Oops . . . My Bad

I may need to start hiring myself a staff, like a research assistant or something. When I was editor-in-chief of law review, I had a full staff under my control. I should have started this blog back then and made all of them do the dirty work. Unfortunately, I run this site for free, no revenue, so I think "hiring" someone might be a little difficult. Any volunteers?

You might be asking yourself why I am talking crazy all-of-the-sudden; allow me to explain. As you all know, I like to end my weekly Link Dump with funny videos. I like to think these videos help you get through your Friday afternoon with some good laughs and a smile. Some are disturbing, some ridiculously funny, and many make fun of people hurting themselves (like when skateboards fight back).

A few weeks ago, I was going to post a video that showed a cricket player taking a ball to the face while practicing the "hook shot" with a "bowling machine" (actual cricket terms . . . seriously). And because I am incredibly witty and humorous, I was going to post it under the tag line "Practice makes ouch" (you see it's like practice makes perfect only I replaced perfect with ouch . . . cause the guy gets hurt . . . get it? It's funny). Since your curiosity is now piqued, I guess I should let you watch the video. Why should I feel bad for that you ask? Well, it turns out that the video is of an accomplished professional cricket player from England named David Fulton. Apparently the injury he suffered was so severe that he missed the first eight weeks of the 2003 season and, when he stepped down from his captaincy in 2006, he admitted that the injury was still causing him problems. I would have felt pretty bad for making light of that.

With all that being said, I must be the bearer of bad news. There will be no official Link Dump this week. I am heading out town this afternoon for a fun and relaxing weekend in Tahoe with a large group of friends (commonly referred to as "Bachelor Party" . . . or so I hear). Since I will be on the golf course for most of tomorrow morning and early-afternoon, I will not have the time to get you the information you need to get through the afternoon. I sincerely apologize. But rest assured, my dear readers, I am not going to leave you empty handed. Here are a couple videos for your viewing enjoyment, a day early:

• What do you get when you mix John Daly, Kid Rock in overalls, and a tallboy? Exactly what you would expect.
  

I have taken the liberty of embedding the next video so you do not have to go to another window. Before you dive in, be warned that it does contain some "adult" language. So if you are at work, be careful (read: close your door). But I promise you, it is worth it.



Have a great weekend everyone!

Counting Down

As you know by now, I am heading to the Los Angeles Kings draft-day party this afternoon to see how Dean Lombardi manages to screw things up even more. You are right, I should be more positive; good things are going to happen. It is hard to stay positive out in Los Angeles right now, however, because every local talk show has spent the last three days talking about what the Lakers are going to doing next season after getting waxed by Boston in game six. Seriously, I think have of Los Angeles is on suicide-watch right now. Get over it people. You lost in game six of the NBA Finals. There is no reason to feel bad. If the Kings had lost in game six of the Stanley Cup Finals I would be sad, yes, but at the same time I would be celebrating the fact that my team was two wins away from winning the championship. Ugh, I hate Los Angeles fans, their bandwagons, and their gross overreactions (okay, I'm heading to a dark place . . . breathe . . . breathe . . . 3, 2, 1 . . . and we're back).

Moving on to happier places, seven weeks from tomorrow my Better Half will be making an honest man out of me. I have learned that a lot goes into planning a wedding, and I commend my Better Half for all the work she has put in; it is going to be an amazing day. But when we were deciding what date we wanted to get married, trying to avoid various sports scheduling conflicts, we managed to overlook one thing: the Olympics. Now, I do not know about all of you out there, but I am one of those people who ramps up my national pride for the Olympics. I love that NBC has 24-hour coverage across its various channels. I can got to bed with the Olympics on, and wake up to the Olympics. But the opening ceremony for this year's Olympics is the night before our wedding and our honeymoon spans the first two weeks of events. I certainly will be spending most of my honeymoon (in Tahiti) indoors . . . but for a different reason than all of you are thinking (perverts). Obviously, I will be watching NBC's "coverage" (telephone call from Better Half in 3 . . . 2 . . . 1).

