There’s nothing quite as thrilling on baseline level as going online to check your bank account and finding that your debit card number has been hijacked by someone who likes internet gambling.
“I’m going to gamble and gamble and gamble and gamble and gamble until there’s no money left in this person’s account,” they apparently think to themselves.
Yes, it’s exciting.
The process of fixing the issue is even more exciting.
You see, often what will happen is the computer voice at your bank’s alleged 24/7 hot-line keeps saying things like, “Would you like to check your balance,” no matter which option you choose.
Of course, since you have a brain and are able check your balance online, you already know that you have negative forty-seven dollars.
It’s times like that you sit back, relax, and throw your phone through a window.
That’s not to say the bank doesn’t work with you. “We’ll send you an deposition statement in the mail for you to sign and return. That’ll get the investigation started.”
“Investigate this,” you reply. “I didn’t sign up for 80 different gambling sites at 3:30 in the morning. I don’t have a week to wait to put gas in my car. It’s thirsty now, and so am I. I’m addicted to those No-Carb Monster drinks. The big ones – the ones that look like you need a wrench to open them.”
“Ooooh, those are good! What we can do is issue you a line of credit while this is being worked out.”
You figure that’ll work. Especially when that line of credit is all of TWENTY-THREE DOLLARS.
Anyway, that was a large portion of our weekend’s activities.
We got an email from someone who claims to be in the know, and since we don’t worry about verification and such things, we’re just gonna run with this.
An additional reason? No NBA basketball watching for us this past week.
Anyway, here is portions of a back and forth we had with some dude via email.
when is anyone going to write about Vince Carter being secretly engaged to a New Jersey Nets dancer?
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Is there some evidence of this or at least source of rumor?
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The source is Vince’s teammate. Vince has been dating her since June when he was a judge for the New Nets Dancers competition. This girl is a captain.
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And who are you exactly?
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I am a close friend of one of his teammates. What do you need for verification?
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Nothing really – I’m not a news site where I care about stuff like that.
Curious what your agenda/motivation is, though.
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honestly, my motivation is simply that Vince Carter should not be above the rules. I know that these players sleep around with the dancers but at least RJ’s girl quit the team to be with him. They did the right thing. Vince and his dancer think they are outsmarting everyone. People think he is a clean cut, all American Momma’s boy. Some of us know better.
Few things of note about this – all of them funny:
* Our crack journalism skills, ie, “No, no – we don’t care about verification – whatever.” (What we were really saying there is, “Hey, is she one of the hot ones?”)
* Whoever this guy is, he must be pretty insulated in the world of celebrity athletes, because out here in the real world, nobody like Vince Carter. Upon last inspection, people don’t have enough respect for him to call him an All-American anything. Plus, he played in Canada for awhile.
* This guy’s motivation is kinda odd. Does he think this’ll overshadow Roger Clemens’ butt or something? Like, NBA players sleeping with members of the dance team is probably the least shocking thing on Earth. And hey – Vince is even engaged to her – that makes it even kinda sweet – like their love is trapped by her fear of losing that sweet $25/night dancer job.
We’ve never been big Vince Carter fans, but we’re sure of one thing here – Jason Kidd sent this email to get us off his case and onto Vince’s.
WE ARE SO IN YOUR HEAD, “JAY”. (That’s what his buddies call him. And he makes them spell it “Jae”. There’s some REAL gossip.
In closing, we think the dancer in question is Megan – her uptight lifestyle and high-pressure Government degree from Harvard makes her lash out and break the rules – even though Vince likes dudes.
It’s begun…with a weird signing.
4 years, $24M – we figured any number of teams would throw that at former Heat-person Jason Kapono, being that he’s one of the best shooters (percetage-wise) in the NBA. But Toronto?
It’s weird not so much because they offered, but because we figured Kups (what we called him when he was with CLE) would go to a warm-weather city. Specifically, we figured he’s end up in LA with the Lakers. He went to UCLA, they need players, etc, etc.
Our favorite Kups memory was probably a January game during his rookie year that he inexplicably was really, really tan. Clearly he was going to tanning beds, and this became a point of great interest for us.
Were the Stephen A Smith sock puppet around back then, we’d have asked it to scream “WHY ARE YOU SO TAN?!” at the guy.
Anyway, that the only big change so far. Vince Carter re-upped with the Nets, which was a surprise to nobody. He can passionately be non-passionate for New Jersey right on through when they move to Brooklyn.
We’re ready for some Kobe/KG movement asap – get to it, NBA execs.
NOTE: When did the Nets mascot become a werewolf? Wouldn’t it be better if it were just a big net? Like they drop it from the ceiling and it just falls on the court and lays there motionless, but for some reason all the NJN fans go nuts for it?
