- No one has confused Brooklyn Nets point
guard Deron Williams with a franchise player in at least five years. Therefore,
it shouldn’t be a story that head coach Lionel Hollins admitted as much a day
after the Nets were eliminated from the playoffs…and yet, here we are. Lionel,
take it away. "He's not a franchise player anymore," Hollins said. "He's
a good player, he's a solid player, but I don't think he's a franchise player
anymore. That's just my opinion. He's a good player. I'm proud of the way he's
bounced back and played, and there's so much pressure on him to be a franchise
player, and everybody talks about a franchise player, but we need to have a
franchise team.” Right now the Nets have none of the above and according to
Hollins, having a “franchise team” means that all players play hard, together
and unselfishly. “To me, that's what
basketball is about. It's not about a franchise player. I mean, those guys come
along once in a lifetime, and everybody doesn't get a chance to coach one,” he
added. It seems like an eternity – or 2010 in this case – ago that NBA
general managers voted Williams the best point guard in the NBA, but his time
with the Nets has been marked by injuries, subpar conditioning and a general
lack of performance despite a five-year, $100 million contract. He averaged just 11.8 points and 5.5
assists while shooting 39.1 percent from the field in his team's first-round series loss to the Atlanta Hawks,
backing up what former teammate Paul Pierce said before the postseason when he
claimed Williams didn't want to be an MVP candidate and couldn't handle the
pressure of playing in New York.
Factor in the turn by Hollins, who has repeatedly defended Williams against
criticism, and it would seem that everyone is finally on the same page about
the status of D-Will……….
- Them damn bells. For Burlington, Vermont resident Olga Lopatina, it’s not a case of tinnitus, but actual bells
producing the ringing in her ears that she wishes would just stop. Lopatina
lives near Christ the King Church and while a church would normally seem to be
the sort of quiet, polite neighbor you’d like to have…unless that neighbor
began a tradition last summer of broadcasting the sounds of bells and hymns to
its neighborhood. Notice the phrase “sounds of bells” and not simply “bells
chiming,” as the church has put a cheaper, new-school twist on the idea of
church bells. . "It's not really music," Lopatina lamented. “This
one, it sounds like a teenage iPhone recording, like the first generation ring
tones that you pay 99 cents." Oh no she didn’t….Olga just dropped some
first-generation iTunes ring tone smack on these fools. Ironically, Lopatina
said she loves the natural sound of bells after growing up in Ukraine,
but these days the droning of digital bells is a bother and not a blessing. The
bells have divided the community, some of whom have posted fliers against the
noise and claimed that the bells violate Burlington's noise ordinance.
A meeting with a mediator was scheduled for March, but those hoping for relief
will have to wait because that meeting was postponed until May 18. This is all
hilariously ironic in Vermont, a state deemed the least religious in the nation
by a Gallup Poll last year. In the state’s largest city, the recorded chimes
are played three times of day from the church building, which also houses a
school. They sound off at noon, when the students are let out of school at 2:45
p.m. and at 6 p.m. In light of the public outcry, the church agreed to some
modifications to the volume and length of the recordings but critics claim it
has not adhered to them. The truly sad part of this is that unlike actual
bells, which can be easily sabotaged and therefore necessitate expensive and lengthy
repairs, some priest dropping his iPod nano onto a docking station and playing
digital bells three times a day is much more difficult to snuff of……….
- There’s something just wrong about once-famous recording
artists begging fans for money on crowdfunding websites. Even if said artists
haven't been relevant or even released an album in more than a decade, going
out with hat in hand and hitting up people working low-paying, blue-collar jobs
for some money so you can get back in the studio and put out an album you then
expect them to buy has a pathetic and just plain wrong quality to it, but
groups like Long Island hip hop outfit De La Soul continue to exploit the hell out of
fans’ dogged devotion to their music as a means of racking up hundreds of
thousands in free money. The trio recently announced their eighth album, “And
The Anonymous Nobody,” which will be their first new release in 11 years. They
set out to fund the album via a Kickstarter campaign and set an ambitious goal
of $110,000 to make it happen. That number turned out to be far too low, as
they have reached their goal thanks to 11,169 supporters pledging $600,874. The
project will feature guest sports from 2 Chainz, David Byrne, Little Dragon and
others and propelled by a massive wad of cash sent their way, the group is
legitimately excited about what lies ahead. "One way to look at this is
that we’re sampling ourselves. So far, we’ve got over 200 hours of tape - we’ve
been recording this music for years and finally we’ve got what we need to make
the best De La Soul record ever,” member Dave Jude Jolicoeur said. The last time
the world heard a new De La Soul album was 2004 with “The Grind Date” and its
successor will include samples from original recordings made by the group and
session musicians in Los Angeles over the past three years. One track that
won't appear on the project is “God It,” a new song recently released by the
group and featuring a guest spot by Naas. "While busy at work, we also
like to play! This song is not from the new album, but an indication of the
good music to come... Just a little appetizer until we complete the main
course. You may recognize our featured guest. Enjoy,” the group wrote in a post
about the song. Here’s hoping “Whoring It Out For $$$$” is a track that makes
the cut for the album…………
- The world never really gets a chance to forget how
ridiculous soccer is…because the sports of hooligans, throwing lit road flares
at players and trying to burn your city to the ground whenever your team wins
or loses won't let us forget. Just as we creep up on a sufficient amount of
time having passed so as to put the most recent riot or attack behind us,
another one pops up, even uglier and more indefensible than its predecessor. Go
ahead and add the goings on in Poland over the weekend to the list after a man
died after being hit by a rubber bullet and 14 police officers were injured
during clashes that erupted during a Polish league football match in the south
of the country. What sparked this fatal unrest? Was it some hideous social
injustice that merely happened to come to the forefront at a soccer match? Hell
no. Are you stupid? It was nothing more than supporters of the local Concordia
Knurow team bum-rushing the field during a match against Ruch Radzionkow
because their team was trailing 4-1. As always, if your team is about to suffer
an embarrassing home loss to a rival, you may as well storm the pitch and try
to create mayhem. These fans succeeded in that respect and one of them died
after being struck by a rubber bullet when police fired at the attackers. The
riots continued at the hospital, where the sh*t hit the outdoor fan after the
fan struck by bullet was pronounced dead. "We are shaken by the fighting
we witnessed. Stones and Molotov cocktails were thrown,” Tomasz Pitsch, the
deputy director of the Knurow hospital, said. At least the friends and
loved ones of the deceased can take peace in knowing the man they cared about
died for a good reason……….
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