Monday Morning Coffee

February 27th, 2017

In case you were living under a rock over the last week, Magic Johnson has replaced Jim Buss as the President of Basketball Operations, and NBA player agent Rob Pelinka, has replaced Mitch Kupchak as General Manager of the Lakers.  This might make some of you feel better because you didn’t like how things were going with Buss and Kupchak.  However, it’s not like everything is suddenly ok in Lakerland because of the changes.  The good news is that Jeanie will be able to actually have normal communication with the Basketball Operations Department, unlike the weird dynamic she had with Jim earlier.  The way things were going,  these two practically needed attorneys just to decide what they wanted to order for lunch.  It’s always good for any organization to have a unified direction, unified voice, and good communication, which the Lakers now have.  Still, it doesn’t change the fact the Lakers need to get somewhat lucky to be good again.  They’ll need to keep their 1st round picks, and likely find their next face of the franchise player in the draft.  These days, determining the success of a 19 year old in the NBA is about as easy as playing darts blindfolded after 5 shots of Tequila.  That’s why I’m a little disappointed Jerry West isn’t going to be coming back in any role with LA.  He was the greatest talent evaluator ever.  Even if they sign Paul George in 2018, they’ll still need a lot more around him to be competitive, which can’t be done through free agency alone.

ESPN must be desperate to create news, and the only way they can do it apparently is by talking about race.  On Thursday, Dan Le Batard explained on his radio show that he felt like Magic wasn’t all that qualified to run the Lakers.  Although he gave a comprehensive explanation of this, ESPN decided to take clips of Le Batard’s criticism of Magic, and play them on all their stations.  However, those clips made it sound like Le Batard was a racist, implying that Magic was simply all about “shucking and jiving” his way to the top.  Anybody that knows Le Batard knows this isn’t what he meant and that he’s not a racist, but it’s just another example of ESPN manufacturing a story. Le Batard also spent all of Friday explaining his position on multiple talk shows, as opposed to the clips which suggested he might be racist.  Since ESPN has lost all of their real talent, apparently they have to resort to these smoke and mirror stories. So the Clippers are now considering moving to Inglewood, next to the new Rams and Chargers stadium.  Don’t we have enough terrible teams moving to Inglewood?  Do we really need to add a 3rd? It’s like we’ve created the city of losers.  Getting approval to build that NFL stadium was complex enough, so I’d be surprised if Steve Ballmer is able to get all the city and EIR approvals necessary to get this done.  Even if he has all the money to build the stadium.  Ballmer does realize that Inglewood is in Los Angeles and not in Seattle, right?

I love it when college and NBA players say they never read the headlines, or pay attention the criticism they receive from the media.  The UCLA Bruins basketball team sure reads the headlines and pays attention to that criticism, because for weeks I’ve been ripping them for their pathetic defense, soft play, and lack of toughness.  In the month of February they have answered the bell, playing tough defense against quality opponents.  Both Coach Steve Alford, and his son Bryce, are most aware of this and admitted they are constantly working on it.  It showed, and if the Bruins continue to play like this, the are true national championship contenders.  UCLA has two of the biggest road wins in college basketball this year.  As for Lonzo Ball’s dad, Lavar, he’s at it again, suggesting that he would only play for the Lakers when he enters the NBA next year.  Although he backtracked from these comments yesterday, he replaced them with dumber comments by suggesting that if we currently put Lonzo on the Warriors instead of Steph Curry, they would be better.  Lavar is going to make Lonzo the most hated basketball player in the world at this rate, and he hasn’t even played a single NBA game yet.

Why are NBA players so thin skinned these days? First you have Lebron complaining about Charles Barkley criticizing him for needing more help.  Now we have Javale McGee engaging a huge Twitter war with Shaq because McGee is repeatedly on “Shaq’tin A Fool”, which is a weekly blooper reel of NBA highlights.  It’s Shaq’s job to be entertaining, and that’s exactly what he’s doing.  If Javale has a problem with being featured on the bloopers every week, he should stop making a fool out of himself every week he plays.  The crying and bitching that we’re seeing from his teammates and the Warriors, who are complaining to TNT, is ridiculous.  In case you missed the exchange between Shaq and Javale, here it is.