Like all the out-of-town announcers are like “Why do these people like this thing? It’s just a net, right? Is there something I’m not seeing here?” Then all the fans can just be all pretentious about it like, “You not FROM here. You just don’t GET IT.”
UPDATE: Luke Walton, Laker for life – good move on everyone’s part on that one. Isn’t it funny how reading these deals makes $30M seem like it’s not that much money?
Ladies and gentlemen…the 2007 NBA Eastern Conference Finals, aka The Battle of the Distracted.
Okay, so LeBron gave you maybe a quarter and a half, but it was the correct quarter and half. Cavs beat the Nets in 6, and move on to face the Detroit Lasers in the Eastern Conference Finals.
Contrary to how we’ve been so far in these Playoffs, we’re going to try and simply enjoy this. No, this is not because Scoop Jackson’s Feel-Good Attempt That Failed Because It Was So Melodramatic told us to – it’s simply because what else are we supposed to do?*
Oh, and one final farewell to Mr. Carter, who could’ve held in his emotions over losing the series a little more:
*Before we go full-bore enjoyment, one final moment of torment…NO, Cavaliers fans, you should not be satisfied with 50 wins, the 2 seed, and a trip to the Eastern Conference Finals. We don’t care if they haven’t been there in 15 years. They haven’t earned this, unless you think flimsy play, a level of focus that’s been measured at -14, terrible coaching, and general disinterest by LeBron since early November is worthy of praise. They’re here in spite of themselves.
Watch what happens if they play like they’ve been playing – they will get ROLLED.
THAT SAID, maybe they’ll continue to inexplicably play to the level of their competition, whether that be up or down. We really have no idea if they’re as good as the Spurs or as bad as the Knicks – they just play the same as whoever they’re playing against. They’re like Retarded Chameleons…vs Lasers…
Well…hello. Okay, let’s re-do the first sentence of this post:
Ladies and gentlemen…the 2007 NBA Eastern Conference Finals, aka The Cleveland Retarded Chameleons vs The Detroit Lasers, aka The Battle of the Distracted.
(We have no official predictions yet.)
We know it’s Jack Cobra’s day and all, but we’d feel a little weird if we didn’t put up some kind of sour-puss post regarding tonight’s Cavs-Nets Game 6.
Fear the Sword asks if the Cavs “have the stones”. Umm…no, they don’t. If they did, there wouldn’t be a game six at all.
Our own Jack Cobra asks if LeBron will play hard tonight. Since Shrek the Third will hopefully be in his “already saw it” column by this evening, and Pirates 3 doesn’t come out for another whole week, we expect at least a little focus.
We say he’ll actually turn in a nice fourth quarter, but not much more. Won’t stop everyone from gushing over the 27/6/7 stat line, while lambasting us for complaining about it at the same time.*
Anyway, you’re looking for our prediction, and that last paragraph should clue you in. Cavs will take it, but it’ll be more of a “got it” than a “took it”. We expect another horrible evening of pseudo-basketball, wherein fans on both sides are screaming things like, “They’re trying to give you the game!! What’s wrong with you?!?”
One bright beacon of hope is shining across in the wake of the Lasers’ series victory over the Bulls, however.
“The game has changed, and it’s not like you can just go out there and hate a team. It ain’t the same game,” [Lasers assistant coach Ron] Harper said. “[Animosity] is still there some of the time, but it isn’t there all the time.”
So, Ron, who do the Pistons hate?
“Cleveland. We don’t like Cleveland. That series is going to be fun.”
That gets us a little charged up – just a little. Regardless of the Cavaliers state of mind/play, DET is a fun team to hate, especially when their bloggers are already looking ahead to the Finals.
Cleveland over Jersey tonight – final score 36-27.
*We don’t get the CLE fans who are just happy to be in the second round (and clearly don’t actually watch the team play OR don’t understand basketball). We finally have an (alleged) player who can bring a championship one day – let’s strive for the championship, huh? If this were the Terrell Brandon/Chris Mills Cavs, we’d be happy to be in the second round.
(Hey – the WNBA is starting soon. Check out this awesome promo pic – doesn’t it just make you rush right to the ticket office? No, really – she’s pregnant. Awesome.)
In the chat with Becky we posted the other night, we mentioned to her that we didn’t really have that passion for the Cavaliers we’d had in years past, ie our entire life.
“Why?”, she asked, and perhaps you asked, too.
Well, if you haven’t been reading all season, we have a really hard time getting behind a group of players that flat out don’t care, and if you think the Cavaliers care after watching them get rolled at home by the Nets last night, you’re watching a different team than we are.
They had a chance to close out the series and start resting for the Eastern Conference Finals, and what did they do? Wait, we already said what they did – see what they do to us?
Repeating ourself.
Discombobulation.
