For many of us, Summer means little to our fansmanship. As much as we try to appreciate America’s great past-time, Baseball is too slow and monotonous. We are seeking more than just an old timers’ game; more than five dollar English Leather cologne.

It is supposed to be the fun-time of the year. Many of us get time off of work to visit the world, sit on the beach, party with friends. Most importantly for us bachelors (and non-bachelors if we’re honest) the quadruple B’s are out in full force–blond, bronzed, bikini’d, bodies.

Head out to Avila Beach or Pismo for an hour and you will have plenty of memories by the time you’re done eye-surfing the summatime candy.

But hold on. Just hold up a bit. We don’t want to be creepers now do we? When you took the career job or said I DO, life took a turn for the better. Life was no longer a never-ending scene from Baywatch, and you are no longer David Hasselhoff and his abundantly woodsy chest.

Promiscuity is a bad bad word now, it will cause you to pull a groin or pat on tiger balm morning, mid-day, and night. It is not meant for us mature ones, but for the spry youngsters with a libido the size of Roseanne.

This my friends is no fun, I know. Yesterday I nearly pulled a hamstring on the stationary elliptical. I was trying to both watch ESPN and fake-run at the same time. Sounds easy enough, but nearing thirty, nothing has become easy. The “honey yes, honey of course, honey I will,” sorts of answers, are all that are easy. My life is a tedium glass house, I say no and the world comes crumbling down.

Summatime…

Remember playing ball nine to five on the blacktop with a few friends? It’s seventy five, a clear ardent blue coats the horizon, and the dead day just slumped on your shoulders with not a thing to do. Each one of your pretended for an eight hour period you were MJ, Scottie Pippen, Penny, Shaq, Larry Johnson, Zo, Grant Hill, or Hakeem.

Those were the days. Now, as a tax-paying citizen you’ve grown to resent the group I listed above. As you collect your unemployment from your poor paying teaching gig, your rose colored glasses including your young affair with believing in the impossible have slapped the basement of your life and crumbled into a million little pieces.

Summatime…

Relax, at some point all of us end up washed up. If an epic duo like Will Smith and DJ Jazzy Jeff could never produce anything more than their one-hit album, then trust me, you and I will be forced to scan, fax, make copies, and staple for a living.

But what Summatime foreshadows are feelings of freedom. Despite our limited free time and fading memories of running the black top with skinned knees and soda pop, we all have a place within us that can go there.

Who would of thunk watching men’s professional tennis could excite me like Pam Anderson’s bobbing twins used to? Now as an unemployed man I have the ability to depressingly relive the glory days and bring back the first loves of season: sports, sports, and more sports.

Yes, sports.

Currently, A-Rod is stepping closer and closer to Barry’s all-time home run mark, Tiger is trying to return to form and assume his rightful place as golf’s all-time greatest, and the best living tennis player is still playing at an extremely high level in Roger Federer. Not to mention on Sunday, Jeff Gordon won his 84th NASCAR race, ranking fourth all-time on the list and assuming at forty one, he may go down alongside Richard Petty as the greatest driver in World history.

All this and it’s Summatime. Some things to keep an eye this Summer as you either bum it or find the time in your hectic life to Tivo something. Keep an eye on the Boston Red Sox, who after starting the season 1-9, currrently own the second best record in Baseball and are on pace to be just the ninth team in league history to eclipse 1,000 runs scored in a season.

Watch A-Rod continue his climb to home run greatness, as he sits just thirty four shy of the great Willie Mays mark of 660 at fourth all-time.

The NBA draft on June 23rd is always an intriguing experience. For NBA fans, this not only can shape your future (think Boston in 07′ with the trades of both KG and Ray Ray), but offers a glimpse in the leagues future. This year the popular names are the tweeners, Jimmer Fredette of BYU and Kemba Walker of Uconn, both highly talented but not sure lottery choices as of now.

