In my job as a lowly Race and Sports Book

.... supervisor I log a lot of transactions. We call them MTLs, or multiple transaction logs. I have to do an MTL any time a customer bets or cashes out more than $3,000 in cash, or any time their total bets add up to over 5 grand, regardless of whether they use cash, chips, or are betting off old tickets. While the delicate geniuses that are my work superiors sit in the back room and conceive the lines that allow our book to win the big money that pays all of our salaries, it is my job to log these MTLs.

On my first day back from a trip home in May, I somehow managed to mess up two MTLs. The next day, one of these aforementioned geniuses gave me a tongue lashing about how I needed to be more careful and pay more attention. Fair enough. He was right. Looking back on it now I can't help but wonder - What would have happened if I had only logged 6 out of 24 MTLs correctly that day? My manager might have given me more than just a tongue lashing had I gone 6 for 24. That's not very good. It's terrible, really. Imagine if you were a waiter and on a given night you were working 24 tables. And you only got 6 of their orders correct. You'd probably be fired on the spot. You'd deserve to be fired. Imagine if you were an emergency medical surgeon and you only saved 6 out of 24 lives? What if Peter Gibbons only properly filled out 6 of 24 T.P.S. reports? What if the writers of Entourage only produced a good script 6 out of every 24 episodes?!

Okay, that last one was a bad example. That would actually be a huge improvement for the Entourage writing staff. My point is that 6 out of 24 is not good. It's not even just bad. It is a terrible percentage and certainly not one that should lead to any sort of accolades. Kobe Bryant winning the NBA Finals MVP after a Game 7 performance like that is a joke. I realize that the Finals MVP is given to the best player in the series, not just Game 7, but the bottom line is that the series came down to Game 7, the biggest game of Kobe's career, the biggest NBA game of my lifetime, and the so-called MVP laid an egg, going 6-24 from the field and 0-6 from beyond the arc. Kobe needlessly threw up countless terrible shots that had no chance of going in. The Celtics didn't play well and it was Kobe's awful shot selection and the resulting wasted Lakers possessions that allowed Boston to build what at one point was a double digit second half lead.

I hate when I hear that "Kobe found a way to win the game." That's not true. Kobe didn't find a way to win the game. The Lakers team did. Pau Gasol did. He scored 19 points, grabbed 18 rebounds (9 offensive), dished out 4 assists, and blocked 2 shots. Ron Artest found a way to win. He came up huge on both ends of the floor, with 20 points and 5 steals. It was Artest, not Kobe, who stepped up and hit the crucial three pointer late in the 4th quarter that virtually sealed the Lakers 16th championship. As usual, the refs did their part to help out L.A. The Lakers went to the line 37 times in Game 7, compared to 17 trips to the stripe for Boston. The 17 free throws attempted by the Celtics in the game were actually one less than the Lakers shot in the 4th quarter alone. Seems fair.

I realize Game 7 isn't the whole series. There were 6 other games that got us to that final clash. But Game 7 is obviously the biggest part of the series. It's a career defining moment. You wouldn't give the Super Bowl MVP to a guy who played a terrible 4th quarter in a close game. You wouldn't give the World Series MVP to a starting pitcher who got shelled in Game 7. You wouldn't give the Conn Smythe Trophy to a player who didn't show up for the decisive game of the Stanley Cup Final. So why does Kobe get the Finals MVP? I just don't understand it.

Of course, I don't understand much about Kobe's career and the infatuation that the city of Los Angeles and most of the country has with him. I keep hearing about this tally of Kobe 5 LeBron 0 as evidence that Bryant is better than King James. This argument makes no sense to me. Kobe won 3 titles as Shaq's sidekick 10 years ago while LeBron was in high school. What does that have to do with who is the better player as we head into the 2010-2011 season? Absolutely nothing. Yes, Kobe has delivered two titles since he forced the Lakers to choose between himself and Shaq, but who is to say that he didn't cost them two championships (Perhaps more?) with his selfishness? Shaq had a few good years left in the tank (He was the 2nd best player on Miami's 2006 title team) and with some good role players and the refs in their pockets, the Lakers may have won 2-3 more titles with Shaq and Kobe paired together.

How could the guy being called the "Greatest Laker Ever" be the same guy who broke up a budding dynasty for the franchise? How could the Greatest Laker Ever be the same guy who reportedly asked for a trade and even flirted with the idea of signing with the Clippers? The Greatest Laker Ever couldn't win a damn thing without a premier big man on his team. During his early years as the #2 guy on Shaq's Lakers, Kobe went to the postseason every year, reached the NBA Finals four times, and won three straight world championships. During the three seasons since David Stern and the NBA forced the Memphis Grizzlies at gunpoint to trade Pau Gasol to the Lakers for nothing, Kobe has won a total of 11 playoff series, three straight Western Conference titles, and the last two world championships. Contrast that with the three years Kobe didn't count O'Neal or Gasol as a teammate. During those seasons, the Lakers won a total of zero playoff series, even missing the postseason entirely in 2004-05. Let me know when LeBron misses the playoffs.

Bottom line: Kobe is a very good player who has spent almost his entire career in a great situation. Beyond great, really. Bryant has spent the majority of his career with the most successful head coach in American sports history on his bench. Other than the 2005-2007 seasons, (Coincidentally the same seasons he couldn't get out of the first round of the playoffs) Kobe has always had a great big man on his team. And as a career Los Angeles Laker, Kobe has always benefited from having the refs in the collective pocket of his team. Getting 20 more free throws than the Celtics in Game 7 was one thing, but the Lakers 2002 title was practically handed to them by the officials, who refused to let the superior Sacramento Kings beat them in the Western Conference Finals. If LeBron ever has a world class center, an excellent supporting cast, a Hall of Fame coach, and the refs giving him and his team every call, and he STILL can't win a title, then I'll admit that Kobe is the better player. Until that day, I still say James is easily the best individual basketball player on the planet.

