With the NBA season commencing next week, I figured it was a good time to share some thoughts about the upcoming season. Now, I certainly could sit here and bore you with the same nonsense everyone else is talking about (i.e. Phil Jackson selling his soul to his girlfriend by going back to coach the most disrespectful player he ever came in contact with, but I digress), but I'm keeping an eye on a few other things.

1) The Riley/Van Gundy situation in Miami. You gotta love Good Old Riles. When the team looks like their probably going to be in the lottery for the next 5 years, he'll move upstairs and be the team president. Then Stan squeezes water out of a rock two years ago and gets them to the 2nd round of the playoffs. It was one of the great coaching jobs I've seen in the NBA in a long time. Stan gets the most out of Lamar Odom, enabling Riley to use him as a chip for Shaq. The, last season, Stan coaches them within a whisker of defeating the defending NBA champions in a Game 7 of an Eastern Conference final. How does Riley repay him?? Make him spend the early part of the summer dealing with rumors that Riley is going to fire him and take over. Nice boss. Stan Van Gundy has been one of the three best coaches in the NBA for the last two seasons, yet because Riley needs another coaching ring to validate his massive ego, Stan enters the season with a very short leash. And the most ridiculous part of all is that if Riley can just keep his mouth shut and stay upstairs in the front office, he'll deservingly get a mountain of credit for building a championship team if this team wins it all.

2) Forgive me if I'm not feeling all the love everybody else is with the Isiah Thomas-Larry Brown marriage. Before I proceed, I must warn you that I am not a very big Isiah Thomas fan, but I give him credit for bringing in Brown because it took guts, especially since Brown is going to take his job. Remember, Isiah in less than two years has left a rash of mistakes in his wake. While many of his personnel moves are debatable, his bosses had to be less than enamored with his butchering of the Chaney firing/Fratello hiring. They also were probably not all that thrilled when he made pointed comments to the media pushing Dolan favorite Allan Houston to retire. Combine that with the enormous amount of money he's lit on fire, and its not a push to say that there is not a ton of slack left in his rope. Enter Larry Brown. Larry is a brilliant basketball mind, maybe the best. But he's an insatiable whiner and there's only one thing he hates more than losing... taking the blame. Now, I'm not all that sure how much money Isiah's making, but I bet is nowhere close to what Larry is making. And when this team folds like a cheap suit, and they will, Isiah has been set up perfectly to be the fall guy. If Isiah takes anything out of this Knick experience it will be to pick your friends better.

3) Its official. The balance of power has clearly shifted back to the Eastern conference. 4 out of the best 5 teams in the NBA are in the East. The Spurs are clearly the odds on favorite entering the season. The next four teams on my list are all in the East. They are, Detroit, Miami, Indiana, and New Jersey. If you look at the 2nd best team in the West, your candidates are Houston, Dallas, and Denver. I think New Jersey is much better than all 3 of those teams. Remember, the Nets won 15 out of their last 20 to end the season and that was without Richard Jefferson. They're deeper and bigger than last year. If their big 3 and Kristic all can stay healthy, I give them a legitimate chance to go to the Eastern Conference finals.

Most people I know are quite particular where they take a dump, and I'm no different. I actually have designated certain areas "NDZs". An NDZ is a "No Doody Zone". This whole concept originated one night at a Nets/Lakers game after eating some bad dressing in a seafood salad. Lets just say that I learned a very valuable lesson about the less than sanitary conditions in the Meadowlands arena's men's rooms. Fast forward to this past Friday night. I have my wife and two daughters at a Devils game. It was somewhat exciting, being the kids first ever live sporting event. In the middle of the second period, my 4 year old asks me to take her to the bathroom. No problem, lets go. Half way up to the bathroom, she casually mentions that she has to make a doody. Panic sets in. I don't want her doodying (is that a word?) in an NDZ, but I also don't want her to be one of these kids who's uptight about taking a dump. So, I just smile and say nothing, realizing that I'm about to embark on one of the grossest ventures of my entire life. We get to the bathroom stall and I tell my daughter to stand with her back to the bathroom stall and touch nothing to "give Daddy a chance to set up." I proceed to clean the amalgum of urine spewed from each drunk Devils fan who graced that porcelain that evening. It would have been nasty with an industrial sponge and rubber gloves, but with some toilet paper and my hand, it was absolutely revolting. I started the evening being grossed out by the NDZ and finished the evening CLEANING the NDZ. And I smiled the whole way through it. In a sick, twisted way, I'm proud of that.

