Bricklayer
Don't Make Me Use The Bat
That was simply atrocious -- I almost resigned my grading commision in protest. That game was garbage. That opponent was garbage. For most of the nigth we were garbage too. And our stretch play was big, stinking, rancid, laying out in the hot sun and rotting garbage. That was not entertainment, and I feel sad for anybody who actually paid money to watch it (which technically I did via league pass).
That said, the show must go on, as they say. So I am going to go ahead and grade the crap, but at least we are going to tag it with an appropriate theme.
Theme this morning eqauls: World's Greatest Big Stinking Heaps of Garbage
Salmons ( C- ) -- John continued his hunger strike in protest of all the competition, doing very little out there, and losing his minutes once again. Looked very very unhappy over there on the bench. Something to watch now. Gave a little better rounded nothing game than last time out, so avoids the Ds. But even his modest numbers here did not look as good on the court as they do in the stat sheets, and he was a big bundle of nothing out there. Completely passive.
Guatemala City -- not sure of the name of this megadump, if it even has one. But it lies only afew miles outside of dowtown Guatemal City, and is shielded off from the city proper by giant concrete barricades. Inside those barricades thousands of people actually live in shanties perched atop the garbage, and every morning venture out to spend the entire day shifting throught the cess pools looking for anything they can scavenge and sell, dodging bulldozers and dump trucks along the way. Every once in a while a bunch of them and their houses will disappear into the heart of the huge heaps, as the place is riddled with smouldering underground fires which will suddenly create giant garbage sinkholes and which cover the whole place with hazy toxic smoke. And still I think the local residents might have been better off than the people trapped in Conseco Fieldhouse last night.
Moore ( A- ) -- here's how you know a game was garabge: Mikki Moore was the best player on the floor. Mikki could walk onto a pickup court and not be guaranteed of being the best player on the floor. And tonight, actually, as always when he has a big game, you have to modify it with "but...". The "but" being that Mikki had a big game, and the Pacers never had any answers for him. But of course he didn't actually do anything. He moved toward the hoop, we hit him with a pass when he was 2 feet from the hooop, he dunked it. There were no post moves, no smooth jumpers, no breaking his man down off the dribble -- in general none of the stuff that you talk about when a guy has a big game. There was nothing unstoppable about what Mikki did except that the Pacers did not stop it. Hence perhaps the better way to put this is that Mikki Moore was the most effective player on the court tonight, and that probably does a better job of covering it. With the Pacers Jermaineless, their frontline was just pathetic and I actually hope Troy Murphy was accosted by paying fans after the game for the extreme crap which he put on the floor for the $100,000+ he gets to step onto the hardwood each night. The only thing that slowed down Mikki at all was that he was active in picking up fouls as well, and got his 3rd early in the 2nd quarter costing him some first half minutes. But that was never a serious factor thereafter, and it was a dunkfest for Mikki -- the Pacers have no NBA level big men anymore, and the scrubs they threw out did not ever try to put a body between Mikki and the hoop. Got a bunch of dunks inside, all courtesy of the normal stuff -- cuts and passes, the occasional offensive board etc. Missed most of his set shots, but found minimal resistance in there on the glass as well, and gave us one of his better rebounding nights. There are no As in a game this full of crap, but 22 and 11 will still obviously earn Mikki the top spot amongst the Kings.
Dandora -- located just outside Nairobi, Keya...actually not true. Located inside Nairobi, Kenya, as the slums have expanded out to engulf it, this mega site is one of the world's most toxic dumps. There are no limits whatsoever to what gets dumped there, from feces to medical waste, and more than 2000 tons of fresh garbage are added daily. 2000 tons. Of course like all dirt poor third world mega dumps, the surrounding paupers swarm in looking for anything they can salavage, and getting our of it only sickness and death (which also spreads through the slums where the groundwater is all contaminated of course). Because of the predicable lack of planning, the site also sits alongside the Nairobi river, and washes mega-pollution down river to all the primitive communities relying on it for water and washing.
