I’m just telling this story here because I can, if you want to read some basketball thoughts move on down to the bullet points below.
Yesterday my wife and I hosted a small first birthday party for my daughter, just our families and a few of my daughter’s baby friends (or, more accurately, my wife’s mommy friends) having a picnic in a local park. Things are going great — babies are playing with toys (and not screaming much), adults are having conversations about things other than babies and all the Togo’s I thought I’d have to take home is being eaten.
About 15 yards from us are another couple families picnicking in the park, and their kids (I’d guess second or third graders) are throwing a football around and it’s all very Norman Rockwell.
Then one of the kids tries to punt the ball and it goes straight up into a tree — and hits a bee hive. Suddenly it’s like a seen from The Swarm in the park, with all the parents hustling their children away as fast as they can — including us — and me trying to do things like cover the fruit plate and anything else that may attract angry bees. Needless to say, a nice little family party came to a crashing halt.
In a few years we’re going to look back on this party and really laugh, especially since nobody got stung. Right now it just seems a little surreal.
• Laker coaching search update: Just hum the Jeopardy theme to yourself.
• This little NBA Finals stat from Dan Rosenbaum (posted on the APBR boards): In game two, San Antonio outscored Detroit 61-10 on the combination of three pointers and free throws. Then there’s this stat about the soon-to-be Finals MVP: Manu’s eFG% in game two was 100%. Insane. He is abusing Prince.
• Bill Plaschke takes a lot of flack in the blogsphere for his sports opinions. He usually deserves it. But I will say that his profiles/human interest stories are some of the best writing in the LA Times. If you haven’t read his piece on Gregg Popovich’s days as the coach at Pomona-Pitzer from Sunday, you need to. It will tell you a lot about the man and his coaching philosophy.
• Nobody enjoyed that piece more than my wife, who was a basketball team statistician at Pomona at that time and knew all the people interviewed.
• By the way, Pomona-Pitzer has one of the worst mascots in college athletics — the Sagehen. That’s an animal that plays dead in the face of danger.
• Hoopsanalyst has posted a piece on point guards in the draft that is fantastic. He likes Chris Paul one, followed by Jarrett Jack.
As a side note, I want to talk some draft at FB&G in the upcoming days, but I’ve been holding back some because a coach/team direction is more important. I think the Lakers biggest off-season need is at the point, but who would get drafted/picked up there is probably more influenced by the coach than any other position (Phil likes his points tall, so would he want someone like Felton?). To get around this, I’m going to start with big men. When not being chased by bees I started working on something over the weekend that I hope to post tomorrow.