- NBA commissioner
Adam Silver has gotten much right during his tenure leading the Association.
This is not one of them. The commish continues to swing and miss on the dreaded
"hack-a-player" strategy employed by some NBA coaches to stall opposing
offenses and send bad free throw shooters to the line rather than let their
rivals get shots in the run of play. Silver has made remarks about addressing
the problem and eliminating the practice from the game, but every time he has
come back to inaction as his chosen course of action. He did so again this week
on the eve of a new NBA season, saying that as ugly as the hacking tactic makes
games, it’s unlikely to go away any time soon. "I'm not going to say we're never going
to change it, but we'll look at it closely," Silver said. "We had a
long discussion about with the competition committee this summer and the
decision was to leave it and let's continue to track it. "My inclination
is not to change it, but we'll continue to watch it." In other words,
people still love our sport, they’re still paying premium money for tickets and
cable packages and swag, so we’re not inclined to change it until we absolutely
have to. "It's bad, I get it, from an aesthetic standpoint, from an
entertainment standpoint, for fans," Silver said. "On the other hand,
I hear from literally thousands of coaches -- not just from the United States
but from around the world -- saying, 'You cannot change this rule. What lesson
does that send? The kids who are learning the game, this is a fundamental part
of the game: A guy's got to be able to make free throws.'” The message it sends
is not turning a basketball game into a stilted, farcical version of itself because
a coach is too lazy or not confident in his team’s ability to get defensive
stops. Wrong again, commish………
- First
and foremost, assaulting another human being is wrong. Now that we’ve
established that, let’s tackle the real problem here. The real issue is William Gailit, an underemployed, fully grown loser of a
man who is trying to pass himself off not as some guy making $10 an hour to put
on makeup and raggedy clothes soaked in fake blood in order to temporarily
terrify visitors to Universal Studios' Halloween Horror Nights in Orlando. No,
Gailit is trying to pass himself off as something else entirely, something that
obscures his actual gig and makes him sound quasi-legitimate. Gailit is billing
himself as a “scare actor,” a role in which he claims to have been assaulted by
a guest at the haunted house over the weekend. The Orlando Police Department
plans to ask the state attorney's office to file a battery charge against the
guest, Brandon Brown, who allegedly booted Gailit in the face while going through
the maze of papier-mâché tombstones, rubber spiders and witches in prosthetic
noses. Gailit told police he escorted Brown out of a haunted house Saturday
night after the reported incident and Universal spokesman Tom Schroder says the
theme part has a zero-tolerance policy that can include prosecution of anyone
suspected of compromising the safety of employees. The truly sad part of all of
this is that this ugly incident may have brought Gailit’s scare acting career
to an abrupt halt, as he said this will be his last year as a part of Halloween
Horror Nights. Then again, getting size-11 Nike to the face is probably not
worth it when you’re taking home $8 and hour after taxes………
- It’s
a bad week for the paying, adoring masses. First, Buffalo Bills receiver Sammy
Watkins tossed up a truly regrettable Instagram post in which he attacked Bills
fans hating on him for always being injured and mocked them as losers with “little
jobs” at which they must toil every day. Then, Tool frontman Maynard James Keenan took a run at his band's own fans,
which could make for an interesting scene when the band makes its 2015 live
debut headlining at the Monster Mash Music Festival in Tempe, Arizona. The band
recently wrapped up a seemingly interminable eight-year lawsuit and Keenan said
that the rest of the band "had to con me into" playing the festival.
Why? Why turn down a gig that will make even more money for someone who has
already made a sh*t ton of it over the years? "Insufferable people... It’s
just ridiculous, retards. I’m sorry. Can’t help them. Way too serious. Too
much. Lighten up,” Keenan said. He added that those too-serious people miss the
inherent humor in his band’s lyrics, suggesting that they are “so focused on
the other bullsh*t.” Maynard, those insufferable people are the reason you have
the career you have and their dollars are the ones funneled into your bank
account so you can fly on private jets, own expensive homes and sweet rides and
dine at expensive restaurants with overpriced bottles of booze. Whether previous
comments made by guitarist Adam Jones that work has began on a new album are
true or not, why would fans spend any money supporting an ass hat who doesn’t appreciate
them and thinks he’s so far above them? Feel free to develop a bit of
self-awareness any time now, M.J. Keenan………
- What
a bizarre world exists at the northern end of Europe, nestled ‘twixt Germany
and Belgium. In a magical, mystical place known as the Netherlands, a.k.a.
Holland, curious things are happening, events that would be unheard of in
bigger, richer and more powerful nations where bureaucracy reigns and
governmental incompetence and ineptitude are not only unpunished, but often
rewarded with job security and copious amounts of vacation time. This all
centers on a failed high-speed rail service linking
Amsterdam and Brussels that - brace yourself for this, followers of American
politics - is actually costing people responsible for the troubled project
their jobs. A scathing report, published Wednesday following a parliamentary
inquiry, cites the mismanagement with the net result being that
"passengers didn't get what was promised: fast, direct transport to
Brussels for a reasonable price." Anyone who has ever visited Europe and
especially this particular section of the continent knows that train travel is
a vital cog in the transportation machine, so dangling a high-speed carrot in
front of the public and then yanking it away is extremely offensive. In the
report, government ministers and the national rail company are accused of
putting their own interests ahead of passengers throughout the ill-fated
project. One of those officials, junior infrastructure minister Wilma Mansveld,
announced her resignation at a hastily arranged press conference, saying she
accepted political responsibility for the failure. Mansveld may be falling one
the grenade for those above her, but at least someone on a high pay grade is
losing her job after the Belgian and Dutch governments pulled the plug on the
high-speed link in 2013. The new Italian-built trains were plagued with
technical problems in their first few months of service and getting any sort of
verdict in the matter within two years has to be some sort of record for a
government in a civilized, developed nations……….
No comments:
Post a Comment