Ad Nauseum: Cliff Paul, Hyundai Block Bullies, and Dr. Pepper Mountain Man

A few weeks ago, the Speed Stick Haircut Guy got a blog post all of his own. Let’s take a look at some more TV ads that have been burned into my brain (for better or for worse) lately…

Anyone who has watched any ESPN lately has seen the State Farm Cliff Paul commercials so many times by now that you almost want to just start calling him Cliff Paul in real life (ala Magic Johnson on ESPN’s NBA studio show). On the one hand, you have to like seeing CP3 sporting a porn star mustache, giant bifocals, and an argyle sweater. On the other hand, if you see these spots enough, for some reason you start to develop the inclination to punch Urkel-Chris Paul squarely in the jaw. As long as Paul keeps nailing postseason buzzer beaters though, he can make whatever kind of commercials he likes.

It’s hard to strike the perfect combination of cute, bada**, and funny, but Hyundai comes pretty close with their latest ad for their crossover, the Sante Fe. The imagery is just so good: a wronged kid and his p***ed off mom; the brothers doing curls and benching 450 in their driveway; the kid doing some serious welding; the kid wrestling a bear; the kid saving a guy 3 times his size from a burning building; the assembled team finishing the block bullies’ sentence at the end. It’s all great, and it shows that for a commercial to be good it almost has to be envisioned and developed like a little mini-movie. The only problem is that you almost immediately forget what the commercial is for in this case, but on an entertainment level alone I give it a 4.5/5.

Dr. Pepper started airing ads for their low-cal version, Dr. Pepper 10, several months ago in an attempt to appeal to men. The action hero and fantasy football wide receiver versions were aiight yet kind of weak at the same time. The different variations of the Dr. Pepper 10 Mountain Man crack me up every time though. A cross between Al Borland, Marty Stouffer from “Wild America,” and Chuck Norris, Mountain Man doesn’t need the technologies of the modern world. Mountain Man speaks the language of the forest animals, can carve out a canoe using his bare hands, and snacks on tree bark. Oh, and he has a sweet, sweet beard to boot. If Dr. Pepper 10 is good enough for this guy, it’s good enough for me…bold flavor indeed.

The Best Coast: Round 1 Western Conference Preview

Ok, I made it…and I am extra cranky from throwing my back out last night. So, Western Conference, I apologize if I my tone is slightly different than yesterday’s Eastern Conference Round 1 preview.

Oklahoma City Thunder vs. Houston Rockets (Thunder in 4)…Maybe my back-crankiness has given me a shorter fuse for some of those lower-seeded teams, and I think the Thunder will miss James Harden at some point in this postseason, but look for Kevin Durant, Russell Westbrook, and company to make quick work of the Rockets here.

San Antonio Spurs vs. Los Angeles Lakers (Spurs in 5)…A banged up Tony Parker and Manu Ginobili? No problem. Personally, I love the high-low offense that the Lakers have been using with Pau Gasol and Dwight Howard sans Kobe, but let’s get LA out of here already. No more Dwight-saga, no more Kobe tweeting coaching tips at halftime, no more of any of it. Enough…get out. And let’s give Tracy McGrady a 1st Round playoff series win for Pete’s sake. As lukewarm as an accomplishment as it would be given he was signed an hour ago and will probably only play 5 minutes a game, I always liked McGrady, and I wouldn’t mind seeing his name taken off this list.

Do your thing, T-Mac.

Denver Nuggets vs. Golden State Warriors (Nuggets in 7)…Could end up being the most fun series of the whole 1st Round. Hopefully Kenneth Faried won’t miss too much time, as injuries have started to pile up for the Nuggets, but I’m looking forward to Denver trying to score 130 points every night while Stephen Curry jacks up shot after shot without having any conscious whatsoever. Plus, this series features the circus act known as JaVale McGee. Need I say more?