I haven't filed a blog since the whole Donovan McNabb to the Redskins debacle back in April. I'm still not happy about that and have no hope for my Redskins this fall. Here's what else is going on:

* I've been watching a lot of the World Cup. It's probably my favorite sporting event with the NFL Playoffs as the only possible exception. I loved that U.S.A. team and truly believe that they were better than Ghana. It's just a shame that they wasted such a great opportunity. There is no guarantee that they will even qualify for the World Cup in 2014 and certainly no guarantee that they will get out of the group stage. It's also likely that they will never again have as great a draw as they did this year. All they needed to do was beat Ghana and Uruguay and they would have been in the semifinals of the World Cup! Team U.S.A. will very likely send better sides to the World Cup in the future but we may never see such an easy path to the Cup Final again.

* With my biggest baseball future bet on the Texas Rangers off to a good start, I'm turning my attention elsewhere. Bets have been placed on the Chicago Bulls to win the 2011 NBA Championship at both 20-1 and 18-1. Obviously, the hope there is that Chicago signs LeBron James in the coming weeks and that Chris Bosh follows him to the Windy City. I'm not a big fan of Bosh but do love Bulls PG Derrick Rose. James is pretty good, too. That would be a great team and it'd be very nice to have a 20-1 ticket in my pocket heading into the 2010-2011 season.

* Also made a bet on the San Diego Chargers to win the Super Bowl at 14-1. As usual, the best Super Bowl odds in Vegas were found at the Venetian. I hate Norv Turner and it does concern me that McNeil and Jackson are holding out. However, San Diego appears to be easily the class of the AFC West, and they should benefit from playing four games against the NFC West. Their easy schedule could result in another high playoff seed, maybe even home field advantage. I always like to bet on teams that no one is talking about (Like the Colts last season) and I like teams that have dumped overrated big name players like the Chargers did by cutting ties with RB LaDainian Tomlinson and CB Antonio Cromartie. I'm still looking at a couple other teams to bet on in the NFL. Will pass that info along.

* The Bulls bet and the Chargers bet look good but my favorite future bet of the moment is definitely my play on the Florida Gators. I've been telling everyone to get down on the Gators and the more I look at it, consider it to be my favorite future bet ever. My bets are in at 24-1, 22-1, and 20-1 but I would consider betting more at 15-1 or higher. The Gators preseason odds to win the BCS title have been mostly in the range of 4-1 to 8-1 the last few years and now all of a sudden they are up to 20? I realize they lost Haden, Spikes, Dunlap, Pouncey, and of course, Tim Tebow, among others, but I think those odds are a huge overreaction.

Florida is a great football PROGRAM. They are almost always atop the list of college football's top recruiting classes and all those blue chip recruits have spent the last 2-3 years redshirting and learning the system under Head Coach Urban Meyer and his staff. Consider the case of QB John Brantley. The 2006 Gatorade National High School Player of the year redshirted in 2007 and spent the 2008 and 2009 seasons as Tebow's backup, learning the offense and putting up huge stats in garbage time. Now as a redshirt junior, it's Brantley's time to put up huge numbers in Meyer's offense. Brantley is a better passer than Tebow and may end up being the better player. Meyer's offense was wildly successful before Tebow came along, and it will continue to be successful going forward. Alabama lost both the starting QB (John Parker Wilson) and best player (LT Andre Smith) from their 2008 team and went on to win the national championship in 2009. Duke's basketball team lost their best player from two years ago (Leading scorer Gerald Henderson) and won it all the very next season. College sports are about the program, not the individual player.

The same way Florida has Brantley in position to replace Tebow, the Gators have other highly regarded recruits waiting in the wings to replace the players they lost to the National Football League. They also play a very favorable SEC schedule in which they will likely be an underdog just one time - October 2nd on the road against defending national champions Alabama. For all the hype that game will receive, it may prove to be meaningless if the two teams end up staging a rematch in December's SEC Championship game. The winner of that neutral field game would be the one playing for the BCS Title in Glendale, Arizona in January. Get your money down on the Gators.

* I was at Pebble Beach two weekends ago for the U.S. Open. Considering that I had a bet on Dustin Johnson that went up in flames early Sunday and that I suffered a Top 5 all time personal worst sunburn, it was still a great trip. Very scenic views and it was very cool seeing Tiger, Mickelson, Els, Vijay, Watson, etc. battling the extremely difficult course. I'd blog more about it but I was drinking most of the time so I don't have anything interesting to say.

* I'd also like to say that I will produce a blog about this Saturday night's UFC 116 card that I will be in attendance for. But again the drinking may prevent me from doing so. However, a recap of my drunken night at the Lesnar-Carwin fight might actually be better than my other current blog idea: A 5,000 word rant about how Mike Shanahan may not actually be that great of a coach, considering that he has won a total of 1 playoff game in 13 seasons as an NFL Head Coach without John Elway as his quarterback. Note: John Elway will not be quarterbacking the 2010 Washington Redskins.

That feels like enough for today. I need to mentally prepare myself for this afternoon's pickup basketball game. When you're 27 years old and still occasionally drink like a college kid, these games can be more grueling than one would think.

Go read something else.