Weekend Hangover - Love/Hate

LOVE

- Steve Nash was unreal last night leading the Suns while looking like a cross between E.T. and Two-Face from Batman. He took 6 stitches above his eye and the eye swelled shut, which somehow caused his good eye to bulge out even more throughout the 4th quarter. Nash and the Suns finished off the Spurs in 4 games and appear to be a pretty good challenge for the Lakers (once LA dismisses the Jazz). The Suns will provide a tough matchup with their outside shooting big men which have the potential to drag the Lakers big front court away from the hoop. The Suns continue their march as The People's Choice to win the title and the vindication of Steve Kerr as a General Manager continues. The Suns finally were able to beat the team that has kept them from getting the NBA finals routinely for the past 10 years. And the best part? We no longer have to watch Manu Ginobili flop all over the court with that large feminine hygiene product strapped across his face.

- Another point guard who dominated a game and put up ridiculous numbers? Rajon Rondo put up a sick triple double in the Celtics win on Sunday to even the series at 2 games apiece. Rondo is often overlooked when talking about the best point guards in the league – Chris Paul, Deron Williams, Steve Nash and Derrick Rose get all the attention. Yet Rondo has proven that he has the ability to step up in the playoffs and throughout his career has played better in the postseason than he does in the regular season. Rondo also resembles ET with his bug-eyes and long, wirey arms. If the Celtics are going to win this series, and I still don’t believe they will, they will have to rely on huge games from Rondo to make up for the inability of Kevin Garnett to take advantage of his mismatch with Antwan Jamison.

HATE

- Dallas Braden threw the 19th perfect game in major league history on Mother’s Day with his grandmother in the stands. It was a great story, except that all anyone wants to take about is Braden’s mini feud with Alex Rodriguez. Give it a rest. The guy wants to own the mound when he’s pitching, fine. A-Rod has no people skills so he has no ability to make a sane response, which blows it out of proportion. Just focus on the fact that Braden is a young talented pitcher with tremendous upside. A guy that was a junior college teammate of the much more heralded Manny Parra, and there is no doubt that the prospects for Braden appear much brighter than those for Parra. Congrats to the guy for throwing a gem against the team with the best record in the league.

- Trying to refrain from making any of the all too easy jokes about Tiger Woods this weekend. Let’s see, he had to pull out….of the tournament……with a bulging disc………There are just too many ways to take it straight to the gutter like asking Rachel Uchitel about his bulging disc. In the end, the critics are going to say that he quit and that he just wasn’t playing well so he opted to bail than stick it out. I don’t buy it. The guy has proven to be tough when he won the US Open on a broken leg, so people think that nothing can stop him from playing. However, if he wasn’t playing well, was in pain, and the pain was causing his swing to be even more off than it already was, I have no problem with him yanking himself off the course.

Week 7 Hangover - Love/Hate

LOVE

- Umm, sorry Miles Austin. Maybe you are a #1 WR. That’s two straight monster weeks, 4 TDs, and over 400 yards. My bad.

- Watching Adrian Peterson run right through William Gay was impressive. Followed up like 3 plays later with a screen where he makes a slight little juke to the left and leaves a cornerback grasping at air. Power and footwork – no question the best back in the NFL and a special talent.

- A-Rod finally gets to his first World Series. Strange how suddenly, he’s become a media darling. After being torn apart for his phony steroid story, his hip surgery, his public divorce and his penchant for “manly” looking strippers, he’s now become a sympathetic and likeable figure – and it’s not just because he’s now dating Kate Hudson. I guess it just goes to show that winning cures everything. Can his career arc be compared to Britney? Big star coming out of the gate (in Seattle for A-Rod, Baby One More Time for Britney), getting paid and becoming irrelevant (Texas for A-Rod & the next 3 Britney albums), becoming a train wreck that everyone couldn’t stop watching (NY media for A-Rod, Britney shaves her head, etc), and now making a comeback and everyone is rooting for them.

- Cedric Benson has to feel pretty good today. That’s some good revenge on the Bears. 189 yards like a warm knife through butter. Made the Bears look like a complete joke. Just another chapter on why it sucks to be a Bears fan. Benson basically was the outcast who came back to his high school reunion after getting his book published and he had a supermodel on his arm.

- Not sure any team can slow the Saints offense. Down 24-10 at the half, and then exploding for 36 points in the second half while only giving up 10 more points. They look like a complete juggernaut and will be tough to beat before their showdown with the Patriots in week 11.

- Gambling – The Steelers INT return to ensure the cover against the Vikings. Ted Ginn Jr dropping the pass that would have covered against the Saints. The 49ers rallying from 21-0 to get a push at 24-21 on the arm of Alex Smith. I would bet there were quite a few angry gamblers on those games.

HATE

- Favre’s pathetic attempts to get in the way on both HIS fumble that was returned for a TD and HIS interception that cost his team the game were embarrassing. Just falling down doesn’t count as an attempt to make a play. This was the first of games that Brad Childress found a way to lose – throwing the ball 51 times and rushing only 23 times.

- Not surprising, playing defense worse than a little league team did in the Angels. They committed 8 errors in the 6 game series and the only 2 games they didn’t commit an error – they won.

- Maybe the Giants aren’t as good as we thought and padded their record by beating up on the red-headed stepchildren to start the year. 3 picks for Eli contributed to a big win for the Cardinals. Giants don’t seem to have quite the power running game they need/people think they have, Manningham drops a TD late, and they lose a home game that they needed to rebound from the Saints beat down the previous week.

- The bad teams are just so awful in the NFL, it lends to a ton of blow out and boring games. 6 of the 12 games yesterday were decided by more than 28 points, and 10 of the 12 were decided by double-digits. Maybe instead of worrying about sending teams to London, they should contract and combine some of these awful teams and hope they can be competitive.

- Mr. Tomlinson, unfortunately your days as a premiere running back are long gone. It was a heck of a run, and we’ll see you in Canton, but you are no longer feared, intimidating, or even barely effective. You used to be money at the goalline, and have explosiveness. Neither is there any more. At some point, we knew it would end, and it has. Please try to go out classy like Barry Sanders.

- Swine Flu. Seriously – wash your hands. The regular flu kills more than 30,000 people each year. I’m not a doctor, but that seems much higher than what swine flu has done so far. At least we have Obama on the case declaring it an emergency………