We have officially entered

.... the dog days of summer now that The Rapist and the Lakers won the NBA Championship. All that's left for the next 6 weeks is Major League Baseball. And NASCAR. And Nationwide. And trucks. And the Indy Racing League. And F1. The MLS is playing, too. And there's usually some random international soccer tournaments every summer. And MMA fights and boxing. Oh, and golf every week. And tennis. Plus there's girls basketball now. Slow times at the Superbook. At least until football starts.

I'll give a few thoughts on the NBA Finals, tell a few stories about our trip to Omaha and then I'm calling it a night.

Actually.... I can tell this is going to a long one. Chris - You may need to read this in like 4-5 sessions spread out over a month or so. Enjoy.

* I was not happy for Kobe or the Lakers at all last Sunday. I wasn't happy for their idiot fans. I wasn't even happy for Jeff. Why exactly should we be happy for Kobe again? He has millions of dollars, is a lock for the Hall of Fame, and had 3 championship rings before the season started. Plus he raped a girl in Colorado a few years back and got away with it. Why would anyone be happy for this person? Fuck that.

* I want to thank Dwight Howard for making every FT attempt during the Eastern Conference Finals and then shooting like my sister against the Lakers. Perhaps the Lakers defense was really tough while Dwight stood on the free throw line.

* Orlando just shot the ball out of their minds against the Cavaliers and they couldn't possibly duplicate that performance against L.A. Please don't tell me that it's because the Lakers defense is better than Cleveland's. That just isn't true. The Cavs had one of the best defenses in the leasgue all season and the Lakers are a bunch of Europeans and lazy players. Orlando just went through an historically hot stretch against the Cavs and couldn't keep it up in the next round.

But I'm not bitter.

* I was at the Palms with Hoffman at the end of Game 4 of the NBA Finals surrounded by idiots rooting abnoxiously for the Lakers. After Dwight Howard choked and missed both free throws, Orlando was still up by 3. All they had to do was foul the Lakers and they win the game. Instead they let Derek Fisher take a 3 and he (miraculously) made it to send the game to overtime. Great.

* At the end of the day I'm just bitter about the Cavs not being able to make it to the Finals and the entire postseason just reminded me of why I hate the NBA.

You can hear more of my thoughts on the NBA and life in general in the most recent Blogcast which Andy and I recorded the afternoon before Game 4. Chris.... just listen to it.


And now I will talk about the Omaha trip by making fun of each person who was on the trip individually. Let's start with Matt.

* The Big Guy is a party animal. We went to bed about 6 am the first night we were there and Matt still woke up around 9 to catch the shuttle over to Rosenblatt and start tailgating. There's really nothing good to mock him about but I'm going to do it anyway. For one thing, Matt was the only person who took this stupid tailgate game we were playing seriously. The object of the game was to toss this thing and have it catch on a ladder a few feet away. (It's not as fun as it sounds. Actually it's exactly as fun as it sounds.) All of Matt's tosses would hit the ladder and bounce off at which time he would complain about how unlucky he was. Everyone else was just standing around hoping that somebody would win so that we could stop playing.

For the record, the team of Austin and I defeated Matt and Hoffman thanks to my winning shot. Had I known that Austin and Scott had bet $20 on the match, I most likely would've thrown the game on purpose, then split up the booty with Hoffman back at the hideout.

Matt was also obsessed (Obsessed!) with collecting wristbands from every bar and/or beer tent he went to. I believe that I tweeted that he was like a sorority girl proudly displaying the many wristbands adorning his arms. He was also so self-conscious about this that he actually used bigger wristbands to cover up the smaller ones when I started making fun of him for it which only made me want to make fun of him even more. That guy is too easy.

