April 2007 - Posts
April-May-June Madness is what a friend of mine jokingly calls the NBA playoffs. The Chicago Bulls, with two playoff wins over defending-champion Miami under their belts, are two-sixteenths of the way to their own title.
So yes, the NBA playoffs last twice as long as the World Cup, even though the World Cup is held just once each four years. And yes, the NBA playoffs can cover three full moons, Mother's Day, Father's Day, Memorial Day, May Day, the Kentucky Derby, the Indianapolis 500, the NFL draft, eight PGA Tour events, and 400 to 500 hours of a sleep for the average person.
And that's just the first round.
But here are 10 things to like about the NBA playoffs:
1. The best point guard is a scrawny-looking guy from Canada.
2. No New York Knicks.
3. Tim Duncan shoots bank shots.
4. Charles Barkley foams at the mouth just about every night on TNT.
5. The uninformed who say NBA players don't play defense are proven wrong.
6. Unlike college basketball, the players are the stars, not the coaches.
7. Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban doesn't sit in a suite wearing a suit and mingling with other rich people. He sits at courtside and looks like the typical goofball rabid fan. Acts like one, too.
8. Bill Walton's commentary on games. People who don't like Bill Walton don't like life.
9. Dirk Nowitzki, Dwyane Wade, LeBron James, Chauncey Billups, Tracy McGrady, Yao Ming, Allen Iverson, Tony Parker, Amare Stoudamire, Kirk Hinrich, Jason Kidd, Chris Bosh. Every game has players who are truly amazing. They come from all over the world.
10. The games can be pretty good, too.
That's right, the Sept. 8 Syracuse-Iowa football game at Kinnick Stadium will start at 7 p.m. It will be on the Big Ten Network.
Is this a good thing? Sure, why not? Anything's better than those lousy 11 a.m. starts. I will never understand how people tailgate at 8 a.m. or sooner.
and Hello, new Iowa men's basketball coach Todd Lickliter.
Welcome to a starting lineup that could consist of Tony Freeman, Cyrus Tate, Kurt Looby, J.R. Angle and Justin Johnson. Or maybe Seth Gorney will start at center. At least it'll be an experienced lineup. Sort of.
Tyler Smith was perhaps as talented a basketball player as Iowa has had since, well, Ricky Davis. Who was another one-year Hawkeye. Davis is a 9-year NBA veteran at age 27. Smith is 20, and can't play for a Division I team next season. Who knows where Smith will end up, but I don't think he'll be on an NBA roster come November.
Iowa has a player named David Palmer. He'll score 30 points a game in the Prime Time League this summer for what that's worth, which isn't much. The coach who brought him along to Iowa City from Seton Hall was Billy Garrett, who has hooked on with his old pals at New Mexico, Steve Alford and Craig Neal.
Palmer can't follow Garrett to a third school without sitting out a second-straight season. He's burned his redshirt, thinking he'd play for Garrett and Alford. So he's stranded in Iowa. Which brings to mind an old Manfred Mann song entitled, strangely enough, "Stranded in Iowa."
Stranded in Iowa
Stranded in Iowa
Better get the Breakdown squad out
Get me rolling on
'Cause I can't keep my thoughts out of sight
Better get the Breakdown squad out
Get me rolling on
'Cause I need to feel the stars sleep by at night
I'm stranded all night, stranded all right
I have no idea what it means.
Coaches come and go, players come and go. Alford came to Iowa with a lot of fanfare. So did Smith. Now they're gone. Hawkeye basketball will survive.
But from Iowa's point of view, the coming season probably isn't the best one to return to an 18-game Big Ten season.
It was Zach Johnson Day in Cedar Rapids Tuesday and Zach Johnson Night in Augusta, Ga., this Friday.
The Augusta Spartans of the World Indoor Football League is letting anyone named Zach Johnson (or even Zack Johnson) into
its game with the Osceola Ghostriders Friday evening at the James Brown
Arena. Valid identification is required.
"Anyone who can win a major by shooting over par is okay in my book," said Spartans coach Bubba Diggs.
