Here we are with yet another edition of the ALDLAND Podcast. Chris Cunico is off making bad decisions in Nola, so the task falls to blog founder AD to talk about a wide variety of sports-related topics with me, from the exciting finish to the English Premiere League season to the impending change to the college football postseason. So take thirty minutes out of your work day and check out this awesomeness.
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We’re not into name calling, insult hurling, or piling on, but this thing runs two ways, Chicago ABC affiliate WLS, and where all involved demonstrate objectively poor decision making in an objectively public way, and the whole thing can be presented in a brief, photo-driven post involving Los Angeles, we’re going to include it in this series.
Back in February, I asserted that LeBron James was the best basketball player ever, and at that point, he was. He had at that point, by a comfortable margin, a higher player efficiency rating than any player ever had achieved. (General explanation of PER in the previous post; full explanation here.) Although he regressed from 32.8 to 30.74 to finish the season, it still was good enough to be the tenth best season ever by an individual player. In so doing, James knocked David Robinson out of the top ten, meaning that James (4, 9, 10), Wilt Chamberlain (1, 2, 5), and Michael Jordan (3, 6, 7, 8) collectively turned in the ten best seasons of professional basketball ever played.
James’ competitors for the MVP this year weren’t even close to him:
Rank
Player
PER
1.
LeBron James
30.74
2.
Chris Paul
27.04
3.
Dwayne Wade
26.31
4.
Kevin Durant
26.20
5.
Kevin Love
25.36
6.
Dwight Howard
24.24
7.
Blake Griffin
23.43
8.
Derrick Rose
23.02
9.
Russell Westbrook
22.94
9.
Andrew Bynum
22.94
For comparison, Paul is the only other player whose 2011-12 charted on the top 100 all time— at #79.
Teddy Roosevelt was a sickly rich kid who grew into a little man with a high voice, and spent the rest of his life in the relentless pursuit of bad-assery. While in public office in Washington, he decided it was time to kill some people. So he went to San Antonio—at the time, a middle-of-nowhere cowboy town—and posted up in the Menger Hotel. He recruited the toughest-looking dudes who walked through the door, then took them to Cuba to start a war. He compared firing a gun to having an orgasm in terms of pleasure and necessity. Even his signature policy accomplishment as President, the “trust-busting” of monopolies, has a tough-guy name. He would scoff at Obama for issuing a “kill order” instead of personally going to Pakistan to carry it out himself. For his sheer mythic ruggedness alone, Teddy Roosevelt is the sort of President to whom candidates in both parties routinely compare themselves. But when it comes to a simple foot race, the 26th President of the United States just can’t win. … Read More
Who was that masked man on the floor at the FedEx Forum in Memphis for games five and seven of the Clippers-Grizzlies series? The internet can’t figure it out, although BaconSports and SB Nation have some gooddecent pictures and GIFs.
What we do know is that his use of the towel and mask (and, apparently, the Force) was not enough to will his team to competency in a home game seven. A full four quarters of competency is all it would have taken for these Grizzlies to win– even sweep– this series. Instead, they made like Lebron James and mailed in the fourth quarter each time before totally skipping game seven.
The Clippers now limp down to San Antonio, where Pop’s Geriatrics are unlikely to be interested or flapped by LAC’s nonsense, and injuries are likely to curtail any traditional advantages Paul and Blake Griffin could have exerted over the Spurs.
On Sunday, Donald “Duck” Dunn, longtime bass player for legendary Stax Records house band Booker T. & the MG’s died in Tokyo at the age of seventy. As first reported by best friend, bandmate, and guitarist Steve Cropper, Dunn “died in his sleep . . . after finishing two shows at the Blue Note Night Club.”
Dunn grew up with Cropper in Memphis, and the two formed a band in the late 1950s before going to work for Stax, where they eventually became half of the house band, Booker T. & the MG’s, alongside Booker T. Jones (organ) and Al Jackson (drums). AllMusic lays out the essentials:
As the house band at Stax Records in Memphis, TN, Booker T. & the MG’s may have been the single greatest factor in the lasting value of that label’s soul music, not to mention Southern soul as a whole. Their tight, impeccable grooves could be heard on classic hits by Otis Redding, Wilson Pickett, Carla Thomas, Albert King, and Sam & Dave, and for that reason alone, they would deserve their subsequent induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. But in addition to their formidable skills as a house band, on their own they were one of the top instrumental outfits of the rock era, cutting classics like “Green Onions,” “Time Is Tight,” and “Hang ’em High.”
