"Gimme your lunch money, kid! I'll shake it out of your pockets if you don't give it to me!"
Anyone else really disappointed Bawful didn't inform us he missed today's post thanks to "flu-like symptoms?" For shame.

The NBA -- rather approprately -- scheduled an April Fool's Day game between the Cadavers and Generals. Even more appropriately, jose3030 discovered this sweet ticket deal on Stubhub:

Uh, I think I'm going to need to get a different credit card to buy those, Stubhub. Gimme a few minutes...

Worst of the Weekend in Pictures:

Is it possible that Andrei Kirilenko's strategy is to distract his opponents with his ridiculous hair and general appearance?

"Wow, your face is soft! Do you use moisturizer?"

I've seen a pic of Tim Duncan doing this like 825 times, but it still creeps me out

"You see that ball? Yes, ball. See that round thingy? That's a hoop. Put ball in hoop. Got it?"

Robert Sarver finally is hit with the terrible realization that he's wasted Steve Nash's career

I haven't seen a face that smug since this guy:


Nationally Televised Games:
Spurs at Heat, ESPN, 8pm: This game speaks for itself, so I'm just going to post this randomly amazing animated GIF of Jeff Van Gundy that JE Skeets shared earlier today.

Woah.

Magic at Lakers, ESPN, 10:30pm: Controversy!! Dwight Howard has seemingly shunned Marcin Gortat. Per Gortat: “We didn’t shake our hands, we didn’t talk to each other, we didn’t say anything. And that’s fine, at the end of the day he’s on a different team, I’m on a different team, and I’m a grown-ass man, I don’t need him any more.” Anyone else picturing Dwight Howard making a frowny face in response to this? Because I am. And it is making me chortle.

All The Other Games:
Celtics at Nyets, 7pm: According to The Score's shot chart for the downright ridiculous Celtics/Bucks 87-56 game yesterday, Troy Murphy appears to have a made shot from out of bounds behind the backboard. Nice. I was unaware HORSE shots counted in the NBA.

Thunder at Wizards, 7pm: Kendrick Perkins might be making his Thunder debut against the Generals. Way to kick a team when they're down, guys.

Nuggets at Hornets, 8pm: Protip: don't count on JR Smith shooting lights friggin' out from downtown in the 4th quarter every game like he did against Detroit. That was maaaaaaaybe just an aberration.

Clippers at Grizzlies, 8pm: Three of the Grizzlies' remaining 15 games are against the Clippers. Talk about favorable scheduling down the stretch.

Suns at Rockets, 8:30pm: Steve Nash is expected to miss his second straight game with what the team has called "pelvic instability." (I'm not sure what that is, but it sounds worse than the "pelvic inactivity" which I just decided is great euphamism for a lack of sex that I will have to casually drop into conversation at some point soon.) But either way, Aaron Brooks will get the start. Against his former team. Intriguing...

76ers at Jazz, 9pm: It's possible that the Sixers can sweep the Jazz for the first time in 23 years. Mind-boggling.

Warriors at Kings, 10pm: You mean to tell me Kevin Love's double-double streak was ended by the Warriors? Oh snap! The Kings might not break 50 points in this game!

Labels: Bawful After Dark, Cleveland Cavaliers, Jeff Van Gundy, Washington Wizards

Analysis or discussion of Van Gundy's meatloaf recipe? Could be either or.
prattle tales (prat'-l talz) noun. The coaching/playing anecdotes and miscellaneous personal information (usually inane) shared by play-by-play announcers and color commentators during the "dead spots" of a live telecast, particularly if the game is lopsided or boring.

Usage example: Jeff Van Gundy's a pretty good broadcaster, but he sure spends a lot of time on his prattle tales.

Word history: The term was coined on the Quixotica blog, a self-described compendium of mondern invented slang. Upon discovering it, I was immediately reminded of our good friends Jeff Van Gundy and Mark Jackson, who like to talk about themselves, their personal/professional relationship and other insipid factoids regarding their days as coach and player almost as much as (or perhaps more than) they like to talk about, you know, the game they're broadcasting. Take the following example (via Awful Announcing) in which JVG discusses bowling, childhood obesity, knife fighting and Sasha Vujacic's workout regimen. And it's not like this was some meaningless mid-season game between the Hawks and Grizzlies; it was Game 5 of the NBA Finals.