The only funny parts of this story is that there is something called the World Indoor Football League and that one of its teams is in the South and has a head coach named Bubba Diggs.
Since the golfer Zach Johnson will be playing at Hilton Head, S.C. in this week's Verizon Heritage tourney on the PGA Tour and can't attend the Augusta Spartans' big game against the Osceola Ghostriders, what does he have to look forward to other than the remaining three majors?
Well, his win put him in October's Grand Slam of Golf, which annually matches the winners of the four majors. It's a 36-hole, 2-day event with the winner bagging $600,000; second place $300,000;
third place $250,000; and fourth place $200,000. Nice work if you can get it.
From pgatour.com: Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama and Johnson were guests on David Letterman's television show Sunday. Obama came up to Johnson's dressing room to meet Johnson.
Asked whether he thought Obama was looking for
votes in the Iowa Caucus, Johnson laughed and said "My vote counts in Florida."
From cnbc.com: Johnson's sponsors got $7.5 million in exposure time Sunday on CBS, according to sponsorship evaluation firm Joyce Julius &
Associates.
He thanked his sponsors afterward. It should have been the other way around.
AUGUSTA, Ga. -- It's 1:40 p.m. at Augusta National Golf Club, 15 minutes before Cedar Rapids' Zach Johnson starts his final round and 35 minutes before Tiger Woods tees off.
Everyone is forecasting a Tiger slam-dunk today for his fifth green jacket. An Augusta columnist wrote that such a scenario is necessary to give something memorable to what he called a forgettable year here to this point.
To heck with that. You want something to remember, how about Tiger collapsing or choking on Sunday when in contention? That would be novel. That would be fun.
I could live with Stuart Appleby becoming the first Australian to win this tourney. I could live Padraig Harrington taking the green jacket home to Irelan. I could live with Augusta native Vaughn Taylor winning, or someone called Bradley Dredge. I could live with Phil Mickelson rallying to catch and pass Tiger for the title.
And if Johnson wins this thing to give his hometown newspaper's guy here a little something extra to write about? Well, I think I'd accept the additional work tonight.
AUGUSTA, Ga. -- Late Friday night after I left the grounds of Augusta National Golf Club, I went driving around town to try to ascertain a route that might get me here the rest of the weekend without battling Washington Road's grostesque traffic jams.
In the process of failing to achieve that goal, I saw some very nice neighborhoods and some that were downright shabby. There is some serious money in this city, and a serious lack of it elsewhere here.
This isn't some half-baked social commentary, at least I hope not. But it's interesting to me that a private club in a city that is 52 percent black has just two or three black members. (I know, I know, Augusta is 50 percent female and Augusta National has no female members.)
However, the bathroom attendants on the golf course -- yes, the bathrooms of a golf course have attendants! - that I've seen have all been black. The women who serve the sandwiches and soft drinks in the lounge of the media center are all black. Nearly all of the young men who pick up the little debris there is to be found on debris on the club's grounds are almost all black, and look like they're working on prison detail thanks to the bright yellow jump suits they wear with numbers on the back.
I don't know what this means, I'm not condemning anyone for it and blaming The Man. It's just something that strikes you when you're here.
What also strikes you is how many rich folks are gathered in one place. They rent houses here for several thousand dollars a week. They squire clients. They come from all over the world. They fly in and out on private jets, or they drive here in Jaguars and Mercedes.
These are not people I meet in daily life. These are not people who would give me the time of day in daily life.
AUGUSTA, Ga. -- OK, I briefly have Internet access here after it was completely down at the Masters' media center for nearly all of Thursday.
Brett Wetterich had an early tee time in today's second round. He shared the first-round lead with Justin Rose. He has parred his first six holes today. That's a pace that would be very good to keep. I don't know yet if they watered the greens overnight on the Augusta National course. If they didn't, this thing will play U.S. Open-like. Which is to say, the greens will be way fast. Scores would go higher than the room rates for budget motels in Augusta.
