8:00 PM CSN Baltimore has video of Marcus Smith, a U.S. soldier who dressed as a minor league umpire to surprise his children at a Bowie Baysox game with a home visit from Afghanistan.
7:45 PM A Japanese Harley-Davidson motorcycle that was swept out to sea during last year's tsunami washed up on a shore in British Columbia last month. The bike's owner asked that the motorcycle be displayed at the Harley-Davidson Museum in Milwaukee as a memorial to the tsunami victims.
7:30 PM Buffalo Bills receiver David Clowneytweeted the results of his HIV test which came back negative. And to the critics of his decision to share his results, Clowney added: "Some people are Ridiculously stupid ... And can't see the bigger picture about things that are important in this world."
Acclaimed author Roland Lazenby, who wrote probably the twobest books about the Lakers ever published, recently blogged of concern Phil Jackson and Jeanie Buss had about 75-year-old Lakers Owner Jerry Buss.
As for those teen-aged girls, Buss has long dated hundreds of them, usually only once or twice each, and then collected their photos in albums. He has not been above boasting about his conquests to some media and associates.
Buss and his elderly friends gather in his owner’s box at Lakers games with their young dates, a sight that’s increasingly hard for Jeanie Buss, the owner’s daughter and Phil Jackson’s girlfriend, to stomach.
One Lakers insider contends that only in Los Angeles could a team owner get away with such antics and basically get a free pass by the media.
Informed fans in this town have always known about the Hefner-esque lifestyle of Jerry Buss, which is particularly disturbing for some as he entertains his anonymous teenie du jour in the owner’s box during Lakers games.
Though I’d never heard the creepy part about Buss collecting “their photos in an album.”
While it isn’t hard to imagine that Jeanie and Phil are turned off by an elderly man seducing hosting barely legal girls at his place of business, their concern could also be viewed as ironic and perhaps even a little absurd.
The LOS ANGELES TIMES has video of righteous observations from an appropriately smug Phil Jax on the delightful plight of Donald Sterling. (And Clips.)
“I’m of that generation that believed in karma. If you do a good mitzvah, maybe you can eliminate some of those things. Do you think that Sterling’s done enough mitzvahs to eliminate some of those? How about all those other incidents that we have on file?”
I don’t particularly buy into the Phil Jackson-as-Coaching-God theory — when you’re blessed with Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant and a young Shaquille O’Neal, probably the top three players of this generation, you had better win 10 NBA titles. So whether or not he stays with the Lakers holds no special interest for me. Others, as I understand it, care a whole lot.
That would include Lakers vice president Jeanie Buss, who happens to be Jackson’s longtime girlfriend. With former Lakers assistant and Jackson protege Kurt Rambis headed to the Timberwolves, Buss made a somewhat surprising observation recently on ESPN Radio in Los Angeles: Rambis’ departure could mean that Jackson could stick around in LA longer than anticipated. Read more…
We have a tendency to lionize certain super-successful sports figures, and perhaps rightly so. Phil Jackson must exist on a higher mental plane than you or I, since he’s the only coach to ever win as many rings as he has. Listen to all the stories about giving out books! Who gives out books? A genius, that’s who.
(Kyle Orton wants his look back, sir.)
So when Jonah Hill was on Jimmy Kimmel Live last night and telling stories about his primo seats at the Staples Center (and a Jack Nicholson he ain’t), we expected to hear about the mind-bending maxims coming from the venerable coach as he guided his team to yet another ring. We did not expect to hear the censor’s beep.
Look, many of history’s major agreements have come to fruition as the main participants were bathing. Winston Churchill convincing FDR to enact the lend-lease program (bathtub); the Missouri Compromise (steam room); signing of the Declaration of Independence (Founding Fathers nakedly cavorting in local hot spring). Now comes news that the seeds for Ron Artest’s signing with the Lakers were sewn last year as Artest joined Kobe Bryant in the shower.
It happened in 2008, following the Lakers’ Game 6 loss to the Celtics that decided the NBA Championship. Artest, who was then employed by the Sacramento Kings, had attended the game, and afterwards burst into Phil Jackson’s office — which was off limits — to tell the coach he thought he would be a good fit for his team. Then Artest made his way to the adjoining shower area, where Kobe was lathering up, and walked right in to again present his plan. Read more…
After flirting with the idea of only coaching home games (Mitch Kupchak: “Not bloody likely!”), then mulling retirement, Phil Jackson announced today that he’s returning as coach of the Lakers, full time. Apparently finished with a battery of medical tests more thorough than the ones administered to Linda Blair in “The Exorcist,” Phil The Departed is now Phil Of The Future.
This has to come as good news to Ron Artest, who won’t have to worry about explaining his special brand of crazy to a brand new coach. And to Lakers fans, who just watched Jackson win his 10th NBA title. Jackson has had a number of health problems, including a leg ailment, hip replacements and an angioplasty procedure in 2003 to open a clogged artery in his heart. But he wants one more ring: As they said in “Spinal Tap,” this goes to 11. Read more…