Miller ( B- ) -- back home in Indiana, Brad laid an offensive turd -- shooting 2-7, and notching twice as many turnovers (4) as assists (2) as he kept on having flashbacks to his days in Indiana and passing balls directly to various Pacers. The only reason he even reached double figures was because of a pair of gifts -- first an absolute complete 100% B.S. phantom call by the refs that may have decided the game for us, when Brad stumbled untouched through the lane while bricking a layup, and the refs reflexively blew their whistles figuring no NBA player could possibly be so uncoordinated without somebody fouling them. Well, Brad can. And that was our game winning play. Quite appropiate for this "contest". And then Big Game Mike Dunleavy, after choking wide open shot after shot as his team's theoretical leading scorer, decided to foul Brad with 1 second left in the game just to prove what a hardass he was I guess. In any case, Brad continued his ridiculous FT shooting, knocked them all down, and got himself the world's least deserved double double. The second part of that double double though is why he has any grade at all here: Brad pulled down 16 rebounds tonight, and almost all of them were on the defensive glass as he helped us keep the Pacers All Star collection of scrubs to one shot and done. You might I've have thought Troy Murphy might have competed there, as he was once a good rebounder, but no, Troy is just stealing money at this point and is just pathetic. Jeff Foster did his Jeff Foster thing while he was in there, but missed so many easy layups and bricked so many FTs that all he ended up doing was pasdding Brad's stats. In any case, much ugliness here, as in this game. But the big rebounding number deserves something.
LAgos, Nigeria -- and this time using the name of the city (Africa's largest) as opposed to the name of the dump is on purpose. Because you see the city IS the dump, and vice versa. In one of the world's worst trash situations, there is no regular centralizd trash pickup, and instead private contractors tour through neighborhoods and charge residents fees for pickup, and then go dump the garbage off in another neighborhood, or a lagoon, or a creek, or wherever. So the whole city is spotted with open fields used as dumps, creekbeds used as dumps, streets used as dumps. And then every once in a while it will rain and wash all the garbage into another neighborhood. Or sometimes the locals will burn a huge pile of garbage to create a toxic fire, which they will then often build shanties upon afterward. Africa is such a mess.
Martin ( C ) -- back into the starting lineup, and can we send him back to the bench? Played a lax fugly first half where the only two shots he got to go down were gimmes at the rim as the completely shotblocker free Pacers (with no Jermaine) just parted like the Red Sea to let him walk in. Everything else was missed. Sloppy, and I have no idea really why he racked up 20 minutes with that performance. Got better int he late 3rd and early 4th, and Kind of labored his way on up to 20. It was never smooth, there were no hot streaks, but he finally got there in true scorer fashion. Did very little else in 41 minutes of play except turn the ball over: 20pts (6-14) 2reb 1ast 4TO.
Fresh Kills Landfill -- Staten Island, NY. Of course no list of this type could be complete without this monster, even though it officially closed in 2001. This site was the primary dump for one of the world's great cities (New York) for over 50 years from 1947 to 2001. Covering a staggering 2200 acres, and standing 225 feet tall, they claim it can be seen from space. While officially closed beforehand, after 9/11 this is where they brought most of the wreckage of the World Trade Center.
That said, the show must go on, as they say. So I am going to go ahead and grade the crap, but at least we are going to tag it with an appropriate theme.
Theme this morning eqauls: World's Greatest Big Stinking Heaps of Garbage
Salmons ( C- ) -- John continued his hunger strike in protest of all the competition, doing very little out there, and losing his minutes once again. Looked very very unhappy over there on the bench. Something to watch now. Gave a little better rounded nothing game than last time out, so avoids the Ds. But even his modest numbers here did not look as good on the court as they do in the stat sheets, and he was a big bundle of nothing out there. Completely passive.
Guatemala City -- not sure of the name of this megadump, if it even has one. But it lies only afew miles outside of dowtown Guatemal City, and is shielded off from the city proper by giant concrete barricades. Inside those barricades thousands of people actually live in shanties perched atop the garbage, and every morning venture out to spend the entire day shifting throught the cess pools looking for anything they can scavenge and sell, dodging bulldozers and dump trucks along the way. Every once in a while a bunch of them and their houses will disappear into the heart of the huge heaps, as the place is riddled with smouldering underground fires which will suddenly create giant garbage sinkholes and which cover the whole place with hazy toxic smoke. And still I think the local residents might have been better off than the people trapped in Conseco Fieldhouse last night.
Moore ( A- ) -- here's how you know a game was garabge: Mikki Moore was the best player on the floor. Mikki could walk onto a pickup court and not be guaranteed of being the best player on the floor. And tonight, actually, as always when he has a big game, you have to modify it with "but...". The "but" being that Mikki had a big game, and the Pacers never had any answers for him. But of course he didn't actually do anything. He moved toward the hoop, we hit him with a pass when he was 2 feet from the hooop, he dunked it. There were no post moves, no smooth jumpers, no breaking his man down off the dribble -- in general none of the stuff that you talk about when a guy has a big game. There was nothing unstoppable about what Mikki did except that the Pacers did not stop it. Hence perhaps the better way to put this is that Mikki Moore was the most effective player on the court tonight, and that probably does a better job of covering it. With the Pacers Jermaineless, their frontline was just pathetic and I actually hope Troy Murphy was accosted by paying fans after the game for the extreme crap which he put on the floor for the $100,000+ he gets to step onto the hardwood each night. The only thing that slowed down Mikki at all was that he was active in picking up fouls as well, and got his 3rd early in the 2nd quarter costing him some first half minutes. But that was never a serious factor thereafter, and it was a dunkfest for Mikki -- the Pacers have no NBA level big men anymore, and the scrubs they threw out did not ever try to put a body between Mikki and the hoop. Got a bunch of dunks inside, all courtesy of the normal stuff -- cuts and passes, the occasional offensive board etc. Missed most of his set shots, but found minimal resistance in there on the glass as well, and gave us one of his better rebounding nights. There are no As in a game this full of crap, but 22 and 11 will still obviously earn Mikki the top spot amongst the Kings.