Now that my Better Half knows that I am CLEARLY joking, here are some things you might have missed:

• While she is no Briana, a congratulations goes out to UCLA's Elise, SI On Campus's "Cheerleader of the Week" (I was going to make a joke about her shockingly white teeth, but my Better Half said it might give her a complex).
• Speaking of UCLA and my Better Half, when she heads off to grad school in September you can rest assured she will be well dressed.
• I know I am giving her free publicity by linking to this article, but Ms. Knapp just took Tiger bashing to a whole new level.
• Vigilante justice . . . caddy style.
• "You go gangster on me, I'm going to have to get you."
• When faced with the possibility of missing their flight, some people tend to overreact.
• Dick Ebersol, 2008 graduate of the "Dean Lombardi School of Making Bad Decisions".
• I am officially kicking of my bid to be the 2009 R-P-S champion. Training will be intense, but I think I can handle it.

After last week's Link Dump, I was "shocked" to discover that people enjoy laughing at the expense of other people's . . . shall we say . . . "unfortunate" injuries. So for your weekly viewing pleasure, I have found a plethora of accidents for you to delight in:

• Karate teaches you how to take a kick.
• A little rough on the landing, she might have to settle for the bronze.
• Ever wonder why Major League Lacrosse has cheerleaders? Now we know.

Have a great weekend everyone!

Dear Dean . . .

Dear Dean,

How is it going? I know you are busy figuring out which third-round talent you are going to take with the number two overall pick at tomorrow's 2008 NHL Entry Draft, so I apologize for this interruption.

About a year and a half ago, my good friend (and best man) Money Bags asked if I would be interested in joining his fantasy baseball league. He and his old high school friends had a league together for about ten years but it had started to decline recently. So Money Bags took over as league commissioner, let go of the managers who did not want to stick around, and offered teams to some of his other friends and co-workers. His goal was to start fresh, every team starting from square one.

Since I know you are such an avid GameTime, TBD© reader, I know you have noticed the lack of baseball-related posts. I am not the biggest baseball fan, and my lack of baseball knowledge has proved costly. I thought my success in fantasy football (I'd like to thank my coworkers for the new plasma and Xbox 360 over the past two seasons) would translate into success "on the diamond"; I was wrong. For starters, I finished second-to-last and am not fairing that much better this year. Why is that you ask? Because I was not around to draft my team the first year; I was auto-drafted by the (stupid) computer. And believe you me, when you are playing in a keeper league, using your third and fourth round picks on closers is not a strategy to go with. Oh, and in the draft lottery for this season, with the second best chance of getting the number one overall pick, I got the eighth pick. The lesson to be learned you ask?

When drafting, it is a good idea to have a coach. So imagine my surprise when you announced last Tuesday that the Los Angeles Kings had fired head coach Marc Crawford, a mere ten days before the 2008 NHL Entry Draft. I know what you are thinking to yourself right now, "What is this guy talking about? GM's do the drafting." Yes, you are correct, general managers do the actual drafting (more on this unfortunate point later), but it is the coach who decides what system the team is going to play, and the system should play a roll in the type of player the general manager (that would be you if you've forgotten) drafts.

Every hockey fan in Los Angeles (by this point in time, there might be only about five of us) is wondering why the Kings waited until now. You had just finished tied for last in the entire league, the franchise's second-straight disappointing season, and fifth-straight season out of the playoffs. So when you were asked, "Why now?", here is what you gave us:

• it was "a gut call."
• there was "an organizational change in philosophy."
• "we're committed to the way we're going after my meeting with ownership this week."

It was "a gut call"? SIX weeks after the season ended? Ten DAYS before the NHL draft? After several teams had hired some of the prime coaching candidates?

The organizational philosophy of getting younger is not a change in philosophy, it is what you said two years ago when the Kings first hired you to be the general manager, Dean. You said it would take three years until things started to change around here because you were going to get younger, develop the talent in our farm system, be more aggressive in the free agent market. So this is not actually a change in philosophy. Let us call it what it really is: a mistake. When you hired Marc Crawford two seasons ago you made a mistake and it has set us back on your timetable and now you are trying to back track.