What else can we say that we haven’t said all season? What else can we type? How many ways can we say it? If they don’t care, how can we? We feel bad, because we know our parents are planning to watch this garbage on Tivo, and we feel like we should call and warn them.
We can’t wait to see how Coach Mike and the Gang justify this one. Which cliches that make it seem like not a big deal can they roll out this time?
Ambivalence, thy name is the NBA.
(For his own reasons, Bill Simmons is starting to hate the league, as well.
We don’t hate the game itself, we just hate NOT FREAKING TRYING. BTW, the game isn’t even over yet – oh look, LeBron just pulled a Vince Carter on his ankle. Nice.)
The headline in today’s Beacon Journal uses the word “enraged” to describe the mindset of LeBron James.
This in the aftermath of Nets forward Mikki Moore’s takedown of Sasha Pavlovic in Game 4, of course.
As any longtime reader knows, we’ve long been a proponent of one “Angry LeBron”, he being the version of LeBron who can take over an entire game in a way only a few players in the NBA can.
Let’s now look at some direct quotes to determine if our savior is indeed upon us for this evening’s potentially series-clinching Game 5 in Cleveland.
“I guess the intent was to go at Sasha in a harmful manner,” James said. “It really ticked me off that they would try to do something like that to Sasha and try to hurt him. I had to stick up for my teammate, I didn’t like it at all. Sasha knows he’s got 14 guys behind him, especially me.”
Boy, he sounds pissed, doesn’t he? Using words like “intent” and phrases like “harmful manner” scream rage to us, especially when they’re so haphazardly thrown together like that. This is all sounding dangerous.
Regardless of whether Angry LeBron shows up or not tonight, we do expect the Cavaliers to roll forward and take this thing.
They’re one of those teams that really does play better at home, and with New Jersey facing the double obstacles of a 3-1 hole and Vince Carter leading the way…well, you see where we’re going with this.
We’ll attempt not to get too far ahead of ourself, but what do you think the Cavs’ chances are against the Lasers? And where do you think Vince Carter goes this summer in free agency? Perhaps one of the Russian Minor Leagues? Is that where the combination of “relaxing atmosphere” and “not having to care all that much” is optimal?*
*Special thanks to us for the last-minute switch from “best” to “optimal”. Wow!
Well, in what can roundly be called one of the ugliest games ever, LeBron and the Cleveland Jumpshooters beat Vince and the New Jersey Jumpshooters in Game 4, allowing them to go up 3-1 with the next one Wednesday in CLE.
By all logic, they should take the series at that point, but of course, this is the same Cavaliers team that will claim in post-game comments (which we haven’t heard yet) that there was nothing but good shots taken in this victory.
We say otherwise, and the proof is right after the jump. Yes, we spent a good portion of the second half in chat with Becky, who isn’t a happy camper, and has actually wished an STD on Vince Carter. Here’s a preview:
me: I think Kieth Van Horn is a doctor
like a pediatrician
he never told anyone
it’s why he was always distracted on the court
Boki isn’t a doctor – he’s not even a US citizen
Rebecca: yeah but he has a brother
me: is his brother a doctor?
Rebecca: i think he plays basketball too
but he could be a doctor
If that doesn’t get you to click through, nothing will. Read it…through this link following below…WARNING: ADULT LANGUAGE.
[click to continue…]
We’re on a serious hunt for Angry LeBron, and there’s not much else to be said about tonight’s Nets-Cavs Game 4.
Bill Livingston sums it all up in his column from this morning’s Plain Dealer, and we don’t feel there’s much we can add.
As such…
After Tuesday’s performance, in which he scored 36 points with 12 assists and accounted for 63 of the Cavs’ 102 points, why did James take only 16 shots Saturday and score a career-playoff-low 18 points against the Nets?
Why were only six of those taken in the paint? Why were three of his four shots in the fourth quarter 3-pointers? Why, after not making the All-NBA first team, did James not take it personally? Why did he react to the slight, at least publicly, with a shrug?
Yeah, that’s the thing about Saturday’s game that really threw us – not only did LeBron not come out all fired up and doing more than usual, he actually had a completely lethargic and subpar game.
He wasn’t even Average Lebron, who’s good for 25/5/5. He was Non-Lebron, who was like 18/12/4 or something. The 12 would be the assists – we can’t really argue with those, but whatever. They lost when they could’ve easily won with a little effort.
We don’t really feel the series is in any danger, and even the Lasers lost lasterday – in the end, it’s no big deal. It’s just that you worry, because you can’t give up a game to “not feeling like it” in the next round.
As for you Nets fans, we’d offer up some kind of apology for disrespecting your team, but in the spirit of being honest, we really don’t have any respect for your team.
(We’re pretty sure a lot of the old Pat Riley Ranger Corps stuff was lost in the server move, but click on the category and see if you can figure out what the hell this is all about anyway.)
