Don't Call it a Comeback, Kobe

I like Kobe Bryant as a basketball player; I hated him back in the early 2000's because I was a Blazers fan and a Mavs fan, and the Lakers were A-holes for winning so many games and championships.  He won me over, though,  during those terrible years laboring along when his best teammate was Lamar "Candy-man" Odom.  A lot of people saw it as the just retribution for a spoiled, selfish young man who threw a tantrum until he got the team all to himself, and to be fair I was of the same opinion for the early part of those first couple of seasons.  But then I started watching Kobe actually play; and I realized that I had never seen anyone play with that level of tenacity and grit since Michael Jordan was slaving away on the early Bulls teams.  I also saw Dirk play with it during the 2011 finals run.  I wanted to see Lebron play with it during the loss to San Antonio during the 2014 finals, but never did.  Nothing tells you more about a basketball player than how hard he's willing to fight just to avoid losing to a better team.  That's a different post, though.

All I mean to say is that Kobe finally wore me down and won me over; especially during that two year championship span in '09 and '10.  So understand that when I say this, I don't say it simply just to throw more gasoline on the already smoldering remains of his reputation: the Lakers are terrible this year, and it is mostly his fault.  Sure, the top tier free agents took a pass on L.A. the last two summers, but that happens.  In a league with 30 teams and only about 10 sure-fire game changing players, you're going to end up losing those bets more often than winning, even if you're waving the temperate weather of Southern California in their face.  But the reason that their current roster is the steaming pile of basketball dung that it is, is because Kobe - as he as always done throughout his career - decided to get his first, and force the rest of the organization to adapt.  He was getting those $50 million; someone else coming into town was going to have to take that pay cut, because it wasn't going to be him.  I don't exactly blame him for it; he'd earned the money, in his eyes, and he was right.  As Jalen Rose says, you only get what you have the to leverage to negotiate.  So congrats to him on making even more money; here's your door prize: a roster full of guys who , with 2 exceptions, max out as marginal blench players on mediocre NBA teams.

Steve Nash is a big name; he's also 40 and just injured his back carrying bags.  That's the sort of injury that your grandmother tells you is the reason why she couldn't make it for Christmas.  I love Nash, but the dude has been a disastrous signing for the team; not because he's played poorly, but because he simply hasn't played.  And sure, Steph Curry had injury problems for a couple straight seasons, and so did Blake Griffin...but they're still way under 30.  Your body doesn't just stop breaking down when you're 40: it actually accelerates the pace, which Nash has found out.  It's too bad, because he's had a brilliant career and I really hope I'm wrong...but I'll be surprised to see him play in more than 30 games this season, and even more so if he has more than 5 significant outings during them.  Of course, I'm no expert, so...I guess you could say I get surprised a lot.

The only other player on the roster of note is Jeremy Lin, who is a solid offensive player with terrific finishing skills, and a dependable jump shot, but is a little turnover prone.  That's okay, most score-first small guards tend to be.  He deserves to be on the roster, and he might even have a spectacular year; the problem is that, outside of him, there us not a single other player on the roster that can penetrate to the rim in the half court and get layups.  He's also the only guy who can push the ball in transition and try to catch the defense off-guard for easy baskets; but he's not the one man fast break that Russel Westbrook is, or that Steve Nash was, so these opportunities will be scant.

I've been watching the Lakers in preseason, because I wanted to see how Kobe would look, and I was not surprised to see that his game is pretty much a steady diet of long jumpers and post fade-aways; he is still the best in the league at it, so that's fine.  Gone, though, is his speed and explosiveness; I never once saw him push the ball up-court in transition, except on a steal when there was no defender on the same side of the court.  There may have been others, but the trends are there: Kobe cannot consistently create shots at the rim for himself anymore.  It may be a conditioning thing, combined with the fact that it's just the post-season and he's coming off of an injury, but what I saw was a 36 year old man who had logged a ton of minutes which were finally starting to show.  Rarely has he even attempted driving deep, and when he does, he hasn't seemed to be able to push past the defense; instead, he ends up double-teamed along the baseline, having to make a tricky pass to get out of the situation.