Much is made about everyone's favorite herpes carrier Michael Vick and his ability as an NFL quarterback. After watching him on Monday night, I know exactly where I fall on this argument. This guy stinks. He's Kordell Stewart on crystal meth. Sure he can run, but as soon as the Jets started staying in their lanes, I thought that Anthony Wright locked Vick ina bathroon stall at halftime and stole Vick's jersey. The reason he succeeds in the league is because ich McKay and Jim Mora have created the perfect storm for him. Good defense, best Offensive line coach in football, a double complementary running back threat, and a tight end who can catch it in the middle of the field. The fact is the older Vick gets, the more he gets beat up, the slower he'll get, therefore the less effective he'll be, because when it comes to throwing the football, he can't hit a bull in the ass with a bass fiddle.
And while I'm on the NFL, I'd like to take a moment to mention the passing of NY Giant owner Wellington Mara. As a diehard Giant fan, I'll never watch a Giant game without thinking about the dignity and pride he brought to being a Giant fan. He was truly, the anti-Steinbrenner. Giant fans have as much passion and knowlegde as Yankee fans, but we also bring class and humility. Thats a reflection on Mr. Mara. He leaves a legacy for all of us not only to enjoy, but to take pride in as well.
So I'm at this golf outing the other day, and its like 45 degrees and windy. My windbreaker isn't warm enough and the only consolation is that the other 3 guys I'm with are freezing also. As one of them comments that he has to piss, I am reminded of the worst fate of doing an outdoor cold weather activity for a prolonged period, the eventual urge to urinate. So I begin to explain this phenomenon which goes something like this. If you think you're cold now, wait until that cold hand meets that warm pecker and you'll get a chill that won't go away for 5 hours. Well, I din't realize what physical and emotional dmage I had inflicted. Evidently, one of the other guys in my foursome was gripped with all this urination talk, and he has to go too. But these guys are afraid to go because of the "Cold Hand Effect". One guy waits two holes, while continually rubbing his hands inside his pocket, waiting for the perfect teperature to begin draining the wheez. The other guy actaully wouldn't go in the woods, because he needed a sink to run hot water on his hand before taking a leak. And even though my commentary virtully gave these guys urinary tract infections they were gratefuk for my warning which I refused to heed on the 15th hole, as I routinely went to take a piss on a tree. The chill was still running through me the next morning.

I watched something extremely interesting last night on HBO. Please understand that I'm not going to make a habit of critiquing journalism, but since I have a goddamned opinion on everything, it will happen occasionally. Bob Costas had a panel discussion with John McEnroe, Jim Palmer, and Pete Rose. What I found noteworthy was that Palmer, Costas, and McEnroe found every articulate, polite way to tell Rose that he was a degenerate piece of human filth, yet Rose sat back and took it, because they all beleived that he should be in the Hall of Fame. Frankly, I could care less if he's in the Hall of Fame or not, but to watch him get abused in a fashion that was beyond his intellectual capacity was enjoyable. The guy's a moron and I hope they keep him out of the hall of fame for a lot longer just to see him make a fool of himself on TV over and over again.
Also, on HBO last night was one of the all time great rants on Inside the NFL by Cris Carter. I will admit that I'm not a big fan of Cris Carter, but on this week's show, he was AWESOME. They did a piece on Bill Romonowski punching that Raider backup tight end during a practice two years ago, essentially ruining the guy's career. Romo's gross lack on contrition was disgusting, and his lack of candor was appalling, such as swearing he was not on steroids at the time. Think about it, the guy spent almost every waking moment in the NFL on some kind of steroid, but at the moment he illogically destroyed a man's career, he was clean. The hypocrisy was not lost on Carter. Who referred to him as a dirty player and a bad guy. He then admonished Costas, Marino, and Collinsworth for being objective in their language in referring to Romo. Then he declared Romo unworthy of their airtime and tabled the topic. It was entertaining and satisfying. Romo is an appalling human being, who cheated for years, treated people like garbage, and now is attempting to profit from being a social deviant. If you buy his book, you deserve to be punched like that poor Raider tight end and please never read my blog again.
So, have you ever walked into the bathroom at work and smelled one of those foul dumps. Now, as gross as that smell is, once you leave the bathroom, its easily forgotten, unless you put a face to the smell. I walk in the Mens room the other day, I catch a wiff of something that was probably doody, but could have easily been a dead animal. And as I'm washing my hands trying not to breath through my nose, a well like dco -worker emerges from the stall with a big hearty hello. My question is this. How do I look at this nice guy again without conjuring images of that horrendous odor?? Am I going to smell that every time I say hello to this guy? How long will it take for me to forget that odor?? Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.

Welcome to my outlet. This is a place for me to express all of these bizarre bottled up opinions that I impart to only a select few. Many of these opinions will be sports related, however I do expound on other things like television, politics, and fatherhood. To give you a brief sample of some of the things I like to discuss:

The Minnesota Vikings- Fellas, importing hookers from the best strip club in the country sounds like a mighty fun bye week tradition, however in the words of Forrest Gump, stupid is as stupid does. Next time, I suggest hiring a prostitution consultant, like Michael Irvin. The Cowboys were smart enough to use their ample resources to rent a house to do this stuff. No one found out until the end of their Super Bowl run. Heck, Michael Keaton in Night Shift was more low key than the Vikings. Maybe this is partially why those Cowboys won 3 Super Bowls and these Vikings are embarrassing the city and the league, on and off the field.

David Stern and the NBA- What the heck are they doing?? 85% of the league's players are African American and he imposes a dress code that outlaws most every trendy clothing item that his players like to wear. Dave, you may want to clean up the image of your league, but the place to start is to keep players out of the stands beating on patrons and keep patrons from throwing beverages on your players. Stephen Jackson's bling and Allen Iverson's throwback jerseys are not keeping people from watching basketball. Next thing up, will be to make all bald coaches wear wigs. Could you just see Jeff Van Gundy wearing George Costanza'a hairpiece from that one episode of Seinfeld. High comedy.

Fatherhood- I'm at the stage with my 2 year old where she isn't potty trained yet, but she eats enough to make adult size dumps. And I've decided that its the worst diaper changing stage that fatherhood has to offer. Frankly, its like cleaning one of my own dumps, but smells worse. If I was cleaning my own dump, it wouldn't be as bad because we can all stand the smell of our own poop. Now granted, through DNA, the smell of my kids' dump has a resemblance to the odor of mine, so its not like cleaning a stranger's poop. But its no picnic. And it gets worse before it gets better. Because once potty training starts, you have accidents. Which means not only are you cleaning poop off your kid's butt, but you have to detach the clothes from the poop. With all that said, I love fatherhood, but that isn't as funny as talking about doody.