Basketball

OK I haven't posted anything in a while so sort of feel like I should. However, this is pretty much all going to be about basketball, so if that's not your thing, you might want to skip this. Otherwise, read on Paul . . .

BT Update

Tonight we played our third game of the season, and won by just four or five points. You know it's going to be a serious game when the other team plays man for 40 minutes straight, but it kind of worked out for us, as it forced us to go to the basket, instead of jacking up threes all night long. After tonight we're 3 - 0, although that doesn't really mean anything since we finished about 20 and 2 last year and then choked in the semi finals. Still, it's been fun the last season or two. The team seems like it's clicking most weeks, even though we're usually down at least one player a week (and have been without Wheelie since late last year). Having Ando's mate Dimi the last two games has helped a lot - with another big guy out there, it doesn't allow other teams to just focus on Ash, and means guys like me often get totally ignored by the defense.

To be honest though I think the competition has dropped a little bit - the team we played tonight were reallt good, but there seems to be a lot of mediocrity in the league. One postive is we seem to have lost some of the boneheaded teams - not sure if the guys from Coopers Troopers and Rydaz lost interest in basketball, or just went back to prison, but the league is better without them.

Anyway, the thing that's been really cool lately is that everyone has been contributing. Although we lose a lot of height when Ash goes to the bench, almost everyone else on the team is pretty interchangeable - someone different usually steps up every week.

Basketball on the world wide interweb

Back in the day the only website I used to really read for basketball commentary was slamonline. They changed it a while back from one long post a day from the editor Lang Whittaker to a whole lot of medium sized ones. For a while it dropped off, but now I think it's probably better than before. Lang doesn't write a whole lot anymore, but there are some other good writers on there - I alway like Russ Bengston's stuff, and Jake Appleman is pretty good too. Their new online editor Sam is growing on me too.

www.slamonline.com

The next page that got added to my must read list was Bill Simmons' page on ESPN, and that's still the first thing I'll check out whenever I'm online. It's weird, there's this whole sub-community of people on the internet who thinks that Simmons sucks now, and spend a lot of their time talking about this. That to me seems incredibly depressing - not just spending your life online, but spending your life bitching about someone you've never met because you don't like their new stuff as much as their old stuff? They even have their own site, www.sonsofthesportsguy.com.

Anyway, I still love his writing, and I've actually enjoyed the increasing number of guest appearances from his wife over the past six months. Although her style is suspiciously similar to his, I'm not sure how much she's actually writing herself.

http://sports..espn.go.com/espn/page2/simmons/index

Lately I've started checking out quite a few basketball blogs, and there's quite a few good ones out there.

Truehoop is sort of similar to the old slamonline site, with links to a whole lot of stories with a bit of commentary. This has become part of my daiy rotation, I highly recommend.

www.truehoop.com

Then there's some stuff that's a little weirder. Free Darko is sometimes good, sometimes average, and usually confusing. For some reason I keep coming back. Bethlehem Shoals is a unique writer, even if he does get a little deep sometimes for an NBA site.

www.freedarko.com

Straight Bangin' isn't exclusively a basketball blog - the author also covers hip hop a lot - but there's some good stuff in there, and it's updated pretty regularly.

www.straightbangin.blogspot.com

Basketball on TV (sort of)

If you haven't seen it yet, here's the latest Nike basketball commercial.

It kind of reminds me of a skit that aired on the Chappelle Show where he pointed out how everyone looks cool walking in slow motion. Although I guess I play sport in slow motion and noone ever complimented me on that.



And finally, here's the commerical for the Jordan XXI, also known as the greatest commercial of all time.