Extra media double dribbles
Adding to the notes, quotes and antecotes gleaned from various sources through the week, spinning off from today's Daily News media column and notebook, and now into your lap:
ESPN's Bill Walton riffs further on:
==The Lakers chances against Phoenix: "It's a very difficult task. Phoenix is a great team, one of the five that have a realistic chance to win it all. I'm taking Phoenix to win the title. I voted Amare Stoudamire on the All-NBA team, and you've got the MVP with Steve Nash. The Suns have two great lockdown defenders and a great coach. The Lakers fans may say, 'we took 'em to seven games last year,' but that was without Stoudamire. The best job I've seen anyone do lately with the Suns was how San Antonio handled them recently. Bruce Bowen shut down Nash, and Tony Parker torched him on the other end. Phoenix played awful and San Antonio barely won. You beat Phoenix by playing attacking, assertive basketball. You won't win by backing in and hoping the other team plays poorly. The Lakers, like the rest of the league, can learn so much about basketball by watching how Nash operates with the Suns."
==The chances his son, Luke, will stay with the Lakers: "I'm a proud dad, and he's his own man. I can't speak for him and I don't make his decisions. I can only say from my own experience that he's in an unbelieveable great situation with the Lakers. To play for this franchise is so incredible in the big picture. To be in Southern California, playing for Phil Jackson, under this umbrella of the Lakers' mystique ... it's hard to beat."
==What may have possessed Luke, pictured far left in Sunday's game against Seatle, to cut his hair like Britney Spears: "In our house, we live by the Bob Dylan creed: You grow it out on the outside or else it'll grow on the inside and scramble your brain waves. I get my hair cut regularily so that it matches the pace which is falling out on its own. It stopped being red long ago. I'd prefer to talk about backdoor cuts, outlet passes and why Commissioner Stern can't convince Mrs. Nash to have more children, or at least allow cloning."
==Where the Dallas Mavericks fit into the championship race: "They have an inside track, but championships are won by teams that dominate the paint. The All-Star games, the shoe endorsements ... they are all won by the pretty boys on the perimeter. Championships are won by Shaq and Hakeen and Jordan charging into the paint. That's where Stoudamire can assert himself. Shaq remains a force. In the modern era of basketball that can be defined for our purposes as everything since Jordan, every championship has been decided by Shaq in one form or another. The ones he didnt win, you had to go through him to win 'em. That was the same way with Wilt Chamberlain. They're just in an other area of great players."
Read on, if you must ...
==TNT analyst Doug Collins, while agreeing this is a different Lakers team that enters the playoffs this year as opposed to the one that went on a hot-streak before facing (and being eliminated) by Phoenix in seven games, adds that not having the Lakers in the playoffs would be as disappointing as the current situation now where New York, Boston and Philadelphia have been pushed aside. “L.A. has been one of the greatest franchise in the history of the NBA, but so have the Knicks and Celtics and 76ers,” said Collins, who’ll do Games 2 and 3 for TNT with Kevin Harlan and Craig Sager. “Those teams automatically made people tune in to see their games in the playoffs. The Celtics and Sixers were always in the Eastern Conference finals. Now we’re missing them after they’ve been down for so many years recently.”
==For the entire NBA playoff TV schedule, keep an eye on the NBA's website, linked here.
==For those who need to watch it, NBA TV will televise live the decisions that will break all the ties for the 2007 NBA Draft. The coin flips,lwhich take place today in New York sometime during the league meetings between 11 a.m. and 1 p.m., will break ties between Portland and Minnesota (both at 32-50); Charlotte, New York and Sacramento (each 33-49); Indiana and Philadelphia (both at 35-47); New Jersey and Washington (41-41) and the Lakers and Golden State (42-40). Boston, by virtue of having the worst record, has already locked in most ping-pong balls for the draft lottery, which includes all teams that missed the playoffs. The NBA Draft is Thursday, June 28.
==One of the first things Keith Olbermann pointed out in a less-than-enthusiastically-attended conference call with reporters earlier this week to announce his addition to the NBC Sports "Football Night In America" studio team is that, not only does he share the exact Jan. 27, 1959 birthday of new studio partner Cris Collinsworth, but he’s four hours older. Talk about someone trying to mark his territory. Since Olbermann has shown on his MSNBC "Coutdown" show that he's a fan of Deadspin.com, the news of his NBC Sports gig had us to go the website to see what kind of reader comments were posted under the story headlined: “Keith Olbermann Now Vital Seventh Cog in NBC Pregame Team” :
-- "Remember the "Smug Cloud" episode from South Park? The NBC Studio is in serious danger of being fully engulfed by such a Smug Cloud."