Normally the draft would be all fun and games. That is if there was not a looming NBA lockout. According to NBA analyst Charles Barkley, the owners are at a “point where they are going to try and break these players unions down.”

Like the NBA’s situation, the NFL lockout has to be the most intriguing situation for sports fans. Most of us wait the two dead  Summer months: June and July, for August when football training camps report and news regarding trades begin to swirl. As of now, both sides remain at a stall and the idea of living without football for many not only kills their Summer, but does away with Sunday beer drinking hoots around the tube. Now Church is the only sad option.

June gloom is definitely upon us. A marshmallow cloud bank over the Pacific does it justice. Not only are we concerned about our lack of freedoms living as grown adults but we also may have to live without two of our favorites next year. In order to keep the faith, now would be a good time watch Baywatch re-runs or finally take up those dance lessons.

I am a realist with specks of surrealism poking through my veins.  When I see mountains, I see mountains, though I admit, beneath their weighty crouch of pine trees, one can see shadows that resemble crow-dark figures. But the difference between a person like myself and those who dream of trolls and witches, is I prefer reality, whatever the hell that is*.  What-ifs are a futile form of phantasmal thinking. They are as pointless as is asking for charity from the big wig munchers sitting in Armani suits atop the towering buildings of American money trade.  But I must confess, as I grow older, more restless with the direction of Father time, and mount toward a gush of a pre-midlife crisis, the what-ifs linger like tinkling pennies in the piggy bank of the soul. Why, what, when, and how become a blabbing second personality–they control you from the inside-out with illusions of a glittering fantasy world.

Okay, not really. But the build up was quite nice. Writing Fan-Fiction ranks 209th on my list of literary successes, behind a research paper on the mating practices of cockroaches*.  I guess I’m learning to become more intrigued with the futurist perspective, the cruel reality of what the intellectuals call historical luck. So I’ll give this elementary form of literature a shot.

When M.J prematurely bolted from the NBA in 1993, after being crowned with vice-God status, oh, and three consecutive titles, David Stern and co. found themselves swallowed in the belly of “who next.”  David Robinson? Hakeem Olajuwan? Patrick Ewing? Reggie Miller? Shaq? Penny Hardaway? Chris Webber? and the list of plausible courtship’s continued. But none of them fit. For one, Robinson, Olajuwan, and Ewing all split time as the best centers in the NBA. They tore each other apart, night in and night out, passing title hopes to one another like a plate of chicken wings. Miller was just too funny looking to take serious. Shaq was dominant, but didn’t have the “that’s it” factor like his airness. C-Webb was a poor man’s Charles Barkley, and Penny Hardaway, a second fiddle to the big fella.

So as it was, after nearly two years in limbo, MJ stopped the pathetic whiff of the bat,  saving the NBA from the folly of ESPN2 status. But he was 35, and though God can’t be held by the shackles of age, clearly he had only three years left. So for three years the NBA garnered another glory run. We watched MJ’s greatest moments. 72 wins in ’96 and title 4; 69 wins in ’97, a heroic 38 in-game 5 with the flu, and title 5, and then his best, at 38, without a healthy Pippen, he won title 6 in ’98 with a game winner. The replay of the legends final moment paused in our minds forever. We fixated on what he’d given us for fifteen years, yet he wasn’t coming back, so we began to croon over the “what now?”

And this is where the world got murky. What-ifs clouded the senses. We glorified the likes of Jerry “score twenty on twenty-five shots” Stackhouse, and Grant “got hurt tying my shoe” Hill, as the ones who’d ascend this trialsome period. Because the compass of greatness passed over us with a gray fog of finality, we wandered lost, like the Israelites begging for redemption. Yet along it was not us, or his airness, that would lead us out of this dark place. It was the powers that be: historical luck, a.k.a., the Sam Bowie syndrome.

