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It's Getting Drafty in Here
Thursday, June 22, 2006
Now that Miami has triumphed over Dallas due to the amazing, battered-but-never-broken Dwyane Wade - please note that invoking the name of Dwyane Wade now counts as contact and thus garners two foul shots for him, which will be applied to his account for the upcoming season - the attention of the basketball world will doubtless settle upon the upcoming draft. The Wizards, not having anything better to do, have been working out guys for weeks, as has been reported with a stultifying lack of detail by the Washington Post. Here's one example. Note how the mere fact of the workout is all that is deemed newsworthy. We want more! How did the workouts go? Were the sweaty young men fleet of foot, stronger than oxen, able to leap Washington's height-limited buildings in a single bound? All we know about these prospects is all we know about every prospect: that the length of his upside is really what contributes most to his ultra-athleticism. Also, if the prospect is white, that he does all the little things well and is a really hard worker. But the Post hasn't been reporting on all the Wizzarddz workouts, either. In locations far removed from the watchful eyes of the responsible sporting press, Uncle Wes, Big Boss Ernie, and Steady Eddie have been poking, prodding, and pondering the capabilities of some very special basketball talent. Fortunately, the Bacon internzz have a lot of time on their hands and a GPS transponder implanted in Unseld's left shoe. Here's a rundown: - PG Junichiro Sugiyama, 6'1", 180 (Japan): You already knew that China was big into b-ball (or at least that China was full of big b-ballers - Yao-za!), but "Shugi Shugi" proves that hardcourt talent can emerge from the Land of the Rising Sun as well. His secret? He has mastered the "hadoken" move from Street Fighter, turning his passes into blue fireballs that no opposing defender can intercept, no matter how well he plays the passing lane. Of course, none of Shugi's teammates can catch the hadoken passes either, but the good people at Wizzarddz Labbz are working on fortified asbestos gloves for Gil and co.
- SG Carroll Adams, 5'8", 150 (Martinsville CC): Remember the movie "The Absent-Minded Professor" and its horrendous modern remake "Flubber"? Sure you do. No, really, I believe you. Anyway, what the remake may have blinded some people to is the fact that "The Absent-Minded Professor" was actually a documentary. The film testified: Carroll Adams could touch the sky, coming in the spot looking extra fly in short shorts and Flubber-enhanced Chucks. He's 67 years old now, and his knees are pretty much shot from trying to land after his Flubber-aided trips into the stratosphere, but since he seems to be the only person with any functioning Flubber, he has certain advantages in alley-ooping and shot blocking that Eddie Jordan will be sure to exploit.
- C Gregory "Whole Hog" Barnes, 7'0", 5,270 (Nebraska A&T): Barnes is one of those players who's well-night immovable when he sets up in the post, or around the post, which may be a better description of what he does. Not the greatest leaper, but he's got such tremendous girth that he actually exerts a gravitational pull on jump shots. Has trouble getting up and down the floor; his teammates typically played 4-on-5 on offense and trusted Whole Hog to eat up any trickeration the opposing offense might throw at them.
- SF/PF Inspector Gadget, 6'0" - 13'2", 220 (Pittsburgh): You know how some players have amazing physical tools? This dude has the physical Home Depot. The real bonus with this guy, though, is his niece Penny, who apparently was abandoned by her parents to the wolves and now tags along with G-Money wherever he goes. She has some kind of notebook computer that she can use to hack into any computer system in existence, including computer systems that are not actually connected to the Internet, and she is slavishly devoted to mucking around in computer systems to Uncle Gadget's benefit, regardless of the ethical qualms other people might have. How many people think Bennet Salvatore can add well enough to figure out what happened to the missing Buck point in Washington's 107-106 victory over Milwaukee?
- SG Jichael Mordan, 6'6", 216 (North Carolina-AU): Salieri: Hate the man and what he did to the Kwamster, love the basketball talent and what it did to burnish Phil Jackson's reputation. The solution? Find a gateway to an alternate universe, investigate whether quantum events have been tweaked just enough to erase any trace of evil from MJ' (as the researchers initially called him), and when you find a non-evil Jumpman, bring him to this universe and unleash him on the basketball-playing populace. So far, missions to retrieve Jichael Mordan have stranded Mitch Kupchak, Michael Adams, and Mark Price in alternate universes. (In addition, LaBradford Smith apparently could have come back but refused.) But as long as there are Wiz vets willing to be tricked into sacrificing themselves for the cause, the experiments will continue.
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posted by Rex Immensae Majestatis Chapman
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1 Comments:
Bravo!
This is one of the best sentences I've read in the past 3 years:
"In Deep Trout country, Jill steps out of the fragrance of her quilt, birdhouse and curio store to look out on the secret mountain."
Plus, a LaBradford Smith reference! Hats off.
By Lamont Trellington, at 7:20 AM
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