Hmm. Self without a butt.
That's going to haunt me for awhile.
jaybate 1.0
10346 posts
Zimmerman was the guy the stood out like a superstar to me. Monster talent. Moves as well as Joel, but gets the game like someone that's been playing it his whole life. I was prepared not to like him because of the talk about his recent "no risk" quote and his long neck and low shoulder sockets, but he could have shut any big man on the floor down AND scored on them at will, but it was pretty clear who was supposed to get show cased among the bigs in the Jordan. And it wasn't Zimmerman. He was cool with it, too. The guy is a PHENOMENAL talent and his parents need to have their heads examined for not getting him to the best coach on the planet. He is one great coach aways from dominating his class in basketball. What a shame that he went to UNLV.
It can't hurt to spread that rumor.
As a matter of fiction, I was talking to a UK assistant today on the plane and he says that Kentucky is getting the death penalty tomorrow. Just joking. :-)
Not sure. But it is conspicous how the scoring and pop declines as they get bulkier. :-)
Bringin' the mondo graphics.
Goat footed mahn.
Rather horn-ed, too.
Red sky at morning, doncha know?
The kinda think that happeneth/
After a tobacco endowment...
:-)
I keep trying to modify the hypothesis as more information surfaces. Alas, it remains only a hypothesis. Big Shoe appears to be one element with a three brand regime emerging. But there seems to be an agent element also. I initially conceptualized the agents as a highly diversified service market of individual entrepreneurs, but I am starting to wonder if there may be one or two dominant agents, or agent organizations, that constitute a regime and serve athletes from AAU to the professional levels.
I am beginning to hypothesize a dynamic between the shoe brand regime and the agent regime that is triggering clumping of draft choice grade players, whether they are OADs, or TADs, at certain basketball programs. This clumping seems to be greater for a small number of Nike programs, and smaller for a certain number of adidas programs. The clumping seems to occur one program to a power conference. Sometimes the program is a traditional elite program, but other times a lesser program appears to be transformed, or at least resuscitated, into a new elite program.
I have a hunch the hypothesis is still insufficient to explain the phenomenon; that there is a third, or fourth element that has not yet surfaced in the news.
One key thing I keep reminding others about is that my hypothesis assumes that nothing illegal is going on; that this clumping phenomenon can occur without illegality. Put another way, it may not be fair, but it is assumed to be legal.
Regarding UK, like and dislike of UK probably depends on lots of things that are too complicated for me to even try to hypothesize.
But I do think it is going to be interesting to see whether Cal and UK will continue to be able to sign lots of OADs after failing the last few seasons to "getter done."
Rock Chalk!
It was a nice walk down memory lane. Made me feel kinda old though, since I was remembering watching back to Wilt and Big Russ!
You are right that all types of players come in clumps.
25 footers and near footers are a LOT of footers coming available to the L this year and next just based on last year's roster stacks. Add Zimmerman and Labissierre and that's 27. And that doesn't include probably another 3 or so from overseas. Call it 30!
There are 34 teams and probably 20 to 30 footers and near footers in the L already. If we think space is congested now, we ain't seen nothing yet!!!!
And as you rightly note these 60 May increase by a few late growth spurt types!
If the NBA doesn't expand, we may not be far from our first starting five of footers and near footers. Imagine a 1-3-1 zone of all athletic footers. They could basically stretch to the half court line and choke off 3 point shooting.
Where this seems to be heading to me is a return of the set shot only from ultra long range. Say 45-50 footers. It sounds fantastic, but shooting accuracy from 3pt range with a two hand set could drastically improve PPP from Trey balling and long rebounding would become a new dynamic.
Interesting point.
I agree with you that the NBA players have wised up quite awhile ago and figured out that their careers probably lasted longer if they all run around shooting treys at a slow tempo with good defense, instead of transitioning, and banging and driving inside.
The NBA is a game of a player's union trying to improve working conditions and career length for its members, given the rules. The NBA not only emphasizes treys, but its tempo the last 20 years or so has been pretty slow.
