Posted in Sports, Videos on July 3rd, 2008 by Hyphen
New Nike commercial, greatness. I got dunked on once…by Donald Watts…I was a high schooler at the time though. Never had it happen again, so I’m aight.
Shout to the homies Owen and Dave for being on the receiving end, pause, of the two nastiest dunks I’ve seen from a game I was playing in (Dave even got it on his birthday…ouch). Special shout to Evan for selling Owen out on that play by letting his dude go backdoor, errr…second pause. Final shout to Alex who did this to people on the regular back in our P-P days.
This is literally the worst day in Seattle sports history. If you haven’t heard, the City of Seattle and the ownership group for the Seattle Supersonics NBA franchise agreed to terms yesterday that released the team from the last 2 years of its lease at Key Arena, effectively ending 41 years of storied tradition the Supes built in my city. If you want all the gory details, hit ESPN. If you want to see the carnage as it was unfolding, read this brilliant Bill Simmons piece.
I could write a book on this travesty, but here’s the Cliff Notes version. The head of Starbucks, Howard Schultz, bought the Sonics in 2001 and aside from some minor success, ran the team into the ground. Despite having a net worth of over a billion dollars, Schultz worried about losing a few million and decided to sell the Sonics to an ownership group from Oklahoma City, even though it was widely known that they would attempt to relocate the franchise to their hometown. He could have sold the team to other local business people and prevented this all from happening, but he declined. He’ll forever have the legacy of Seattle’s biggest traitor.
Instead, from day one of their ownership, Clay Bennett, Aubrey McClendon (who was the 8th largest donor to the Swift Boat Veterans who smeared John Kerry in 2004 and is currently raking in a fortune as the head of Chesapeake Energy while we pay $4.50 a gallon), and the rest of The Professional Basketball Club, LLC, lied to the city and people of Seattle, promising that they would do everything possible to keep the team here. Rather than keep their word, they traded behind the scenes emails that later became public about how they were planning on moving the Sonics all along, and literally laughed about keeping it a secret. At the same time, they snuggled up to Bennett’s long time friend, NBA Commissioner David Stern.
After doing everything in their power NOT to keep the Sonics in Seattle (including a Major League style fire sale that led to the Sonics posting their worst record in franchise history last year), the city was left with one last option: sue the team to ensure that they play out the final years of their lease at Key Arena or settle with them for a barrel of money and hope to receive an expansion franchise (or steal someone else’s team…hello Memphis) in the years to come. Rather than irrevocably damage their relationship with Stern and the league, the City of Seattle caved and gave up the team for $45 million dollars, or $75 million if another NBA franchise isn’t put in place within 5 years. This doesn’t even cover the economic benefits of having the Sonics here, let alone the non-financial value the team had to the city and residents. There’s also no guarantee that we’ll get another team, and one of the greatest cities in the world (not to mention the 13th biggest market in America) will be without professional basketball for years to come.
In layman’s terms: a bunch of really rich people decided to become local heroes by going to another city, swindling more rich people and an inept local government, and stealing a franchise that had been there for 41 years. In the process, they ripped out the hearts and souls of the people in that city, including my own.
Teams have relocated in other sports and other cities in the past, but never under such devious and unscrupulous auspices. It’s unfathomable that a city as brilliant as Seattle is going to be without an NBA team, and it’s a warning shot to sports fans everywhere. If a city’s franchise can be hijacked and stolen away in broad daylight, it sets a frightening precedent.
Worst of all, this has a real effect on the kids in this area. I grew up obsessed with basketball and shaped almost every aspect of my life around it. The friends I made, the memories I had, in full, the person I have become…are all direct results of growing up in the Seattle basketball community. It’s part of who I am. Now similar kids won’t have this opportunity here. Dads can’t bond with their sons at Sonics games like I did with my stepdad. That’s gone. The 8th graders I coached this past year are absolutely crushed, and all because a few rich people decided to screw us all over.
I’ve been doing my best not to swear on this site (no easy feat on a hip-hop blog), but this is the first time where it’s completely justified, and in fact, too lenient.
Fuck you Howard Schultz. Fuck you Clay Bennett. Fuck you David Stern.You stole basketball from the city of Seattle and you stole memories from me. You extinguished the possibility of life changing experiences for future generations and I hate you all.
