Foul… Foul… Foul!

In the essence of equality, I say I was being cheated out of my essays. It would have been an easy 85 out of 100 in Ancient Political Theories, only to crumble right from the start because of my short and undeviating paragraph(s). I know a thing or two about Plato, I knew that he was a geek, I mean a Greek. I knew that his real name was Aristocles, I also knew that when he said, “Man from birth is pregnant of the truth” he meant that we don’t have to be such numb nuts and be totally clueless about the world but instead use our brain and willpower to achieve a greater understanding of the biosphere around us… well since I practically answered all the ancient questions that our professor gave us, why did she still flunk me? Did my short and concise answers not satisfy her expectations? I read the instructions carefully, I'm not blind nor do I have poor eyesight, I clearly remember it read: ANSWER AS BRIEFLY AND ACURATELY AS YOU CAN… Oh well, next time around I’ll run the whole page for you Madame.

The Fan

In case some of you still don’t know, I am a dedicated basketball fan. I follow the regular season in any way I can, on magazines, on TV, on the Internet. Now since it’s the preseason, I'm going back to work again. Watching summer camp games, monitoring the free agency, watching for activity around the league, trades, free agent signings, the NBA draft. I hope I'll see Kobe in an orange prison jumpsuit soon.

Revamped Bulls

I am a true blue Chicago Bulls fan; I don’t care if you say they are a legitimate losing team, screw that idea coz I still believe in them. I watch them year in and year out even after the post-Jordan era. I watched them on TV, I watched with excitement and hope when Elton Brand got drafted and won the ROTY award, I watched Jamal Crawford pour 50pts against Vinsanity and the Raptors, I watched Dalibor Bagaric make 10pts in a row during garbage time against the Lakers, in other words I watched them when they won and I watched them when they sucked and I'll still watch them even if the Bobcats will beat them by one point on Okafor’s game-saving block on Tyson Chandler (that’s as far as Charlotte will go to get a win).

Since the NBA draft, the Bulls made significant changes in their lineup. They added first round picks from the draft, Ben Gordon (move over Okafor and Howard), Luol Deng (Read: Grant Hill w/o the bum knee) and Deng’s college teammate Chris Duhon. But they also traded their scoring leader Jamal Crawford to the Knicks just when he was showing that he was capable or exploding (re: the 50pt game) and sputtering the next game (14pts on 5/17 shooting or 29.4% from the field). In return they get a bunch of players whining for playing time and whose contracts are about to expire next season, with that said the Bulls will be able to offer big contracts to big “soft” men Curry and Chandler, whose contracts expire next season.
The only significant player they got in the trade was four-time Defensive Player of the Year, seven-time All-Star Dikembe Mutombo. But he’s already 38, his knees are catching up, he’s been limited to 65 games last season and he’s not the intimidating man mountain that he used to be.

I heard from the rumor mill that he might get traded before the season begins, I think its possible that the Bulls will trade him along with Eddie Robinson and Paul Shirley (who?!) to the Kings for sharp-shooting Peja Stojakovic and one other veteran player preferably a backup center who could last longer than Eddy Curry on the floor when he’s already getting owned by Greg Ostertag.

But still there's more to rave about than Chris Jefferies possibly seeing more playing time, which is not about to happen soon. The emergence of Kirk Hinrich (pronounced as Hainrik) as one of the top rookies from last year brings together an exciting backcourt combination. Hinrich plays the point, has good court vision, has the pass-first mentality rarely seen in legitimate point guards, can knock down that three straight up top and is an underrated end to end defender, additionally he can also lay the two spot when coach Skiles needs to mix things up.

And get this LeBron and Melo fans; Hinrich is the only rookie from last year to ever record a triple double (11 points, 12 rebounds, 10 assists in 48mins against Golden State, while playing cat and mouse with Nick “The Not So Quick” Van Exel). Throw in Ben Gordon in the mix, the standout guard from UConn and top college forward Luol Deng and you have a buncha kids making a formidable backcourt. That’s scary; imagine being chased around by your little siblings around a big room, them pulling your pants and you trying to shake them off. Of course you might do a good job of avoiding them at first but at one point or another you’re bound to not see where you are running and then find yourself gluing together the pieces of your mom's dear china. My point? they're capaple of running down a team given the right attitude and as long as the energy of the young guys stay up. Just like those pesky 'lil kids.

Try again

We were scheduled to have our second round of tryouts for the basketball varsity yesterday. Coach couldn't make it, but his assistant was there. Heck they said it would be a tryout, it didn’t seem like it.

Fear Factors...
There was one drill called "planting rice" where we have to run to certain points on the court then run back sprinting all the way. It would have been OK if not for those 20 repetitions we did under the blazing heat of the mid day sun. Then we had to do a couple more drills under the heat for the next hour, I almost had sunstroke.

Call it whining, call it chickening out, call it whatever you want but man, that sucks. We are not in the team yet but we had the feeling we have to be tortured before making it. (It's all worth it if we do).
Good thing there were short breaks; too catch some air, to rehydrate. At least those psychos in charge are still apable of doing something humane.

Bust Picks
In the latter part of the tryouts, the top 10 prospects were chosen. The list included the remaining members of the team who also worked out with us. There were these two who just stood around with the assistant and didn’t suit up for the tryouts, they were watching & enjoying the whole reality torture show happening.

When the announcement came up, guess who took the number one spot? Right, the freakin’ player that didn’t suit up, the one that just ate and watched at the sidelines not even shedding a sweat. Now that was really absurd and stupid, I was thinking how the f*ck did he make it to the team?! He didn’t even step on the court. That guy can’t even shoot; I remember during the previous practice sessions he challenged me to a 3pt shootout, I torched him 10-1. Now I’m not saying that I should be the number 1 pick but at least the assistant didn’t make it obvious that he picked him first because they were buddies. The new guys including me ended up from 5th down to 14th. I was ranked 11th, he didn’t even let us play our usual game. Maybe it was because I didn’t sweat enough during the drills? How can he explain the other pick that didn’t? Duh... Damn right it was stupid.

They say we have another practice on Friday, I'll think about it. I hope coach comes around to take charge of the practices. At least he has a better eye for talent than that idiot assistant of his.