August 31st, 2015
Jim Buss still hasn’t figured out the politics of being an NBA executive yet. Buss sat down for an interview last week, and started by saying that it’s completely up to Kobe, whether or not he wants to continue playing with the Lakers after this coming season. That sounded great at first, until he said “He just has to know, at that age, and that many miles on you, what is your role? We’ll explain the role, and if he still wants to do that and that’s how he wants to go out, that’s fine with me.” Jeez Jim….why didn’t you just say you’re going to throw him out like Uncle Phil used to throw out Jazz on the Fresh Prince? This will likely be Kobe’s last NBA season anyway, but there’s no need to publicly throw down the gauntlet like that. Even if the Lakers do need to move on from Kobe after next year, there’s no need to publicly say that. If Jim’s dad were still around, he would have been smart enough to know this. The irony of it is, Buss said some other really good things, like the fact that the Lakers are focused on developing 7 or 8 really good young players they can move forward with. For a guy who could be forced out in a few years, he’s actually going about things the right way. He just doesn’t have the charisma to handle these situations yet.
Speaking of the NBA, the Clippers are currently in the midst of negotiating a new TV deal with Fox Sports West. However, owner Steve Ballmer suggested that the Clipps might instead move their games away from cable, and go to online streaming. Even though consumers are slowly moving away from cable, we still haven’t yet reached a point with live sports where we can reliably go to the internet to find our content. The Clippers already struggle with ratings and market share in LA, so moving their games to the internet for a subscription fee will only further their irrelevance in the LA sports landscape. Let’s hope for the sake of Clippers fans that this is just a negotiating ploy by Steve Ballmer to get the deal he wants with Fox Sports. Ultimately, Fox Sports West needs the Clippers equally as much as The Clippers need Fox Sports West.
On to baseball, where the Dodgers are the most pathetic $300 million team I have ever seen. The Boys in Blue were no-hit for the second time in nine days. This time it was by the Cubs and Jake Arrieta. Fortunately the Giants have been blowing it, so the Dodgers have been hanging on to the division lead. Nevertheless, LA is incredibly fundamentally flawed. You think we should be excited because they won 5 in a row before last night? Yea, well they lost 5 in a row before that. That’s called .500 baseball, or better known as mediocrity. I love how skipper Don Mattingly has been instructed by Andrew Friedman not to play hit and run because his team cannot run the bases, and he would rather not give away outs. It’s too bad the Dodgers don’t have a young, all-star, cost controlled, 2nd baseman and leadoff man, who can steal 60 bases a season. Oh wait….they did have that in Dee Gordon, but Friedman traded him to Florida last winter. Watching this team play couldn’t be any more frustrating.
Then there’s the Angels, who got swept away by the Indians. The season has quickly gotten away from the Halos in the last few weeks, and with a month to go, the division looks out of reach. Even the Wild Card is slipping away with a couple of teams that have jumped in front of them. The lineup has too many holes, and suddenly the starting pitchers look like hell. It’s sure going to be fun dishing out about $40 million next year to Jered Weaver and CJ Wilson, when neither should even be in the rotation. If Mike Scioscia has as much power and influence as I think he does, he needs to make sure that he’s got a roster that can actually manufacture runs, play good defense, and play his style of ball, rather than one that sits back and waits for the long ball. Otherwise, the team is making one of the best managers in baseball look like one of the worst.
It’s really a shame what Sark has done to the USC Football program in the last week. People should be talking about how great of a team they could have this season. Heck, Adoree Jackson might even be a sleeper Heisman Trophy candidate. Instead, we are talking about how stupid Sark is for getting hammered at last week’s donor event. Sark could have easily been suspended by Pat Haden for his stupidity, however, if Haden eventually has to remove Sark, the USC AD will find himself under much more heat from the University for making a 2nd straight poor hire. Then again, without Sark, we’d be talking about something stupid like how many points USC is going to crush Arkansas State by. This is a far more interesting story to follow!
On to the NFL where they say week 3 of the preseason is like a dress rehearsal for NFL players. This makes perfect sense because RGIII was on the sidelines in street clothes for this past weekends preseason game. Rumor has it that not only has Griffin lost his starting spot to Kirk Cousins, but that Subway will now try to trade him to another restaurant as well.
Did anybody actually watch the MTV VMA’s? Did anybody actually realize that some artists still make music videos? Since there aren’t many, it must not take much to win these awards. In any case the show was still entertaining. The Nicki Minaj and Taylor Swift “beef” is fake, but Minaj’s beef with Miley Cyrus is way more real. Once again, Kanye found a way to make everything about him, stealing the stage for an 11 minute speech, where by the end, you really had no idea what hell he was talking about. I do see why he thinks he has a chance to become President in 2020 though. I mean Donald Trump has given hope to everybody now. Miley Cyrus also had a nip slip. Since Jock Talk LA is a family site (ok maybe not) i’ll let you just Google it.
Finally, Fear The Walking Dead aired it’s second episode last night on AMC. This prequel to The Walking Dead is really more of a “slow-pocalypse” rather than a “zombie apocalypse”. The world is very slowly falling apart, but that’s perfectly ok for the audience. What we’re really seeing isn’t how the world fell apart. It’s how human beings fell apart and brought the world to an apocalyptic state. Nick, one of the main characters, is a drug addict who has to deal with withdrawal during the chaos. Ironically, his seizure prevents his sister from walking off to her imminent death. You also know the world is falling apart when the principal tries to eat you. This show is far less bloody than The Walking Dead, and the zombie scenes are actually more intriguing because people don’t know how to deal with zombies yet. They don’t know how dangerous they really are, and that they are actually trying to eat people. One of the themes that’s emerging in this show is that people just don’t talk to each other either, which is causing the decay of society. I’m talking everything from the government not communicating with citizens, to Nick’s own family members not wanting to listen to him because he’s a drug addict. It really just confirms that the zombies didn’t cause the apocalypse. Human beings did.