* Austin made the smart decision to turn in early on the first night instead of joining us on our dumb trip to a place called "The Play House." He also came through with free tickets to several games and got us into a few tailgates where we drank and ate for free. But even he was not without flaws. He and I had planned to leave at the same time on Wednesday so that we could share a cab to the airport. His original flight back to Vegas was around 2:30 so I booked a flight at 1:55. Makes sense. What he failed to tell me until Tuesday morning was that not only was he going straight to NYC from Omaha but that his new flight was at 7 AM. This wouldn't have been a huge deal except for the facts that we had no place to stay on Wednesday morning (We had slept at his buddy's house and his buddy would be at work) and a cab ride from his buddy's house to the airport cost more than 50 bucks. Instead of just apologizing for this, he went into to classic defensive Austin and repeatedly told me he had "Forgot" and that somehow it wasn't his fault that he had never bothered to look at his new itinerary. Sigh.

To make a long story short, I called Southwest Airlines on Tuesday night around midnight and paid a decent amount of money to move my flight up to 7:20 AM so that we could leave his buddy's house in the morning and split a cab. However, more problems ensued when Austin left his cell phone at the kid's house and the cabbie had to turn around and go back to get it. When we were a few minutes away from the airport, Austin mentioned to me that he needed me to pay the whole cab fare because he had very little cash left and would need to pay for a cab ride from the airport in NYC to his brother's apartment. He and I are no longer on speaking terms.

* Back to the first night..... With Austin in bed and us headed to the local strip club, The Play House, we needed to find a fourth guy to fill in for him and round out our group. That fourth guy was a young Nebraskan kid named Chris who was sitting at the bar, heard us talking about going to a strip club, and somehow ended up in our limo on the way to The Play House.

Yeah, we had a limo in Iowa. I don't really remember what happened but Matt says we jumped into a limo that two other guys were already using at the urging of the valet guys and had them take us to a strip club. But not before we stopped at a gas station so Hoffy and this kid Chris could jump out and buy beer. Okay, there's a lot at play here:

1. You can bring your own beer into strip clubs in Iowa. I still can't get over that. You just walk in carrying cases of beer like you're going to a house party. An Iowan house party. With fully naked girls. Fully naked Iowan girls.

It was awesome.

2. We were in a limo that was not our own and the other people were not amused. The one thing I do remember is that one of them was wearing Vikings gear and a scowl the entire time we were in there. That person may have been related to Chris Bennett.

3. Being the asshole that he is, Matt started to mock this Nebraskan kid Chris in the limo and Chris didn't realize he was joking around and got offended. I'm pretty sure Matt even got up and went to the other side of the limo to apologize.

4. Chris ended up going out to breakfast with us and our driver dropped him off at his house around 5:30 AM. This begs several questions: How did he get to the bar we were at in the first place? Who did he come there with? Or was his plan to just go to a random bar in Iowa and hope to run into some dumb kids from Vegas looking to go to a strip club?

It also begs the question of how 3 morons like us had our own driver. Well, we did. She was an employee of the hotel who drove a shuttle for hotel guests. I was so drunk that I had no idea that's who she was. I honestly thought she was a cab driver who was just following us around from the strip club to breakfast and then back to the hotel. Scott thought she was some girl I had met at the bar and convinced to drive us around. After we all had a nice post-strip club drunk breakfast, she dropped Chris off at his house in Nebraska and we never saw him again. (Although he was one of about 10 guys to give me his phone number during the week. Nice kid.)

* I'll make fun of myself for a while and ease into the Scott jokes. I was pretty drunk that first night. I can handle beer like a champ but throw in a few shots of Tequila and I'm like a tweenage girl experimenting with alcohol for the first time. A little tequila and I'm screaming at bartenders to come to the strip clubs with us and nearly getting into a fight with a bouncer who Metcalf swears was two seconds away from ripping my head off while I leaned against a car and mocked him. Matt said I was pretty funny, so I have that going for me. Still probably wasn't a good idea. I was a little sloppy on Friday but I pulled myself together on Saturday. Somebody had to babysit Hoffman. And I managed to take a few notes while I was blocking the "Shot Girls" from getting near him.

