Random thoughts and events from the weekend

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I have not done the whole blog thing for a while, so after great weekend it seemed like a good thing to write about.

Friday night was large. It began with after-work drinking, and eventually ending up in a the Northern Steamship where drinking continued. At one point I lost Rock Paper Scissors and ended up having to walk to the next closest bar (200m or so) to by a couple of packets of cigarettes. The confusing this about this is that I don’t smoke, and I am not sure why I was involved in the RPS in the beginning. Upon the purchase of these cigarettes, I decided for revenge I would open both packets, move a bunch of the cigarettes around, so that the package appeared to be tampered with, which technical I guess they were. When I returned to the group I handed them the packets and told the smokers that I had removed one cigarette from each packet, put it down my pants and did a little dance. Both of the smokers believed me, and tried to pick which cigarette looked like it had been removed… and then decided to smoke the packets anyway. It occurred to me that they were actually not too concerned about smoking my nether-regions, so I told them I didn’t actually put anything in my pants. In hindsight I kind of wish that I had, who knows sweaty ball-sacks may even taste good when mixed with tar and carbon monoxide and all of the other ingredients, maybe that is one of the things that Russel Crowe’s character tried in The Insider, maybe that is why he had an ethical problem in the first place.

The next step of the night was the Casino, this was great, I ended up sitting down at a hot table, and winning a lot of money, as did the American guy who was on the table at the same time. They couldn’t calm down the winnings, even when the automatic shuffler mysteriously jammed and they needed to hold us up and change out the ten of diamonds, this did not interrupt the table karma. It got to the point where we were openly mocking pit bosses with comments like “exactly how much do I need to win before I get some free drinks” (you do not actually automatically get free drinks just for gambling in New Zealand casinos), and when cashing out “if only I could get a free drink I would probably sit here for another hour and keep playing”, still no free drinks. We then had celebratory drinks with the American guy, and reminisced about how much greater Vegas is, he went to college about 3 hours away from Las Vegas so had plenty to share.

Friday night wrapped up about 3am, with a return to our place where Green Griffin, Cream Crusader and I stayed up to 5am watching Skin and Bones, good times.

Saturday morning, surprisingly not feeling too bad. Not a lot planned for the day aside from watching the Rookie v Sophomore game for the NBA’s all star Weekend. This has to be my least favourite event from the All Star weekend, however I was optimistic, given the level of talent from the past two drafts. Yet again this game turned out to be disappointment. The problem is that this game has no intensity, and there is no defence played at any stage, it is like watching 18 Vince Carters. The highlight of the game is usually when the game is over and everyone clears out and it turns into a dunk contest, and even this didn’t happen this year. Also Yi looked so out of place in the game he has no place in this game (I agree he is one of the top rookies, but he looks so out of place), almost like Yao has no place in the All Star game, the Chinese players just look like they have no idea what is going on in this game, they do realise that the game is an exhibition right? while we are on the topic of players who didn’t belong Daniel Gibson shot 11 threes and won the MVP, what is the point of this? the game is about dunks and layups, how do you have 20 three point attempts, this is not the Euro league, sure in the regular season when Lebron clears the defense and leaves you with open shots you can take the threes, but in a game with no defence to start with, why are you shooting these threes?

How does this get fixed? I have always been against the idea of a International vs USA game, only because almost 80% of the players in the league are from the states, so it is not really representative, also in an international game, an international team can beat a US team, but this is because the US team is an all star team, and the international team is actually a team, if both teams were all star teams then the US team should win comfortably. However imagine if on Friday night there was an international vs US players game, using players who were not in the actual all star game. Think of the potential teams, the only international players in this years All star game were Yao, Dirk, and Nash. So that could leave an international team including Andrea Bargnani, Andrew Bogut, Pau Gasol, Manu Ginobili, Tony Parker, Leandro Barbosa, Loul Deng, Andrei Kirilenko, Jose Calderon, Andris Beadrins, Mehemet Okur, Hedo Turkoglu, Yi (considering you need a mix of players and positions), I am sure I am missing people too. That team should beat the next best 12 US players who were not in the All Star game, and they would all have something to prove, the international players, and the US Born All star snubs.

Then consider there are players like Dirk who played like he should not have been in the actual All Star game, there is a lot of depth in this game, and it will only get better as more players from overseas come into the league. This would also increase the international emphasis in the NBA, which David Stern clearly wants to do if he wants to have a European division (more on this), and still showcase the young players, as a lot of them would still make this game.

