Well, lasterday’s debate/criticism/b-t-h session sure was productive. Let’s see what was accomplished:
* Boney has written a follow-up response rehashing his initial points and claiming he had a girlfriend.
* Detroit Chris M is now convinced he shot Mamba.
* Becky has defended our honor, as has Jack Cobra. (And others.)
* Our mother sent us an email stating that she thinks this is all hilarious. (You see, Mommy has seen a large portion of the film.)
* MC Bias is a Born-Again Mamba Devotee, and will take on all comers from the dreaded Anti-Mamba Revenge Squad:
As for us, we’ve firmly settled into our stance, and even considered shutting down until it’s movie-time. This would not be a punishment or something so cruel – it would merely be one less thing to have to worry about.
THAT SAID, there are clues and hints all over this site.
While we haven’t been posting daily or even nearly daily, the astute among you should know when it’s coming, what it’s about, and several plot points.
What do you think that thing behind Greg Oden’s head was lasterday? Some doodle we randomly threw together?
Look, we may not be here for you as much anymore, but we’re here for you. Now, instead of talking about ourself, allow us to hack out some retreaded Photoshopped Pistons or Celtics garbage in 2005-stylings, so Boney can be happy.
Of course, this will make us miserable, but that apparently doesn’t matter. Stagnation is everything!
Famed and valued commenter Boney has issued an open letter to us on his blog.
Portions are excerpted below – you can read the whole thing at the link in the previous sentence.
Dear “The Cavalierâ€Â,
Over the course of the last 2 NBA seasons and the 2005 NBA Eastern Conference Semis we have grown fond of your little website, and at times, we have become jealous that we are not as witty or clever as you are…
You see, Cav… we can call you Cav right? You have devoted your full attention to making a movie that has been hyped more we think than any of the recent Tom Cruise movie releases…[Cav note: This is blatantly untrue!]
Now we know it must be hard to lead a hollywood [sic] lifestyle and all, but over the course of the last year you have begun to push us all away…
We are not alone in making the following demand:
“Come back, or else.â€Â
…it’s just that Cav, we know the type of game you bring to the table. Unlike LeBron, there’s no worry about you not bringing your “A†game to the table. When you’re on, you’re among the best…. and over the last year, you haven’t been on and it’s a shame.
We had a whole long response to this written, but we just deleted it.
Look, do you want to watch your favorite comedians tell the same jokes for 3 straight years, or do want to see them EVOLVE? We did Photoshop – we did “witty commentary” – why continue? We proved everything we can there. We’re taking things up 10 levels. 100 levels. INFINITY levels. And then we’re leaving the internet FOREVER, so our aspirations and will no longer trouble you so.
We set out to do something, then we went and did it, and you’ll get to see it. (FOR FREE. COMPLAIN ABOUT THAT.)
Those of you who remain, thank you for your patience. Those of you who don’t, see you in crow-eating room at the Anti-Mamba Revenge Squad HQ.
(And Boney…”or else” what?)
It’s one of our favorite days of the year – the day we officially can stop following the NFL for the rest of the season.
Following the Browns getting clubbed to death at home by the Steelers, we no longer have inspiration nor reason to be into pro football until next year.
It’s not that we don’t love the sport – we absolutely do. It’s just that you can only do so much, right?
Anyway, with that off our plate, we can fully concentrate on things like Doug Christie blogging at MVN, and Britney Spears, the walking disaster. If you missed the MTV Video Music Awards last night, Britney was the opening act, and it was beyond awful, actually treading into “sad” territory.
How most of the pre-show interviewees were saying they were looking to see what she was gonna do, we have no idea. She’s been a wreck for about two years now, and spent the two days leading up to the performance out clubbing.
Why do we bring this up on the NBA blog here? Because the condition of Miss Spears is oh-so-parallel to the condition of this blog?
No! Say not that to be true! It’s because there’s nothing else to talk about – it’s September in the NBA. When Gary Payton considering playing for the Warriors is the news of the day, it indicates something.
Anyway, we may be back later when the big news breaks about “Gary Payton still considering the Warriors, but is having dinner first.” Of course, we may not – which you can probably take right to the bank.
Smile – we’re getting there! Tell them of the future and how bright it is, Jordi!
Well, to the above there is your first actual screenshot from the dead snake movie.
Many of you had guessed this already, but there are indeed boxes in the film. For the extremely clever among you…yep, there are several boxes.
We’ve had an incredibly busy two weeks, but everything is coming together as almost planned. What did we miss while we were gone?
It seems like the site has mostly turned into embittered readers sniping at each other and/or Boney. This hardly seems fair – if anyone deserves your scorn, ’tis us.