Dandora -- located just outside Nairobi, Keya...actually not true. Located inside Nairobi, Kenya, as the slums have expanded out to engulf it, this mega site is one of the world's most toxic dumps. There are no limits whatsoever to what gets dumped there, from feces to medical waste, and more than 2000 tons of fresh garbage are added daily. 2000 tons. Of course like all dirt poor third world mega dumps, the surrounding paupers swarm in looking for anything they can salavage, and getting our of it only sickness and death (which also spreads through the slums where the groundwater is all contaminated of course). Because of the predicable lack of planning, the site also sits alongside the Nairobi river, and washes mega-pollution down river to all the primitive communities relying on it for water and washing.
Miller ( B- ) -- back home in Indiana, Brad laid an offensive turd -- shooting 2-7, and notching twice as many turnovers (4) as assists (2) as he kept on having flashbacks to his days in Indiana and passing balls directly to various Pacers. The only reason he even reached double figures was because of a pair of gifts -- first an absolute complete 100% B.S. phantom call by the refs that may have decided the game for us, when Brad stumbled untouched through the lane while bricking a layup, and the refs reflexively blew their whistles figuring no NBA player could possibly be so uncoordinated without somebody fouling them. Well, Brad can. And that was our game winning play. Quite appropiate for this "contest". And then Big Game Mike Dunleavy, after choking wide open shot after shot as his team's theoretical leading scorer, decided to foul Brad with 1 second left in the game just to prove what a hardass he was I guess. In any case, Brad continued his ridiculous FT shooting, knocked them all down, and got himself the world's least deserved double double. The second part of that double double though is why he has any grade at all here: Brad pulled down 16 rebounds tonight, and almost all of them were on the defensive glass as he helped us keep the Pacers All Star collection of scrubs to one shot and done. You might I've have thought Troy Murphy might have competed there, as he was once a good rebounder, but no, Troy is just stealing money at this point and is just pathetic. Jeff Foster did his Jeff Foster thing while he was in there, but missed so many easy layups and bricked so many FTs that all he ended up doing was pasdding Brad's stats. In any case, much ugliness here, as in this game. But the big rebounding number deserves something.
LAgos, Nigeria -- and this time using the name of the city (Africa's largest) as opposed to the name of the dump is on purpose. Because you see the city IS the dump, and vice versa. In one of the world's worst trash situations, there is no regular centralizd trash pickup, and instead private contractors tour through neighborhoods and charge residents fees for pickup, and then go dump the garbage off in another neighborhood, or a lagoon, or a creek, or wherever. So the whole city is spotted with open fields used as dumps, creekbeds used as dumps, streets used as dumps. And then every once in a while it will rain and wash all the garbage into another neighborhood. Or sometimes the locals will burn a huge pile of garbage to create a toxic fire, which they will then often build shanties upon afterward. Africa is such a mess.
Martin ( C ) -- back into the starting lineup, and can we send him back to the bench? Played a lax fugly first half where the only two shots he got to go down were gimmes at the rim as the completely shotblocker free Pacers (with no Jermaine) just parted like the Red Sea to let him walk in. Everything else was missed. Sloppy, and I have no idea really why he racked up 20 minutes with that performance. Got better int he late 3rd and early 4th, and Kind of labored his way on up to 20. It was never smooth, there were no hot streaks, but he finally got there in true scorer fashion. Did very little else in 41 minutes of play except turn the ball over: 20pts (6-14) 2reb 1ast 4TO.
Fresh Kills Landfill -- Staten Island, NY. Of course no list of this type could be complete without this monster, even though it officially closed in 2001. This site was the primary dump for one of the world's great cities (New York) for over 50 years from 1947 to 2001. Covering a staggering 2200 acres, and standing 225 feet tall, they claim it can be seen from space. While officially closed beforehand, after 9/11 this is where they brought most of the wreckage of the World Trade Center.
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