Los Angeles Clippers vs. Memphis Grizzlies (Clippers in 6)…While I was rooting for LA to be matched-up with Denver in Round 1, Clips-Griz is nothing to sneeze at either. In the 1st Round of last year’s playoffs, these teams played a 7-game, knockout, drag out brawl of a series. The backbone of both teams is the same, but the Clippers have acquired even more talent (Lamar Odom, Matt Barnes, Grant Hill) while the Grizzlies have lost some pieces (Rudy Gay, Marreese Speights). While I think LA’s system is flawed and Memphis is built for playoff basketball, the Clippers’ depth of talent should be too much to overcome.

Looks like I made it through...Advil, ice packs, and gin, here I come!

Beast Mode: Round 1 Eastern Conference Preview

I have work to do, but I’m procrastinating as long as possible here today. With the NBA regular season wrapping up last night, let’s do an Eastern Conference 1st Round preview…I’m doing this assuming I will be able to do a Western Conference preview tomorrow. Knowing how this blog usually operates, don’t hold your breath though. And then you will see that my East Coast bias is in full effect.

Miami Heat vs. Milwaukee Bucks (Heat in 5)…If this was an old school best-of-5 1st Round series, I would give Miami the sweep easily, but I see the Bucks stealing 1 game. If it goes anywhere past 5, I will be stunned though. One of the things the Heat have traditionally struggled with is little quick guards, and Milwaukee has that in spades with Brandon Jennings and Monta Ellis. I can see them making a ton of 3’s one night maybe, but this is still Brandon Jennings and Monta Ellis after all, and Miami just finished probably the best regular season since the Jordan-Bulls.

Finish your breakfast, Miami.

New York Knicks vs. Boston Celtics (Knicks in 6)…Even with their age, injuries, and dependency on the 3-point shot, the Knicks should win this series easily. Boston always seems to sandbag going into the postseason though, and even without Rondo I suspect they are probably going to be a better playoff team than they showed throughout most of the regular season. Also, New York hasn’t won a playoff series in forever, and this isn’t Pierce and KG’s 1st rodeos. I think that’s worth a couple of wins at least.

Indiana Pacers vs. Atlanta Hawks (Pacers in 6)…Ladies and gentlemen, your 2013 NBA TV 1st round series! The Pacers, limited as they are in some areas, are built for playoff basketball. The Hawks, per usual come playoff time, are just good enough to make it interesting while still losing. That’s really all I have for you on this one. I would actually just rather watch Paul George and David West play a best-of-seven 2-on-2 series against Josh Smith and Al Horford (hence my NBA TV comment).

Seriously, can we just skip ahead to what will probably be a testy, physical, contentious Knicks-Pacers series in Round 2?

Brooklyn Nets vs. Chicago Bulls (Nets in 7)…Their contrast in styles would make the Bulls a much tougher 2nd Round matchup for the Heat, but on the other hand I think the Nets matchup pretty well with these Bulls. On the other other hand, I think Brooklyn will get smoked by Miami in Round 2. It just goes to show that styles really do make fights. You just have to wonder how the dynamic would have changed if a supposedly physically ready but mentally not ready Derrick Rose had returned a month or 2 ago. It increasingly looks like we will never know though.

As the World Turns: Reassessing My Lakers' Posts From This Past Year

When I left the house at 5:30am on Saturday for an all-day licensing exam, I lost contact with the outside world for about 14 hours. Getting back to my truck and turning on my phone, I was immediately inundated with alerts of text messages, emails, and notifications from every app known to mankind. You really don’t know how much contact you get throughout the day until you are forced to stash your mobile device somewhere without checking it for several hours. Such was how I learned that Kobe Bryant had torn his achilles the night before. Kobe’s injury brings to mind several things: Kobe’s future as a player, the Lakers’ plans for how to reshape their roster in the upcoming years, and, most selfishly, all of my wacko Laker comments and predictions dating back to last summer. As the default NBA soap opera franchise of this past year (the Miami Heat previously held that title), I’ve written about Los Angeles a bunch lately. However, my prognostications have ranged from spot-on to complete crap. Allow me to give myself a Laker report card…

On a sidenote, Mike D'Antoni's grade for his season as Lakers' coach? F----.

