The reason why this blog is coming so late is not because of 20 year old, Lakers’ phenom Andrew Bynum getting hurt. Although it was a devastating start to my day. No, the reason I haven’t written anything yet is because today was my first day back at school in about a year. I have to admit that Bynum’s knee injury was an ominous start to my academic comeback, but hopefully by the time he is back on the court I will be well on my way to finishing up Community College and the Lakers will still be in playoff contention. Now if you’ll excuse me I am going to go through up a little.
…much better. To go a little bit deeper into this Lakers crisis, let me make one thing clear. Up until Bynum’s injury I was enjoying watching the Lakers as much as I did during Shaq and Kobe’s first championship run. Now I’m not saying that I think this Lakers team had a great shot of winning a title this year, there are too many great teams in the NBA right now to get my hopes up. Yet there was something refreshing about watching players like Bynum, Lamar Odom and even an aging Derek Fisher playing out of their minds and having Kobe willing to pass the ball and help the team win by shutting down the other teams best offensive player. (sigh) Oh well, now I have a feeling that we will see the Lakers turn back into the Kobe show. Which is awesome if you want to watch Kobe go for 80 points on a lowly team like say… the Bulls, but isn’t good if the Lakers want to win finish the season with a plus .500 record. And then there is the thought of watching Kwame Brown playing major minutes for us… oh god, hold on a sec, I think I feel something coming back up….
(Topic Change)
So Chad wrote about last weekend a little bit, but I feel I need to face the music as well. Yes, I went 1-3 on my picks this weekend, and I didn’t see any of the games shaping up the way they did. Clearly Green Bay was a much better team than Seattle, imagine what the score would have been if Grant didn’t fumble those two times to start the game. Besides that game though, the rest of the match-ups were much better. Jacksonville tested New England much to the fact that the Jaguars’ young QB David Garrard played the best football of his career. San Diego came up with a monumental upset, that seems cheapened due to the fact LT, Marvin Harrison, Phillip Rivers and a host of other players didn’t finish the game due to injury. Still, I have to say congratulations to Norv Turner for actually winning a game when it counted. You had me fooled Norv, good luck with that whole New England thing.
As for the Cowboys/Giants game, I have to make a confession, I didn’t actually watch it. I don’t know, there is just nothing that excited me about that game. Terrell Owens played hurt, Tony Romo and Eli Manning are both mediocre and I didn’t feel like listening to any of the Mexicogate talk. In fact I haven’t even turned on ESPN today, that’s how sick I am about hearing about that and Roger Clemens ass (literally). It doesn’t really surprise me that the Giants won in the end, because nothing surprises me in the NFL, especially when there are only a couple of great teams. I’m still looking forward to next week though, I guess secretly I’m hoping for a Packers/Patriots Super Bowl. Just don’t tell my dad.
Last but not least, Chad mentioned how Adam Vinatieri reminded him of Robert Horry in the playoffs, and I’d have to agree there. I’d like to add another player to this list though, call it the anti-Ewing Theory list. That player would be Charles Haley. This five time -Pro-Bowler was on five Super Bowl winning teams, he won Super Bowls with the 49ers in 1988 and 89 then moved to Dallas where he won three more in 92, 93 and 95. If you ask anyone who is in the know about pro football they would tell you that Haley played a key role in making the teams he played on as strong on defense as they were on offense… speaking ofcourse of those high powered 49ers and Cowboys offenses. Even though he was a five time Pro-Bowler and Super Bowl champion, he has not been voted into the Hall of Fame… yet. I hope this isn’t a preview with what will happen to Robert Horry, as he is truly one of my favorite players of all time.
Charles Haley… I salute you.