At the same time, there is also intermittently a minority movement starting to try to try to push the ball up court faster to get better looks before the defense locks in. it is a return to Red Auerbach's running game adjusted to get treys instead of lay ups. George Karl kept the up tempo game going for awhile. D'Antonni restarted it, but won no championships with it. Now Kerr is picking up the flag and trying it with Golden State. Here is a nice concise link on the speeded-it-up phenomenon I had to look up, because I have not been keeping up with the NBA much the last five years.
http://www.nba.com/2015/news/features/john_schuhmann/03/06/warriors-defending-with-pace/index.html ↗
But the story indicates that it is still a minority phenomenon.
Could it spread around the league? It depends on two things IMHO. First it has to prove it can win a championship. But there is a second criterion in the NBA, now that NBA players make so much and want to play as long as they can and stay as healthy as possible to milk the cow as longs as they can. Which way of playing the game puts the least strain on players and so lengthens their career? This is the union's agenda, as it should rightly be. My hunch is that the pro game has slowed, because defense wins championships. So: teams have figured out that you might as well have most of your team spend most of its energy on defense and rely on a just a couple players to be great scorers. By slowing the game down, everyone is playing more under control and there are fewer health risks--fewer sacrificing body plays in a slow tempo game. But there are health risks to half court m2m defense. Defensive sliding is one of the toughest wear and tear items on a player. Self defense wrecks the pop in half his players by their second,or third seasons just in college. Professional players have recognized this for decades and only played defense during the play offs. And then reintroduced zone defense to further reduce the need for sliding in the playoffs.
Where is this headed then?
One idea I see confusing board rats some is the idea that the NBA is getting away from centers. I think this is a somewhat misleading take. The NBA drafts every footer and near footer it can find. And though I can't document it, I suspect the NBA probably has more footers and near footers on its rosters than ever before. And it is very shortly going to have as many as 20 more on its rosters, since UK, Duke, UA, Louisville, and Gonzaga have four each. Oh and Utah had 4, or so. Plus some more always turn up from overseas. What is happening is that the NBA is starting to use footers and near footers differently. They are probably running less offense through them and more through their trey ballers. But the more trey balls they take the more long length they need to grab long boards and stop stick backs. And the more footers and near footers they find they more of them turn out to be able to shoot the trey, which means the more these footers have to be able to range out to guard the trey. And so on. So: it is not at all that footers and near footers are scarce. Quite the contrary. It is the rising number of footers and near footers that forces more and more outside shooting, which puts a premium on the footers that can range outside to guard the trey stripe.
I think the push the ball approach makes sense in the NBA, because it produces a quick shot before the footers and near footers get locked in and the perimeter guys overplaying because of those footers behind them. And it does this with as little defense being played as possible. Couple push ball with settling into zones for any half court defense needed after a miss and you've got just about the least wear and tear you can put on an NBA player over a career. Note that push-ball is not really running basketball like Red Auerbach's Celtics, or George Karl's kamikaze kids used to play. Push ball NBA style is not aiming for a drive to iron, It is aiming for a quick open look trey. Players are not running full speed, they are just releasing early and striding out comfortably for a long sideline pass and an open trey. During the regular season, when the emphasis is on entertainment and not on winning, this style is perfect for letting most of the players loaf and every so often letting the super star have an uncontested running dunk that doesn't look quite as fake as it is. All one team has to do is just not release defenders up the floor every 5th or tenth drip in January and let the superstar make his highlight dunk in which no one has to run at all.
So: yeah, the tempo is going to speed up to striding out, but there is going to be none of the balls to walls running of the old days. And the beauty of push ball will be that there will be even less of what you are describing--back to basket banging in half court. This combination of benefits should lengthen careers and reduce injuries in the L. The union will be happy and so will management.
That being said, they will still draft as much length as they can find to rebound the long missed treys. And during the playoffs, the height will make ACTUAL driving against a zone difficult enough to justify 3 point shooting in the playoffs. The bigger you are in a zone the less slides you have to make to cover ball movement; that's good for the bigs. And the more treys you take the less stress on the ligaments and tendons on your back court guys.
Now, with the above context, consider what we are seeing shape up in D1.
