Consistently inconsistent

 So remember a few days ago, when the Blob tsk-tsked at all the prisoner-of-the-moment types who were saying the Warriors were in trouble because the Celtics beat them in Game 1 of the NBA Finals?

("No," you're saying)

Well, I did. Actually what I said was, in Game 2, Steph Curry would probably score eleventy-hundred points, and the Warriors would drop 29 threes or something, and they would win, I don't know, 176-12 something.

Turns I was off  a tad.

Turns out the Warriors only won Game 2 by 19, 107-88, after leading by as many as 30 points in the fourth quarter. And Steph didn't go for eleventy-hundred points, only 29. And the Warriors would not drop 29 threes, only 15.

On the other hand, 36-year-old Al Horford did not score 26 points with six threes for the Celtics, either, the way he did in Game 1. This time he scored two points on four shots. And he didn't attempt a three after making 6 of 8 in Game 1.

In other words, he was the very archetype for these NBA playoffs, which have been nothing if not completely inconsistent. Team A blows out Team B in one game; Team B blows out Team A in the next. It's been a special circle of hell the all the instant analysts out there, those professional sports watchers who can sniff Portents and Omens at 20 paces -- even if those Portents and Omens only have a shelf life of 24 hours or so.

More astute observers would have observed the obvious, which is that Al Horford wasn't going to put up 26-and-six again, at least not in this lifetime. And the likelihood the Celtics as a team would go 21-of-41 from the arc, the way they did in Game 1, was perilously close to zero.

And so, on to Game 3. On to Boston.

Where the Celtics will adjust the way the Warriors adjusted in Game 2, and Boston will slow down Curry just enough to keep the Warriors from putting together one of their fabled nuclear runs. And the home team will pull out the win by, oh, let's say eight or 10 points.

After which the instant analysts will once more commence with their "See, this is how you beat the Warriors" narrative.

At least that will be consistent.

A brief pause for some newsie stuff

(Which means all of you who think sports journalists talking about sports journalism issues is boring are hereby excused.)

(But I expect that paper I assigned last week to be on my desk by the end of class tomorrow.)

(And no "Awww, gee" and "No fair" out of any of you. Also no "Yay! No Critical Sportswriter Theory junk!" until you're out of earshot.)

Now, where was I?

Oh, yeah: The NBA Finals. Specifically, how the NBA is conducting the Finals vis-a-vis media coverage, which involves impaling local media outlets with a giant screw.

This upon seeing a tweet from Kylen Mills of KRON4 News in San Francisco, expressing "disappointment" that the NBA essentially shut out local media for the two Finals teams, the Golden State Warriors and Boston Celtics. Local media outlets that covered the teams all season were barred from floor or interview room access. Instead, parachuting bloggers, podcasters and writers from around the country were basically given their seats.

Me?

I think Mills is showing admirable restraint in calling this disappointing. It's an abomination, is what it is. Also a damn disgrace. Also complete unadulterated bull you-know-what.

Local media that have covered a team all season should be at the front of the credential line, not the back. And they for damn sure should have floor and interview room access before some blogger from Mom's Basement, N.J. 

And, yes, I know, it's 2022, gramps, and the blogger from Mom's Basement probably gets goo-gobs of hits per day. Same with the podcasters. And why don't you teleport back to 1955 and go set some more hot type, old-timer?

Well, harrumph to that, to continue this theme. I don't care if Mom's Basement gets hits/viewers from beyond the grave, he or she is still a guest in the NBA Finals home. And the local media are the homeowners. How do they get assigned to the guest quarters?

Which, based on a photo Mills tweeted, are up in the nosebleeds at the end of the floor. You can almost see the game from up there, if you squint hard enough. Even then it looks like two ant colonies fighting it out.

Reminds me of where my seat was in Indianapolis for the 2000 NBA Finals between the Pacers and the Lakers. I was up in the rafters, too, which was OK because I was Indiana media but not Indy media, and my paper didn't cover the Pacers on a consistent basis. God knows where the NBA would have put reporters like me today.

Somewhere in auxiliary parking, I'm guessing.

In Fort Wayne.

Muzzling dissent

 Florida Man struck again this week, but this time it wasn't because he went swimming in a meat suit in a pond full of gators. This time he accidentally did the right thing, minus the principle involved.

