Monthly Archives: February 2018

Monday Morning Coffee

 

February 26, 2018

The theme of this week’s Monday Morning Coffee is “disappointing”.  The Lakers may be playing better, but they are going to be disappointed this summer when they learn that Lebron James is going to be staying in Cleveland for another year.  Of course when asked if he wanted to see a change in the NBA’s playoff structure, Lebron’s said no.  He knows he has a free pass to the Finals playing in the Eastern Conference.  It would take that change in playoff structure, Paul George, and trading for another star player to get Lebron to seriously consider signing with the Lakers.  Despite the recent talk that other star could be Kawhi Leonard, that story makes little sense.  If the Spurs are willing to trade a top 5 player in his prime, he has to be damaged goods.

The Winter Olympics came to a close last night, but not before some major disappointments from the US figure skating team.  They should just change their Olympic slogan to “Going For Bronze”.  Shani Davis also left his last Olympics in incredibly disappointing fashion.  He bitched about not carrying the flag in the opening ceremony, had a disappointing race, then didn’t even want to talk to anybody when it was over.  Congratulations to the U.S. women’s hockey team on winning the gold! When Canada’s men and women both lose the gold in hockey, everyone in America wins! Speaking of hockey, Russia won the gold medal in the men’s tournament.  When is Trump inviting them to the White House?  I guess a sport is not actually a sport until someone gets caught for Performance Enhancing Drugs.  That makes curling officially a sport as of last week.  Congrats to the US men’s curling team on their gold medal! The internet wins again!

Then there’s the disappointment that is UCLA basketball.  The Bruins took a sledgehammer to their tournament hopes a pair of road losses at Utah and Colorado.  Are we also going to blame these losses on the fact three players got suspended in China? UCLA should never lose basketball games to Utah and Colorado.  After yesterday’s loss, Steve Alford says the idea that all college basketball players are getting paid is “ludicrous”.  Today I’m telling you the idea that Steve Alford is getting paid to coach UCLA is ludicrous.  The man has no idea how to prepare his team for a basketball games.  If the Bruins get embarrassed again next week at USC, the Chancellor should call Casey Wasserman again to help them find a new coach.

Continuing our theme of disappointment is the idea that the FBI has nothing better to do with their time than crack down on college athletes getting paid.  There is no victim in this situation.  Players are getting paid and rightfully so.  The NCAA is making boatloads of money, and the amount of money and benefits going to these players is so minuscule compared to what they could and should be getting.  If the NCAA really cares about fixing this problem, they’ll increase the stipend that college football and basketball players receive, making these other benefits and payments they are receiving meaningless.  If USC and Arizona end up playing in the Pac 12 Title game in two weeks, it’s going to be a complete embarrassment to the NCAA, and the conference.  If the NCAA had any balls, they would suspend everybody, but they won’t because stars would sit out the tournament and ratings would suffer.  Now that Louisville has to vacate all their wins from 2013, does Rick Pitino have to vacate the tattoo on his back?

I’m not sure what to make of the Rams acquisition of Pro Bowl Cornerback Marcus Peters.  Since 2015, no defender has allowed a lower passer rating in coverage than Peters.  He’s also only making  $1.7 million next year, which for a Pro Bowler is like being on food stamps.  However, this dude brings baggage.  He left a game last year after mistakenly thinking he was ejected, throwing a flag into the stands and leaving the game and returning not in uniform.  He’s also yelled at assistant coaches, and irked his owner by kneeling for the National Anthem.  This guy is talented, but if culture matters and the Rams are still building it, then this is a disappointing move.

We continue our theme of disappointment by taking it to television, and the dumpster fire that has become The Bachelor.  Arie began his hometown tours on last week’s episode and last night we had “The Women Tell All.”  You know you need to shutdown a relationship when there’s taxidermy involved.  I could only deal with seeing a stuffed animal at a museum behind a glass, but I’m not touching a dead animal, let alone stuffing it.  Arie is probably wondering if he’s gonna get put on the wall by Kendall when he dies.  I like how Kendall didn’t give Arie the answer he wanted when asked if she was ready for an engagement, yet he picked her anyway.  Lauren B is as boring as her family, which we learned when they were so quiet so early on.  She looks like the winner though, but not for any good reason based on Arie’s logic (or lack thereof).  So Seinne is the next Bachelorette right? Isn’t that what we learned last night? Didn’t think ABC was progressive enough to have two black women in a row as The Bachelorette.  I love Arie continuing to put Krystal in her place, but she sounded nothing like she did all season.  If Arie brought half the personality to the show he brought last night this season wouldn’t be such a drag.