Footers are being stacked and played as few minutes as possible at the stack schools, until they absolutely HAVE to play their best two footers. Since the ShoeCo-Agency complex appears to running the whole show now, the stacking works perfectly to minimize wear and tear on their product endorsers and fee generators. It would be stupid NOT to reduce wear and tear on the footers now that stacking is feasible to do, because of informal institutionalizing of the recruiting space by the ShoeCo-agent complexes. When everything used to depend on head coaches and players having a meeting of the minds, there was no way to control talent distribution. Now that the coach and school are just a pit stop, it is the long term relationship with the Shoeco-Agent complex started in middle school, or early high school, that shapes choice by players and their families. The ShoeCo Agency complex apparently gives the cream of the crop players a list of schools to choose between. The idea is for you to go where ever you can not be overworked and have your joints jeopardized with injury BEFORE you generate a fee to the agents that have been shepherding you since 9th grade or so. Most of the top footer players that don't have affluent parents go to the stack schools, where their minutes can be limited until the Madness. They can't afford to say no to the shoeco-agent complex. The occasional exception like Zimmerman announces he is taking no risks so it doesn't matter where he plays, as long as he does not play unnecessary minutes, and does not have to dive for 50/50 balls. Of course I am speaking hypothetically in all of this.
Notice that UK, Duke, UA, Louisville, and Gonzaga each had 4 footers and they all went a long way.
Notice that the only non stack school to make a dent this season was Wisconsin, which had one stretch 5 footer, the rarest bird in the aviary.
You are right. The future of D1 is probably not back to the basket post men.
The future of D1 is 4 footers rotating two at a time taking dishes from drivers, sticking back drivers misses, and long rebounding missed treys.
My hunch is that we are going to see more and more footers in the college game playing less and less pure back to basket, now that you've got me thinking this through.
The amount of reliance on three point shooting will depend heavily on the refereeing.
So long as referees increasingly favor home teams on foul calling during the regular season and stack teams the last ten minutes in the Madness, I think the driving perimeter player becomes indispensable, because you will always have a higher PPG driving and shooting FTs than three point shooting, given a favorable whistle.
And if you are a non stack team, like KU appears destined to be until it resigns with Nike, you have no choice but do what Bo Ryan, Rick Pitino and Mark Few have done, and what I believe Bill Self is in the process of shifting over to.
You have to have get rid of your long trey ballers that cannot drive it, and stock up on driver/trey ballers on the perimeter. And at the same time you have to get as long as possible in front court to rebound the long treys, and limit your opponent to shooting outside. You also want at least one of your bigs to be able to be a stretch 4, or a stretch 5, that can ding the trey. Finally, you want to tailor your offense to push ball as much as possible. You want your footers releasing the rebound to a wing defender and then rifling it up the sideline to someone to take an open trey the way the pros do, or else, settle into a little action ending in a drive.
Or so it seems written in a hurry and on the run myself.
If a sports broadcaster cannot hype betting expectations that can be exploited by Big Gaming, can he really be said to be doing his job?
The fiduciary responsibility of the director of the NCAA appears increasingly to be to find everything legal that is in anyone’s self interest except the players.
The NCAA increasingly appears to honor this maxim: where there’s smoke, there’s revenue.
Has John Calipari ever heard of an alumni infraction he knew about?
An NBA commissioner appears to be to college basketball what Nosferatu would be to Bryn Mawr.
Without the media-gaming complex, college basketball would suffer the hardships of unpredictable winning margins, more players attending class, more players graduating, referees calling fouls symmetrically, star players being kicked out of games for cheap shotting, plus coaches that would get to see their wives more. It would be intolerable.
A Division 1 head coach will always draw the line at hiring an OAD’s AAU coach...to replace himself.
Mike Krzewski appears to have developed the cheap shot to such an extent that it should now be called a solid gold shot.
Correlation may not be the same as causation in no calls and point spreads in the last ten minutes of an NCAA tournament game, but I would want some points to bet on it.
Just as a ref cannot call fouls, if everyone is fouling all the time, an NCAA director cannot give the death penalty, if everyone is committing death penalty violations all the time.
