The All-Star Game is in Toronto, and amid all the madness about trying to keep Beyonce out of the country for singing something that doesn’t precisely connect with the elderly white experience, the noted communard Bruce Arthur of the Toronto Star points out that keeping Ontario safe from people who dance, sing and deal with the burden of being too fat while being not fat at all isn’t the most difficult task awaiting the rush of basketball fans.
“The temperature on Saturday is expected to reach a high of minus-17C (-1.4 F), which will feel like minus-28C (-18.4), because the wind will apparently be coming off the lake looking for souls to harvest. The low is forecast to be minus-23C (-9.4), which will make it feel like you are in The Revenant.
“Maybe we can just tell NBA players that fur coats are back in. PETA may get upset, but PETA can’t create a good look at the basket in a one-point game.”
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Luke Walton, who won’t be there because going 39-4 happens every day, was surprisingly pimped for the about-to-be re-vacated New York Knicks job by of all people his elongated father Bill. From Larry Burnett of Vice:
“Luke has had some great training for the job. His first coach was Greg Lee, our point guard at UCLA. Then Luke had a great coach in Jim Tomey at University of San Diego High School. Next came Lute Olson at Arizona. This man is a Hall of Famer and, really, the 21st-century version of John Wooden. Then Luke got drafted by the Lakers and played for Phil Jackson. That changed all of our lives. Now, he's gotten himself into this situation with Steve Kerr as the head coach and Jerry West as the guy overseeing things. I know that Luke calls Lute Olson and calls Phil Jackson. He calls his former coaches all the time. That's what makes me feel so proud.”
“(Does Luke call you, too?)
“No. I call him).”
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It was a big day in hockey, too, as the Toronto Maple Leafs dealt veteran defenseman and icon-during-these-wretched-putrid-days Dion Phaneuf to, of all teams, the Ottawa Senators in a nine-player deal that clears the way for both teams to screw up their franchises even more. The last time these two teams did any business was 18 years ago, when they swapped Per Gustrafsson for Dwight Wolfe in a deal that helped no sides, since neither one ever played a second for either team.
This of course set Canada alight, which judging by Arthur’s weather report was much needed.
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Only Gregg Popovich could get an election update during a time-out interview, and only he could be comedy-pissed about it.
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I can’t wait to see what owner will be required to provide what justification for signing Johnny Manziel this offseason. Anything short of, “I’ve been in a bathysphere at the floor of the Marianas Trench, what did I miss?” probably won’t fly.
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And finally, ESPN, which went all-in with Draft Kings, is now all-out, according to Daniel Roberts of Yahoo Finance. Expect this news to be repeated with other capitalized acronyms in the days to come, because as we all know, a sinking ship raises all silt.
