Books, Sports, Rhymes & Life
Continue reading “LeBron Has Spoiled Us with His Greatness”
“Cruise hadn’t hurt his box-office draw — his movies continued to be successful. But Hollywood was convinced he was poison, a religious fanatic, and possibly unhinged.”
– Amy Nicholson, L.A. Weekly
Tom Cruise is an all-time great actor. Don’t believe it? Look at how many people have won or been nominated for Oscars playing opposite him. He makes every actor that shares the screen with him better.
It’s common in popular culture to claim that someone is ruining their legacy.
Every time you heard an Onyx song, you knew it was coming.
Technically speaking, Dr. Dre and Snoop Doggy Dogg have never made an album together.
Kevin Durant, deputy publisher of The Players Tribune, who has averaged 27 points and 7 rebounds per game in his second career as a member of the Seattle SuperSonics/Oklahoma City Thunder, announced his decision to join the Golden State Warriors today.
Sports punditry and analysis is always full of bad arguments and poorly thought-out opinions. The roster that Fox Sports 1 is assembling is proof of that. But the worst sports argument, at least at the moment, concerns LeBron James.
LeBron is playing in his sixth consecutive NBA Finals and seventh total. And he’s going to lose. Again.
That means that his record in the Finals will be 2 – 5. And that means he sucks.
[Author’s note: I was obviously – and happily – wrong about this, but it’s not like I was the only one.]
Forget the fact that he’s in the conversation as the greatest all-around player most of us have ever witnessed. Forget that he’s been under a microscope since high school. Forget that he drags teams full of CYO players and D-League castoffs to the final round every single year. Forget that he’s done it in two cities with two completely different sets of teammates. Forget that in those seven years, he’s had the lesser team at least four times. “In fact, LeBron never played for a team that entered the finals with more than a 2-in-3 chance of winning.”
None of that matters. Because he sucks.
He’s no Jordan.
Continue reading “The Fallacy of the LeBron vs. Jordan Finals Argument”
I haven’t been to very many historical sporting events. No World Cup. No Super Bowl. No championship-clinching win. I was there for the final Philadelphia Eagles win at Veterans Stadium in 2002, went to a few NLDS and NLCS games in 2008 as the Phillies rolled towards a title, and attended a few NBA Playoff games, but they were appetizers. The biggest event I’ve ever attended was the final game of Michael Jordan’s career and while that was great, it’s not like it was the 63-point game at the Boston Garden in 1986 or Game 6 of the ’98 Finals in Utah.
Everyone knows that an epic hip-hop battle that took place in late 2001, when Jay-Z and Nas brawled for the throne, but far too many people forget that another classic rap clash began that year as well.