As for the rest of the team, they have no reliable post threat, no real three point threats, and no one that can create their own shots.  Which means that they all stand around near or beyond the free throw line, taking long catch-and-shot jumpers which, in today's NBA, are generally considered the worst shot in basketball.  I both agree and disagree with that stigma, by the way.  Mid-range jumpers are a fantastic weapon, as the 2011 Mavs proved, as long as you have the right guys take them.  You want your guards and small forward, and maybe your stretch 4 if you're lucky enough to have one on the roster - though actual, dependable stretch bigs are few and far between, and in all honestly I've never seen a team win significant games with one (Dirk is a not  a "stretch 4."  He's a 7 footer capable of creating his own shot anywhere on the floor, which is way more than a "stretch big;" they only need to be able to knock down long jump shots if the ball gets passed out or swung around to them, so that there's more space in the lane for driving and cutting, and maybe a big making post moves) - but what the Lakers have are big guys who can't really shoot consistently taking those shots.  Kobe really only seems interested in passing it to Carlos Boozer, who is the king of those lazy mid-range shots, and who hasn't really ever been a real threat in the NBA to do anything more than run a high pick and roll, so long as he doesn't have to move very quickly - because he can't and never could - and so long as he doesn't have to go into the paint - because he doesn't, and won't.

Basically, the Lakers struggle to get shots in the half court, simply don't get shots in transition, and rarely score in the paint.  They are old, slow, and lack the talent to make the playoffs in the western conference; and they may be even worse than that, if Lin goes down for the whole season.  There will be a lot of nights where Kobe will feel like Jordan did in the early part of the 1998 season, when Pippen was out with a foot injury and he had to carry an older, tiring Bulls squad through half of the year by himself: why did I bother coming back?  Here's to hoping he can find something to keep him going all season, because he doesn't have a Pippen waiting in the wings to look forward to.

Suprised to See a New Post? Me too!

Although I'm proportionally un-surprised by the fact that there's nearly, what, three years between my previous post and this one?  I mean, come on: given the title, what else would you expect?  Consistent energy, effort, enthusiasm, ebullience, and any other positive adjective that begins with an 'E'?  Sorry, dude: clearly not the M.O. of a person who names their blog after two non-flattering descriptives.  (Also, according to spell-check I just made that word up.  I'm not sure if that's true, but I'm more than happy to share the credit with whomever actually did).

      What surprises me most is the fact that I'm even doing this anyway; you might also be equally incredulous.  (Also, I'm just going to pretend that the "you" to which I keep referring is an actual person/people other than myself, even though I know it's not.  Denial's great for the self esteem, "you" should try it.)  Nevertheless, I decided to post something again anyway; someone get Fox News on the phone, they need to run this as their main story tomorrow!  ...What's that?  Yes, I'll hold.

      In lieu of actually writing something, I thought I'd put up something that I'd already written; I know, that seems like a rip-off.  Any and all complaints can again be referred to the title of this blog, and if that doesn't resolve the issue...well, I don't care.  It's my free google-hosted webpage, I'll do what I want with it.  (I always like to start off the day by arguing with imaginary people.  It helps get the combative juices flowing...which, I guess would just be blood; right?  I don't know, I'm moving on).

      Back when I was but a lad, I harbored thoughts of becoming a serious novelist.  Then I realized that I wasn't nearly diabetic, slovenly, and eccentric enough to pull it off, so I moved on to other, equally unsuccessful endeavors.  But I've been needing money, and I thought: "You've been writing every other genre of story these days, why not go back to writing a book, try to make a little cash?"  You know, because selling a book can't be difficult, can it?  It's not like there are millions of people in the country doing the exact same thing for the exact same reason as I am...oh, there are?  Ok, then at this point since I'll probably never sell it, I'm just writing it for fun.  Which I guess is a rather scathing indictment of my sense of adventure.  "What do you do for fun?"  

"Me?  Oh, I sit around and let a little electric motor overheat my thighs and nether-regions while I routinely misspell simple words.  Want to come over and hang out?"

      So, without any further procrastination, this is the first chapter/prologue to a book that I have begun writing.  It's a fantasty/war novel (which apparantly are selling like reverse-hotcakes right now; which is to say, most publishers won't buy anything that even smells like it might be related to one) about a mercenary who sort of gets caught up in a civil war/revolution.  For right now, I'm calling it the Sword of Vathir, but that won't mean anything for this segment.