Draft day, 1996. Pick 1: Allen Iverson. Pick 5: Ray Allen. Pick 13: Kobe Bryant.  The boyish eighteen-year-old face, with pleasurable dimples, and a rail thin body, shyly bumbled to the stage, beneath a veil of lights, and a flutter of pictures. He wears the Charlotte Hornets’ shades of blue on his ball cap, perfectly slack at the side, further admitting to his school boy demeanor.  Charlotte is ecstatic. The cities deflated NBA economy inflates a bit with a keen interest in the High School boy who’s been compared to his airness. Pedestrians walk about the city whispering the what-ifs, the could it be’s, for a team coming off an average 41-41 season, with a superstar wing in Glen Rice.  Still lamenting over the tragedy of losing Alonzo Mourning and Larry Johnson to trades, the city hopes for a revival of the 1994-1995 season which saw the Hornets boast 50 wins. Surely the young kid could evolve into a dynamic threat, creating the most explosive duo in hoops–Bryant the athletic poster child, and Rice, the cool, collect, three-point aficinado,  segwaying the Hornets into a true playoff contendor.

Yet like me, the Charlotte Hornets are realist.  They wagered on Bryant to be a bust like  Harold Minor or Isaiah Rider.  And in so doing, they traded the thirteenth pick of the 1996 draft, Kobe Bryant, to the Los Angeles Lakers for veteran center, Vlade Divac, altering the league forever, and Hall of Fame faces such as Shaquille O’neal, Phil Jackson, Kevin Garnett, Tim Duncan, and Pau Gasol.

But what if the Hornets froze with a premonition of the boys greatness, further tossing historical luck down the philosophical drain? And Sam Bowie acted as the sports George Santyana, reminding Charlotte not to repeat history, but to transcend it with wit and insight? Assuredly the man known as the Black Mamba would be the face of Charlotte, a team with successes and failures, and his legacy slung in blue, not purple and gold.

1996-1997 would be a season of building blocks. Rice would continue as the teams breakout superstar, while Mugsy Bogues runs the show, and Anthony Mason controls the middle.  Bryant would come off the bench for hard-working Dell Curry, at nearly twenty-five minutes a night, and show enough flashes of greatness to replace the veteran Curry the following season.

1997-1998 would be a season in which Bryant starts at the guard position. Rice now thirty, begins to be haunted by the lack of a championship, and chooses to demote some of his shot totals to the nineteen-year-old.  Anthony Mason plays third fiddle, and continues to play as one of the leagues premier do- it- all big men.  David Wesley, Bobby Phills, and Del Curry battle for back-up minutes, and Wesley wins. Phills fades into obscurity and Curry becomes a veteran, on a guard heavy team with little to any usage and retires. Bryant averages in the mid-teens, struggling down the stretch, and the Hornets lose in the 1st round.

1998-1999 was the season of the lockout and first post-Jordan experiment, acting as a minimal launching pad for Bryant. The Rice and Mason injuries allow for Bryant to assert himself offensively as the teams go to guy. Though there are flashes of stardom in the wake of the teams injuries, the youngster still lacks a consistent jump shot, and the assertiveness to tell off veterans like Derick Coleman, and J.R. Reid, who both shoot far too much for players with their lack of offensive abilities. The team misses the playoffs.

1999-2000 was a season of fine tuning the teams direction. Now season four of the Bryant/Rice experiment, the Hornets feel the pressure to make this thing work. Bryant now expects to be the man on a team stacked with paling reflections of one time all-stars. Coleman comes to camp overweight and is nothing more than a seventh or eighth man off the bench. Rice still has the ability to score, but at 33, with brittle knees, and a bad shooting elbow, his percentages drop, as does his demeanor. Mason’s ruptured leg causes the greatest decline, and though he averages a double-double through determination, he is unable to be counted on as anything more than a role guy. Rookie Baron Davis comes excited and both he, and Bryant, give life to a team in steep decline. Bryant averages 20-25 a night, Rice at 17, and Davis around 12, but the team misses the playoffs for a second straight season.