Arguing that a PetroShoeCo-Agent complex is not influencing where players go, because we cannot yet explain how and why it is done, is like arguing that the sun is not attracting planets, because we cannot yet explain gravity.
The NCAA tournament has become as suspect as an electronic voting machine in a poor neighborhood in a battle ground state, when it is a republican’s turn to be selected unitary President.
Today, amateurism appears necessary largely for the abuse of amateurism.
(Note: all satiric fiction. No malice.)
Skullduggery?
An apt word.
Denmark was fresh as a daisy compared to basketball recruiting.
I am almost at the point of wanting to send them another player to make sure we meet them in the tournament next season.
Notice the huge crowd!
The thing I want to stress here yet again is that PetroShoeCos exert absolutely no influence on Division 1 basketball, Division 1 basketball recruiting, Division 1 basketball program stacking, Division 1 coaching hires, Division 1 tournament seeding, and Division 1 Officiating. None. Zero. Zip. The PetroShoeCos are like the Federal Reserve. They have absolutely no biasing effect on anything. They are both absolutely impartial.
HOWLING!
Another thing...
Why can't adidas design some uniforms at least as good looking as that jersey Bragg is wearing for all of the NCAA-adidaas teams?
Hay maker delivered!
I'm relieved to see that he is even as tall as Svi!
The really great thing about this feed was seeing ALL the players (well, except for Brannen) appearing to be uninjured and without knee wraps for a change.
Now, if we can just keep this up into next season!!!!
Bragg is wearing the brand of nATIONS. Its a new Petro ShoeCo holding company. The "n" is never capitalized. The "n" stands for the number of petroshoecos that will eventually be owned by the holding company.
Currently the following are owned:
adidas nATION
NIKE nATION
Under Armour nATION
Jordan Nike nATION
Merrell nATION
SAS nATION
Dexter nATION
Florsheim nATION
Muck nATION
uGG nATION
Allen Edmonds nATION
Hush Puppy nATION
CROC nATION
Ecco nATION
Dr. Maarten's nATION
Chuck Taylor Converse All-Star nATION
Memphisto nATION
The nATION shoeco holding company is getting huge-atious!
It is supposedly funded by black money from the Pentagon.
LOL!
Agree on the jr high kids. :-)
Howling! This is the @nuleafjhawk I remember!
Does it fly on aviation grade crystal meth?
@Danr recently posted a screen capture indicating no more unread posts and requested relief from this unusual form of hell in response to which I am making this post.
"Christian views on Hell: {{anchor|hell in Rom Cath}} Roman Catholicism: Hell as a place or a state
Writing in the 1910 Catholic Encyclopedia, Joseph Hontheim said that "theologians generally accept the opinion that hell is really within the earth. The Church has decided nothing on this subject; hence we may say hell is a definite place; but where it is, we do not know. " He cited the view of Saint Augustine of Hippo that hell is under the earth and that of Saint Gregory the Great that hell is either on the earth or under it. On the other hand, Catholic theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar (1905-1988) said that "we must see that hell is not an object that is 'full' or 'empty' of human individuals, but a possibility that is not 'created' by God but in any case by the free individuals who choose it". The Catholic Faith Handbook for Youth, with imprimatur of 2007, also says that "more accurately" heaven and hell are not places but states. Capuchin theologian Berard A. Marthaler also says that "hell is not 'a place'".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_views_on_hell#Hell_as_a_place_or_a_state ↗
Hell, it might also be noted, exists in Allen Field House, when there is a lack of standing height at the 5 position capable of rim protection.
Rock Chalk!!
Howling!
Fake Basketball Books Coming Out Soon
"Winning with Operable Injuries" by Gill Innerperson, chapters on Leeth Klangford, Casha Pawn, Viral Seed, Davis Ankleford, Prophet Bombsome, Raul Brokeback, Shane Welden, and Granville Treen. Learn when simply not to report operable injuries to catch opponents by surprise and avoid uncomfortable questions about playing with operable injuries. Learn the effective spin terms liked "nicked up" for characterizing operable injuries being "played through."
