Attention Tinfoil Hats: We bring you a fresh and utterly absurd conspiracy theory to explain Indiana’s Game 1 win over Miami: The NBA is fixing the games in the East so that people will forget that the East is unwatchable and has been all year. Proof: The Pacers scored more points Sunday (107, only the second time they’ve hit three figures all postseason) than they did in the 13 games against ATLANTA and WASHINGTON, both of whom played the regular season drunk.
Indiana, of course, didn’t get liquored up until February. Hey, don’t hate the players, hate the games.
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Kevin Love said he wants to get out of Minnesota rather than spend more time selling Wolf tickets, which immediately caused rampant ovulation among Warrior fans who think their team is THE destination for any live talent. But of course, it isn’t that easy, as Dwight Howard should have convinced them.
Between the fact that the Lakers, Knicks, Bulls, Celtics, Suns and Rockets would also be in play, there is this: If a team needs Kevin Love, it wasn’t such a title contender as the Warriors imagined they were when they were smoking their former coach, were they?
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And speaking of which, Mark Jackson remains unfailingly polite when asked about his time in Oakland, as he was again during Sunday’s Indiana-Miami game. That didn’t prevent Jeff Van Gundy from fulminating about how coaches are now the league’s chief blame magnets for every little thing, which is in keeping with EVERY OTHER SPORT ON EARTH, EXCEPT THOSE FEW PLACES WHERE THE COACH WINS AND THE OWNER IS SMART ENOUGH TO LEAVE WELL ENOUGH ALONE, WHICH IS ALMOST NOWHERE.
It’s kind of like Van Gundy is shaking his fist at the incoming tide, like a crazy old man whose metal detector fritzed out on the beach. Of course coaches get blamed, Jeffy. They’re the ones who get the least amount of time schmoozing the owner, remember?
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Evidently California Chrome’s sleep apnea, which requires that it have a nasal breathing strip when running, is causing some consternation as the Triple Crown contender heads to Belmont. New York doesn’t allow breathing strips, preferring its horses snore in the paddock, and there is some panic that Chrome won’t run at all.
But . . .
“Neither the New York State Gaming Commission or the Stewards at Belmont Park have received a request to use nasal strips in the June 7 Belmont Stakes,” said an e-mailed statement from the guardians of the race. “If a request to use nasal strips is made, the decision on whether to permit them or not will be fully evaluated and determined by the Stewards.”
In other words, calm down. Unless, of course, you see the way the e-mail capitalized the S in “Stewards,” as though they were actually the Guardians of Oa. This may not end well, after all.
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The Bakersfield Blaze’s plan to have Tara the Dog-Fighting Cat thrown out the first pitch at Tuesday’s California League game seems daft, unless a Blaze player is going to actually tape the cat to a ball and throw both, but according to the Associated Press’ Animals Doing Stuff Animals Can’t Do Desk, “Dan Besbris of the Bakersfield Blaze minor league baseball team said Friday that the cat named Tara will throw out the ceremonial first pitch at the next home game. Besbris wouldn’t reveal how they expect to pull off the stunt, hoping to heighten interest. ‘It sounds crazy,’ Besbris said, ‘but we’ve got a trick up our sleeve.’”
Okay, but it better not be the cat-put.
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A Los Angeles Kings fan named Kari Allender has found out how much free time she has on her hands, by putting the names of all the players on the Kings and their opponents into her anagram-o-meter to produce, well, this:
For The Loins Sans Kegels, we have among the more printable offerings, goaltenders Hot Quackninja (Jonathan Quick) and Men’s Janitor (Martin Jones), star defenseman Dogturd Whey (Doug Doughty) and fourth line troublemaker Sir Wet Lover (Trevor Lewis), while the A Hogsback Chawlick has brilliant goalscorer Nike Packrat (Patrick Kane), defenseman Senor Rat Kabob (Brent Seabrook), team captain A Hotjaw Sonnet (Jonathan Toews) and head coach Jello Queen Liven (Joel Quenneville).
We didn’t see any offering for the San Jose Sharks, whom the Kings beat after losing the first three games, but when we tried it (and came up with feeble offerings like Joe Thornton as Jet Honor Not, Logan Couture as Unclear Outgo, or Antti Niemi as Inmate In It), every name ultimately came up the same:
Thorax Constricted Paralytics.
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And finally, the Arizona Diamondbacks are 2-0 under Tony La Russa, so Kirk Gibson’s job as manager is safe until . . . oh, let’s throw caution to the wind and say Wednesday.