This Florida Man is named Ron "Gossamer Skin" DeSantis, Il Duce of Florida and one who does not like being disagreed with. This makes for some silt-brained decisions on occasion, like going to war against Disney because Disney didn't like Gossamer Skin's law banning any mention of those horrible gay people in Florida classrooms.

It takes a special kind of stupid to pick a fight with Disney in Florida.  But no one ever said DeSantis wasn't special -- if in a way you generally don't like to see in a public official.

And so, he's at it again.

This time he's taking a swipe at one of the state's two major-league baseball teams, because it had the gall to publicly express views which irked him. In the wake of the latest slaughter of innocents in Buffalo and Uvalde, Texas, the Tampa Bay Rays spoke out against gun violence in America, a completely reasonable stance given the circumstances.

DeSantis didn't like that. So he vetoed a line item for $35 million to build the Rays a new training facility.

Of course, DeSantis didn't say it was an attempt to muzzle dissent, even though the timing clearly established it was. He said his veto was because he doesn't believe in giving taxpayer dollars to professional sports facilities.

He's absolutely right about that. Taxpayer dollars shouldn't go toward funding new stadiums and the like, for the Rays or any other pro sports entity. Especially when the owners of those entities make piles of jack from their hosts, directly and indirectly, and can easily foot the bill for facilities that -- let's face it -- primarily benefit only themselves.

Who knows. Maybe DeSantis actually does believe that.

But somehow I think it's more about punishing those who displease him. And about juicing a 2024 presidential run by sucking up to a political base with a taste for thin-skinned bullies. 

Florida Man For President.

Sings, don't it?

The Finals, finally

 The NBA Finals kicked off on the west coast last night, and you know what that means. It means we get to learn again the formula M = DE2, and its corollary, OMIGOD (TEAM NAME) IS UNBEATABLE!!

"M = DE2" is short for "Momentum Doesn't Exist." The corollary, as of last night, is OMIGOD THE CELTICS ARE UNBEATABLE!!"

That's because they went out to Golden State's barn last night and got down 15 late in the third quarter, and then holy crap did you SEE that?

Yes, we did. We saw the Celts blow away the Warriors 40-16 in the fourth quarter, and saw 36-year-old Al Horford stick six threes on his way to 26 points, and saw the Celtics take Game 1 120-108. The 40-16 fourth quarter was the most lopsided final 12 minutes in NBA Finals history. And it happened even though Steph Curry scored eleventy-hundred points for the Warriors, although it was actually 34. 

It also happened even though the Warriors hit 19 threes as a team, which is completely ridiculous.

And so of course the living-in-the-moment narrative now is the Celtics ain't pretty but they sure are gritty, and the Warriors won't be able to match their grit, and Boston's D will prevail because it will wear down the elegant Warriors in a seven-game series they way it eventually wore them down last night.

This being the NBA, where every game is new miniseries, you can probably forget about all of that.

Because you know in Game 2 Curry will go for eleventy-hundred-and-one points, and the Warriors will drop 29 threes, and Golden State will win 176-12 or something. And the narrative will instantly become Boston can't sustain enough defense over a seven-game series to stop the Warriors, and that's why the Warriors win this.

Then everyone will go back to Boston for Game 3, and ...

Well. You know.

Bee, plus

 I'll put this in NASCAR terms this morning, for those of you who'll see the words "National Spelling Bee" and flee the premises because it's like, you know, spelling, and that lives next door to grammar, and who needs school junk on the third of June?

So, let's say it this way: The National Spelling Bee had its first-ever green-white-checker finish last night.

In other words, it went to a spell-off, and a 14-year-old from San Antonio (Harini Logan) beat a 12-year-old (Vakrim Raju) by correctly spelling 21 of 26 words in 90 seconds. Vakrim got 15 of 19 right n the same time.

Don't know if the NSB people went this route because of what happened a few years ago, when eight champions were crowned because the little brainiacs basically defeated the dictionary. They all kept spelling every word right, even the made-up ones, and finally the organizers said "Screw it, then, ya little goobers. You can be co-co-co-co-co-co-co-co-champions for all we care."

And so, the spell-off. Which, like the green-white-checker in NASCAR, the Blob has mixed feelings about.

On the one hand, at least someone (as opposed to someones) actually won. 

