It's a Good Thing He's The Best Point Guard In The East

From espn.com:

Gilbertology update: Arenas offered up his best excuses for dodging reporters this week. He said he left quickly after Tuesday's victory over Minnesota because he wanted to see the movie "Hannibal Rising" -- he shrugged his shoulders in disappointment when asked for a review -- and said he would have to beat a quick path out of the arena Thursday to prepare for the upcoming road trip. "I have to pack," he said. Why couldn't he pack before the game? Because, Arenas said, a power outage prevented him from getting into his own house, which has a sophisticated security system. Apparently, he's saving "the dog ate my homework" for a later date.

Whatever. Can't argue with 10 games over .500 for a team that traditionally wins no more than 10 games in an entire season.

Mundane Basketball Names Restated

If you ever play the video game NBA Street, you're familiar with the ground-swell to create more entertaining basketball nicknames. We've created an entire 12-man roster* of obscure and curious basketball nicknames, should I ever decide to coach a team and have the final say in naming rights. This is a bit of a tangent from the term redifinition project, but we'll get back on track soon enough.

Starting 5
The Skillet
Tough Juice
ATM
Homeland Security
Dr. Hoops

Bench
King Sir
Cotton Gin
Bill "The Filabuster" Flennington**
Side Arm
The Human Piñata
Poor Man's Isaiah Thomas
Thumbs McMurtry


* names have pending copyright protection.
** not to be confused with mid-90's Bulls center Bill Wennington.(pictured above).

Jinxing Them, Again

Mundane Basketball Terms Redefined

In the second part of this continuing crusade to rejuvenate the common basketball phrasebook, we rename several court locations with especially boring names.

The "lane" (current nickname: "the paint") is now referred to as Hot Lava or simply The Lava. Example: "The Clippers are dominating the lava this evening, grabbing a season-high 20 offensive boards."

The "free throw line" (current nickname: "charity stripe") will, from here on out, be known as the Freedom Parallel (and "free throw percentage" naturally becomes the Freedom Index.) Example: "Despite a league-low 68% freedom index, The Bucks iced their victory last night down the stretch shooting a perfect 8 for 8 from the freedom parallel in the final 3 minutes."

The "three point line" (current nicknames: "long distance," "the arc") is henceforth called The Rooftop. Example: "Though not considered a shooter, Chris Paul made 6 of 8 from the rooftop last night on the way to a game-high 31 points."

We'll stick to only three terms today - we'll have more next week. Don't think the "sideline" and the "key" aren't prime candidates for new monikers.

MVP

When Michael Redd, who just so happens to be the new most underrated player in the NBA (now that Gilbert Arenas has officially taken over the world), can't do anything but smile when Gilbert sinks a 35-foot game-winner against his team, you know there's something special brewing. I haven't been this excited about pro-basketball, well, ever.

Admittedly, there was a brief moment of excitement about 8 months ago during the 2006 playoffs, when Gilbert (I can address him by his first name because I suffered through literally a lifetime of terrible DC basketball) drained a 40-footer to force overtime against the Cavs, only to have my entire month ruined by Lebron James' 3rd buzzer beater in four games. That's so incredibly not happening this year, even if me writing about it on the internet could potentially jinx it.

Mundane Basketball Terms Redefined

Welcome to what I hope to be my first recurring theme here, now that they allow the ever-popular tagging on blogger. Alongside co-geniuses Casey and Michele, we've begun to retool the standard basketball journalist's phrasebook to make the sport sound like the true man-to-man war that it is.

Today's redefinition is for the term "loose ball." You know, like, when the ball is in no one's posession and all the players go diving for it. Sounds a little more exciting than "loose ball" lets on, right? From here on out, we collectively dub the loose ball, the Alabama Scramble.

Named for the late Alabama Franklin of the New Orleans Jazz, the Alabama Scramble became a popular local term in the south in the 70's as Franklin was rather adept and denying inlets to the high post and swatting away the point guard's posessions, but could never quite recover possession without causing a mass of flying bodies resembling a bad game of Twister. We'd like to dedicate this exciting occurrence in basketball to him.

Grasping At Straws

I made one half-hearted (is that word really hyphenated?) attempt to subscribe to the Washington Post out here, because I enjoy it more than the LA Times (it also frequently has multiple crossword puzzles, Scrabblegrams and various random logic puzzles that help prevent Alzheimer's and coolness). Unfortunately, I'm stuck with the online edition. Since I did very little yesterday, I read just about everything available on their website. I had a few problems with it.

Initially, MySpace drew her in, and she spent lots of time looking at her friend's photos or leaving comments on their pages, she said. Now, only a year or so later, ennui is setting in. She spends a lot less time on the site, instead listening to music or talking on the phone, she said. (In Teens' Web World, Myspace Is So Last Year)

Apparently Friendster (remember it?) hit a traffic peak this year. Seriously? Neilson reported their average user session as over three hours. What they didn't mention was that (at least when I used it eight years ago) it takes two and a half hours just to login. As nice as it would be to imagine a post-myspace world, I think we're stuck with it for longer than we'd care to think about.

"Whatever happens in your past, you get second chances," Arenas said. "Basketball is where I put all my pain and let it go. The court became my sanctuary, my outlet. Most males, we don't have outlets. A lot of females don't realize we can't go and tell our friends our problems. We don't talk about that. That's why a lot of men have stress. Some golf, some do strip clubs or whatever. Mine was going on the basketball floor. (The Psychic Scars That Shaped An NBA Star)

I think they mean "psychological scars." This piece on Gilbert Arenas' deadbeat mother that magically resurfaced after he became a wealthy NBA star actually paints a pretty good picture of his past. I don't usually care much about phenomenally wealthy basketball players' personal problems, but since Arenas' has single-handedly resurrected the Wizards, I'll try to care a little bit.

Ban proponents contend that indoor smoking imposes externalities on the nonsmoking patrons and employees of public establishments and is therefore an appropriate target for government regulation. But that's not right. When it comes to indoor smoking (as opposed to pollution outdoors), there is a single individual who ultimately bears the costs and benefits associated with smoke-filled air. (Against Restaurant Smoking Bans)

This is an obnoxiously economic commentary on the negative effects the public smoking ban will have in DC. Maybe he should have written this before they passed the upcoming ban.

Webb, a former U.S. Navy secretary, responded angrily Friday on Washington Post Radio, defending his novels as "serious" works and calling Allen's attack part of the senator's negative campaign that is devoid of ideas. "To take these things out and pull excerpts out and force them on people . . . is just a classic example of the way this campaign is run," Webb said. "Literature is literature. I've made my career as a novelist. George Allen doesn't have a record to run on." (Allen Blasts Webb Novels For Sex Scenes)

That's the sound of George Allen's political career going from presidential hopeful to teaching polysci 101 at The University of Richmond. Jordan wrote a good commentary on this issue Allen seems to have with fiction.

For Griffin, it is a tough choice -- balancing the undeniable success of the Hubble against the equally undeniable risks to the astronauts who would fix it, as well as the unforgiving schedule of shuttle flights needed to complete the international space station. (NASA Deciding Whether to Close a Window Into Space)

NASA is strongly considering letting the Hubble Space Telescope run its current battery to extinction (it reportedly has one or two years of power left) and simply letting it float in space as a shining beacon to the only project NASA ever completed that wasn't both a financial and scientific disaster. Instead, they'd apparently rather spend the money on continuing to fix the useless International Space Station. This shouldn't be a surprise, I suppose.

I don't like the web version's crossword puzzle at all.