Just admit it, Crawford was never the right fit. You probably knew this going in. But you did not think you could sell the fans another Andy Murray-type hiring, someone without experience at the NHL level, because, after all, the team had just fired AM. So you went out and found yourself a coach who had won a Stanley Cup and made this the focal point of his credentials. And you had to, because behind the smoke and mirrors was the fact that Marc Crawford was not known for his ability to develop young talent. He was a coach that took already-talented teams to a higher level. So when the Kings began their youth movement two years ago, an uphill battle in-and-of-itself, it was like you had shot them in the foot before they even started climbing.

So now you are out there looking for the twenty-second coach for the start of the teams forty-second season, TWENTY-SECOND. I am not positive, but I think the old saying goes "third times a charm." And while I appreciate that you are looking for a coach schooled in the old Hockey Canada system (wait a sec, isn't that the same system AM ran when he was here? Weird.), I am going to tell you how to make the twenty-second time a charm: hire John Tortorella. That is right Mr. Lombardi, the ex-Tampa Bay Lightening coach is the guy for you. He was won a Stanley Cup the way the Kings want to do it, by developing their young talent. He took a perennial last-place team (alright, I will admit they finished tied with the Kings this year) to four playoff appearances and the Stanley Cup in six-and-a-half seasons by taking young superstars-in-training Vincent Lecavalier, Martin St. Louis, and Brad Richards, and turning them into actual superstars. The Kings youth is bursting with superstars-to-be: Kopitar, Brown, Cammalleri, O'Sullivan, Johnson, and Bernier. It is also not to late for Frolov to develop the consistency everyone has been waiting for.

But maybe that is not what you are looking. Maybe Anschutz is actually planning to move the Kings to the booming hockey market of . . . wait for it . . . wait for it . . . Kansas City once his new arena opens out there. So when you say that ownership is committed to the way the team is going, you are actually saying ownership is committed to losing so the franchise loses enough to justify the move. I think I have seen this movie before, so let me give you a piece of advice: do not hire Lou Brown. He will find out you are losing on purpose and next thing you know, he will be pulling pieces of clothing off a life-size cut-out of Anschutz (ew, that's gross).

But I guess we will find out exactly what you are thinking tomorrow during the NHL draft. I know you are desperately trying to move the number two. You have always hated high draft picks. I give you credit for the success you had in San Jose where you used late first round picks to find that diamond-in-the-rough. That is great; there is nothing wrong with using the twenty-fifth overall pick to take a chance. But this is the second overall pick we are talking and you have the chance to either trade for some much needed goaltending help or draft a player who might make a difference. I know the easy choice would be to take Drew Doughty or Zach Bogosian, two puck-moving defensemen. And I would not blame you. Puck-moving defensemen are all the rage in the post-lockout NHL. But last time I checked, we have two puck moving defensemen on our roster (Johnson and Visnovsky) and you drafted one last year.

So take a chance and draft (La Femme) Nikita Filatov. I know it is not a guarantee that his Russian club will let him come, but he wants to come and he has all the makings of the next Ovechkin. Yeah, you might have heard about that Ovechkin fella, I hear he has been doing some pretty impressive things over in Washington. Besides, after the number two pick you have eight more picks in the first four rounds to play with. I am sure you can find a puck-moving defensemen then, or maybe even a stay-at-home defenseman with speed, something I think everyone would agree that the Kings need.

I will be at the Kings draft party tomorrow with my Brother-in-Law while you are in Ottawa working your "magic". Since my Brother-in-Law is connected to the NHL, I have promised him I will not make a scene if you do something stupid. So how about you do me a favor. Do not do something stupid. Do something smart. Then I will not even have to be concerned about making a scene. Can you do that for me, Dean? I would really appreciate it.

Hope you have a great time in Ottawa. Say hi to the family for me.