Try to guess which one of these things Scott didn't really do:

- Elbow me literally every single time a hot girl walked by. (Which during an LSU or Arizona St game was pretty much every 2 seconds) Dude - I'm already looking at her. Every guy in our general vicinity is already looking at her. Freakin' Hoffman.

- Took a piss in the street across from the stadium. This wasn't like an abandoned alley. This was a very busy street with hundreds of people everywhere. Luckily we were in Nebraska so the security guard and police officer let us off with a warning and a boys will be boys laugh. Except Scott is 31.

- Went up to a guy and asked him to "Make a line" on whether I could knock Scott out with one punch. The guy looked at him with a "What the hell are you talking about?" face but eventually bought us a few beers. And offered to help me get a job as a sports writer. And gave me his phone number offering to take my buddies and I to a Nebraska football game if I'm ever in Lincoln.... People in Nebraska are really nice.

- Threatened to fight Austin repeatedly. And threatened to fight Matt. And threatened to fight Austin and Matt at the same time. And refused to sit with us at dinner one night, instead opting to sit across the room muttering about how Matt was "Overrated" and how he wanted to kick Matt's ass.

- Nearly got into a fight with a belligerent kid at a beer tent in Omaha after the kid refused to buy him shots.

- Was banned from going to the casino area of our hotel and forced by security to return to our room for no less than 8 hours.

- Slept in the same bed as Matt Metcalf.

- Spooned every night with Matt Metcalf.

- Took about 90 minutes to get ready on Saturday morning, prompting me to tweet about how much of a diva he is.

- Finally gave up on Sunday night and went to bed at 10:30 PM.

- Almost fought through it on Sunday night when Matt told him that The Play House was doing 2-for-1 black lap dance night.

I need to stop here for a second because I thought that was definitely the funniest joke anyone made on the whole trip. Think about how funny that is. The strip club gives you two dances for the price of one as long as the girl is black. Does that mean that you get two black girls at once? Or does the same black girl dance for two songs and only charge you for one? What if the girl is half black and half white? Does it cost $12.50 instead of $25? What if the girl is related to Tiger Woods? Do you need to break out a calculator at that point? What if there's only one black girl working? How long would that line be?

Whatever the case may be - Scott was very intrigued by this.

Actually the funniest thing that happened on the whole trip occurred on Monday morning. Austin and I had just boarded the shuttle for Rosenblatt and Scott and Matt were standing on the curb waiting for their ride to the airport. A pretty girl walked past the two high rollers and Scott looked right down at her ass as Austin and I watched the whole thing play out and laughed out loud. I love the Hoff. He really is incorrigible.

Before I go, I will rank the 8 schools who were in Omaha based on the hotness of their female fan bases:

1. LSU. And it's not even close.

2. Arizona St

3. Texas

4. Arkansas

5. UNC

6. Cal Fullerton

7. Southern Mississippi

8. Virginia


UVA has to be one of the worst sports schools in the country. They never have good crowds at their basketball games. Their own football coach called them the "Wine and Cheese" crowd of the ACC, and they had about 20 fans in Omaha despite it being their first ever trip to the College World Series and hardly something they can expect annually the way fans from LSU or Texas do. UVA sucks.

(The above rant has nothing to do with the fact that I wish I had been smart enough to go to UVA.)


That's enough for today. It was light out when I went to bed last night and when I woke up the U.S. Open was already over. And had been over for several hours. It sucked. Going to get some sleep tonight. I'll try to force out a blog from time to time but there's really no point now that I have the aforementioned Blogcast and I am available to follow on Twitter.

(And yeah I follow Miley Cyrus on Twitter. So what? Have you heard what Eminem says about her in the second verse of his new song 3 AM? Well, I suggest you listen to it. I won't seem so bad after you hear that.)


Enjoy the game.

Allow me to give my thoughts

.... on the NBA's Western and Eastern Conference Finals. If you don't wish to read 1,000 words from me ripping Kobe Bryant or listen to me whine incessantly about the Cavaliers playoff choke job, I suggest you stop reading this right now. In that case, I recommend going back and reading my old blogs like Jorgen does when he is bored at work.