We’ve teased you, strung you along, and prodded you left and right for over a year. And what do you get for all of that? Nothing as of yet!
Luckily, we’re exactly like Kobe Bryant, whose summer-long quest to agonize Laker and NBA fans with his on-and-off again trade demands yield no answers, outside of vague red squares with words engraved on them.
ESPN’s Chris Sheridan checks in on the latest Kobe-isms at Team USA camp.
“Do you still want the Lakers to trade you?”
As we walked toward the team bus some 40 minutes after Team USA’s practice ended Saturday, this was his response:
“I’m not going to answer that question. The Lakers know exactly where I stand, and they’ve known exactly where I stand since the beginning of the summer.”
Other than that, nothing has happened in the NBA since we left, outside of someone getting shot at Deshawn Stevensons’ house and nobody talking the police about it. That’s not suspicious or anything, so don’t think it is.
What kind of conclusion have you drawn here from this return post? We’ve got nothing – we’re still alive. We’re still on target for that 1X.X0.07 date for the WSM?. Everything is, as Mamba would say, cool.
JERMAINE O’NEAL IS BACK. (for today)
A huge ALERT: Ladies DOT DOT DOT is holding a “hottest male blogger” contest, and “yay sports” (nice) is listed as an 8 seed. That is Jack Cobra, not us.
We’re hoping to have this adjusted to show it as his own site asap. Anyway, go vote for him.
Just as an aside, we totally would win this thing after looking through the brackets. Yes we are that arrogant/full of self-love.
***NOTE: Tuesday is a travel day – we’ll try to get something new up before the CLE-NJN game. (Which CLE will take by 15.)***
(After reading this over, we’d like to pretend we didn’t write this or PS that. Therefore…The Cavalier is on a brief, one-post hiatus. The following was not written by him, but he would be really embarrassed, and moreso, ashamed, if he had.)
Our favorite segment of fandom (after Boston fans in general) to watch with curiosity are Laker fans.
Why? Because their devotion is matched only by their delusion.
Case in point – their continued pursuit of Kevin Garnett, which some fans have taken to a whole new level by starting GetGarnett DOT COM. They describe it as follows:
We as fans would welcome KG with open arms. The opportunity of playing under Phil Jackson and alongside Kobe Bryant may appeal to Garnett himself. Beyond that, the fans would appreciate a player with so much passion. After all, the look on Kobe Bryant’s face of frustration and sadness from the game 2 blowout up in Phoenix could only be paralleled with one other player in the entire league. Kevin Garnett. We as fans have to push for the Lakers and Jerry Buss to look into pairing up what could be the deadliest one-two combo in the entire league. Will KG ask out? Can the Lakers pull it off? Kobe said it best, “do something, and do it now.â€Â
There reference there is to something we didn’t have an opportunity to cover, and that’s Kobe Bryant’s newfound aggravation with the LAL organization.
He says they’ve been at “Ground Zero” for three years, and he’s had enough. That’s both fair and true, and while we could easily shoot off some references to “making own bed” and “sleeping in said bed”, it’s much easier to simply poke a stick at the people who think there’s any chance LA can get Kevin Garnett.
(As perfect a pairing as that may be – KG could finally be the #2 guy he would function best as. We digress.)
Anyway, there are much more realistic objects of your desire, LAL fans – for example, you could at the very least make the target of your desires a slightly more realistic Jermaine O’Neal. There are others out there for the taking with the meager trade assets you have – perhaps a Grade A Jerome James?
(Yes, we realize Andrew Bynum is actually a decent trade asset, as is Lamar Odom. That totally ruins our concept here, however.)
Looking at the games on the schedule tonight, obviously CLE-WAS is the one we’re gonna be eyeing the closest, followed by the true game of interest, HOU-UTA Game 5. They’re tied up 2-2 and all. (Spurs-Nuggets is a San Antonio formality as far as we’re concerned.)
Our picks would be CLE, UTA, SAS. We simply don’t trust the universe to grant Tracy McGrady anything. Nothing against McGrady, it’s just an astrology thing.
With that business out of the way, let’s focus on something more fun. As we mentioned in the last post, the reference to us being in semi-retirement was fake infuriating.
THAT SAID, how long would it take for traffic to go down to zero, were we to actually go into retirement? For the record, we had a blog once before, and it’s been out of commission since July 2005. People still check it – we just checked the traffic, and it had 2 people visit lasterday.
That blog had a max traffic level of about 7,000 people daily. This site got, in its heyday, over four times that amount in terms of visitation.