One last quick note: this specific chapter is intentionally written with an abundance of windyfoggery.  And, you may also be delighted know, that word I did NOT make up.

                                                                          I.

Thomas Peddington, Chief Steward of the Royal House of the Sovereign Kingdom of Rheone, stood unobtrusively at the side of King Tarquine III’s massive bed.  As chief steward, his main role was in expeditiously assisting the Lord of the Black Hall in maintaining and adhering to his daily schedule as efficiently as possible; but since in a more practical sense he was, for lack of a better word, merely the head butler of the house - albeit the largest, oldest, most important house within five hundred leagues - he had honed a specific talent to do all things that his king required in this manner: unobtrusively.  It was, he had decided, his favorite adverb.

“Thomas,” the King asked as he stretched out his arms and legs in a manner which Thomas found really rather un-kingly, “has my son arisen yet?”

Oh, you mean that little demon you spawned through the nether-regions of one of your heffer concubines, Thomas did not ask aloud; he had found throughout his life that in many cases it was quite acceptable - in fact sometimes even necessary - to have unexpressed thoughts.  Although he did note in passing that the majority of such thoughts that he had tended to be in relation to the Crown Prince; specifically, that he was a boil upon the face of the earth that was at least ten years overdue a lancing.  Not unlike the boil on his own left hip that needed a good doctoring.  Rather proud of that metaphor though, he thought to himself; you certainly have a way with words now and again.  Not all of his associates appreciated his wit, his linguistic panache; but he had long ago resigned himself to the fact that in life, some - by which he meant himself - were gifted with the peculiar talent for coining a phrase, while others…while others, well…were not.  

“Not yet, your majesty.  I will go wake him now if you wish.”

“Yes, yes that would be all right; of course it would be all right: we've been living this same schedule now for the last five years.  Frankly, Thomas I’d prefer it if you would stop asking and just go wake the lad up.”

“I’ll try to keep that in mind your majesty, for tomorrow.”

“Yes, and you've been saying that every morning for the last five years as well.”

“Your Majesty.”

The king then stood, and it was Thomas’ “inestimable pleasure” to cover the man’s nakedness with the royal, black satin robe which was waiting, draped over the shoulder of a nearby chesterfield.  His majesty was getting fat, Thomas once again did not say.  

“Will there be anything else that I can do for you before I go and wake the young prince?”

“No, no that will be all; thank you.”

“Your Majesty.”

Thomas bowed in the customary manner, stifling the urge to cry out in pain as it aggravated the un-lanced boil on his hip.  He then turned to leave, when the voice of the king called him back.

“Actually Thomas, since it is the whelp’s birthday, why don’t you head down to the kitchen first and pick him up some breakfast?  A boy shouldn't have to adhere to table manners and formality every day of his life, now should he?”

Not necessarily, Thomas thought; what harm could it do for a man to be trained at a young age the proper amount of respect, posture, punctuality, chivalry, and all the other thousand little things that separated the nobleman from the peasant?  The question was academic anyway, as the young prince had never been forced to adhere to any sort of manners or discipline in his entire life.  The brat was spoiled rotten; Thomas was quite convinced that if the prince were to be prodded hard enough he would burst like an overripe banana and spill rotten juice and fruit flies all over the massive stone floors of the Black Hall, Capitol building in the capitol city of Rheone.

        So it was that old Thomas Peddington walked from the king’s bedchamber of the royal apartments, in the top floor of southeast wing of the main palace, all way down to the kitchen - on the lowest level of the northwest wing - just to grab some eggs, sausage, bacon, and bread for a little bastard who would probably just throw most of it out of the window at whatever pedestrians were unfortunate enough to pass by as he “ate.”  

Which of course meant that Thomas would be forced to speak with the only person he had ever met that could have instantly turned into a bear-troll and find his circle of friends to be considerably enlarged, and that those of his old friends as could compare the two would be surprised to find that they liked him much better now than they had when he was a human; the most superlative example of the very worst of humanity, the perpetual hangnail on the already mostly wretched finger of a life of the chief steward, his nemesis.  His arch-enemy: the Head Cook.

