A view from the sports couch (Mon., Oct. 27) The Los Angeles Lakers are feuding. With new superstars Karl Malone and Gary Payton on the roster, the Lakers are the odds-on favorite to win the NBA title. But the pissing match between current Laker stars Shaq O’Neal and Kobe Bryant is reaching a new level. Both Shaq and Kobe have been fighting in the background over the past few seasons over whose team it is: Shaq’s or Kobe’s. Both players have enormous egos and both believe they are the ...
Tonight, the NBA began its 2003-04 season... with grade-A, 100 score by Whine Magazine, vintage whining from the Los Angeles Lakers' Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O'Neal. On ESPN, Bryant — after head coach Phil "Guru" Jackson told the team to shut up to the press about this — called O'Neal "childlike," "unprofessional," "selfish," "fat" and "jealous." He also took the 7-foot-2 bohemeth to task for overplaying his sore toe and coming into training camp overweight and out of shape. Ah man... Please,...
If I happen to describe you in this, I'm sorry. Well, maybe not. Sports Parents who need to curl up and die: 1. Swim parents. I find that the more elitist the sport, the more money needed to engage in the sport, the more isolated the sport is to society and the more egotistical the participant, you'll find the worst parents. In swimming circles, the swim parent is the norm. To everyone else, this parent is the worst. "Why isn't my child in the paper?" "He's just as much as athlete as a footb...
This was taken from my column, And Now…, in The Daily World, Aberdeen, WA, published April 20. Copyright to The Daily World and me. In Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, the story begins with Alice chasing the white rabbit and embarking upon a magical journey. On Feb. 10, the story of Ohio State running back Maurice Clarett begins with him chasing the white rabbit of National Football League draft eligibility and embarking upon a legal journey. A lawsuit in U.S. District Court from Clarett...
Over the past several months, the spectre of steroids has placed a heavy shadow on Major League Baseball and a phantom in the corner of professional sports in the United States. Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire, Jason Giambi — three big-time baseball players whispered about by fans, media, other players as being "on the juice." Others in baseball, football, track & field, swimming, other speed-timed sports are also marked as "juicers," truthfully or not. Any sport associated to the IOC has testing...
Seattle at Cincinnati (This is an occasional blog entry on the NFL, usually Seattle Seahawks games. Most of these will be from my couch, drive by drive observations. This is a good exercise for me in following a game from beginning to end while analyzing what’s going on on the fly. It’s like exercise for the sports brain, really.) Seattle’s offense, engineered by QB Matt Hasselbeck and RB Shaun Alexander, takes on Cincinnati’s defense, led by head coach/defensive guru Marvin Lewis, at the ...
A quick post: Joe Namath's incomplete pass on ESPN (audio) — http://home.kc.rr.com/mkbaslee/namath.mp3 Rob
On television and live, a lot of weird was taking place in the NFL. Five laterals, wide right -- The New Orleans Saints, still clinging onto a playoff berth, broke out a five lateral last-second play to get to within one point of Jacksonville on Sunday. This was a play that was remeniscent of "The Big Play" in 1983 -- five laterals by Cal players to defeat the John Elway-led Stanford team in "The Big Game" in Berkeley. A wonderful play that makes the game great. Then, Saints kicker John Car...
Lawrence Taylor sat down with Mike Wallace of "60 Minutes" and told him and the world of his excesses in the National Football League. Lawrence Taylor, better known as LT, is considered one of the best football players of our generation, a defensive player who changed the way the game of pro football was played on the field. And, according to his book, he changed the way the game of pro football was play off the field, too. Drugs, hookers, parties, sex, guns, more drugs, more sex, more hookers ...
It has been a tough 72 hours for Tiger Woods, whose dirty laundry was tossed into the wind storm created by the lowest-common denominator media (aka TMZ). Reading through the commentary over the past 24 hours on Woods, the aftermath and the apology, the consensus theory is that he's human. Really. It took this fucking long for people to realize that Tiger Woods - the golfer, the icon, the video game avatar - is human? As if his knee injury-riddled victory in the U.S. Open didn't prove it, it ...