1. Dwight Howard will wind up being a Laker before all is said and done…B+…Howard’s 1st choice was always Brooklyn, but as those talks broke down it become increasingly clear that LA was the only logical destination. So, my prediction was on-point, but I will downgrade my mark because it was fairly obvious to begin with.

2. The Lakers could be really, really good…D…I did give the caveats about roster age, Howard coming off injury, and how the pieces would all fit together, but generally I thought the Lakers would immediately vault back into a top 3 team in the West even if it took a while for them to start to click. Well, playoffs or not, I couldn’t have been farther off.

3. The Lakers will only improve this year through some kind of blockbuster trade, preferably moving Pau Gasol…D…In my defense, I didn’t see Dwight Howard getting healthy or Kobe playing 47 minutes a night in the cards either. More on those in a sec…

4. Dwight Howard needs to tone down his on-court wardrobe…A+…This wasn’t so much as a prediction as a plea, and Howard has obliged. For the most part lately, he’s ditched the headband, arm sleeves, and ballerina tights. Lately, he’s been sporting a Underarmor style black compression shirt under his jersey, which looks odd given the league’s dresscode, but…

Ahh, looks much better. Coincidence that he's started to play better also? I think not.

5. Dwight Howard will never be the player he once was again, and the Lakers shouldn’t sign him to a max contract…F…Yikes…at the time I wrote this, Howard looked like a shell of his former self. Once an unmatched pairing of strength and athleticism for a paint player around the league, earlier this season Howard more resembled a taller Carlos Boozer who couldn’t shoot (yikes again). Shortly after writing that post (see the but at the end of the last bullet), Howard started to look a little more spry though, and now he is the human basketball wrecking ball that he was pre-back surgery again.

6. I’ve had enough of Kobe Bryant…A-…Also, not a prediction really, but how can I not bring this up when I wrote the post and Kobe goes down in a heap a month later?!? For all the sports-hate I have towards Kobe, I wasn’t wishing him to go out like that! And even worse, I doubt that this is him going out at all. Instead, it will probably be the last nail in the coffin for coach Mike D’Antoni (playoffs or not), who was giving Bryant so little rest the last few weeks that an injury was almost expected. But if I had to bet, Kobe will be back at some point next year, and we will have to hear “heartwarming” (I mean nauseating) Kobe-rehab stories for months on end…making the Lakers the NBA’s soap opera team for 1 more year at least.

Spare me.

It's All in the Cards: 2013 NCAA Tourny Recap

In a year where a number 9 seed, 2 number 4’s, and a number 1 overall seed that I didn’t even know was in the top 10 in the country made the Final 4, there were a lot of people that had their bracket busted pretty early on. I was actually in decent position to make some noise following a pretty weak opening weekend for my picks going into the Friday of the Sweet 16, but Michigan completed a wild comeback to eliminate Kansas, Michigan St. was ousted by Duke (long past my bedtime), and you could stick a fork in my bracket after that. According to ESPN’s Tournament Challenge, I only wound up in the 22nd percentile of brackets, which is pretty shabby considering how much basketball I watch. Still, the NCAA Tournament showed again that if you think you are pretty smart when it comes to this stuff it can knock you down off your high horse a few pegs.

F***...

After watching what can only be described as a watered down, talent depleted, poorly played tournament, it was nice to see an actual basketball game breakout in the finale. The pace was so fast and there were so few whistles going into the 1st half under-16 timeout that I thought I might be able to watch the game and get to bed before 11pm. That turned out to be very wishful thinking, but last night’s game reminded us of what college basketball can be when it’s really good: teams playing frenetically, going all-out on every possession, and making great play after great play (as opposed to taking the air out of the ball on offense and playing hack-a-everyone on D).

