July 17, 2017

Remember early last week when you were prisoner of the moment and thought Lonzo Ball was totally overhyped? I bet you don’t feel that way anymore.  Don’t feel bad though, so did some of those foolish ESPN writers, who didn’t even rank Lonzo in the top 10 summer league rookies at that point.  Forget the fact that Lonzo is going through shoes faster than the Kardashians go through NBA boyfriends.  His impact has been unbelievable.  I’m not talking about his stats.  It’s the intangibles.  He forces everybody to make the extra pass and look for an even better shot.  Wait until he plays with even better players come the fall.  As for the offseason, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope was a great signing for the Lakers, who is a nice piece to go along with their young core.  He’ll also be a nice plan B next summer, if the Lakers are unable to sign Lebron next.

Elsewhere around the NBA, I love how the Knicks waited until the offseason was basically over to bring on new General Manager, Scott Perry.  There must be some rule that once you end up in New York, you automatically become dumber.  Perry talked about the importance of young talent after signing a new five-year deal, yet for some reason he wants to try to convince Carmelo Anthony to stay after the Knicks had momentum on a trade with Houston.  Meanwhile, the Paul George press conference in OKC was hilarious.  “I’m committed to the Thunder to give them everything I have while I’m here.”  Are you kidding? He’s not even hiding the fact he’s signing with the Lakers next summer.  I nearly fell out of my chair laughing when I read that.

The 2017 MLB All Star game MVP should have been awarded to the fan who was able to stay awake for the entire game.  The best part of the game was Nelson Cruz deciding to take a picture with the umpire in the middle of the game.  The home run derby was slightly more entertaining, however, Aaron Judge can expect a drug test from the league after that performance.  Cody Bellinger’s mom should also get expect to be hit on and trend on Twitter for the rest of her son’s career.

The Dodgers are rolling and in a couple of weeks they’ve ended the NL West race faster than a knife fight in a phone booth.  They have the best record in baseball but it’s not all good.  Brandon McCarthy, Rich Hill, Kenta Maeda, and Hyun-Jin Ryu still can’t be trusted to give you a reliable performance.  If this were the postseason, I wouldn’t even trust any of them to tell me what they wanted on their pizza.  The Dodgers also can’t seem to find a reliable lefty shutdown reliever since Grant Dayton, Luis Avilan, or Adam Liberatore are either injured or stink.  Those might seem like correctable problems, but there isn’t really any starting pitching available at this year’s trade deadline to improve, and the reliever market is always fickle.  Things look great now, but I’m still a doubter until LA can finally come through in October.

Meanwhile, the Angels continued their annual tradition of getting rid of their starting 2nd baseman in the middle of the season by letting go of Danny Espinosa.  I guess it took half the season to realize that he was the worst performing everyday 2nd baseman in the league.  I wonder how much longer the Halos will put up with the likes of Jefry Marte and Luis Valbuena?  Probably not before another Angel pitcher gets hurt and not before Garret Richards comes to his senses and realizes he should have had Tommy John surgery last year.  The Angels need to find young and effective arms that can stay healthy. Until then, not even Mike Trout will be able to lead them to the postseason.

I hope you’re all enjoying these ridiculous WWE like scripted press conferences that Floyd Mayweather and Connor McGregor are providing us.  It’s going to be ten times better than the fight itself, and should remind you just how far the sport of boxing has fallen.  With all this talk about Mayweather’s taxes and smear campaigns against both fighters, I’m beginning to wonder if this is about a boxing match or a Presidential election?  Even if McGregor makes $100 million off of this fight, it won’t buy him better taste in suits.

Let’s talk TV because the season premier of Game of Thrones went down last night on HBO.  Spoiler alert for those of you who have yet to see it, so read no further if that is the case.  Did anybody actually know what Ed Sheeran looked like before seeing him on that episode last night, and with the help of the internet? I sure didn’t.  One of the scariest parts of the episode was hearing Sansa say that she has learned a ton from Cersei.  I hope she was talking about her taste in wines because nobody wants to see Sansa become the evil villain that Cersei is, but it sounds like she might become more unlikable.  This show is clearly delivering a theme of women that are becoming empowered.  Sansa’s input is becoming more valuable to Jon, Cersei is controlling Kings Landing, the Mother of Dragons has an army behind her, and Arya is on a mission to avenge the death of her family.

Finally, The Bachelorette is going down tonight on ABC, and we’re down to the final four.  Well, I think we are.  After last week, I’m beginning to think the producers just throw in random people you’ve never heard of on a weekly basis, just so Rachel can eliminate them.  I mean who are Matt, Adam, and Will and has Rachel ever spoken more than 10 words to them? I knew Eric was going to stick around for at least another week.  ABC wasn’t going to continue to anger people by eliminating every black man off the show.  They’ll just wait until the season finale to show their racial insensitivity again.