The Lakers started their longest road trip of the season in Chicago last night (5 games, which isn’t very long) and Kobe was in shoot-first mode for the entire game. He posted 42 points (on 15-26 shooting), three assists, two rebounds, three steals and EIGHT turnovers.
Is the Ron Artest move working out? Against the Bulls he went 3-14 from the field for nine points, four assists and five rebounds. He is shooting just under 43% for the season, which is right around his career average. I expected his accuracy to rise this season as he really doesn’t have to be much of a scorer and should be exercising better shot selection. So much for that.
Freshman phenom (and likely #1 pick in the 2010 NBA Draft) John Wall scored 25 points, including 12 of his team’s final 15 points, in a 64-61 win over UConn [highlights]. Dana O’Neil says that Wall lives up to the hype.
The latest chapter in Wall’s building biography of game-changers came against 12th-ranked Connecticut, his the fitting last dagger in an epic game. With 30 seconds left and Kentucky down 61-60, Wall took the ball on a toss back from Darius Miller and drove, splitting two defenders before going to the rim and banging bodies with Connecticut’s Alex Oriakhi.
Wall gives up 45 pounds to Oriakhi, all of which ended up in his right hip as he went up.
No matter.
Count the bucket, score the foul.
End the game, 64-61.
I caught Kentucky’s win against North Carolina and Wall looks like the real deal. He’s incredibly athletic and has a great feel for the game. He had a couple of jaw-dropping finishes against the Tar Heels — check out the video below.
Kenny and Adam Carolla audition for “Never At Ease: The Roger Staubach Story.” Be sure to click the video a few times if it doesn’t play right away. ESPN video is quirky that way.
SNL is taking a bit of heat this week for its sketch of Tiger Woods (impersonated by Kenan Thompson) and his wife Elin (played by host Blake Lively) at a press conference in which he keeps getting beat up (presumably) by his wife.
Here’s the skit:
The problem that some are having with the skit is that the underlying theme is about domestic violence and the musical guest that night was Rihanna, who has been a victim of domestic violence herself.
And apparently, some didn’t even find the skit funny in general. From Popwatch.com:
It wasn’t just unfunny, though: It was also incredibly tone-deaf. Intimate partner violence isn’t a ripe source of material in the first place, but with Rihanna as the musical star the sketch seemed even more poorly thought out. The whole joke was that Tiger Woods was lying about his wife assaulting him, with every imaginable cliché and crummy lie we’ve seen in a hundred Lifetime movies about domestic violence. It was lazy.
Could there have been a funny bit here? Definitely. But this hypothetical funny take would need to present an actual point of view, a unique thought, or some sharp commentary. This bit suffered from both an ill-conceived problem (Tiger Woods covering up his wife assaulting him) and a total lack of transformation or change. It was a padded stand-up bit, not a fully realized sketch, which makes it really hard to forgive the poor taste of the subject matter.
Not to sound insensitive, but I laughed several times throughout the skit. That doesn’t mean I think domestic violence is funny, because I don’t. But Woods’ incident and Rihanna’s situation are two different things and while the timing was bad, there are some comedic elements to Tiger’s ordeal, which SNL portrayed.
Is it a double standard? Yeah. But I don’t think SNL went over the line, which some are suggesting.
The Lakers started their longest road trip of the season in Chicago last night (5 games, which isn’t very long) and Kobe was in shoot-first mode for the entire game. He posted 42 points (on 15-26 shooting), three assists, two rebounds, three steals and EIGHT turnovers.