The fact that Louisville topped Michigan last night was not surprising…that they survived an unbelievable shooting display from a little-used reserve guard and the worst game of the year (and benching) from their best player was. Spike Albrecht scored almost half of the Wolverines' 1st half points out of nowhere, and Russ Smith seemed to try to do a little too much all night long, but eventually it seemed like the Cardinals team speed, defensive pressure, and their own hot shooting from a backup were too much for Michigan to overcome.

Luke Hancock shot Louisville back into the game at the end of the 1st half.

Now, we move onto next season. There’s NBA Draft early entries to determine, big time recruits to put under the microscope, and teams to hypothesize about. April 9, 2013: when every team in the country can be filled with optimism and everyone’s 2014 bracket is still unblemished.

Pre-Colonoscopy Retro Diary

[Started writing on Thursday] I'm generally pretty ok with my upcoming colonoscopy tomorrow afternoon. Some people might freak out at the thought of being knocked out or being probed like an alien, but I'm mostly alright with those aspects of it. What I'm most stressed out about is what my diet is supposed to be for the next 30 hours or so. The day before, you are only allowed some combination of the following for breakfast: 1 hardboiled egg, white toast with nothing on it, an 8 ounce can of Ensure, low sodium chicken soup, Jell-O, and clear liquids. Sounds like a meal fit for a nuclear holocaust, right? To make it more bearable, I'm going to spread it out over the morning (f*** eating this all at 1 sitting). Well, it gets better...no solid food for lunch or dinner the day before (clear liquids only). And nothing but that bowel flush stuff at night and the morning of.

I know people have had to go longer without food or drink (just ask Krissy) for medical situations, but I am admittedly a pretty big baby when it comes to food. If I go half an hour longer without eating than I want to, cranky and grumpy only begin to describe my mood. I can only imagine what I will be like tomorrow at around 12pm (my appointment's scheduled for 2)...God help us all. So, as a way to deflect the stress of my colonoscopy-fast over the next day or so, I figured I would do a pre-colonoscopy retro diary post. What could be more fun than that? Right? Right? No? Ok...

Oh, shut the f*** up, Condescending Wonka.

Thursday

5:45am - Woke up, dressed, and drank my 1 allotted can of Ensure for the day. These doctors know I'm a big dude, right? I could down 4 or 5 of these at a time, easy. Drinking Ensure makes me feel like a menopausal lady...actually, wait, this s*** tastes pretty good! I can really only have 1?

7:26am - Got to work a few minutes ago. Time to have my dry, bland, tasteless toast. Mmm mmm, good.

9:01am - Jell-O snack pack thingy...did I mention that I hate Jell-O and have always hated Jell-O even when I was a little kid? I didn't? Ok, well, I do. Thanks, colonoscopy.

10:02am - Never in my life have I gobbled up chicken noodle soup so ferociously. That probably doesn't bode well for my impending hunger issues.

11:34am - 2nd Jell-O and 2nd can of chicken noodle soup equals my last meal of the day, as I just snuck it in before noon. F*** off, colonoscopy instructions...you don't know when I eat breakfast!

1:56pm - My belly is starting to gurgle in that "feed me" sort of way...and so it begins.

Mmmhmm, mmmhmm, yep.

Friday

7:47am - Notice the huge gap in time there between entries? Well, blame that on a massive headache, drinking that bowel prep garbage juice, and then sitting on the toilet all night because of said bowel prep. At this point, I could probably eat a horse, but I actually don't feel terrible hunger-wise. I think my body has adjusted and is going into digging into your reserves mode...like a grizzly bear who's hibernating for the winter. I'm taking my 2nd and final dose of this bowel prep drink as I type this sentence. I cannot stress this point enough: it tastes awful. If anyone who has had it before tries to tell you differently, they either took a different one than the one I'm taking or they don't know what they're talking about. Krissy sipped it and tried to tell me it wasn't that bad, and I wanted to smack her...seriously.