I know a party of five staying in a Motel 6 off an Interstate 20 exit not far from here. The room rate they got was $250 a night. It sounds like literal highway robbery.
On I-20 west of Augusta, billboards advertised $31.99 and $34.95 room rates. They're a cruel tease. Those are the rates for 51 weeks a year. This week, they're five, six, seven times that. Bring your own towels.
Augusta National is located on Washington Road, but it's hermetically sealed from its neighbors. While this place is an ode to nature and golf, Washington Road is a paean to tacky commerce. I pass two Waffle Houses each day on the street as I drive here. For other dining delights, there are Denny's, Dunkin' Donuts, Krispy Kreme, Taco Bell, Sonic, Subway, etc. I've seen two Raising Cane's Chicken Fingers. I mean, I've seen two Raising Cane's Chicken Fingers restaurants. I haven't seen any of the actual fingers, thankfully.
The motels include the Scottish Inn, Sunset Inn, America's Best Value Inn (that can't possibly be truth in advertising) and the Masters Inn. The Masters Inn looks just like the Scottish Inn or Sunset Inn or America's Best Value Inn.
There's a Hooters a not-so-long walk from Augusta National's gates. John Daly's merchandise trailer, seen at many PGA Tour events, is on the Hooters grounds. Daly didn't qualify for this year's Masters, but he's been at his trailer to sign autographs, sell his stuff, and be John Daly. Hooters set up a miniature-golf type putting green outdoors. Daly said the Hooters girls have been teaching him how to putt. He finds that quite funny.
I wonder what the old folks with the old money around here think about that. I'm sure Daly couldn't care less.
AUGUSTA, Ga. -- Driving up to Augusta National early Thursday morning, a man sitting on a lawn chair held a sign that said he was willing to pay $2,000 for a Masters badge.
Our civilization is doomed.
AUGUSTA, Ga. -- So I hear it's a little nippy back in Iowa.
Well, fear not, Midwesterners. I'm not gloating about the near-perfect 70-some-degree day here Wednesday. That's because it's supposed to be unseasonably cool here for all four days of the Masters, which starts Thursday.
The high forecasted temperature of the tourney, according to the Masters people, is 68 degrees today. Friday's high is predicted to be 63, Saturday's 58, Sunday's 63. And get this: there will be near-freezing temperatures around sunrise Saturday, and a frost likely late Saturday night.
This is because of a large high pressure system over southern Canada that has pushed cold Arctic air into Georgia. Which is ridiculous.
Even more absurd is the fact the air conditioning is running in the media center.
If you'll excuse me, I have to run. Gotta get to a department store before closing time for some warm-weather attire. Anyone know where you can get a good bowl of hot soup in Augusta?
AUGUSTA, Ga. -- Minor travel snafus got me to Augusta National Golf Club later than hoped for Tuesday, so I don't have any Zach Johnson updates for his many friends and fans in Iowa. I'll catch up to him Wednesday, either before or after he plays in the Par 3 contest here.
The most interesting thing I saw today was in Atlanta's Hartsfield International Airport. While waiting several minutes in line for a car rental, I kept hearing periodic bursts of applause. Knowing the Florida and Ohio State basketball teams would be heading home today after Monday night's national-title game in Atlanta, I guessed the clapping was for them. I guessed wrong, and was glad.
"That's for the troops,'' the woman at the Avis counter told me matter-of-factly. "We hear it every day."
Lots of U.S. military people pass through Atlanta on their way to Iraq. Or in many cases, back to Iraq. A U.S. Army man with the name "Hansen'' on his clothing was on my flights from Cedar Rapids to Cincinnati and then Atlanta. I wanted to approach him and ask him questions about what he faces, or at least thank him for his service. But I was too embarrassed to do so, a grown man traveling to cover a golf tournament while these people cross the globe to serve in a lousy place, doing their country's hard, dangerous work.
None of the several soldiers I saw in the Atlanta airport looked the least bit scared. But they all looked serious. Here's hoping they all come back home soon, safe and sound.
Thanks, Hansen.