On the other ... well, Harini won despite misspelling FIVE WORDS.

This just seems wrong to me.

I want to see the nation's champion speller win because she beat her opponent over the head with "cernuous." Or "auguillette." Or "ba'mla'hoc," which is a word I just made up but which sounds kinda Klingon-y to me.

It means "A freaking spell-off? Come on, man!"

Indeed.

Parenting fail, part 1,265

 It's become axiomatic here in America the self-absorbed that asshat parents are everywhere, which is why there are no longer youth/high school umpires and referees everywhere. The latter are getting run off by the former, and it's become not just an issue but a critical one.

 Today's example?

For that we dip into the ranks of the minor celebrities, which is to say the Magic Twitter Thingy and national sports talk radio. It seems Clay Travis, Trumper sports-talker, got thrown out of his son's Little League game after railing at some poor umpire who made what Daddy Clay considered a horrible call.

Then he went on his national radio show to talk about it, apparently believing he was standing up for truth, professionalism and the American Way.

Actually all he was doing was demonstrating what a garbage parent he is. More on that in a bit.

For now, here's some poor Little League ump getting called out nationally for not being "professional" and not earning his paycheck. I'm sure that will be massive incentive for this guy to continue umping Little League games, oh, you bet. 

I'm also sure I can't imagine anything as unprofessional (since Clay was talking about "professionalism") as using your radio platform to air a private grievance.

I also can't imagine a greater parenting fail.

Because I keep thinking about Clay's kid, and wondering what lesson he was learning, watching his dad harass an ump and get ejected from the premises. That if an ump or ref makes a bad call, you should throw a mad fit? Get thrown out of the game? This is the example you want to set as a parent?

So, there's that.

There's also this: Justifying your misbehavior by claiming these Little League umps are all professionals and should earn their apparently massive paychecks by being competent. Gotta say, that one made me laugh out loud. Hell, a lot of these kid baseball umps are barely more than kids themselves, and all they're doing is trying to earn a little spending money for the summer. Because a little spending money is all they're making.

Like they need asshat parents yelling at them as if they just blew a critical call in the seventh game of the World Series?

No wonder the ump/ref shortage has gotten so bad entire swaths of games are being canceled because the organizers couldn't scare up game officials.

Sad thing is, the day's gonna come when Clay's son shows up for a Little League game and there won't be a game because there are no umps available. The sadder thing is, Clay (or any other asshat parent) won't realize they're largely to blame.

Meanwhile the kids will shrug and go looking for ice cream. Because, you know, sometimes it's the kids who get all the perspective.

Your completely catty post for today

 They say if you live long enough nothing will eventually surprise you, because if you haven't seen everything by a certain point you've at least heard about it. This is especially true for me these days, having seen a President Donald Trump and some of the nitwits he's helped get elected to Congress.

Once upon a time Congress was Daniel Webster and William Jennings Bryan and Margaret Chase Smith. Now it's Marjorie Taylor Greene, last seen predicting on her podcast that straight people would be extinct in 50 or so years.

Lord give me strength.

And also, thank the Lord I can still be surprised at my advanced age, because something happened in England the other day that made me say "Now I've finally seen everything."

What happened was, a professional athlete got sentenced to 180 hours of community service.

For kicking his cat.

Yes, it's true. Kurt Zouma, a defender for West Ham in the Premier League, was sentenced in Thames Magistrates Court after pleading guilty to two counts of "causing unnecessary suffering to protected animals" -- the protected animal in this case being his cat, which Zouma is caught on video punting across the room, slapping and pelting with shoes.

"Why would someone videotape that, Mr. Blob?" you're asking now.

And the answer is, "Because it's 2022 and everyone videotapes everything."

In any event, Zouma now joins Michael Vick in the Athletes Who Are S***heads To Animals Hall of Fame, and he's banned from owning cats for the next five years. This is not nearly long enough in the Blob's estimation. I'm a dog person, but I also have a soft spot for cats, and I think the ban should be for life. I also think someone should periodically punt Zouma across the room, slap him and throw shoes at him, but that's just me.

(Actually, what I really think is Zouma should be dropped into a pit of feral cats with sharp claws who are really, really pissed. The court could decree how much blood loss would be a suitable amount.)

(Also, he gets a year's hard labor cleaning especially gross catboxes. Sounds right to me.)