The final disappointment comes from the return of The Walking Dead, and the loss of another major character last night.  Spoiler alert if you have yet to see it, so read no further if that is the case.  You knew this one was coming, but Carl finally died after suffering a bite in the previous episode.  This episode was sad, but it was a nice ceremonial tribute to one of the original characters that we’ve seen for the last 8 years.  Carl may be dead, but his meme’s will live on forever.  If there’s one thing I won’t miss though, it’s that stupid hat of his.  As much as I hate to see him go, the show had to deviate from the comics because it was becoming way too predictable.  For those of you complaining, it’s the zombie apocalypse people! There’s going to be death.  Couldn’t Carl at least have gotten Enid killed in the process? She’s by far the most annoying character left on the show.

Monday Morning Coffee

February 19, 2018

Now that Steph lost to Lebron again, he will probably beg Kevin Durant to join his team one more time just for old times sake.  Then again, KD will probably now demand a trade to the Cavs when he wakes up this morning.  For the first three quarters of the All-Star game, I was bored and ready to switch over to some Olympic figure skiing.  However, the 4th quarter was actually entertaining because Team Lebron decided to compete.  Steph’s team was so surprised by it, they ended up choking their lead away.  Forget the game though, Fergie’s National Anthem disaster was hilarious.  That rendition would have been perfect were she performing in a strip club.  I don’t know how any player managed to keep a straight face either.

You didn’t really think we could go a full week without hearing from Lavar did you? His latest idiotic comment is saying that Lonzo won’t re-sign with the Lakers unless his two brothers are playing in their organization.  As much as I think Lonzo is going to be a very good player (and no I don’t really think the Lakers should trade him just for the sake of it), part of me would love to see the Lakers trade him just to punk Lavar.  Hopefully it’s in a package for Anthony Davis.  Better yet, I’d rather see them re-sign Lonzo, sign his two brothers, then cut them.  If Lavar keeps up this crap, if Lonzo ever falters, he is going to have to pack up his circus and take it elsewhere.

To college basketball, where the Bruins picked up a couple of huge wins last week against the Oregon schools.  I don’t care what anybody says:  Thomas Welsh is UCLA’s most important player, and he might even be their best player.  Of course you would never know that since Steve Alford is their coach.  All season long, he has had no idea how to get him more touches, and facilitate more offense through him.  I always knew Alford couldn’t coach defense, but the fact he can’t figure out how to use his best player tells you just how bad he is.  The Bruins need to win two of their last three, plus grab a conference tournament win to safely make it in to the NCAA Tourney.  Then Alford’s squad can look forward to going home early again.

In case you didn’t hear, the LA Kings made a huge trade last week.  They traded former 40-goal scorer Marian Gaborik to the Senators for defenseman Dion Phaneuf.  Phaneuf used to be one of the best defenseman in the league, 10 years ago.  However, the Kings got the most important asset in the acquisition: Phaneuf’s wife, Elisha Cuthbert.  Phaneuf’s contract is horrible, but knowing that they would be seeing Cuthbert in the stands every home game was probably enough to get the deal done.

Donald Trump is going to add the U.S. Men’s curling team to his travel ban list after their horrendous performance at the Olympics.  Can’t we just put politics aside for this 17-day period? Apparently Lindsay Vonn and her critics couldn’t.  Vonn got sixth place in the Super-G after saying she wouldn’t visit the White House if she was invited.  Of course all the Trump supporters jumped on her like a Cheetah on a Rabbit after her disappointing performance.  Seems rather un-American for both sides.      Lost in all that however, is the fact that NBC looks like fools.  They announced Austrian, Anna Veith as the winner, but it was Ester Ledecka from the Czech Republic that won after NBC had left coverage.  Even more shocking was the fact Ledecka did this after borrowing ski’s from U.S. star Mikaela Shiffrin.  Aren’t the Winter Olympics tough enough for the U.S.? Now we’re actually lending equipment to other countries to beat us.  Also, is this the Winter Games or The Hunger Games?

