's in the game, you don't even have to guard him!) and see if that works. I don't know if it will, but it's better than just allowing Duncan to beat your ass.

Because We Care

Since I've been told updating a blog frequently is important, here's some filler material.

But it's not really filler, it's totally sweet.

Fujiya and Miyagi - Ankle Injuries


The piece of video magic that begat this blog


I just started watching The Larry Sanders Show on DVD, I'm disappointed our whole generation is missing out on it because it stars Jeffrey Tambor as "Hey, Now!" Hank Kingsley


The Thermals- A Pillar Of Salt


The Decemberists- 16 Military Wives


That should get you through Friday.

The Curse of Mark Cooper

Forget the goat.

Forget the Bambino.

A more devastating curse just ended, I don't know why it hasn't received more attention. Truly, it has everything to do with this man.


Cooper, Cooper!

You laugh, but here are two facts that could not possibly be related by anything other than cause and effect.

The Warriors' last playoff series win: The spring of 1991
Mark Cooper is offered a 10-day contract by the Warriors on a fictional television show: November 1992

As a 9-year-old, I remember being riveted; rooting for Cooper to make the team over a fat, drunk Byron Houston and going into the backyard and shooting into the wee hours of the night when he didn't. TGIF rarely hit me this hard, except that one time Balki and Cousin Larry got into a shouting match.



I was young then, and not so caught up in the ridiculousness of an NBA team trying out a high school gym teacher, much less one with a Shawn Marion-esque jumper and the inability to get Holly Robinson Peete in the sack.


I mean, he was living with her! How do you not pull that off?

But from that point, the Warriors have been the taint of the Western Conference.

They made one playoff appearance after Cooper's run on the team (1993-94), but since then, hadn't finished over .500 until this year.

That includes seasons like this:

2000-01: 17-65
1999-00: 19-63, and hilariously, led in total points by Donyell Marshall and Jason Caffey. This team wouldn't have made it to the second weekend of the NCAA Tournament.
1997-98: 19-63

Throw in the Latrell Sprewell choking incident and there's too much circumstantial evidence to blame anybody but this guy:



Odds and ends:
1. I know the Brewers haven't beaten anyone very good (except maybe the Cubs), but they are 22-10 and look pretty good. Also, if this is your anti-Brewers argument, we'll see you in the playoffs. Hating the Brewers for Mr. 3000? Truly heeeee-larious. Michael Jackson being black jokes? So fresh.
2. Everything I think about Roger Clemens can be summed up by the Dugout. Awesome, as usual.