I've spent way more time watching the Eastern Conference games but I'm going to start by talking about the Western series. The series price originally came Lakers -250 which was interesting because the Lakers were roughly 1/5 to win the whole thing at Caesars at the time. Was Sherman panicking before this series? You bet he was.

The #1 thing I consistently find so fascinating about Mr. S and his fellow Laker fans is their undying loyalty to Kobe Bryant. It's very possible that right now there is no athlete more beloved by his own fans than Kobe is by Lakers supporters. They worship the guy. They defend him no matter what. They still think he's better than LeBron James which is just laughable. This is all fascinating to me for several reasons:

1. Kobe Bryant is obviously a gigantic douche.

He's just not like a likeable guy. He's completely phony. Every exchange he has with teammates, fans, media members, etc... seems forced and uncomfortable and just generally akward. I don't care what anyone tells me: There is no way the other Lakers players like Kobe Bryant. For one thing, he's about as likely to pass them the ball on the basketball court as Bennett and Jorgie are to pass on a backwards number at the Golden Nugget. I'm sure Kobe's teammates respect him for being such a great player and I'm sure they appreciate the fact that he is capable of carrying them on his back when he's hot, but there is no way they like him. Let alone adoringly fawn over him the way the Lakers fans do.

2. Kobe forced Shaquille O'Neal out of town because he didn't want to share the spotlight.

Why does everyone pretend like this never happened? The Lakers won three titles with Shaq as their #1 guy and Kobe as his sidekick. They probably could have won 1 or 2 more titles together but Kobe wanted to be the lead dog and forced the Lakers to deal Shaq to Miami, where he won a championship with Dwyane Wade leading the way. Wade is not the player Kobe is so it stands to reason that had they stayed together Shaq and Kobe could have definitely won at least one more NBA Championship. But Kobe didn't want it that way. He wanted to be the guy. Shaq was a likeable guy, a great player, and he lead the Lakers to 3 world championships, winning 3 NBA Finals MVPs along the way. Kobe forced him out of town while he was still good enough to win another title. And nobody in Los Angeles seems to care or even remember that it happened. I just don't get L.A. fans at all.

3. There once was a girl named Katelyn Faber....

I don't want to go into too many graphic details but I'm sure you can see where I'm going with this. Innocent people settle out of court with their accusers all the time. Don't they?

Nobody in Los Angeles seems to be bothered by this whatsoever. I just don't understand these fans.

Aside from the reasons above, let's not forget that the "Kobe as Top Dog" experiment in Los Angeles wasn't working at all (And rumors ranged from Kobe demanding a trade out of town with Chicago as a possible landing spot to Kobe SIGNING WITH THE CLIPPERS a few summers ago) until David Stern forced Grizzlies management to trade Pau Gasol to the Lakers for nothing 2 years ago. Look at the results of the 3 Kobe-led Lakers team, prior to the Gasol trade:

- In 2007, the Lakers lost 4 games to 1 in the first round of the NBA Playoffs to the Phoenix Suns as the #7 seed. (That same year LeBron James led a similar, if not worse, cast of supporting players to the NBA Finals as a 22-year-old.)

- In 2006, Kobe and the Lakers lost 4-3 in the first round to Phoenix, also as a #7 seed. (That same year, Shaquille O'Neal and the Miami Heat won the NBA Championship.)

- And in 2005, the first Kobe-led Lakers team without Shaq in the middle didn't even make it to the postseason.....

Kobe was 26, 27, and 28 during those three seasons. Those are prime years for most athletes but with a mediocre supporting cast he could barely lead his team to the postseason and was unable to win even one playoff series. That tells me all I need to know about the ridiculous LeBron-Kobe "Debate." As I said above, LeBron took a similarly crappy team to the Finals in 2007 at the ripe old age of 22, and he is back in the Eastern Finals this year with a team of crummy supporting players, white guys, and a dopey Brazilian guy who looks like Sideshow Bob. By the time he is 27, LeBron would be able to carry a team of me, sharp shooting farm boy Jorgie, a hungover Scott, and my 60-year-old mother to the second round of the playoffs. I'm sorry but if you think Kobe is as good a player as LeBron is, you don't know shit about basketball.