The NCAA denied Notre Dame’s appeal of 21 vacated football wins due to an academic misconduct violation.  I guess the NCAA finds it a complete outrage that athletes at Notre Dame have to be students too, and felt the need to punish the school.  By “punish”, what I really mean is that we’re all going to pretend that Notre Dame didn’t really finish the 2012 season undefeated and play in the BCS National Championship game.  That’s ok though, I’d rather wipe away the embarrassment of that game against Alabama.  The Irish did lose the game, but make no mistake about it: they won the tailgate party…..

Finally, another episode of The Bachelor goes down on ABC tonight.  Last week was a difficult episode that was missing a lot of entertainment value with the recent departures of several contestants from the week before.  I’m going to start referring to Lauren B as “Lauren ZZZZZZZ” because she’s practically sleeping on all her dates with Arie.  She was basically walking around Tuscany in silence.  Did Arie think he picked the other Lauren when he kept her on the show?  Then what was Arie doing when he got up in the middle of dinner with her after she actually started talking? Did he have to pass gas or just talk to the producer? It’s like they forgot to air an episode, because there’s no explanation for why Lauren is still around since they have nothing in common.  I sort of thought Arie was a dummy, but now I know he’s a dummy because he used the phrase “I’m trying to be logic” on two different occasions with two different women.  Bekah M sabotaged herself by continuously reminding Arie of her age.  It’s like nails on chalkboard and led to her elimination.  Then there’s Tia who claims she is falling for Arie.  Of course she’s falling for Arie.  What do you think there’s rich race car drivers just walking around the woods of Weiner, Arkansas for her? If Arie picks her over more educated women like Jacqueline or Sienne, it’s not even close to being believable.

 

Monday Morning Coffee

February 12, 2018

The Lakers made a lot of noise at the NBA trade deadline last week.  I’m shocked that ESPN didn’t respond by getting Lavar Ball’s thoughts for the next 30 minutes.  As for the acquisition of Isaiah Thomas and Channing Frye, it’s like I told you after the Lakers used D’Angelo Russell to dump Timofey Mozgov’s contract.  If the Lakers are going to keep dumping young talent they’ve spent years investing in, this summer they better sign Lebron James.  Come July, I better not hear Magic and Rob try to sell me on trading for another has been like Brook Lopez, with one year left on his deal, just to try their luck in the 2019 free agent market.  It’s Lebron James and Paul George or bust, and the Lakers are either doubling down on dumb, or they know something the rest of us don’t.  I sure hope it’s the latter.

Then there’s the Clippers, who blew a huge opportunity at the trade deadline.  They hung on to DeAndre Jordan, Avery Bradley, and decided to sign Lou Williams to an extension.  Everyone comes up a loser in this instance.  The Clips blew an opportunity to get more assets to help them rebuild, and I don’t know what Lou Williams was thinking.  He signed a team friendly extension with a Clipper team that probably convinced him they won’t trade him.  That’s about as smart as doing business with Lavar Ball.

To baseball where Yu Darvish just signed a contract for up to $150 million over 6 years with the Chicago Cubs.  This dude has a career postseason ERA over 5, and bamboozled somebody into giving him $150 million? What a time to be alive! I’d like to know if the MLB players union still thinks the owners are colluding to not pay top dollar for free agents.  Sure the Dodgers could use another great starting pitcher, but surely not at that price, and not for a guy who has shown you can’t trust in the most crucial moments of the season.  Nobody should have given Darvish a dime until he proved he’s not really tipping his pitches.

Nothing in the world could have been more predictable than seeing UCLA lose to Arizona State, after defeating Arizona on the road.  As usual, Steve Alford’s squad looked totally disjointed on offense, and looked completely clueless on the defensive end against the Sun Devils.  The win against Arizona also makes sense because you can always count on Sean Miler to make Alford look like John Wooden.  Nobody does less with more than Miller.  Alford played lineups that never even played together all season, like Holiday, Ali, Smith, Olesinski, and Goloman all at once.  This of course came after someone donated $6.5 million to the UCLA basketball program.  For $6.5 million you would think the donor would just spend the money on a much improved coach for the men’s team. The gift came from the Price family, and now Alford’s title is “The Michael Price Family UCLA Head Basketball Coach.”  Who wouldn’t donate even more money if they knew they could own the rights to Steve Alford?

