09-10 Hoops Preview

I know college basketball does not start for a couple of months, but consider this my 2009-2010 college basketball preview. Also I hope you realized that my last post was the 2009-2010 women's college basketball preview.

I hope Arizona does well.

I hope Oregon does well.

I hope Lance Stephenson makes Brooklyn and Cincy proud and picks up at least 3 felonies by the time conference play starts.

The only other person I really care about is Louisville's Peyton Siva. I first saw Peyton play in an AAU tournament after his sophomore year of high school. He was a flashy, score-first point guard who wore the number 3. I was sold. I talked to him a couple times for meaningless interviews, but unfortunately he was too young to be a hilarious asshole yet (not everyone is blessed with the Marbury gene).

I saw him play again after his junior year and by this time he had several tats including "GOD'S GIFT" on his inner biceps. He also reps Seattle hard.

I rarely use Twitter, but because I can't fall asleep before 1 I found myself killing time on my Twitter homepage. I forgot I followed peytonsiva3, but I am glad I do because of his brilliants tweets like this:

I want to meet Obama. He like the coolest person. No homo
6:04 PM Aug 24th from TwitterFon

Another reason to root for Peyton is that he looks just like the dude from V for Vendetta.

Once again it's on

I used to claim that I started this blog to hone my writing, practice journalism and some other bullshit that I have since forgotten. Having unofficially given up on transitions, cohesive paragraphs and anything else that would moderately resemble legitimate writing, I present a post of trill stuff I did in Philadelphia.

- I have lived in New York for a couple months and I have never seen a celebrity on the streets. The first time I was in Philly within 24 hours I saw Jim Cramer. On my most recent trip, within 2 hours I ran into Danny Bonaduce. If you want to bump shoulders with A-listers and mega-celebrities, Philly is for you.

- My friend/Philly ambassador Tarny and I went to the Philadelphia Mint to see blue-collar Philadelphians do the US government minimum wage's worth of work just to make a dime. It was mildly exciting. I learned that the Philly Mint alone makes 6 billion pennies a year, which seems like a giant waste in every way imaginable.

- Every time I go to Philly I get a cheesesteak, enjoy a Rita's water ice, listen to a lot of State Property, see famous celebrities, and convert a lot of money to weird state quarters in the dope coin-converting machines Philly is famous for. Last time I was there I got some Guam jumpoffs, this time I got some American Samoas.

- I toured Tarny's dad's frozen-food warehouse, which has a dope roof that overlooks the city. I recommended Tar build a basketball court atop the roof to which Tar responded, "I would never do that because I would be too afraid my best friend would fall off trying to touch the top of the backboard. Then I would not be able to sleep at night and I'd spend the rest of my life working as a security guard at a local high school."


- The warehouse currently has a 60'x100' American flag painted on the side, which is cool, but not half as trill as the massive Iverson Reebok advertisements that once covered the wall. If I could go back to any time in history it would be living in Philly for AI's glory years.


-It goes without saying that Tar and I listened to Freeway's Flipside about 2o times.

- I rehearsed meeting Tarny's D1-hooping sister Rosie with her cardboard cut-out.

- Then I met the real deal, ate some cheesesteaks, and asked her a million questions about playing in Mac Court.

- We then bounced to the mall, found some Mike Vick tees and copped 3 purr. Didn't have to think twice. Done deal.

- The mall also had a jewelry shop selling a huge I-95 medallion. A Mike Vick tee and a I-95 pendant, this mall had everything I could ever ask for. Unfortunately these cz's were a monochromatic grey bling, unlike Joey Crack's multicolored pendant. The sales representative noticed my interest and asked if I wanted it. I told him that I needed the I-10 jumpoff. Which I did not know was a real thing until I saw K-Town wearing his.

- I'm overlooking the whole point behind wearing huge interstate inspired pendants is to make it known to anyone with 50 feet of you that you have moved cocaine along the I-95. A feat I have yet to accomplish and probably won't accomplish any time soon.

Linkstigating

As many of you know I am a huge Lang Whitaker fan. I have read his writing at SLAM since I was a freshman in high school and he's pretty much the reason (for better or worse) I studied journalism and wanted to be a writer.

I met with Lang two weeks ago to get some advice the writing industry and life. As an added bonus he bought me a great lobster melt from Cosi's that I will forever be grateful for. In short, Lang was a really good guy and he was quite helpful.

Lang was kind enough to run my notes from last Wednesday's Entertainers Basketball Classic in last Friday's "Links."

Below are some additional notes from last Wednesday that I did not e-mail to Lang.

************

-- After watching the first 15 minutes of the USA/Mexico game at work I ran across town to catch the second half at Nevada Smiths. Luckily I was one of the first 10 in a line at least 30 deep that got access to the bar for the second half. Sure I could have gone down the block, paid less for a beer and had a seat to watch the game, but the atmosphere would have not even been close.

-- I proudly ordered a Bud Light, blissfully ignoring the fact that the European company InBev owns Anheuser Busch. It was still a statement drink against all the Mexicans in the bar with their bottles of Corona.

-- The United States lost 2-1 and every USA-backer was forced to walk out of the bar to Mexico supporters chanting "¡Olé, Olé, Olé!"

-- Normally I'm a big Mexico fan, having grown up in the Southwest and picked up all my Spanish from Mexicans, but I left the bar furious and ready to join the Minute Men.