This race for the 2024 Summer Olympics in getting interesting.  After Donald Trump was elected President, it dealt a major blow the hopes of LA’s bid.  However, Budapest dropped out because similar to a number of other previous bidders, the cost was just too great for them.  That leaves Paris and Los Angeles.  Paris is unfortunately the home of a lot of terrorist activity of late, while the United States creates a great degree of uncertainty because of Trump’s immigration orders.  On one hand, it’s hard to imagine all of those IOC voters from Islamic and Latin American countries voting for the LA because of Donald Trump.  But on the other hand, we know the IOC is corrupt, and is getting bribes left and right.  How else do you explain a disastrous country like Brazil getting the Olympics? It’s going to be an interesting decision for this corruption that is the IOC.

Why did the LA Kings acquire one of the top goaltenders on the market to backup Jonathan Quick now? This would have been helpful 3 months ago when Quick was hurt.  Maybe they wouldn’t be on the outside of the playoff picture looking in if they had.  By the way Kato Kaelin was in the house for the Kings-Ducks game on Saturday at Staples Center.  This makes sense. Whenever Kato is in the house there is always bloodshed.

The Walking Dead went down last night on AMC.  Spoiler alert for those of you who have yet to see it yet, so read no further if that is the case.  Just when I thought I got that “Easy Street” song out of my head, I had to hear it again, and I’m going to playing it in my head for the next few weeks.  Listening to Eugene’s nerdy talk was unbelievable.  He was like some type of super nerd, that was made from parts of a lesser nerd.  Couldn’t Negan have just killed him instead of some of our favorite characters this season? It was even more painful watching him interact with the girls Negan sent to him.  Negan lines up some easy sex for him and somehow, in two or three sentences, he lost the ability have sex with every woman in that room.  The scary thing about him though is that once you gave him some pickles, he got his confidence up, and bought into Negan’s nonsense.  Eugene is desperate for his own survival, and knows the’s too much of a coward to stand up for what’s right.  Dwight on the other hand is on the verge of snapping, and I’m curious to see if he gets revenge on Negan.

As for the Oscars last night, I thought blunders like that only happened in beauty pageants that were hosted by Steve Harvey! Harvey may think he’s off the hook, but the reality is we will forever compare his blunder in the pageant to every other blunder like last night.  I realize it wasn’t entirely Warren Beaty’s fault, but perhaps the Academy should make sure all of its presenters are young enough to effectively read and recognize when they have the incorrect envelopes like Beaty did.  Props to all the people from La La Land that recognize the goof, and stopped their acceptance speech to give the real award to Moonlight.  I know i know…..most of you are wishing that the 2016 Presidential Election turned out the way Best Picture did last night.  Outside of that blunder, and Justin Timberlake’s brilliant performance to open the show, last night was just a reminder that the Oscars are nothing but politics and who is in bed with the right people in Hollywood to get recognized.  In case you missed the blunder here is the full disaster…..

Finally, we get to see another highly anticipated episode of The Bachelor tonight on ABC.  Last week we got to see Nick go on four different dates with each remaining contestant.  The remaining women are from Houston, Montreal, some small town in Arkansas, and Miami.  It should be a no-brainer where he wants to live.  Corrine has both geography and money on her side.  Her dad also seems like the equivalent of Pauley D from Jersey Shore, but 25 years older.  He’ll also have the person who might be the most famous nanny in the world, Raquel.  My favorite part of the show was seeing Corrine’s mom say “I can’t do a lot of things without Raquel”, while waiting anxiously for Raquel to pass her a glass of wine.  Let’s be honest though, Nick doesn’t really like olives.  Vanessa might seem like the most normal, but her family is way too intense.  She got dumped people, she didn’t grow up eating lipstick.  Apparently, none of them realize they are on The Bachelor, and are surprised Nick asked for the permission to marry each girl remaining from all the parents he visited.  They were about as surprised as I was that there was no cheese pasta served for dinner at her house.  I’m going to need to take a shot of whiskey tonight every time Nick says the word “respect”.  From platinum “vageen” to platinum visa, Corrine needs to be the winner.

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