(The “heyday” would’ve been last year’s Playoffs, when we were good for 5-6 posts per day, the material was still fresh, the Orange Roundie was created, and the snake movie hadn’t yet started its symbiotic relationship with our body and mind.)
Since that time, we’ve had two extended absences, decreased output, substitute teachers, a regular season void of any and all passion from the vast majority of participants, and we got the flu that one time.
The question becomes, how long would a true blog suicide take? And we’re not talking abandonment – we’re talking like if we intentionally started tanking the site.
For example, what if starting with the next post, out of nowhere and without explanation, we exclusively posted short essays on the importation trends in the sausage industry of colonial New Hampshire? How long would you stick around? If you did, would you question what was going on, or become strangely addicted to reading these essays every day, just to see if they would stop at some point?
Do you think about these things? We do, especially when every first round series is nearly a sweep or involves Derek Fisher v Rafer Alston. More Warriors games, less Manu Ginobli.
(We choose the “importation trends in the sausage industry of colonial New Hampshire” because we actually did this once on some high school aptitude test wherein we were supposed to write an essay about one person from history we could spend a day with.)
TrueHoop Henry emailed us this pic from the Lakers-Suns game lasterday, suggesting we might like to mess with it in some way. Perhaps in celebration of PHX being up 3-1, and yet another first round series becoming a non-event.
Allow us to explain a few things here, okay?
1) We rarely do requests.
2) When you title your email “I know you’re in semi-retirement”, it only makes us angry. The reason for this is because everything makes us angry – as those of you in the mass-NBA-blogger email extravaganzas have surely noticed, we’re off-balance, proprietary, selfish, and an ego-fueled, idiot savant level child.
3) Steve Nash had 23 assists in the game, yet we still can’t find anything all that interesting in the event or the series as a whole to write about. As such, we choose instead to engage in faux-feudish type activities with TrueHoop Henry.
4) Much like the Heat-Bulls talks of last week, is it really a feud if only one side is into it? Especially when that side (us) has already admitted there is no feud via the use of the phrase “faux-feudish”?
5) THAT SAID, the words “semi-retirement” burn through us like hot things that are on fire. We would kill to go into full retirement, believe us.
6) If there’s one thing we believe in, it’s the law. Both on a state and federal level.
7) Should this list be in the blue blockquotes? We’re not sure. Normally that’s where we’d put a player/coach quote regarding the game being discussed. However, we take no special interest in Lakers-Suns at this time, therefore no quote shall be pulled.
Oh, and in case you were wondering, yeah – we went ahead and did the PS anyway. There’s your request, TrueHoop Henry. There it is, in all its glory. You happy now? You like the Steve Nash jokes? Maybe more will be on the way. Maybe not.
It’s all up to you at this point, isn’t it?
(Seriously, Vince Carter…NJN…vs the Cavaliers…this is not good. We have a better shot of beating the 1952 Celtics, and most of those guys are dead, which means the game can’t even take place.)
By far the biggest story of the first round so far was the Warriors taking out the Mavs in Game 1 of their series, followed by the Warriors emotional implosion in Game 2.
Many will tell you that sums up the GSW team as a whole – immensely talented and equally as unstable.
We prefer to think it’s the Mavs that are the even bigger headcases, and that’s why we shall now label tonight’s Game 3 as our most anticipated matchup of the evening’s many intriguing matchups. (Also taking place – CHI/MIA & TOR/NJN – both well worth watching.)
Anyway, Golden State Head Coach Don Nelson says he’s confused about his team’s lack of composure.
“It doesn’t make any sense to me, as hard as we worked to get to the playoffs, to all of a sudden get there and then not be able to play because of ejections and not controlling our emotions,” Nelson said.
“I want to play with passion, I want to play with emotion. But you have to have respect for authority out there. The referees are the authorities.”
This is so very true, and as we saw in recent weeks, the referees are nothing if not even handed and respectful right back at the players.
At least the refs aren’t the story of the Playoffs so far, as they usually are. Actually, they might be – like we’ve continued to beat you over the head with, we were only able to start watching last night.
And yes, we’ve now seen the LeBron on American Idol video. We have no opinion, other than wondering why he wasn’t actually singing for most of it.
Finally, for a last random turn into nowhere, how is it we’ve linked to MOTTRAM’s empire twice in one post? We really don’t know, to be honest. It’s just like that today. Maybe we’re weak. Maybe we’ve tried so hard to create so many enemies that we now feel a need to reach out and recreate friendships.
And maybe…just maybe…we’re bipolar. Maybe that’s it. And it’s taken us over. It’s all such a sad situation, tinged with just a touch of happiness. It smells like flowers to us. Thanks for having us back.
(Mavs in 5.)