Best regards,

GameTime, TBD©

While I Was Flying

Once again, I found myself traveling on business all week. I must say, it is hard to keep up with the daily going-ons of the sports world when you are living out of a hotel room for a week, using your travel budget to buy drinks for you and all of your college buddies. I was, however, able to keep up fairly well this week because I take my responsibilities as Editor-in-Chief and Lead Writer for GameTime, TBD© very seriously and I did not want to let you all down this week.

Because I was away, I have yet to have a chance to put together my thoughts on the Los Angeles Kings' firing of Marc Crawford. While my previously-mentioned college buddies and I were watching game three of the NBA Finals, my eyes were drawn to the sports ticker announcing Crawford's untimely departure. Rest assured, I have my fair share of opinions on this recent development and the comments that have been made by the organization since then. And rest assured that those opinions will find there way to GameTime, TBD© sooner, rather than later.

Speaking of the NBA Finals, what happened to the Lakers last night? I was enjoying dinner and some drinks at the airport before my flight, watching the Lakers build a comfortable eighteen-point halftime lead. By the time I boarded the plane, flew from San Francisco to Los Angeles, and turned on mu CrackBerry, the eighteen-point lead had turned into a six-point loss. Now that is impressive. I hoped to get the low down from Kurt at Starbucks this morning, but he was nowhere to be found. So, while I try to figure out what I missed during the second half of last nights game, here are some things you might have missed:

• Speaking of Lakers-Celtics game four, Bill Simmons certainly did choose the right game for one of his famous running-diaries.
• Oh, and there is something going around about a Laker Girl who used to be a Celtic Dancer. What, was she traded for three pairs of hot pants and a sports bra or something?
• Oh, and if you have a couple extra tickets to game six in Boston, this guy is willing to offer you his wife. Stay classy Celtic fans.
• And since we are talking about Boston, a GameTime, TBD© congratulations goes out to Big Papi on becoming an American citizen. I guess that just makes him Big Daddy now.
• My invitation must have gotten lost in the mail or blocked by my spam-filter.
• If you see a decidedly un-athletic-looking character parading around town with a Giants Super Bowl ring — and it's not Eli Manning — please call your local authorities immediately.
• Pop Quiz: What does eight earned runs on three hits earn you?
• Hey taxpayers of New York, I know times are tough, but would you mind giving me $400 million?

Before I present to you with your clips for your Friday viewing pleasuring, I would like to remind you that quality is more important than quantity. That being said, here are two videos that best sum up how Laker fans are feeling today:

• What would we do without replays? (listen with sound if possible).
• I knew there was a reason I never got into skateboarding.

Have a great weekend everyone!

If You Can Call It A Milestone . . .

I do not know how I missed it, but apparently my "Coffee with Kurt" post, while bringing the Lakers bad luck, was GameTime, TBD©'s 75th post (trumpets, trumpets, trumpets . . . fireworks . . . fanfare . . . thank you, you are all too kind). Reflecting back on my first seventy-five posts as lead author [read: only author] and editor-in-chief (believe it or not, I do actually have a couple of editors), running a sports and girls related blog, especially part-time, is hard. While I do not think full-time bloggers have it easy, per se, I do think it would actually be easier to be a full-time blogger than a part-time one (stupid job that pays the bills). So then, if you are wondering why I keep doing this, it is because of you. The "you" of course refers to all of my avid readers, who stop by GameTime, TBD© week-in and week-out, sending me questions and comments about my recent ramblings. The "you" also refers to those of you out there who might not be an avid reader, but who happens stumble on my little corner of the massive world-wide-web and are able to get even the smallest iota of entertainment out of what you see. So, I thank for sticking around all this time, or just for stopping by, and hope you are looking forward to all the things still to come.

But enough about me, now for the real reason you stopped by on this Friday afternoon. Here are some things you might have missed over the past week:

• Marisa Miller (and her cleavage . . . nice!) at SpikeTV's "Guys' Choice Awards." I am not positive, but I am pretty sure . . . you are probably not even reading this anymore.
• If any of the people on this list are looking to make charitable contributions, I am willing to set up a fund in honor of my plans to retire by the age of 28.
• The New England Patriots cheerleading squad and a high school senior, how could this possibly go wrong?
• Big Brown to win Triple Crown while licking wing sauce from his hooves, wearing orange hotshorts and low-cut tank top.
  