-- I bumped Shyne's first album on my Zune to fuel my rage, but it actually relieved my tension to be reminded that Shyne will be a free man on October 6th. I pray every day he post a "housing-wanted" ad on Craigslist and moves into my apartment.

-- I then hopped on the train uptown to catch the Entertainer's Basketball Classic semi-finals at Rucker Park.

......

Read the rest of my notes midway through this Links column.

**I'd also like to publicly hate on Gould for failing to edit my notes before I sent them to Lang. As a result there is a line that reads: "Even though it was a great guy that went down to the wire, Brandon Jennings did not look up once from his Sidekick."

It should read: "Even though it was a great game that went down to the wire, Brandon Jennings did not look up once from his Sidekick." Thank you Gould for making my man-crush on Brandon Jennings look even gayer than it already is.

Brandon Jennings and such

Because I feel some odd moral obligation to reblog everything Brandon Jennings. Here is his new Under Armor commercial, which even I will admit is incredibly retarded. I don't get the odd, fake-dunk sequences nor do I like the cheesy rap music that randomly begins playing.



I got this picture e-mailed to me from wherespmac-reader Brian. It's now my favorite picture of all time. Brandon to photographer: "Make it look as if I am talking to God, but at the same time make it understood that I am more important than God."



Props to Nathanial Butler/Getty/NBAE for the pic.

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In college I never really understood the role of teacher's assistants. I still really have no clue what they did. But I do know that my friend Tyler and I would have never had "Summer Heights High" years before it aired in America if it weren't for one of Tyler's pseudo-teachers telling him about the show during my junior year.

Furthermore I would have never known about Diggable Planets collaborating with Tide laundry detergent to make this commercial if it were not for my former TA linking to the advertisement on Facebook.



And just to prove that I will buy anything rappers sell, I bought the coldwater detergent. And because it was on sale at Target.

Jersey talk

This is a couple years old in internet time, but this is my favorite promotion in the history of sports. The Nets' "10 gets you 10!" promo pack gives 8 games (10 if you count match-ups against the Knicks and Clippers) and 5 of the greatest reversible jerseys of all time.

I'm a pretty big NBA fan, which means I watched almost every playoff game and waited in line for 6 hours to get tickets to the NBA Draft. But I still had no idea who #22 on the Nets was. According to their roster (oddly sponsored by Haier) it's Jarvis Hayes, who averaged 8.7 points for the Nets last year. He's also now my favorite Net since his jersey is one half of the Lebron James jersey included in the package.

There are also these new Portland jerseys which are amazing and hideous at the same time. They are right behind Brandon Jennings' 3 Milwaukee jerseys on my list of "Authentic jerseys I talk about buying every day but will never actually buy."

Conversations with Big Ra

Since I know most people now read this blog solely for a Big Ra anecdote, here it is. Big Ra told me Stack Bundles was his nephew. Big Ra is 36, Stack died when he was 24. I'm not quite sure how Big Ra is Stack's uncle, but there are a lot of things I don't understand in life.

While researching Mr. Bundles, I learned he only has a wiki entry in Deutch. And that is very reason many argue the European Union is ahead of us.

According his wiki (which I cheated and translated with Google), Juelz Santana, Jim Jones, Maino, Lupe Fiasco, Joe Budden and DJ Clue all attended his funeral. If each and everyone of those people are not at my funeral, then my whole life was a failure.

Gelfness

I kinda work/write for Gelf Magazine now. It's a dope online magazine that covers everything.

I interviewed Shawn Boburg for the magazine. Boburg writes for The Record in New Jersey and co-wrote "Becoming Manny" a biography on Manny Ramirez. The book was good, nothing great, but it was solid and I know know a lot about Manny's life pre-asterisk.

I interviewed Boburg in Washington Heights, Manny's residence between the Dominican Republic and Cleveland. It's where Manny grew up sharing a two bedroom apartment with his mom and two sisters and later where he shattered every record at George Washington High School. To my understanding GW is the Lincoln High School of baseball.

Boburg is a good guy and nice writer. Manny seems like a crazy dude and is a pretty good baseball player. But the real star of the book was Macaco, Manny's mentor, and arguably the trillest dude on earth.

Macaco is a good 30 years older than Manny, he was raised in the DR, then moved to Washington Heights where he helped found a baseball league and at one point coached six teams at once. He became Manny's mentor from early on and still is close with Manny. Since he has lived in the States, Macaco worked the graveyard shift in the local hospital. He still lives with his mother and niece in subsidized housing in Washington Heights. He's never asked Manny, who has roughly 94 zillion dollars, for a dime.

He sleeps a couple hours a day and spends the rest of his time hanging out at Peligro Sports, a baseball shop two blocks away from Manny's childhood home. Macaco is not an actual employee but he is always in the shop advising kids on what cleats and mitts to buy. Everyone in the neighborhood knows that if your glove breaks, Macaco will fix it for free.

With his royalties from the book, Macaco bought baseball gear to give out to the kids back in the DR.

I met Macaco in Peligro Sports when I was with Boburg and he was the coolest dude ever. A short old Latino guy, leathered skin, wearing some baggy jeans, a white tee with a blue Dodgers fitted resting atop his head.

Read my interview with Boburg here.

Also Gelf hosts a speaker series every Thursday night in DUMBO Brooklyn. If you live in the area come check it out. If you don't live here you can watch videos from the event online. My favorites of the events I have been to: New York Times writer Bruce Weber and Brooklyn Brewmaster Garrett Oliver.