2000-2001 was a new beginning. The Rice/Bryant experiment did not work. Rice is dealt to a playoff team in need of a shooter, as is Mason, gone to free agency.  The pick up of Jamal Mashburn gives the team a much-needed offensive punch at the swing position. Bryant continues to shine, and records his second straight all-star appearance. He averages 25-28 points a night, while Davis continues to grow into a good point guard, though his shoot first attitude perturbs the star Bryant.  Both have a slightly poor relationship, and the friction causes the quiet tempered Mashburn to fade far into the background. The team makes the playoffs but fails to get anywhere but the second round.

2001-2002 was the final recordable season. Season six for Bryant, and the cities lack of drawing power for big name free agents, causes him to seek a new home. They still have the trio of Bryant, Davis, and Mashburn, but they are unable to upend the Eastern Conference elite: Pacers, Sixers, and Nets. Davis is nothing more than a poor shooting eighteen point, six assist point guard, and Mashburn is on the steady decline. Bryant averages 30+, but has become the same type of player as a Vince Carter or Tracy McGrady, a shoot first player with few playoff credentials.

2002-present has been a vague unreadable sign. Bryant, McGrady, VC, Iverson, Duncan, Garnett, Shaq, Wade, Bosh, Nowitski, and Durant all battle for superstar supremacy. It is fair to say, at this point, there would be no comparison between Bryant and Lebron. Lebron would clearly be the best of the best, lacking playoff successes. Duncan would probably have six titles to his name, and Garnett two. Bryant gets caught in the free agency fray much like a McGrady  or a VC, and continues to experience nothing more but all-star appearances and playoff losses.  Though a phenomenal athlete and tremendous scorer, Bryant is a poor man’s Dominique, nothing more than a top thirty to fifty player of all time.

The problem with WOW & Fan Fictionites, is they live in a world with little to any REAL credential*. It is creative in that it feeds the never-ending need to enslave oneself to something born far from reality. But what greatness is there in a world nobody cares about*? As I sit back, sipping on a beer, shooting the shit with friends, I am amazed at the tremendous ability life has to shape things with the hard and near impossible decisions. We all have made piss-poor choices, shoot, choices meant to be regretted over. But in the regret, we become better people, and learn how to fruitfully shape the real world. We will no longer (hopefully not) concern ourselves with our Bryant for Divac swaps, because whether we are the recipient of greatness or not, we’ve given ourselves over to the great collective–a fabric of souls interconnected by the dominoes of our lives.

I’d trade Bryant for Divac full well-knowing the kind of player he’d become.

For every Bryant there’s a Divac, both serving their place in the ying-yang world of sports.

Divac: hard-working, playoff contender, smart, and the greatest flopper of all time.

Bryant: five time champion, Olympic champion, top ten great of all time, top five scorer of all time, thirteen time all-star, one time MVP, and the list continues to mount.

The greatest flopper of all time lends itself to a round of merry humor– which we all need.

But if the Kobe accolades say enough for the name of reality, then, who the hell wouldn’t make that trade, and who would possibly have the guts to re-arrange the beauty of such greatness?

–Luke Johnson

Any player who can score 30 points regularly in Division 1 college basketball, like he has over the past few years, will probably be a first-round draft pick. He is a prolific scorer and shooter, but what will really allow him to excel in the NBA is not his shooting ability. Mike Penberthy was a really good shooter and was out of the league quickly. Shawn Respert was an AMAZING shooter, but that didn’t keep him in the league.

Fredette’s ability to score also won’t keep him in the league for a long time. Lots of scorers in college have flamed out in the NBA.

What will make Jimmer not as bad as people are predicting is his athleticism. Because he won’t be required to dominate 75 percent of his team’s possessions, he will be able to spend time working to become a better defender than pundits think. His athleticism will allow for improvement that wouldn’t be possible for less athletic players.