Speaking of this European Division idea, I think it is a great idea, both for increasing the international popularity of the game, and because of the potential size of the markets revenue wise. However adding 5 teams to the NBA will ruin the league, so you would need to move 5 teams. If you moved New Orleans, Memphis, Seattle (OK City), New Jersey, Mikwaukee to London, Paris, Madrid, Amsederam, and either Berlin, it would be fantastic. Also you would need to move a team to Vegas to balance out the East having Amsterdam in their conference, so move the Kings out there. Travel will be a factor, but not much of a factor, it is not like these teams are flying on commercial airlines. The NBA wouldn’t need as many minor leagues if they had teams in Europe, there would be way less need for totally inferior leagues like the ABA, CBA, WNBA and the D League. When Europe already has an inferior league.

That evening White Warrior and I want to the first Waikato game of the Super 14, an always good local derby against Auckland at Eden park. It was a good time, unfortunately for Waikato it was too early in the season, so there were not many Waikato fans there, because it is February and it is hard to get into the mood for Rugby season. There was a good Auckland crowd, surprising because generally Aucklanders don’t show up for things. Overall I thought it was much closer than the final score showed, however I have been told that it did not look good on TV for Waikato. We snuck out of the stadium 10 minutes early to avoid the abuse from Auckland fans, and to beat traffic (I cannot figure out how that stadium is going to host World Cup games, it is going to be an embarrassment for New Zealand).

On a related note, I am now ready for Rugby season. Last week I thought it was too soon, and still summer, but now that I have been to a game, and watched about 3 more I am ready to get into this. I went into the season thinking that Auckland and Canterbury would be New Zealands best teams with Waikato not far out in Third. I still think this, because Wellington clearly will not be good, and Otago will win a game somewhere, just hard to see where.

Later that evening was Blue Streaks Birthday at the Ivory Lounge (there was a dinner first, but I was at the game). It was fun if uneventful, just drinking, which is always fun. After the bar closed we all returned to our place for more drinking, the problem was we only had spirits, and had no mixers. The solution was Green Griffin who produced a case of Red Bull, and we drank Vodka and Whiskey and Red Bull, going through about 13 bottles between not many of us (while watching Skin and Bones… once again good times). Unbelievably I was able to sleep when it came to that hours later.

Sunday was uneventful, aside from the NBA Saturday. Again it is an overrated night, but always fun to see NBA players wearing their suits, and their reactions to what is happening. It was fun to see Deron Williams and Chris Paul take the skills challenge seriously, and their rivalry. It was fun to see the 3 point shoot out, and see Chris Bosh look legitimately excited to see Jason Kapono, I was surprised that he even knew who he was and that he was paying attention to the event, do you think they hang out? does Chris Bosh have to hang out with with Jason Kapono because there are no other Black people in Toronto?

Finally the Slam Dunk contest. Normally I think that the Slam Dunk contest is a little overrated, but this year, with Rudy Gay asking for dunks on You Tube, Dwight Howard not getting respect last year, Gerald Green returning from last years great performance, and Jamario Moon playing this whole year trying to prove he should have been in the NBA all along. I thought Moon’s first dunk was awesome, and Rudy Gay’s Dunk throwing the ball off the back support was great and underrated, but Green and Howard took it to another level, If there were scores in the second round, Howard could have scored 200, they were all amazing, original, and fun. Greens shoeless dunk was great, as was the Birthday Cake dunk. It was the greatest Dunk contest ever.

The weekend finished watching Crank on Sky. Now I don’t want to say that the overall quality of movies has decreased over the years, but Sunday night used to be a night where there would be a decent movie on. Crank is a terrible movie. Jason Statham who was once a good actor, and was in great movies, Lock Stock and Snatch, is now reduced to making movies like this and The Transporter II. Even though the Transporter should never have been made, the Transporter II is even worse, it also has the biggest stretch in movie history. At one stage there is a bomb on the bottom of his car, the solution is the jump the car flipping it over under a crane, so the bomb gets hooked on the hook of the crane, and unhooks the bomb, while the car continues to rotate landing on its wheels, and driving away… If there is ever a Transporter III  I may have to kill someone.

Now all I have to look forward to is next weekends Boat Trip… wait that will be awesome.