       He always dreaded these unfortunately necessary interactions with Rombul, so to ease his mind before being compelled to share the same foul breathing-air as that thing-more-toad-than-man, he listened to the sounds of his footsteps echoing off the stone walkway against the stone walls, bouncing around the stone hallway like dandelion puffs in a summer breeze; all right, that was not his best metaphor, but then how could one be expected to be poetic when all thought was drowned out by the sound of his own damn footsteps every quarter-second, and he was on his way to speak with quite possibly the worst person ever born?  Idly he considered asking his royal majesty Tarquine III if he might not be allowed to wear his slippers to work instead.  He was not, after all, going to start getting younger and at his already advanced age, Thomas found that his knees ached terribly at the end of each day.  

“All this goddamn stone; it’s a wonder I haven’t frozen to death already.”

“Speak of the devil; here comes the miserable ol’ bastard now!  You talking to yourself again, poor old Wretched Tom?  What’sa matter, can’t fin’ no one else as wants to talk with you?”

This, of course, came from the cavernous maw of the gigantically obese Rombul, Head Cook of the Black Hall, and all around master of bastardy.  

“There are many that I’m sure would welcome even the briefest of dialogues with me, and I’m equally sure they would be the better for it; but in my old age I find that I prefer conversation with… intelligent people.”  That was Thomas’ usual response whenever any about the palace heckled him for his eccentric behavior, and it always shut them right up…well no, it never actually did.  But it would, if anyone else in this damned stone coffin had any sort of appreciation for fine wit.  

“Oh don’t get your cockles in an uproar you scuddy old skid mark; I was just making a joke is all.”

“My, what a…descriptive image.”

Rombul turned away from the soup he had been stirring and began to bark orders at his under-cooks, gesticulating wildly as he did with the soup-spoon still in hand.  A few gobs of the nasty stuff flew directly into Thomas’s face.  The older fellow merely ground his teeth together as he waited for the fat chef to finish his tirade, wiping away the residue with his trusty old handkerchief.  How, he thought, does any food manage to make it out of the kitchen, given the size of Rombul’s inhumanly large paunch?  His dirty, patched, stained tunic showed abundant evidence of multiple lettings-out to make room for his ever expanding waistline; which grew at a speed matched only by the receding of his hairline.  Thomas shuddered to think of the vast quantities of food that must be shoveled into that filthy, rotten swamp of a mouth just to satiate the monstrous appetite of so large a stomach.

“If you are quite through strewing your stew about the room, and consequently my face, his Majesty King Tarquine III has asked that a breakfast plate be prepared for the Prince, as it is apparently his birthday.”

“I’m busy at the moment; come back in an hour.”

“My good Rombul, we do not have an hour in which to prepare the plate; his Majesty has asked for it now.”

“Well then his majesty will damn well have to wait a spot or two ‘fore he gets it; I've got a crisis in here what needs managering, and as head chef it’s my duty to managerize it.”

“I do not believe it is the king’s concern how you choose to run the kitchen; provided, of course, that when he asks for a plate of food to be prepared post-hate, it is done so and delivered in the manner requested.”

That of course, was a mistake; Rombul was a fat, disgusting, jealous, fat, bitter, stupid, smelly, fat fool - did he mention fat yet? - but he tolerated no one “telling me what’s right and what ain’t in my kitchen!”  Thomas knew of a surety that the grossly obese chef felt this way, because he only found the man shouting it at him repeatedly within an inch of his face; he was surprised only in that Rombul had managed to puzzle out the meaning of his quip without assistance.  Consequently, Thomas also found that more food - this time partially masticated bits of whatever filthy urchin Rombul had found and devoured on his waddle to work this morning - had become plastered onto his face.

It took full twenty minutes of obsequious bowing, scraping, and all-around self-debasement for Thomas to convince this stupid ass to prepare the plate; and once the silver was in hand, he fled from the wretch and his kitchen as quickly as his unobtrusive dignity allowed. Finally he found himself returned to the Royal Apartments, approaching the door, adjacent to the King’s own bedchambers, wherein the crown prince slept - most likely while dreaming of murdering a litter of puppies, or some other such horrendous act of what probably passed for “entertainment” in that twisted little brain.  He nodded slightly to the two guards stationed outside the doors, and they returned the nod and parted for the skinny old man carrying the breakfast tray.  Beyond those guards another short hallway, which led to the bedchamber of Tarquine IV, heir to the throne of Rheone.