Jimmer fits the profile of a stereotypical non-athletic chucker. The only problem is that he is very athletic. He needs to improve his ball handling and defense, but his athleticism and drive make him capable of both. He’ll do just fine in the NBA. — OM

As of now, the idea of Adam Morrison is dead.

That idea was that he’s the next Larry Bird. Or that he we was worthy of a third pick in 2006, to Charlotte.  

He’s like the Thunderbird of wine: nearing extinction.

It wouldn’t hurt as much, if his name translated into one of the great “Morrison’s;” Jim for one. But it doesn’t, it would be make believe. The dude from the Zags, yes, a guy who averaged 28.1 points per game his Junior year, leading Gonzaga to a 29-4 season, into the sweet sixteen, finishing with a National Player of the Year Award, whom was heralded at times by the narrow-visioned Jordan, to be the next “it” thing, has been tossed into the sea of pro-hopefuls like myself, waiting tables at Marie Callenders, and drinking cheap beer. The last two years he’s done as much basketball–watching, as any overweight bartender has, playing forty-one games, and averaging a pea-size 2.1 points with the L.A. Lakers.

The mop top, slinky white kid, from Glendive, Montana, with the awkardly perfect stroke (42.6% 3pt his Junior year) has been given over to the harsh reality of linguistics. A reality that some people have it, and some don’t. As Darwin would say, a game masquerade in survival of the fittest, where the biggest fish eats the littlest fish, then grows into a bonafide superstar. Unfortunately Morrison has been ingested.

I have travelled the country quite a bit. My travels have taken me to parts of Africa, most of Indonesia, in the slums with the Abo’s in Australia, and the list continues to mount. But no matter how much my Spanish speaking friends continue to quiz me on the difference between ‘que’ and ‘quien’ I am a lost soul awaiting a certain type of death: death by stupidity. Attempting to be a linguist would be less attainable to me than would walking the tight rope from New York to New Jersey; it just isn’t happening. Period.

So I’ve taken to being the laughing stock of our gatherings. And it’s awarded me with a comedic role, one I now relish in, considering most of the pretty Latina girls are taken by my humbly sensitive English-only-quiet-naturedness. But when it comes to professional sports, none of this funny. We all remember watching Morrison drill tough minded Michigan St. for 43, then, two weeks later doing the same against Washington, on 18-29 shooting, 6-9 from downtown.  He followed that with 27 against Virginia one week later, and then 34 against Memphis the next. Without a doubt he was the risen, beetles clad, better looking version of Larry Bird. So on draft day, going to the Bobcats could not have been a more perfect fit. He would certainly be the starting swing man and begin his ascent as the teams go-to, and the leagues best Caucasian player since Nowitski or Nash.

Nonetheless, the me-first, stylistic NBA clashed with Mark Fews pick setting sets at Gonzaga. Morrison, who’d lived off the pick and pops, no longer had that luxury, playing with athletic freaks like Gerald Wallace, who would rather go 1 on 5, jumping over his defenders, then work a team oriented set. This lack of a team concept suprised the non-athletic forward his rookie seasion, as he averaged 11.8 points per game. Though that was an understatement for what people thought he was capable of, we still saw it as a partial success. He could continue to build on such, and would hopefully assert himself more and more on the wayward, loss heavy Bobcats. But a seriously sprained knee in training camp his sophomore season deterred him. He played 44 games, starting just 5, and clearly lost his perfectly dopey looking demeanor. He was now tense, and it showed, as he shot 36% from the floor and averaged 4.5 points.  Guys like Nazi Mohammad made Morrison’s slow feet look like blocks of concrete. At that point, the slow forigiving Larry Brown  asked his personal chefs what the fat content would be with roast de Morrison. The answer was zippa-roo!(As they skipped to the Sounds of Music)

His trade to the Lakers, on the eve of his third season, was a salary dump on Charlotte’s part. The deep and experienced Lakers allowed the soft tempered Morrison to drown in the background, lose touch with his could-be abilities, and collect rings in the art of all things sitting. The days of comparisons were clearly over. He was more of a poor man’s Keith Van Horn than he was Larry Legend. His translation abilities were like a blind man reading letters in a darkened optometry office. He scored a zero.