Also as a member of the MG’s, Dunn was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1992 and received a lifetime achievement award in 2007.
At this point, I don’t find anything on the web beyond the basic AP-style report, but I’ll supplement this post with any engaging remembrances that appear later. My only additions are: 1) Blues Brothers is my favorite movie; 2) this is some great music; 3) dial up Otis and Duck from 1967’s Monterrey Pop Festival; and 4) there would seem to be something to be said for dying (basically) doing what you love.
Close with a clean-shaven, pipeless Dunn and his fellow MG’s performing their biggest hit, “Green Onions”:
From the “What Year is It?” file. ESPN reports that a high school baseball team in Arizona forfeited a championship game rather than face a team with a female player:
Instead of playing in a championship baseball game, Paige Sultzbach and her team won’t even make it to the dugout.
A Phoenix school that was scheduled to play the 15-year-old Mesa girl and her male teammates forfeited the game rather than face a female player.
Our Lady of Sorrows bowed out of Thursday night’s game against Mesa Preparatory Academy in the Arizona Charter Athletic Association championship. . . .
Paige, who plays second base at Mesa Prep, had to sit out two previous games against Our Lady of Sorrows out of respect for its beliefs. But having her miss the championship was not an option for Mesa Prep.
…
Officials at Our Lady of Sorrows declined comment. In a written statement Thursday, the school said the decision to forfeit was consistent with a policy prohibiting co-ed sports.
The statement also said the school teaches boys respect by not placing girls in athletic competition, where “proper boundaries can only be respected with difficulty.”
Our Lady of Sorrows is run by the U.S. branch of the Society of Saint Pius X. The group represents conservative, traditional priests who broke from the Catholic Church in the 1980s.
In junior high, Paige played softball and volleyball. Because Mesa Prep does not have a girls softball team, she tried out for the boys baseball team and received support from her coach and her fellow teammates.
…
Both schools play in the seven-team 1A division of the ACAA. Our Lady of Sorrows won the Western Division and Mesa Prep won the Eastern Division with an undefeated season.
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Does God care about high school baseball? When religious expression, positive or negative, appears in athletics, secular and religious critics often retort that “God doesn’t care about sports games.” Sports are entertaining. Playing sports is a good way to learn values like teamwork, leadership, and perseverance. It also encourages better treatment of our bodies. People spend a lot of time on sports. Some dedicate their professional life to it in some fashion. It seems at least possible that God cares about sports.
What about women in sports? Our (secular) society has encouraged female athletics as a meaningful part of gender equality. The idea that “not placing girls in athletic competition” actually “teaches boys respect” for girls appears diametrically opposed to society’s prevailing view. It also is at least somewhat out of step with the Bible, which in many ways takes a comparatively progressive stance on gender.
What time is it? When I start tending toward scriptural interpretation here, it probably is time to wrap up the post. It also probably is really stinky to have your school’s administrators forfeit the championship game and spoil your undefeated season for you.
Or perhaps the passive voice is appropriate here: The Knicks are being hurt by Carmelo Anthony. Observe:
With fifty-four playoff games played, this isn’t the result of a small sample size.
What’s harder to know is whether Anthony is to blame or if he’s the anti-Steve Kerr. If it’s the former, which everybody thinks, that’s pretty bad. If it’s the latter, though, Anthony should retire right now and become a general manager.
We do a lot here with sports and music, so an opportunity to combine the two is pretty irresistible. Such an opportunity comes today in the form of a positive externality of the NFL’s crackdown on the New Orleans Saints’ bounty program, which we’ve been covering here on a derivative level. Back in March, the league suspended Saints head coach Sean Payton for a year because of the bounties. As a Deadspin reader reports, Payton seems to be handling his time off just fine.
At least nominally, Grace Potter and the Nocturnals have been on my radar since college, when they started getting some pub and a friend got into them, but I never listened to them, and I figured my friend’s allegiance to Grace Potter was based mostly on them both being female Vermontsters. When I saw today’s Jam for the first time, though, I realized my assumptions about Potter’s sound were inaccurate, and she, Warren Haynes, and Sean Payton are welcome to rock ZZ Top anytime:
Bad Jeremy was scheduled to be on this podcast to talk about either real hockey (if the Devils won) or his NHL 12 team (if the Devils lost), but he decided to go see Avengers instead. So Chris and I are back to talk more about soccer, including Lionel Messi’s record-breaking Saturday and the FA Cup Final. The Washington Nationals and the interesting Phillies-Nationals rivalry are also discussed.
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