-- "Olbermann and Collinsworth together? Can a person actually die from an overexposure to smarmy douches? I think I’ll stay away just in case."
-- "I want someone to create a photo slideshow detailing the increase in the size of his head from the time he worked at ESPN until now. It's absolutely Bondsian."
--"Anyway, if Bernard Goldberg can spew facist ramblings on Fox News, than I'm cool with Olbermann talking sports on NBC."
--"Yes, but will he grow the mustache back now that he's back on sports?"
--"He may be a sanctimonious prick but he's OUR sanctimonious prick, goddamnit."
--"If this leads to a massive brain explosion on the part of Bill O'Reilly than all is well with this move."
--"Will there be any football on this pregame show?"
--"If he started acting like Peter Finch's character in Network, it would make NBC's pregame show a whole lot more entertaining.'
--"Great. Yet another media douchebag who talks like the expert that he never was, sharing fabulous insight that he's never had."
--"I prefer my pre-game sports analysis to come from intelligent, well-spoken and likeable former athletes. Surely NBC could dig one up somewhere?"
--"I once shared an elevator with Bob Costas and Keith Olbermann. I was in Denver at the baseball All-Star game a few years ago, and they were both staying in the same hotel as I was. I told Keith I had read his book (the one he wrote with Dan Patrick), and Costas replied to me, "Oh, so you were the one." They continued to playfully snipe at each other the ride up. If they can bring that level of banter to the show, it could work."
--"Seriously, Olbermann is the new-age Cosell. Incisive, divisive, people love him or hate him, he's got an opinion about EVERYTHING and it is Very Important that he tell you. Screw this pre-game nonsense and put him in the booth."
--"Yet another reason to not watch Football Night in America...Olbermann is a bitter lunatic barely a notch above Jim Lampley..."
==As we also mentioned in our media notebook in the Daily News, here's the official link to the Onion's exclusive story that appeared Thursday surrounding the fake tragedy of ESPN's Mel Kiper Jr. and his beloved NFL draft big board:
Our favorite passage from the story:
"This is much worse than the 1995 'bobble' of the Big Board that saw five players' names from the mid-first round come unpinned and flutter to Mel Kiper's floor," said Buffalo Bills general manager Marv Levy, who was woken by aides and told of the knock-over only minutes after it occurred. "We weren't sure whether we were supposed to draft Warren Sapp, Ruben Brown, Mark Fields, or Ellis Johnson. In the end, we had to guess, and Sapp went to Tampa Bay. I don't want this to happen again, to anyone."
Our second favorite paragraph:
"We're in bad shape, but all is not completely lost," said Kiper, shuffling through the stack of rumpled index cards he managed to salvage from the area of his floor where the board fell. "I'm reasonably sure that this 'Calvin Johnson' fellow was up near the top, for instance. He's a wide receiver, though, and I'm not sure I'd rank a wide receiver first. And there's a young man named Okoye here whose name I remember… 19 years old, though, can that be right? Damn it, how could I do something so stupid?"
==Bonnie Bernstein and Howard Cosell have finally officially been linked in journalism history. The National Jewish Sports Hall of Fame will induct both Cosell and Bernstein into its shrine next week in a class that includes former Olympic swimmer Mark Spitz (they waited this long for him?) and former Olympic high jumper Dwight Stones among its 12 honoreers. Why so long before Cosell got in? The famously obnoxious ABC broadcaster apparently was never inducted while he was still alive because there were reports that he never considered himself Jewish, according to the New York Post. Hall of Fame director Dave Freedman told the newspaper that a recent book by Dave Kindred, "Sound And Fury: Two Powerful Lives, One Fateful Friendship" about Cosell and Muhammad Ali, it "clearly showed he considered himself a Jew until his passed away." As for the inclusion of Bernstein, pictured here not with Bill Belichick but with Brian Billick, the Hall says in her bio she's "one of the most recognizable and highly respected journalists in the field. In July, 2006, she signed on with ABC/ESPN." Glad we got that straightened out.
==Ad Age magazine reports that McDonald’s is talking to Dwayne Wade and LeBron James about starring in a remake of the "Nothin' But Net" game of HORSE TV ads that Michael Jordan and Larry Bird made famous in 1993. The McDonald's CEO is quoted as saying he'd like to have them done by the NBA Finals. The only way the squished burger company could pull this off is if it actually got Jordan and Bird to participate again. Please, don't let Wade and James try to copy something that's already a masterpiece of pop culture.
