Monday Morning Coffee

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February 10, 2020

Relax Laker fans.   So they didn’t make a trade at the deadline and they shouldn’t have.  Every team was asking for multiple starters, the Laker girls, a dinner with Jack Nicholson, and a chance to touch the championship trophy.  Props to Rob Pelinka for at least trying to get a deal done with limited assets.   This team looks physically and mentally exhausted, and needs the All-Star break to recover. Seeing the best player in franchise history pass away will do that to you.   Yes Darren Collison or Andre Iguodola would have been nice, but they have enough to win as is. Collison must have really just wanted a free dinner at The Palms and courtside seats to a game with Jeanie, because that meeting was a serious waste of time.  By the way, this man has a $100 million contract with the Knicks in his future….

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Meanwhile, the Clippers took advantage of the Knicks and acquired Marcus Morris.  After firing their President, the Clips took advantage of them like that new guy in your fantasy basketball league that has no idea what he’s doing.  Interestingly enough, Mo Harkless could get bought out by the Knicks, who could be a good buyout candidate the Lakers could sign.  Harkless probably has all kinds of inside info on what kind of personality disorder Kawhi has that led him to sign with the Clippers.  By the way, the Clippers lost by 30 to the Wolves, and of course nobody talks about it.  That’s because nobody cares about them.

Elsewhere around the NBA Trade deadline, the Pistons traded Andre Drummond to the Cavs for a can of Coke, and a pair of nose bleed seats to a Browns game.  Andre Iguodola just sat out for 6 months and is getting another $30 million.  This country is amazing.  Everyone and their aunts, uncles, cousins, lions, tigers, and bears got traded as part of the Hawks, Nuggets, Rockets, and Wolves trade.

As you all know, Dodger President of Baseball Operations Andrew Friedman is my whipping boy on Jock Talk LA. However, I’m going to take this opportunity to actually give him credit for making a great trade now that it’s official. Mookie Betts, the 2nd best player in baseball, and David Price are now Dodgers, and Friedman gave up nothing more than a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Congrats Andrew. You’ve earned yourself a good two weeks without me complaining about your penny pinching philosophy. I have to say that the Angels really got screwed in this deal though by the Red Sox waffling, because they really could have used Joc Pederson and Ross Stripling. As nice as it would be for Friedman to keep those guys though, they should try to move them for a high leverage bullpen arm. That way we won’t all be sweating bullets come October with the likes of Kershaw, Price, and Jansen on the mound.

The LA Kings are a disaster. We’re talking Iowa Caucuses level disaster. They are bleeding losses, and while you think it’s great they are going to get another great draft pick it doesn’t mean anything. The Kings have the #1 ranked farm system in the league already. However, their system is broken, their culture has disappeared like Joe Biden, and their front office has no idea what they are doing. The latest trade by GM Rob Blake demonstrates a complete mismanagement of the trade value of goalie Jack Campbell, and the complete mismanagement of the salary cap by retaining salary for Kyle Clifford. Blake is now responsible for putting $11 million in dead money on the salary cap. This guy is burning money faster than Enron did. That’s 2-3 quality players they could use with that money. It doesn’t matter what the Kings do in the draft if they don’t fix their misguided system, their inept front office, and their leadership.

I can’t tell if UCLA basketball is really making progress, or if they are just re-living the Steve Lavin era. The Bruins dismantled Arizona over the weekend, and have now won five of their last seven games, including wins over Top 25 ranked Arizona and Colorado. In the Lavin era, they got up for good teams, and lost to bad ones. The fact the Bruins are playing lock down defense at times makes me think it might be more of an effort issue. Only time will tell with another month to go before PAC 12 Tournament time.

That was very bold of ABC to assume that we had five hours to spend watching The Bachelor this week. Gotta love how Hannah Ann didn’t love someone she dated for over 3 years but she thinks she can fall in love with Peter in 6 weeks. Did anybody else open a bottle of champagne when Victoria P, Tammy, Mykenna, and Sydney all went home in the same night? It had to be fun when Mykenna and Tammy ran into each other at the airport. I can’t decide if all the girls are awful, if Peter is a terrible Bachelor, or all of the above? This outfit makes me think the producers are intentionally sabotaging the season:

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Finally, the Oscars went down on ABC last night! Florence Pugh and Margot Robbie really lost to Laura Dern? They should have just asked Chris Rock and Steve Martin to host the entire show. Pretty savage that they didn’t nominate any female directors, yet Rock had to make jokes about the fact there are no women. They are probably going to lose their Amazon Prime status though. Brad Pitt definitely destroyed the GOP with his comment on John Bolton. Holy 2002! Eminem brought the house down with “Lose Yourself”. Who knew that Chrissy Metz could sing? They had presenters for presenters, but nobody to introduce her. Someone tell Diane Keaton we get it….she had sex with Keanu Reeves. That felt more like the Grammy’s than the Oscar’s and I’m perfectly alright with it.

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