"Cheap Shotting for Championships The Coach Mik Way," by Ike Miklishzevski; chapters on the Adams apple chop, the forehead elbow crack, the karate chop to the temple, the right or left nut kick, the stiff screen, the trip from behind, the trip from the side, the trip from in front, the up-ending on the drive, plus kicking and falling on opponents when they are down. The book also contains a chapter on arranging field trips for the team to Guantánamo Bay torture prison and School of the Americas torture training school for teaching U.S. Army torture techniques that are adaptable to Division I basketball.
"Coaching Not to Know," by Yon Dingleaberry; learn plausible deniability the Coach Dingle way. Get the benefits of ringers and none of the personal career costs. Learn how to time motion plays relative to vacated seasons. Don't let NCAA investigations put a damper on recruiting. And it's all legal.
"A Guide to Mid Major Exits to Stack Schools," by Stumpy Grinder and Schlocka Dolt; learn how to jump from a mid major straight to a planned elite major soon to be stacked by a Big Shoe-Agent complex without ever having to pay dues at a lesser major!! Learn how to sign more and better players than coaches far better than yourself do. Learn five certain signs of a planned stack school.
(Note: these are all satiric fictions. No malice!)
@HawksWin, I don't know whether to respond to you are not. You are kind of fading out on my screen.
OMG! Self isn't going to have to hire Bragg's coach to get Bragg, is he?
OMG! You don't suppose Self is going to S-Can Snacks to hire Bragg's coach to get Bragg?
I was hoping Self would keep that ace up his sleeve for a 5!!!!!
The trouble with lying about height, as the trouble with lying about anything, is credibility, when you want to be believed. We know there is a question about him being 6-9, because ESPN has him at 6-8 and we know that ESPN often carries guys at exaggerated heights. How do we know he is not 6-7, like Cliff and Perry turned out to be? We don't.
One thing Self is making very clear. Bragg cannot step in and play a 5.
And this nonsense about playing without 5s on the roster has to end.
Whether the true 5 starts, or rides the bench for specific situations, you have to have one to seriously propose to win a ring. Kaun got to the point that he could not jump a lick and became a back up for the '08 team, but he was absolutely indispensable as a banger, when the situation called for knocking a true 5 off his spots.
And while I liked the Greek footer Pappagianis (sp?) 3pt touch (shades of Kaminsky), I am not sure he could guard the post in D1 without a year of development. Better than nothing? Yes. But a 7 foot 2x4 would be better than nothing.
Self has to sign a center that can play next season, even if Landen makes a nice improvement into a credble starter. Landen will require a 15-20 minute banger behind him--not just a 7 foot 2x4.
First: Self says Bragg is a "legitimate" 6'9" tall. No more fudging Height. Except ESPN has him at 6-8.
Second, Self leaves an impression that Bragg has been adequately coached and mentored to step in and play.
Third, was Snacks reputedly Cliff's mentor?
Fourth: Norm gets the cred for Bragg.
Fifth: where is Snacks?
Seems like it.
All of March Madness felt like a banana republic.
I hope I live long enough to see the appearances end.
A great movie for sure.
Wayne and his illustrious colleagues--Hawks and Ford--created an art form for our country.
Movies are a medium.
Westerns are not just a genre. They are an art form. They have their own visual and verbal vocabularies that speak to us about subjects and in ways that no other art form does.
The lesson of basketball is that strategy is an adjustment waiting to be necessary.
There is not a coach alive that cannot be made more conservative by a shoe contract.
A long term contract is a technique for making sure a coach will never have to work as hard as he did to earn it.
An OAD is a player with a low foundation and a high ceiling playing 3/4 speed 1/2 the time.
Throwing 9.5" diameter balls 20’9” into 18" diameter holes ten feet in the air for three points still makes more sense than driving a 1.68” diameter golf ball 250 yards into a cross wind with a gob of aluminum at the end of a graphite stick, so help me god.
A basketball coach is someone that dedicates his life to doing what the inventor of the game said one should not do, and wishing after every loss that he had not.