In all fairness though, Bill Walton was doing this long before Jeff, especially when he first began broadcasting. Seriously, Walton can work an anecdote about playing alongside Larry Bird into almost any circumstance. I often wonder if he also does that at home over family dinners. Like, when his wife asks him to pass the mashed potatoes, I bet Bill says something like, "That reminds me of '86, when I was fortunate enough to be on the same team as one Larry Joe Bird, who was a great basketball player and an even greater man. His passing wasn't limited to sending mashed potatoes across the dinner table. He took moving the basketball from himself to a teammate and made it an art form that transcended the game itself. Michelangelo's 'David' had nothing on this give-and-go backdoor pass he gave me against the Lakers on one chilly January evening..."

Labels: Jeff Van Gundy, Mark Jackson, Word of the Day

"Mud lun yeah?!" Translation: "What the f***?!"

Lenovo Stat is a new plus/minus statistic that compares the point differential when players are both in and out of the game to determine how a team performs with various combinations, thus demonstrating [dramatic drum roll here] "the power of teamwork." According to this new measure, the Houston Rockets featured the most effective five man player combination during the 2006-07 NBA season. The Rockets' line-up of Yao Ming, Tracy McGrady, Rafer Alston, Shane Battier, and Chuck Hayes led the Lenovo Stat rankings (+269), enjoying a significant lead over the second-best five man unit comprised of Dallas' Dirk Nowitzki, Jason Terry, Josh Howard, Erick Dampier, and Devin Harris (+215). The Phoenix Suns combination of Steve Nash, Shawn Marion, Amare Stoudemire, Raja Bell, and Leandro Barbosa came in a distant third (+165).

Something must be seriously wrong with this statistic, though, because only four of those five Rocket players managed to score in Houston's horrifying 81-67 Game 3 loss to the Utah Jazz. In fact, only four Houston players scored, period. Let me repeat that for dramatic effect: only four Rockets scored in last night's game. Yao Ming (26), Tracy McGrady (24), Shane Battier (11), and Rafer Alston (6) did all the "scoring" while their teammates did all the sucking. Although, maybe that's not a fair statement since only three other Rockets even attempted a shot: Juwan Howard (0-5), Luther Head (0-5), and Chuck Hayes (0-2). No, on second thought, they all sucked about equally. Only the ancient corpse of Dikembe Mutumbo -- who played only five minutes and couldn't score by himself in an empty gym full of 5-foot baskets -- is off the hook.

Overall, the Rockets shot 32 percent from the field and had 19 turnovers. The Rockets' bench went 0-for-10 and didn't score a single point (to go along with six rebounds and zero assists). The team's 67 points were the fewest in Rockets playoff history. And it was the only time in NBA playoff history that a mere four players on one team scored. It was a performance so spectacularly bad, so truly vomit-inducing, that David Stern should retroactively take away one or both of the Rockets' victories in this series. Look, I'm not trying to say that scoring is the only meaningful statistic, but last time I checked, the NBA was still using points to determine who wins and loses.

Now that something this sucktastic has finally happened, is anybody surprised that it was presided over by Jeff Van Gundy, the doleful mastermind of many a joyless "75-71"-type victory while coaching the Knicks in the late 90s? Somehow, despite the fact that it's 2007, despite the fact that David Stern has changed the very rules of the game to increase scoring, Van Gundy still manages to preside over 1990s basketball, which was actually just 1950s basketball in a taller, faster, more muscular package. I know Jeff has won a lot of games that way, but then again, barbarians used to win a lot of battles by chopping off the heads of their enemies and then hanging them from trees to induce a sense of fear and awe. I guess what I'm trying to say is that sometimes the ends don't really justify the means.

"What the f***?! No, really. What the f***??"

Labels: Houston Rockets, Jeff Van Gundy, NBA playoffs, Shane Battier, sucking, Tracy McGrady, Utah Jazz, Yao Ming