Here are my predictions for the NBA standing come the end of the season baring significant injuries.
WESTERN CONFERENCE
Pacific: Southwest: Northwest:
LA Clippers San Antonio Oklahoma Thunder
Warriors Memphis Portland
Phoenix Houston Minnesota
Kings Dallas Denver
Lakers New Orleans Utah
EASTERN CONFERENCE
Atlantic: Southeast: Central:
Brooklyn Miami Indiana
Toronto Atlanta Chicago
New York Washington Detroit
Boston Charlotte Cleveland
Philadelphia Orlando Milwaukee
If Greg Oden stays healthy and keeps improving, and D Wade is ready to go, don't bet against Miami to three-peat.
If Jermaine O'Neal returns and plays healthy the rest of the season, and Jordan Crawford pans out don't be surprised if the Warriors upset the Clippers.
What is it with Sherman of the Seahawks accusing people who lambasted him for his insane rant after the Seahawks win over the 49ers of racial insensitivity? Now all of a sudden we have articles like the one I read this morning in the Sacramento Bee entitled All-American Manning vs brash Sherman. Manning is being portrayed as fair haired and polite. Sherman is being described as having dreadlocks and trashtalking. Hummm, maybe young Sherman is on to something???
I just finished reading a non-fiction book entitled Goat Brothers written by Larry Colton. Colton played baseball for the University of California Bears and the Philadelphia Phillies. He still holds the single game strike out record for the Bears. The book is a must read for men and particularly for men of the Sixties generation to which I belong. It follows the life of the author and four of his close friends and Pi KA (the jock house) fraternity brothers who called themselves the Goat Brothers. Of the four, Loren Hawley, Steve Radich, and Ron Vaughn played football for Cal. Jim van Hoften was a top gun in Vietnam and then an astronaut on the Challenger. Without giving too much away, it's a revelatory book about male behavior in the sixties and seventies, their successes and failures. It's punch-in-the-gut truthful, sometimes heroic, and bitter sweet.
Here's another poem honoring winter sports;
On Cedar Lake 1957
Before our skates had touched the pond that day
We knelt to see, inbedded in the ice,
A fish long dead, his frozen eye turned up;
And further on through surface clear and green
A sluggish waving weed in silent water.
But who could care for all that moved below?
Our skates are sharp, the air is bright
The lake is wide; we swoop, we glide,
Take flight and dip and swerve
Like gulls. We fly, we fly.