When a person karate chops someone in the temple, he is said to have assaulted someone. When a player karate chops someone in the NCAA Finals he is said to play for Duke.
Naismith invented the game to keep track athletes fit and uninjured before track season. Now track players do not play the sport and half of everyone that does play gets hurt.
Naismith required players to pass the ball and not run with it to minimize injury. Dribbling was added out of some deep resentment of father figures.
Naismith used peach baskets with the bottoms in them and raised ten feet to keep players from guarding the basket. Now we use AAU ball.
If you talk about basketball long enough, you will doubt coaches know what they are doing. If you talk about it too long, you will think you do.
Time outs are where coaches give players new strategies that do not survive the first pass.
Naismith tried to make the game as slow as possible, and those that have followed have speeded it up to the point that if anyone slows it down they are said to be wrecking the game Naismith invented.
When you play an opponent, you play the game of basketball. When you play Duke, you play the referees.
Raymond Carver would have understood the temptation KU fans feel to drink after early exits, and would have made a fine collection of short stories about the pain.
Thanks. Would you guess any of them are on track to be hall of famers?
@approxinfinity Gotcha
Have they been fracking under the Erwin Center and is that a picture of a coal gas fire? :-)
Are you saying foreign teams will out bid NBA franchises for these freshmen?
Some of you resident NBA fans, lend me a hand.
I just looked at the 2015 NBA all star rosters for east and west.
There is not one 7 footer that played American college basketball listed. The Gasol brothers are the only footers on the All-Star rosters and they played for Barcelona Juco. :-)
Duncan, Cousins, Aldridge, Davis and Griffin--the bigs on the West squad--are 6-10 or 6-11, so they are out.
Bosh and Horford--the bigs on the East--are 6-10 or 6-11 also, so they are out.
So: who might it be?
This lack of domestic footers fascinates me.
adidas is huge abroad in soccer and track and field.
Spieth could finally fill the black hole created in golf by Tiger's implosion, if he can keep winning. But one time Master's winners are frequent, and not the stuff shoe empires are built on. Nicklaus and Tiger have been freaks of golf. Football and basketball seem to produce monster talents every decade. In golf, they seem to come much more rarely. Have to wait and see. But it sure is nice to see someone new light up the world of golf.
Foreign players like Svi and Prezemek Karnowski are in-sourced to get degrees and training for a shot at the NBA.
Domestic players, like Mudiay, are outsourced to play for pay.
For several decades the insourcing has been going on, and foreign players have been taking up a small but significant percentage of roster spots that could have been going to domestic players. Generally the insourcing has improved, if only slightly, the quality of American college basketball.
But now outsourcing enters into the picture. Outsourcing skims off some of our best players, thus actually reducing the quality of American college basketball, and sends them over seas for a year before going to the NBA. This seems to be a very good thing for players, because they get to play for substantial money, rather than for scholarship benefits most apparently do not appear intent on following through on so as to capitalize on (get degrees that might help them after their playing days).
Since most of the players involved are legally adults, and USA remains a culture and economy where people are free to choose their line of work, subject to demand and supply constraints and personal preferences, it hardly seems appropriate for us to debate whether players should, or should not be allowed to go overseas, or not. That's there damned business and we ought to stay out of it.
On the other hand, this does impact our game of college basketball and in a small, but possibly expanding way, its contribution to our economy.
We don't want to see American college basketball get outsourced the way the American industrial employment was outsourced. We don't want American college basketball "hollowed out." At least we don't want it hollowed out, if we are paying for part of it with our state taxes, and we are paying for a HUGE portion of it with Federal tax deductions occurring from donations private not for profit 501.c3 athletic departments, and from non taxable revenues streams cycling through those tax exempt athletic departments.
Which is better for college basketball and for America? Players spending a year abroad, before going pro, or just letting them go straight to the NBA?