==The Sports Business Daily reports that Nike ran a full-page ad in Sunday’s New York Times indirectly thanking former CBS Radio host Don Imus for his comments about the Rutgers women’s basketball team without actually mentioning his name. (That photo above isn't the ad, but it made us laugh anyway). The real ad said: “Thank you, ignorance. Thank you for starting the conversation. Thank you for making an entire nation listen to the Rutger’s (sic) team story. And for making us wonder what other great stories we’ve missed. Thank you for reminding us to think before we speak. Thank you for showing us how strong and poised 18 and 20-year-old women can be. Thank you for reminding us that another basketball tournament goes on in March. Thank you for showing us that sport includes more than the time spent on the court. Thank you for unintentionally moving women’s sport forward. And thank you for making all of us realize that we still have a long way to go. Next season starts 11.16.07.” And thank you, Nike, for the reminder to today's youth about where to put an apostrophe in a plural noun.
==HBO Sports says it's added NBC's Andrea Kremer to its "Real Sports" group of correspondents starting with next month's episodes. As NBC always includes in any press release about Kremer and her involvment in "Football Night in America": "The Los Angeles Times has called (her) 'the best TV interviewer in the business of covering the NFL.'" Take that ... whoever else you can think of ....
==ESPN is trying to juice up its involvement in the Tribeca Sports Film Festival that begins April 25 in New York, announcing that Billie Jean King has been "named an ambassador" to go along with Tiki Barber (which means they just make special appearance to appear to support the efforts of the filmmakers) and the advisory board will include actor Chevy Chase, NFL Network CEO (and former ESPN boss) Steve Bornstein, Dodgers assistant GM Kim Ng (?), WNBA commissioner Donna Orender, HBO Sports president Ross Greenburg, Wasserman Media Group chairman Casey Wasserman and a bunch of others who really don't matter much but at least get a coupon for free admission and a bag of popcorn (kid's sized).
The festival will also show a "special retrospective screening" of the new director's cut of "The Natural" that Barry Levinson reworked and is now available on DVD. Levinson will do a Q-and-A with Jeremy Schaap to talk about all the revisions on May 5.
More info: www.tribecafilmfestival.org.
==NBC will throw on the Detroit-Calgary Game 5 of their quarterfinal series (Saturday, noon) with Mike Emerick, Eddie Olczyk and Pierre McGuire. Unfortunately, with Sidney Crosby and Pittsburgh eliminated on Thursday, Sunday's 10 a.m. slot will be filled by Game 6 of New Jersey-Tampa Bay.
==Fox sends 68 percent of the country (including L.A.) the Yankees-Red Sox game Saturday at 12:30 p.m. with Joe Buck, Tim McCarver and Ken Rosenthal.
==The Sherman Oaks based Fox Sports Radio Network says it will support the "Strikeouts For Troops" program started by San Francisco Giants pitcher Barry Zito (Piece JC, USC), where money is pledged to help wounded war veterans who are being treated at military hospitals around the country. The fund has raised nearly $500,000 in three years. For more information: www.strikeoutsfortroops.org.
==FoxSports.com has revamped its site and has been showing off the first phase of new higher-resolution graphics, enhanced video and a wide-screen format that will make more content available higher on the screen. The full redesign will roll out over the next several months. FoxSports.com reports more than 15 million unique visitors each month.
==Tommy Smyth, our favorite English-speaking soccer analyst who's used most on ESPN international coverage, was added to MLS Primetime on Thursday's show during the live telecast of New England-Columbus, joining play-by-play man Rob Stone and analyst Eric Wynalda, with Allen Hopkins, the former FSN West Galaxy analyst, on the sidelines. Meanwhile, ESPNsoccernet.com, which is one of the top English language soccer news sites, has launched new versions of the site in both French and German. The launches will be closely followed by Spanish and Italian versions of the site.
==Finally, Shaquille O'Neal has agreed to be part of a new ABC reality series that will attempt to fight childhood obesity. The show, "Shaq's Big Challenge," starts June 26 and is produced by RDF USA, the folks who've enhanced our lives with the other reality show, "Wife Swap." The objective is to take six obese kids from a Florida middle school and help them understand what changes need to be made in their lives. One of the guest trainers is former LSU basketball coach Dale Brown. The show, based on the series "Unfit Kids" shown in England, must be news to many of O'Neal's endorsers that include Taco Bell, Pepsi, Burger King and Nestles. Or, perhaps Shaq can scare the kids straight by showing them his performance in the movie "Good Burger."
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