Random Comment #1: NBA average free throw shooting percentage: 77.2%; WNBA average free throw shooting percentage: 80.2%
Random Comment #2: PGA of the Tee 290 yards; LPGA of the Tee; 254 yards. Makes one think that if LPGA gals were allowed to tee off 40 yards in front of the men, they could compete at every other level. Make that happen, and wouldn't a competition between genders knock the socks off of any previous golf tournament TV ratings?
Random Comment #3 Does Ben Simmons of the Philly 76ers, have no shame? How does a guy pulling down this amount of $ shoot so dismally? 23 % from the field. Less than 30% from the free throw line. Come On, Ben!!!
Random Comment #4: Happy to read the NFL is being sued by Saint Louis folks for the team relocating to LA. through the use of some pretty slimy tactics. How about Seattle filing a suit against the Oklahoma Thunder's owner for his slimy relocation tactic moving his newly bought team to OKC. (When he bought the team he said he wouldn't move it, Right. Liar, liar, pants on fire!)
Random Comment #5: In todays The Athletic, evaluating 2021 NBA draftee: About 3 pt shooting Corey Kispert from the Zags: "Kispert is 22, which is a fossil relative to the other players available. . . " Takes me back to 1961 when I was drafted #1 by the Philadelphia Warriors (San Francisco Warriors/Golden State) I was a 22 year old fossil and gave the NBA and my teams ten pretty damn good years of production. I'm not sure what the diff between 10 years and 15 years means in the NBA. Lots of first round draft choices who are teens wind up in the G League being paid first round draft choice salaries while not helping the home team at all. I'm thinking of a knock-down shooter like Kisspert and another 24 year old from U of Oregon by the name of Chris Duarte. Both can come in and produce right now, not three years from now.
Random Comment #6: As per John Hollinger in The Athletic talking about Free Agency: As a result, teams are likely to pump the brakes on a max deal for Lonzo Ball. Something in the range of 100 million over 4 years seems more likely. As my wife said, "Awh, poor baby, how will he ever manage?"
Random Comment #7: Big ATTABOY to Jacob Stenmstz, the first Orthodox Jew to be drafted #1 in the MBL. Reminds me I need to re-read Chaim Potok's The Chosen. The first part of the book takes place on the baseball field.
Random Comment #8: Nigeria and now the Aussies beat our boys in red, white and blue. And the Argentinians pushed USA hard. Now JaVale Magee joins the team. Really????
Random Comment #9: Congrats to Natalie Diaz for winning a Pulitzer Prize this year for poetry for her Post Colonial Love Poem, published by Greywolf Press. Natalie played basketball for Old Dominion and pro ball in Europe and Asia. Makes one think basketball players should write more poetry.
Natalie doesn't write poems about basketball as far as I know. She does start one stanza on the Teotlachco ball court. If you're scratching your head, the Aztecs invented basketball.
Instead of a poem, here's one of a series of Why Indians are Good at Basketball written by Nicole Tower, a journalism student at Arizona State University
We know how to block shots, how to stuff them down your throat because when you say, "Shoot!" we hear howitzer and Hotchkiss and Springfield Model 1873.
I'm a huge fan of your works. Own all of your books and all of your cards. Basketball and poetry are two of my passions. I wanted to share a poem I wrote about basketball. I have no way to contact you so I'll leave it right here in the hope that you might say "not bad."
ReplyDeleteBarbershop Legends
Come sit down, youngblood
And hold real still
While I cut your head
And tell you tales
Of the last of the barbershop legends
The best ballers
You’ve never heard of
Who never made it
Past that imaginary county line
Who once could run circles around defenders
Until smoke took their lungs
Who once could handle the rock like an extension of their limbs
Until drugs caused their hands to shake, nerves to wane
Who once could pick coins off the rim in a single jump
Until diabetes took their legs
Sugar and fat causing their weight to redouble upon this earth
Who once could run these courts care free, pick up games every weekend
Until lust gave them children to ignore, women to escape, alimony to pay
Their sneakers long since traded for liquor bottles
Or worse
Oh they could have gone pro
Just ask them
You can find them all around
That one boy still has the high school record for most points
The number burned into a plaque high in the trophy case
But he cannot read it from his cell, upstate, doing 8 years for armed robbery
Was it the Johnson kid had a scholarship waiting?
His education in trade for putting that ball through the hoop
He left the papers unsigned on the table
Took a job with his uncle fixing cars
Has a hoop over the loading bay he cannot look at without crying
Remember that boy who could dunk in junior high?
Yonder on the wall is a newspaper with him on the front page
Died of drugs that same year at season’s end
That picture you see is the last basket he would ever make
Where have they all gone
These hometown legends
Now blacktop kings
Proudly telling the world who they were
Struggling to hide from what they are
Searching for what is left
There now, your hair is done
You rise in long shorts, a stained jersey
Shoes half a size too big
But you will grow
Are still growing into a man
Your moves may come, youngblood
Perhaps even glory
But they will fade with one ill decision
So steeped in finality
Go live your life well
And I will pray
That I never see that head again
To cut in the darkness of this single chair
Surrounded by framed ghosts on the walls that taunt us
And the broken husks of men in chairs waiting their turn
Quick to remind us they are
The last of the barbershop legends