Last week was the always overhyped College Football National Signing Day.  For some reason USC felt the need to extend Clay Helton’s contract, just to show a stronger commitment to their recruits.  Clearly, the Trojans care a lot more about these overhyped recruiting rankings than the actual College Football Playoff rankings, because the extension was totally unnecessary.  Helton looked totally in over his head against Ohio State in the Cotton Bowl, and consistently demonstrated a lack of creativity and imagination on offense.  This is like proposing to your girlfriend, immediately after experiencing the worst sex of your life with her.  Most Trojan fans aren’t going to be happy about this, especially when you consider that recruiting at USC isn’t that difficult for a halfway decent coach.

I’m a huge fan of the Olympic Games, both summer and winter.  When else will you be fascinated watching sports you’ve never even seen before like curling, ski jumping, and slopestyle?  I’m very surprised the Koreans didn’t fire a missile into the stadium to light the Olympic torch to open the games.  For many of these events like skeleton and the super-G, if you don’t die during the actual training do you automatically qualify for the Olympic games?  The biathalon, which includes skiing and shooting has to be the most Nordic event ever.  You would think the US would be a lot better at the shooting portion.  Trying to understand curling is one of my favorite parts of the games.  Looking forward taking this in over the next two weeks.

Finally, another episode of The Bachelor went down last week on ABC, and it was a shocker.  Krystal, the biggest villain in the history of the show was sent home.  There has never been a contestant more ready for a two-on-one date, but after talking a lot of smack, she was totally outsmarted again.  I’m really surprised she didn’t flip a table or chase down Kendall and Arie at the Eiffel Tower when it was over.  I also now realize that they make the show two hours because it takes Krystal an hour just to finish one sentence.  My other favorite part of the episode was the fact Arie said that he was intimidated by Jacqueline’s intelligence.  Oh ok Arie, so you’re saying you prefer to spend your time with stupid people.  Thanks for clarifying.  It’s amazing that Arie was able to get Lauren B to talk on his date with her, even after dropping that bomb about a miscarriage in his previous relationship.  Lauren said no more than 10 words during the whole date.  I do miss Annaliese on the show however, who probably would have claimed she had a fear of corn mazes, burlesque shows, baguettes, and French accents if she were still in it.   I have my doubts the entertainment value of the show is going to be there for the rest of the season with no Krystal or Chelsea, however, any of the remaining 7 women can win it.

 

 

Monday Morning Coffee

February 5, 2018

Congratulations to the Philadelphia Eagles and their fans for winning Super Bowl LII.  By the time you’re reading this the fans probably just finished celebrating by burning their city down and running naked through what’s left of the streets.  Isn’t that how The Walking Dead started?  The Patriots didn’t even punt, Tom Brady threw for over 500 yards and they lost.  I’ve seen better defense played in the XFL.  It couldn’t be any more fitting that the NFL season ended with a game where we still have no idea what a catch is.  Unlike Tom Brady, Nick Foles can catch a pass, and he also played out of his mind.  I’m beginning to think that was Eli Manning wearing a Nick Foles mask all along.  This Super Bowl win was long overdue for a much improved Eagles team, and just goes to show you how quickly you can turn it around.  I’m sure Tom Brady and the Patriots will be fine despite the loss, and you can expect to be rooting against them again this time next year.

I thought the best commercial of the game was Rocket Mortgage.  Keegan Michael-Key is absolutely hilarious.  I thought the dumbest commercial was Dodge, which felt the need to use Martin Luther King’s speech in its ad.  In fact, it probably offended people in the process.  I’d like to know what that marketing meeting was like.  As for the halftime show, Justin Timberlake put on a great show.  Many of you haters are missing the point.  The halftime show isn’t a concert.  It’s an entire entertainment show, and if you weren’t entertained, it’s probably just because you hate JT’s music in general.  You’re also missing the fact that the Super Bowl draws an audience of more than just football fans.  The halftime show caters to them as well.  Either that, or you’re just angry you didn’t get to see Janet Jackson’s nipple again.

I feel terrible for Blake Griffin.  He’s going from living in LA to living in Detroit, just six months after the Clippers begged him to stay and be a Clipper forever.  That has to suck.  On the bright side, he can probably buy the entire city of Detroit given what the Pistons are going to be paying him for the next four years.  This move couldn’t be any more “Clipper-esque”.  I don’t have a problem trading Blake if you think you need to rebuild, but the Clips just became more mediocre.  Not a playoff team, not bad enough to tank, and no exciting young players to build with.  We should expect DeAndre and Lou to be traded in the next week for a packet of Taco Bell hot sauce and a can of Coke.  Also, the idea of the Clippers having a shot at Lebron is like you breaking up with your girlfriend in hopes of having a shot at Jennifer Aniston.  There’s a rumor that Jerry West is working for the Clippers to sabotage them.  They are perfectly capable of sabotaging themselves.

