- At least the New York Knicks could be bothered to put
forth enough effort to speak the words and sum up one of the most listless
performances you’ll ever see from an NBA team. No, the Knickerbockers couldn’t
be bothered to give a damn on the court during their 121-107 loss to the Los
Angeles Lakers - coincidentally one of the NBA’s worst teams - at home, but in
the wake of that defeat, they summoned the energy necessary to admit what
they’d done - or not done, as in tried. "That's the worst we've looked
this season," backup point guard Brandon Jennings said after losing to a
Lakers team that had dropped 12 straight road games before their Big Apple
triumph. "You can't coach effort and energy. That's something we should
all have. We all make millions of dollars playing this game, so the least we
can do is go out there and play hard every night. Regardless of who's making
shots or anything like that, just effort and energy, just leave it all out
there on the court." With the loss, the Knicks have dropped 17 of their
past 23 and are in 12th place in the Eastern Conference, nowhere close to the
playoff team most expected them to be after (abysmally bad) team president Phil
Jackson traded for Derrick Rose and signed Joakim Noah and Courtney Lee in the
offseason. But playing poorly is one thing; not giving a damn about it is
another. "You've got to play for some pride," Hornacek said. "If
you're just going to come out and just play basketball, then you're in the wrong
level." Lee went so far as to apologize to fans the day after the game,
but there are some things you just can't apologize for……..
- Africa is feeling mighty good about itself lately and
acting as if it doesn’t need or want the rest of the world’s help or judgment.
First, a group of nations from the continent began bandying about the idea of
leaving the International Criminal Court because it dares to hold Africa’s
dictators accountable for their crimes against humanity and now, the presidents
of five countries in Africa's vast Sahel region have come up with a plan to
create a joint counterterrorism force to battle high-profile attacks by
numerous extremist groups, including Boko Haram and ones linked to al-Qaida. The
plan was hatched following a meeting in Mali of the regional G5 group, which
includes Mali, Niger, Mauritania, Burkina Faso and Chad. If hearing those names
doesn’t exactly inspire confidence in your mind when it comes to stamping out
terrorism, you’re not alone. Those five countries aren't exactly international
heavyweights in the fight against evil, but it’s nice that they’re trying and
they can't implement their plan without a mandate from the African Union and
United Nations as well as financing. Details on who will comprise the force,
how large it will be and how it will operate are scarce at this point, but back
in 2014, France launched its counterterrorism Operation Barkhane, which covers
the same five countries, so there is precedence for such a group. Applause for
the effort, if nothing else, G5………..
- Idris Elba inspires a lot more vitriol than a
good-looking, talented and seemingly decent actor/entertainer should. When his
name was being tossed around as a possible successor to Daniel Craig as the
next James Bond, haters used everything from his race to his acting skills to
try to knock him down. Now, the people trying to go to battle with the “Luther”
star are his neighbors in the tony London borough where he lives when he’s not
making movies or music around the world. Ironically, it’s his music that’s the
issue here, as Elba is reportedly planning to build a recording studio in
the basement of his London home, a plan that has angered many of his neighbors.
Elba, who also DJs when he’s not acting, is apparently planning to build a
state-of-the-art studio in the basement of his $3.5 million Hackney house and
wants to use it for film, TV and music post-production. The studio itself and
the noise it might create are only part of this issue; the foot traffic created
by a studio that would be open for 15 hours a day, seven days a week is just as
big of a concern. Elba’s proposed plans have been submitted to the local
council and his neighbors are already furious over them. Before Elba owned the
home, it housed a charity and apparently, charity is something the neighbors
are out of when it comes to their hood’s most famous resident…….
- Irony lives at Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Center,
not far from a “leaky slop sink pipe” that managed to do what few rivals ever
could to Thomas “Tommy Shots” Gioeli. Gioeli, the orca-fat ex-Colombo mob boss,
is suing the federal government for $10 million over an incident in which he
slipped, fell and allegedly injured himself during a prison ping-pong match.
According to the lawsuit, Gioeli was watching the ping pong match when he
slipped in the liquid that came from the pipe broke his kneecap. This saga has
been going on since 2014, when the former mob boss filed his initial complaint
in the case - a complaint that conveniently left out the details of his prison
extracurriculars. Yes, a man known for having his rivals kneecapped injured his
own without anyone actually attacking him. According to Gioeli, the slip
happened in 2013 when he was waiting for assignment to a prison to serve his
18-year sentence for racketeering and conspiracy to commit murder. The
government accused him of a series of murders, including the 1997 retaliatory
slaying of NYPD officer Ralph Dols for marrying another mobster’s wife, but he
was acquitted of those charges in 2012. Now, a guy who carried a man purse to
trial is expecting the government to fill that murse with a load of dollar
bills to compensate him for apparently failing to properly maintain its plumbing
or to place a “Caution: Wet Floor” sign on the ground to make sure that the
prison rec room was a safe place for one and all as they watched some of their
fellow inmates smack around something other than a witness they don’t want to
testify against them at their trial……..
No comments:
Post a Comment