• High school basketball coach facing felony charges for being awesome.
• Note to self: cancel plans to break into Noah Herron's home next week.
• I can not really say I know much about Taryne Mowatt, but I am pretty sure she and Erin Andrews would make a dynamite announcing team.
• Duke working hard to prove that the only stank found at their football stadium is coming from the field.

And for your weekly viewing pleasure, I have a nice variety of clips for you. Some are of the funny type and some are of the . . . well, I will just let you decide.

• After receiving such positive feedback from last week's 49ers rap, I thought it was only right to let you watch this.
• From the category "some people have too much time on their hands".
• Practice makes ouch.
• Two friends spend 55 seconds punching like girls and 2 seconds punching like men . . . and apparently 2 seconds is all that is necessary.

Have a great weekend everyone!

Coffee with Kurt

I am, admittedly, not the biggest fan of the NBA. When it comes to basketball, I prefer the college ranks to the pros. Having followed the ramblings here at GameTime, TBD©, I know that is not hard for most of you to believe. But living in the greater Los Angeles area, and with the NBA Finals set to tip off tonight with the Lakers at the Boston Celtics, it is hard not to get swept up in all the hoopla surrounding the team.

While I wish it was the Los Angeles Kings that had hoisted the Stanley Cup last night, it is exciting anytime your city gets the opportunity to win a championship of any sport. I enjoy the way such an event seems to really bring an entire area together, if only for a few weeks. Will I watch the Finals? Yes. Will I buy one of those Lakers window flags? Hell no! (seriously, those are the most annoying things ever. Do you really need one? for your rear windows? for all four windows? Ugh, I get annoyed just thinking about them . . . but I digress.) But here is the funny thing, I have actually been rooting for the Lakers over the last three to four months more than I ever have, and it is not just because they are winning (as evidenced by my undying support of the Kings, I clearly don't often root for the front runners).

You see, on most week days for the past three to four months I have had the opportunity to share coffee with former-Laker "great" and current-assistant-coach Kurt Rambis. Well, share might be a bit of an overstatement; we go to the same Starbucks at the same time. The first few times I noticed him (a 6' 8" white guy kinda sticks out in a crowd), I was kind of star struck. When I was younger, and a bigger fan of The League than I am today, Rambis was one of my favorites. He was not the most talented player, but he worked hard night-in and night-out, epitomized team play, and I respected that. Plus, I loved the 80's porn mustache [editor's note to Jeff Kent: grow it back buddy, it's about the only thing you had going for you] and the black thick-rimmed glasses; what a combo.

So one morning, after a Lakers' victory the previous night, I finally got the courage to talk to Kurt (yeah, we're on a first name basis). I simply introduced myself and said that I wanted to congratulate him on a nice victory. Here was the great thing, he did not just say thanks or shrug me off. Instead, he responded with something to the effect of "Well, it was nice to get the win, but there are certainly some things we have to work on." Then, he proceeded to talk with me for about five minutes about the Lakers' inability to close out on the outside shooter on defense and their problems with slashing point guards. He talked about how their offense was good enough to overcome these deficiencies on most nights, but that it was something they definitely needed to address to be successful come playoff time. Needless to say, it was one of the best sports experiences I have had recently.

Since that time, I have had several other conversations with Kurt while he waits for his lattes. He is always willing to share some insights into the game and the team which has allowed me to enjoy the NBA more than I used to. He also always gets two lattes. I keep meaning to ask him: is that for the Mrs. or does Phil make you get him a coffee every morning? I think it is best that I just let that one go for now (until we're actually on a first name basis). Instead, I will just sit here and wonder what will happen once the season is over. Will he still need coffee at 8:15 a.m.? I hope so.

Albom may have had his Tuesdays with Morrie, but I get my coffee with Kurt. Now, when do I get my dinner and drinks with Dan (Patrick that is)?