As for the Lakers, with just a few days to go before the trade deadline, they need to be especially careful.  We keep hearing names like Jordan Clarkson, Julius Randle, and Larry Nance Jr. mentioned in trade talks, just to open up salary cap space.  Unless the Lakers know for a fact Lebron James is signing with them, there’s really no point to trading any of those players, even come July.  You have to be careful with players coming off their rookie contracts.  Just ask how the Magic feel about trading Victor Oladipo, or how glad the Wizards are they didn’t trade Bradley Beal.  Randle may be on the verge of becoming a 20-10 player, and Clarkson is a productive young player on a reasonable NBA contract.  I’d like to think the new Laker front office is smarter than to dump these guys for a couple of nickels and a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

Here’s my new conspiracy theory: The Oklahoma City Thunder don’t even want to re-sign Paul George.  Doing so would put them in repeater tax territory.  The Thunder have the most conservative ownership in the league, and Clay Bennett is a cheapskate.  Eric Pincus wrote a fantastic article for Basketball Insider on this last week, and this theory is further supported by the fact that the Thunder reportedly rejected the Clippers proposal of trading Griffin for George.  Why would they reject that? Blake is under contract for the next 4 years, and they had interest in him last summer.  It’s because they know they would be repeat tax offenders.  If Clay Bennett wouldn’t pay the luxury tax for one of the best young teams in the NBA that just went to the finals a few years ago, no way is he doing it for a team that is going to lose in the 1st or 2nd round of the playoffs.  This is great news for the Lakers.

That was a great basketball game on Saturday afternoon game between UCLA and USC.  Horrible play calling by SC though at the end of the game.  It was almost like Steve Alford was in the huddle drawing up the plays for them.  Bill Walton is a crazy old man who might be doing every broadcast on acid, but the entertainment value he is bringing to the table is second to none.  You can’t hate it.  It’s like listening to Norm McDonald broadcast, but without the impression.  Alford said that the Bruins are a much different team with Aaron Holiday off the court.  Funny because they’d also be an even better team with Alford off the bench.  The Bruins desperately need to beat Arizona and Arizona State and have a deep run in the conference tournament if they hope to be participating in March Madness.

Some large corporations are really benefitting from the new tax laws.  Many are giving employees raises.  United Airlines on the other hand might as well be lighting a stack of cash on fire.  Well that’s just about the same thing as buying naming rights to the LA Coliseum for $69 million.  The Coliseum has been around for nearly 100 years.  Nobody in their right mind is going to start calling the place “The United Airlines Memorial Coliseum”.  I’m sure as part of the deal, the usher’s at the Coliseum will now start dragging fans out of their seats and beating them senselessly before kicking them out of the stadium.

For years I always thought the funniest SNL skit was Celebrity Jeopardy.  For those of you unfamiliar with it, I highly recommend finding it on YouTube.  However, last week Jeopardy had the closest thing you will find to Celebrity Jeopardy on the actual show.  The best part about is was that Alex Trebek was savagely trolling the contestants.  Check it out for yourself…..

Finally, another interesting episode of The Bachelor went down on ABC last Monday.  For those of you wanting to see more age appropriate dates for Arie, you got your wish but we see the problem with it: the dates are totally boring.  That was the case on his date with Chelsea.  I love how the girls could actually see the one-on-one dates from the balcony, and got an up close view with a telescope of Chelsea straddling Arie on a jet ski.  What hotel has a telescope on it’s balcony anyway? Nice little addition by the producers there.  Krystal is definitely the biggest Bachelor super villain of all-time.  I think that keeps her on the show for at least a couple of more weeks, even though Arie is probably done with her.  Everything she’s done has backfired, and she always gets outsmarted by the other girls, yet somehow she is still in the running.  I love her empty threat that she had her stuff packed.  Doesn’t everybody always have their stuff packed on this show?  Bowling dates and cocktail parties in the hotel lobby? I guess the ABC producers blew this season’s budget on hookers and blow to keep their sanity.   Arie must be the first person in history to wear Toms shoes to a swamp.  The gators were definitely laughing at him.