The Importance of Brazil:
Oscar Niemeyer--just a hellaciously good architect. For me there is Wright, then Piano, then Niemeyer. !iu-1.jpeg ↗
The Hot Air Ballon--"The first recorded experiments for a hot air balloon to be used as a means of transport were made at the beginning of the 1700s by the Jesuit priest Bartolomeu de Gusmão. He succesfully managed to lift a balloon 4,5 meters in front of the Portuguese Court."http://thebrazilbusiness.com/article/7-most-famous-brazilian-inventions ↗
The Automatic Transmission with Hydraulic Fluid--"Alfred Horner Munro of Regina invented the first automatic transmission in 1921, but as he was a steam engineer, his device used compressed air, and it therefore lacked power so it never found commercial application. In 1932 José Braz Araripe and Fernando Lehly Lemos then developed the first automatic transmission with hydraulic fluid.
They subsequently sold the prototype and plans to General Motors who introduced them to their 1940 model Oldsmobile as “hydra-matic”. The device was then incorporated to GM-built tanks, and marketed thereafter as “battle-tested”."http://thebrazilbusiness.com/article/7-most-famous-brazilian-inventions ↗
Its the River, Stupid--The Amazon River is the river of all rivers on the wateriest planet we know of. It emits 209,000 cubic meters per second--an amount greater than the next seven largest rivers of the world combined.This is just the south of it seen from space!!!!!!iu.png ↗
Brazilian Women: Let me put it this way. Giselle Bundchen is ranked fourth among Brazilian beauties on the following web site. http://www.therichest.com/expensive-lifestyle/entertainment/the-top-10-most-beautiful-women-celebrities-in-brazil-2012/ ↗
Thank you for posting the Hagia Sophia. It is one of my 5 favorite buildings in the world.
Thank you also for remembering Elia Kazan. Kazan was my hero, and remains the movie maker I respect more than any other, even though he named names. It was evil what was done to him--first by the right, then by the left. He was the greatest, most deeply insightful, dramatic story teller in the history of American cinema. Period. He was not a great visual stylist, but he probably would have become virtuosic at that to, had he been allowed to keep working. In a way, he was to American dramatic film what Josef Conrad was to the English novel. No human being on earth should have been able to come to a new country--Conrad from Ukraine to Poland to England, Kazan from Turkey to America-and make enduring art in an English language that reveals his adopted country more deeply than all but a few other story tellers of adopted land. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Panic in the Streets, A Streetcar Named Desire, On the Waterfront. East of Eden, Splendor in the Grass, and A Face in the Crowd: these films required astonishing insight into America--into the immigrant streak of America, no matter how "American" we think we have become. The great genius of Kazan is that each of these great movies pulls up from the depths of our individual experiences of our culture a conflict that seems irresolvable; that seems never to recede. Kazan more deeply and better than any other film maker before or since dramatized the enduring problem of being an individual American in an endlessly compromised experiment in self government, wherein the constellation of dramas that he laid out in cinematic form and showed us are being played out in hundreds of millions of individual American lives in fact finally are the only bulwark we Americans have standing between our rare, precious,fragile, constitution and tyranical wealth, petty morality, tyrannical socio-economic movements, tyrannical organized crime, and even at times the tyranny of our own elected government imposing bureaucratic policies on us that destroy our way of life in pursuit of imposing the latest new technology. "America, America" is really the only one of his movies he should have had the insight to make, because it was literally his own family's story. But my favorite thing about him of all is that he understood there was much in film that he could not do--I like to think should not have wasted his brilliant story telling ability on. America is so fortunate that he came to us, and focused on what he COULD do.
If someone came to me and said what movies should I watch to help me understand American's dreams and fears I would tell them to watch John Wayne's westerns with John Ford and Howard Hawks, and Randolph Scott's westerns with Budd Boetticher and Burt Kennedy. If someone wanted to understand America's actual hopes, I would tell them to watch all of Frank Capra's films written with Robert Riskin. If someone wanted to understand the sickness at the heart of America, I would tell them to watch Clint Eastwood's and Martin Scorcese's and Quentin Tarrantino's films. If they wanted to know the joy at the heart of America, I would tell them to watch all of Gene Kelly's musicals. But if they wanted to know the truth about what it feels like to live in America still, I would tell them to watch every Elia Kazan movie ever made. Like the English owe Shakespeare a debt they can never repay, Americans owe Elia Kazan more than they will understand for a long, long time. RIP Mr. Kazan
Both great beauties in their primes.