The latest news on Morrision is close to null.  He was waived by the Washinton Wizards on the eve of the 2010-2011 season, over lost projects like Yi Jianlian, and Hilton Armstrong.  A Washington team who as of Saturday is 13-31, and without a doubt would lose to ranked elites like Kentucky, Kansas, Duke, or Syracuse.

Morrison has become more intriguing as an unexpected flop, than he would have, as a success. Not only because of our cultural  fondness for his days of railing teams for 30+ with Gonzaga, but because of our interpretable use for him, as we further try and compare and translate others at the college level with similar skill sets.

Jimmer Fredette is one of these translatable college players. Breaking on the scene last year, the 6’2, 195 pound guard, torched Arizona for 49, a BYU record.  Later, in the Mountain West conference tourney, Fredette put up 37 against TCU, a conference tourney record.  His record setting did not end with personal numbers, as Fredette led BYU to their best season in their history, losing in the 2nd round, 30-6, and ranked #16 in the polls.  In their opening round game against Florida, a double overtime thriller, Fredette put up 37, hitting two clutch threes down the stretch to ice a 99-92 win over Billy Donovan and co.

Then the questions began. A limited athlete, and short for his position, Fredette became the talk of the NBA draft. BYU’s up-tempo offense allowed for Fredette to put up a lot of shots. Which bore the question, is he really this good, or is he a product of a fast paced environment? His numbers answered the question. Last season, Fredette shot 45.8 from the floor, 88.9% from the free throw line, and 44.0% from the three point line. He averaged 22.1 points per game, first in the Mountain West, and his 4.7 assist per night, ranked second on his team.   

Before the start of this season, Fredette had been determined to be a late first to early second round pick, based upon his lack of athleticism, and size. This is because of players like Adam Morrison, who without the pick and pops simply could not get open. Not to mention Morrison had six inches on the stocky Fredette, and could shoot with the same depth.

According to Charlie Zeggers, a free lance writer with rotowire.com, and others, Fredette will have a “career path [that] will most closely mirror Redick’s, unless he has the good fortune to land with an NBA team that will play to his strengths and hide his weaknesses.” This is based upon the current comparisons to: Steph Curry, J.J Redick, and Morrison,  whom were great college shooters, but lacked either the size or athleticism, to translate it at the next level.

Or so we thought. As of now, Steph Curry is a budding all star with Golden St, and is arguably the best player of his draft class. Redick has become a solid role guy with Orlando, and is used as both a three point specialist, and a spark off the bench ala Tony Delk. Both players have ignored the translation factors, and outplayed a large majority of those drafted above them, further giving Fredette fans hope, because Morrison is the exception of the three.

 Which is why we need to live in the moment and enjoy what he’s doing now. His 27.4 points per game, on the 16-1 eighth ranked Cougars, without question places him as the early favorite to win the National Player of the Year Award. Three 40+ nights in his last four games, have us admiring not only his hard-nosed play, but his godly, astronomical greatness. And to top it off, the dude is humble, a class act, a guy who says more about his teammates than he does his individual accolades.

I believe he’ll translate something positive into any NBA arena next year. His humility should earn him kudos with the brash arrogance of the NBA elites.  He’ll rival Curry, Redick, Mike Miller, and Jared Dudley, as one of the premier three point shooters in the league.  And with his work ethic, could become like a Mark Price, who with hard nosed determination, and shooting ability, earned himself top fifteen point guard status in the history of the NBA.

If not, then you can expect a write up on the guy three years from now. It will be entitled: “Only the Good Die Young,” and will leave you wondering why the NBA is more popular than the momentary game of college hoops.

–Luke Johnson