(NBA Finals, 1996. The start of summer after 8th grade. We were louder than the PA announcer. I’ll never forget it.)
Posted in Sports, Videos on July 1st, 2008 by Hyphen
I’m a little ashamed that as big of a sports fan as I am, I managed to go the entire Euro 2008 soccer tournament without mentioning it in a single entry. It’s even more blasphemous because I watched pretty much every game and saw every goal. When you’re a Western European mutt like me, Euro is great because you can root for a handful of teams. My English side couldn’t cheer since they choked in qualifying, but I could claim allegiance to Italy, Sweden, France, and the eventual champion, Spain. Still waiting for my Maltese homies to qualify for a major tournament…ok…I’d be happy if they could win a single game. Actually, maybe I should go try out for them…
Anyway, I won’t bore you with all my thoughts on the tournament, but basically, it was great. If you missed it, here’s a good mix of someone’s top 10 goals, and I agree with most of ’em:
(if you weren’t sick of this song already, you will be now)
Daniel Guiza staying onside and clinically scoring off Cesc Fabregas’ dime
Lukas Podolski cleaning up some sloppy German play with a sweet volley
Arjen Robben drilling home a stunner from an impossible angle
Nihat Kahveci kissing the underside of the bar to cap Turkey’s stunning comeback
Philipp Lahm opening up his body to send the keeper the wrong direction & win the game
Wesley Sneijder poking home a one time effort to complete a “total football” goal
Zlatan Ibrahimovic audaciously scoring far post with the wrong foot from that angle
Wesley Sneijder scoring my favorite goal of the tourney with a long range bomb
Michael Ballack blasting a free kick that continues to rise all the way to the top right corner
Off the top of my head, the only one I would have included that they left out was Andrei Arshavin‘s goal against Sweden. That was end to end brilliance. Funny that Spain only has one representative on the list, but their goals weren’t necessarily that amazing. They just played the best football over the course of the tournament, hands down. Good stuff.
Tried “Angie” for the first time tonight. Pretty simple:
For time. Complete all reps of each exercise before moving to the next.
100 pull ups
100 push ups
100 sit ups
100 squats
I got 26:16. Those pull ups are brutal, they took half my time alone. I need to learn how to kip. I’ll shoot for 25 minutes next time. Try this one. It’s fun and all you need is a bar.
I think I’ll keep posting workout stuff until I can convince one of our Seattle readers to come check out the free crossfit workout at 11 AM on Saturdays @ Foundation Fitness. Then I won’t jam up the blog with the CF workouts I try, since I know some of y’all will get all pissy if I don’t keep this music related. Then again, this is my world and music’s only a small part of it. We’ll see. Anyway, last night’s workout was “Fight Gone Bad” (check the video above for an explanation of each station).
3 rounds, one-minute stations for reps, one-minute rest between rounds:
wall ball, 16lbs
sumo dead lift high pull, 70lbs
box jump, 20″
push press, 65lbs
row (count calories)
Add up every rep you complete (and every calorie for the row) and that’s your final score. I got 235. Next goal will be 240. Try this one out if you can, it’s a crazy workout. Plus it only takes 20 minutes! Can’t beat that right?
If you can’t try it in your current gym, seek out your nearest crossfit spot. Seattle people, holler @ me if you want to come to Foundation Fitness sometime. We had Ricky Pharoe get hooked recently and DV-One will be checking it out soon. Official Seattle hip-hop workouts, son. Don’t be squishy for the summer.
For those of y’all who know me personally, I’m sure I’ve talked your ears off about CrossFit workouts. My man Dru put me on to them recently, and basically, they’re high intensity, short duration workouts that really kick your ass. It takes a minute to describe in detail, but if you enjoy working out, I can’t recommend em enough. They’re way more efficient and rewarding than normal lifting. If you’re in Seattle, come check out the free Saturday workouts at Foundation Fitness every week at 11 AM. Just check their blog for more info.
For my fellow crossfitters, I’m going to try to put my results up as much as possible. Today’s workout was “Kettlebell Hell”:
5 minutes max kb swings waiter’s walk to stoplight and back (approx. 400m)
2 minutes max kb swings
waiter’s walk to stoplight and back
I got 172/74 with the 16kb bell (~35lbs). Pretty good effort for the first time doing this one, though the left arm portion of the waiter’s walk was killin me. Great workout though, try it!