1:10pm - In the waiting room now at the medical center. After my umpteenth poop, I don't think I have anything left in my body to emit. Hunger is starting to hit me again. Let's get this show on the road.

2:01pm - Getting gowned-up...let's do this.

4:00pm - Where am I? Did you guys start yet? You're finished?!?

4:05pm - Hitting up IHOP now. I'm ordering 1 of everything.

As always, Ron Swanson knows what's up.

The outcome was a little bit of good news, bad news. The bad news? I have ulcerative colitis. The good news? It looks like that's all I have. It means that most likely this is going to be an ongoing issue for the rest of my life. However, it should only be intermittent periods of "flare-ups" followed by longer periods of "remission," where I could theoretically eat or drink just as I did BC (before colitis). So, at the end of the day, I'm going to live. This is treatable and manageable, and more than that it's a load off my mind...and, therefore, a load off of my stomach.

The NBA Shouldn't Be Brittney Griner's Measuring Stick

Ok people, let’s back the Brittney Griner truck up a little bit here. With Griner’s college career surprisingly and abruptly ending this Sunday, talk has now turned to her pro prospects…well, her NBA prospects, that is.

Somebody probably would have went there eventually anyway, but we can probably blame Mark Cuban on this one, as he openly admitted he would at least be willing to give Griner a look at this year’s NBA Draft. While Cuban sounded sincere in his comments stating that he would evaluate her just like any male player, there’s no doubt this would be the publicity stunt to end all publicity stunts if he went through with it.

Stunt would only begin to describe it.

Brittney Griner ended her college career as the 2nd leading scorer and number 1 all-time shotblocker in NCAA women’s history. Her combination of size and athleticism is unlike anything the women’s game has ever seen. But at 6-8 and 208 lb., it would be silly to trot her out there in an NBA uniform.

This is not meant to be some sexist rant, but in terms of all things physical men and women are just different, and (as Jamele Hill points out) why does Griner have to prove herself against men to validate what kind of player she is?

Griner’s size, strength, and jumping ability allow her to dominate the girls’ game, but let’s look back at that height and weight. Consider Nicolas Batum of the Portland Trailblazers. Batum measures in at a similar 6-8 and 200 lb., but he’s a long, agile, leaper that plays mostly the 2 and the 3. Would Griner be able to check someone with that kind of foot speed? Does Griner even have the quickness or the ability to transform her game into a wing player? If you kept her as an inside player, and if we stick to the same team, she would have to check 6-11, 240 lb. LeMarcus Aldridge. For some reason, I think you would see a lot Griner stuffed into the basket stanchion on defense and not able to do much of anything on offense.

Picture Griner trying to box out someone like Reggie Evans...damn.

When I suit up to play pick-up basketball with friends, Krissy always plays, and she more than holds her own, but she is a guard. It would be much tougher for her if she was an inside player and had to body-up guys or try to get her shot off inside against bigger players. Griner doesn’t have that luxury. (For the record, I have said 100 times that if Krissy was in a guy’s body she would be the best player out of my entire circle of friends. She would probably be a few inches taller, stronger, and would be able to jump higher. All of that combined with her skill set would have the rest of us bamboozled.)

But that’s kind of the point, isn’t it? Men and women are just physically different. Why can’t we appreciate each as their own entity and on their own merits?

The thing is that I, much like Nancy Lieberman, fully support Griner’s decision to try if she so chooses. And if she happened to somehow stick in the NBA on her own volition, I would gladly insert my foot in my mouth and heap her with all the requisite praise. But personally, I’m kind of on Connecticut head coach Geno Auriemma’s side on this when he said it would be a “sham” if she made an NBA roster…more like a traveshamockery if you ask me.

Griner will in all likelihood be the number 1 pick in the upcoming WNBA Draft and, barring something catastrophic, will have a great career in the women’s game. But she doesn’t need to be thrust into an NBA jersey just for the spectacle of it all. She should focus on becoming the best women’s basketball player she can be. How well she stacks up against the boys is irrelevant in defining her as a player.