I could not have chosen between them then.
Almost posted a pic of them both now, but Ursula is too painful to look at--a victim of failed plastic surgery. Honor looks like a proper English lady. Both amazingly memorable stars of my youth though. Both launched a thousand wet dreams among boys my age after Dr. No and Goldfinger and awakened among many of us awareness of a world beyond Kansas City.
BG needs hip surgery that will take 5 months to recover from after a season in which he turned startlingly lighter shades for some weeks without explanation, and had a slight concussion. And he was suspended a game for not taking care of business? Why in hell was he playing?
Perry.
You strung it out just long enough for Chris Mullin to hire Slice and divert Diallo to St. Johns..
Your PT is a lock now.
We need to sign at least three near footers to go with Lucas to stay big when we meet big. Period.
For whatever reason, Self does not view Hunter as a near footer capable of being in the rotation. Hunter is a practice player in Self's opinion. It seems nuts to me, but that's how he sees it and its his call.
Perry is 6-8 when he has slept on a medieval rack for two days.
Perry is a 3 playing 4.
Jamari is a 3 playing 5.
So: this team has only one near footer--Lucas.
Gotta have 4 total.
Gotta get 3 more.
Bragg counts as a skinny near footer, if we put him on the rack AND give him some growth hormone.
Diallo is really just Perry without the medieval rack and a mad on. Diallo is a great get, but not a near footer.
REPEAT AFTER ME: WE NEED STANDING HEIGHT.
Thorne, Maker, and Zimmerman are the only real near footers out there.
WE NEED TWO OF THEM TO GET REAL ABOUT COMPETING FOR RINGS.
Anything less and we are talking titles.
We don't care if they play hard. We care if they are tall.
We already know that all OADs are 3/4 speed 20 minute types during regular season that are given 2-3 stat pump games against lesser competition during the regular season. They don't turn up the candle until the Madness and even then only if they think the team is going somewhere.
ALL WE CARE ABOUT IS TALL STIFFS.
Okafor was a joke most of the season and he was incredibly lame in the final game, too. He was just 3/4 speed standing height. He will probably "find his game suddenly" in the NBA the same way Wigs found his assists and high 20ppg scoring. But in D1, Okafor was standing height.
This is all we are ever going to see in opposing OAD footers and so that's all we need, or should expect, in ours.
Zimmerman wants to talk about taking no risks? Fine, you pencil neck. Just shut up and stand there with your arms high then.
Heck, I'm not even sure Caulley-Stein has a full speed. Caulley-Stein looked like non legendary footers back in the 60s-70s.
But Cal was smart enough to see this 3/4 speed shizz coming. He knew Unibrow was freak, a throw back, and not the future. Cal realized that all the OAD big men are now standing height stiffs from here on out, so whenever you can pick up a non OAD footer do it.
Thorne was soft and lardy in a weak conference? Shut up and stand there with your hand reached high, Mike.
Get four however you can, Bill.
And it got us a ring!!!!
"Do I not destroy my enemies when I make them my friends?"
--Abraham Lincoln
Seriously, you all have to be as high as Kareem to be thinking he was a better back to the basket scorer than Chamberlain. Not even close really.
Nice move Brown.
jaybate Sports Network stringers inside a Dunkin'Donuts in Lexington frequented by UK HBC John Calipari indicates that Cal is sooooooo ticked off at Slice departing for St. Johns to recruit Diallo against him that he will resign within a fortnight and become KU's top recruiter.
Cal reportedly has said, "Well, I can't coach a lick even with all the marbles. Larry finally told me to my face. He said that if I recruited for Bill we could both finally win another ring. So: I'm going. I am going to become the first recruiting assistant to be paid $7M/season."
(Note: complete fiction. No malice.)
Is it possible that back to the basket basketball might some how be a phenomenon triggered by THC consumption?
No, I suppose there would be a lot more back to basket game being evidenced, if that were the case.
:-)