But nobody in L.A. ever talks about any of this. They just blindly love Kobe. What a sports town.

For all my Kobe ripping, the fact remains that he is one win away from taking the Lakers back to the Finals for the second straight season. Unfortunately for Nuggets backers, the Western Conference finals were wrapped up last night in L.A. Denver's only hope was to win last night and play the game of their lives on Friday night in Denver. Now they would have to win Game 6 at home, then go on the road on Sunday afternoon and beat the Lakers, the refs, David Stern, and ABC in Game 7. That's just not going to happen. Even if Carmelo gets over his little baby flu bug, Denver still has no shot of winning a Game 7 on the road. Sorry, guys.

Let's turn our attention to the Cavaliers and the Eastern Conference Finals.

* Okay, first of all, as most of you already know, I have a bet on the Cavs to win the championship at 20-1 and I was too stubborn to hedge it before the Orlando series because I reasoned that it would be dumb to hedge against an -800 favorite. I realize that I am a moron and as usual I made the wrong decision, but I want it to be on the record that while I have been panicking hard core during this series, I have been no worse than Ed or Jeff who both laid huge prices on Cleveland to win the East. Do you have any idea how much those guys need to bet on a -600 favorite to make it worth their while? Between the two of them, they probably could have bought a small island with the money they are going to lose on this series.

* I also want to address idiots like ESPN's Skip Bayless who are blaming LeBron for Cleveland's current 3-1 deficit. This could be the dumbest thing I've ever heard. LeBron is averaging 42.3 points, 7.3 rebounds, and 7.3 assists during this series. And he really should be averaging closer to 10 assists per game. How many times has #23 driven into the paint, waited as the defense collapsed on him, and then kicked it out to Mo Williams, Delonte West, or Zyndrunas Ilgauskas for a WIDE OPEN shot only to watch as it clanked off the iron? During Game 4, I compared LeBron to a father who puts the ball in the hands of his young son, lifts him up to the point that the child is hovering over the rim, then tells his son to slam it through the hoop. Only these guys are professional basketball players. (Mo Williams actually made the All-Star team this season believe it or not.) And they probably couldn't even make that shot. Yeah, it's LeBron's fault. Skip Bayless might be the most clueless sports reporter on the planet.

* LeBron tries to get his teammates involved. He doesn't want to be like Kobe hogging the ball and settling for dumb outside shots on every other possession. But if you are playing basketball and you realize that you are the only person on your team that can make a shot, would you really keep passing to your teammates? I know I wouldn't.

* There was a sequence during Game 4 that I feel was a perfect microcasm of this series so far. Trailing 93-88 with with just over 5 minutes left, LeBron took and hit a tough jumper to cut the lead to 3. Orlando missed and the Cavs came charging back down the floor. LeBron drove to the rim and somehow saw and managed to kick it back out to Delonte West who was wide open for 3 in the corner. This wasn't a tough angle. It was a direct shot from the corner. There were no defenders in the area. They had all wisely converged on LeBron. I would've expected myself to make the shot. And West missed. Of course, he did. Mickael Pietrus grabbed the rebound and the Magic rushed frantically up the court for no apparent reason and Rashard Lewis forced up a stupid 3 pointer with a hand in his face. *Good.* And Orlando is up by 6 again.

* Cleveland still had a great chance to win at the end, up by 1 in the final seconds. Orlando gets the ball and instead of setting up a play or calmly working it inside to Dwight Howard so he can dunk over Ilgauskas, Pietrus forces up a ridiculous 3 from corner and clanks it off the rim. If there was any justice in the world, Orlando would have lost the game right there for taking such a dumb shot but Delonte West falls to the ground trying to grab the rebound and it rolls out of bounds. Still down by a single point, the Magic inbound it to Rashard Lewis, who turns to his right and forces up a stupid fadeaway 3 point shot from the wing, probably the hardest spot on the court to make a 3 from. (Again I want to reiterate that Orlando was only down by 1 and they have a center who couldn't possibly be stopped down low.) *Good.*

Son of a bitch.