And then he stopped at the end of the hall, having come once more at the start of yet another morning to the gigantic oak door of the young, horrid little beast of a crown prince. Thomas muttered a few oaths and curses under his breath; if resting his feet in a tub of steaming water after supper was the best part of his day, this was certainly the worst.  Last week the little brute stabbed him in the behind with a fork.

…And he still stood at the doorway, key in hand extended toward the lock, but frozen in the air like the last breath of autumn freezing in the first, cold north wind of winter.  That lyricism was much better, he thought; not too sure what it means, but it sounds sort of pretty.  Perhaps he would go home and write it down somewhere tonight.  

“You can’t stay here all day, Thomas; would to the gods I could.  I hate these bloody castles in the morning.”  Its all the black rock, he had decided; sure it was nice in the summer, he could press his face up against the cool rock walls, sometimes even removing his stockings and walk round in his bare feet.  But in the winter?  Gods, it was unbearable.  And it just made that tender wound on his bottom, a gift from the royal little jackal, that much more sensitive.  

He sighed deeply, closing his eyes and shaking his head; and then with one last muttered oath to whichever of the Winter Gods he felt most inclined to call upon at the moment, Thomas turned the key in the lock and thrust open the double-wide doorway into the prince’s bedchamber.  And then he stood motionless.

…

His lip must have been quivering rather violently, his mouth agape for what seemed ages as he stared somewhat uncomprehendingly at the puddle of reddish liquid on the hard stone floor.  Thomas of course knew immediately that it was blood, but for whatever reason he found himself wondering, “how did that little bastard sneak a bottle of wine in here?”  He took a couple of steps forward until his right foot hovered over the pool of violence collecting on the floor, then he shrank back in revulsion; and then he tripped over one of the prince’s toys that must have been left out overnight, and fell on his side - his left side, the one with the still extremely sensitive boil - full into the mucky, red lake.  He kicked at the offending ball with his leg while trying simultaneously to rise, until he finally realized what it was he had been kicking; what it was that had tripped him.  

It was the prince’s head.

From somewhere in the room Thomas heard an awful shriek; even his own wife had never succeeded in creating such a ghastly wail, not even when she stepped onto that mouse which had crawled into her slippers to stay warm one frigid night.  Gods, this was an impressively boisterous cry, one that would have shook the pillars of heaven, had they only been made of glass.  

It was only then that Thomas realized that the horrendous, high pitched scream of terror was in very fact coming from the throat of none other than the Chief Steward of the Black Hall himself, Thomas Peddington.  He had not even thought himself capable of producing any sort of sound at such a pitch, a fact for which he was rather proud for only the briefest moment.  Until, that is, the guardsmen entered the room and shoved their spears and swords and whatever other ghastly little weapons they had into his face, shouting something he could not understand because he was once again screeching at them like an old widow at the fish market who had left her coin-purse at home, but felt the need to accuse every foreign dock-hand that wandered by of the blackest thievery; and all so none would suspect her of the inevitable onset of her obvious senility.

Then one of the soldiers, fed up with the insufferable screeching, and the crying, and the blubbering, rather calmly just plopped the butt of his sword against the back of the old man’s skull, and the fool fell down; finally silent.

     But it was a short respite, for the room was soon full of chambermaids, servants, butlers, and other soldiers all screaming and wailing and carrying on in so extreme a fashion that the guard thought of applying his makeshift sedative on the back of their skulls as well; what has worked once, he reasoned, should work just as well a second time.

Before he really had the chance to consider the ramifications of such an application, the Lord King Tarquine III burst into the room to find his ten year old son’s head bouncing around on the floor while the rest of him lay tranquilly in his bed; his Chief  Steward, Thomas Peddington, lying unconscious in the pool of blood emanating from the fountain of not-so-living waters which gushed forth from severed arteries, and all others in the room in such a state of frenzied panic that not a one of them had managed to say anything remotely intelligible yet.

Then, the Great Lord of Rheone; King of the Northern Hills, Keeper of the Mountain Hollows and Master of the Black Halls…fainted; down he crashed to the floor, to remain unconscious in his son’s blood.  

And as he fell, Thomas awakened for the briefest second and thought, “good lord of Summer what am I do?”