The refs tried to help Cleveland out and LeBron made two ridiculously clutch free throws (Something no one will mention the next time he misses one in the 2nd quarter) to force overtime with 0.5 seconds left but Orlando was able to pull away for the win in overtime.

* I watched a great deal of Game 4 with fellow Cavs bettor and fellow panic junkie Ed Salmons and he kept saying that Cleveland should just let Orlando gunners like Pietrus and Rafer Alston shoot the 3 anytime they want it. And Ed was probably right about that. If you let guys like Pietrus and Alston take dumb 3's instead of passing it inside to Howard or having Lewis take it to the rack, in the long term you are probably much better off. Except in this particular series those guys never miss. None of the Magic players ever miss. Orlando made 17 3's on Tuesday night. Rafer Alston made 6 himself. Rafer Alston. And this is a game that went to overtime so every one of those shots was precious. Orlando is just shooting out of their minds right now and Cleveland, well other than LeBron James, Cleveland couldn't make a shot right now unless you lifted them up over the basket and instructed them to drop it in.

* If you watch the game tonight, look out for the 25 times that LeBron drives to the rim and kicks it back out to his teammate for a wide open shot. When that loser clanks the shot like a JV high school player, think of me cringing and cursing and think of Ed frantically texting me a complaint. Because it's going to happen. Over and over and over again.


I know I wasn't funny today. I've just watched more NBA basketball in the last week than I did over the entire regular season combined. And I didn't want to be the millionth person to write about how bad the officials have been for two reasons:

1. Aside from a few weird calls like the foul on Pavlovic at the end of Game 2, the officials are helping my team, Cleveland. Thank you for that, guys.

2. Everyone who actually watches the NBA and isn't a complete idiot, already knows that the officiating in this league is beyond abysmal, so there's no reason to talk about it until you are hoarse.

You gotta believe that the refs will be helping out Cleveland tonight. And the Cavaliers are at home. And at some point, Orlando's secondary players like Alston and Pietrus have to finally miss shots.

At least I hope so. Or there will be a lot of panicking tonight. And I'm not just talking about Ed and Jeff.



Enjoy the game.

Sorry Guys

.... but there just hasn't been much time for me to blog lately.

Look at all this crap:

My Twitter Page. Where I follow such luminaries as Miley Cyrus, "Diddy," John Daly, Bill Simmons, and Jeff Sherman.

Andy's blogcast. It took 3 whole episodes before it was stale and repetitive to the point that even Ross and I didn't like it.

The baseball contest. Believe it or not there was a time when I was doing good in that contest. A time long, long ago. Ah, to be able to turn back the clock to Monday.

I'm almost as internet savvy as Jeff at this point.

The truth is that the main reason I haven't been blogging much lately is my state of depression over my current gambling stretch. I've been the anti-Hoff lately. Nothing goes my way. I don't know how it's possible that even with all the money I won in April, I'll go over my finances and be like "Shit, that's all I got left?"

I really gotta stop hanging out with Hoffy. He lives too hard. And I don't have any "Hoffytime" to make up for these wild, stupid, nights out.

Although, not everything I do with my money is a complete waste. I did send my Mom a dozen roses for Mother's Day with the following note:

Hey Mom. Happy Mother's Day. No matter what Peter tells you, these flowers are not half from him. This is all me. Your son with the job. And his own money. Peter had nothing to do with this whatsoever.

Regards,

John Murray


Apparently she cried when she got the flowers. Then laughed. Then started crying again. Really glad I wasn't there for that.

Ovechkin and LeBron both playing tonight. And I'll probably get murdered on another Cup race. Whoops, I mean NASCAR race. Sorry, Chris.

Crappy blog but good poll this week.


Enjoy the game.