—May 21, 2003
Rewarding the Ugly
Somewhere men are laughing
Somewhere children play
But there is no Joy
in my house
The Pistons died Today
—FX LEACH
That is a poem I wrote last week while I was locked up all night in my own cistern. It was a nightmare, but it gave me time to pay attention to Anything for more than nine consecutive seconds. And I had some hashish and a large brown bottle of 1982 Petrus, and even a Coleman lantern.
Very soon I was comfortable and thinking with great intensity about the nature and fate of the Detroit Pistons, a team I care nothing about and have never particularly liked.
But I am still vaguely irritated about the Pistons getting the second overall pick in the NBA draft this year. It just doesn’t seem Right. How can the top-seed team in the NBA East be picking at the top of the draft? Why are the Pistons being rewarded for their Failure, so blatantly? Dallas, number two in the West, is picking 27th. The Nets and the Spurs will pick 31st and 32nd, just as they should.
But so what? Basketball season is over, and now it is Summertime. Yes sir. Red Bull and grandma’s apple pie. The strange toxic smell of a freshly oiled baseball diamond. These are the glories of summer, but things are different this year. Now we have a gloomy sense of panic to include in our Summer Schedule.
Summer has never been the same since the 2000 Presidential Election, when we still seemed to be a prosperous nation at peace with the world, more or less. Two summers later we were a dead-broke nation at war with all but three or four countries in the world, and three of those don’t count. Spain and Italy were flummoxed and England has allowed itself to be taken over and stigmatized by some corrupt little shyster who enjoys his slimy role as a pimp and a prostitute all at once—selling a once-proud nation of independent-thinking people down the river and into a deadly swamp of slavery to the pimps who love Jesus and George Bush and the war-crazed U.S. Pentagon.
But wait. I seem to be getting ahead of myself. The West final will not be over until tonight, and the Nets–San Antonio series hasn’t even started yet.
But in truth, the crippled Dallas Mavericks will be badly beaten tonight, perhaps viciously beaten. Dallas without Nowitzki is like Sacramento without Chris Webber. Losers. That is and always will be the fate of a team that loses a right front wheel in the play-offs. A crippled team will never beat a healthy team four times in 10 days. Never. So give the points in this one, but also bet the Under. I suspect the Alamo boys will not run up the score tonight, as a gesture of respect for those gutsy little bastards from Dallas. They will be even harder to beat next year.
As for the final championship series, it will be a drastic anticlimax to the closely matched and sometimes first-class games we’ve been watching up to now. I will probably watch the “finals” from my suite in the Palms Hotel in Las Vegas. I am going there for some lengthy conversations with the Maloof brothers, who own the Sacramento Kings as well as the Palms Hotel. They seem to be high-end Sporting people, and they plan to crown Anita the new Queen of Naked Bowling and give her a new Mercedes 550E.
Gestures like that make me uneasy sometimes, but in this case it seems entirely appropriate. Indeed, so enjoy your summer vacation this year, Bubba. It may be the last one you’ll get for the rest of your life. And please convey my deep and vivid condolences to your family. Mahalo.
—May 27, 2003
Killed by a Speeding Hummer
Whoever wins the championship this year will be the
team that suffers the fewest injuries in the next 20
games. That is what it will take to survive these play
offs—and that team is probably San Antonio.
—HST, APRIL 30, 2003
Not everybody is happy with the NBA championship being decided in a showdown between New Jersey and San Antonio. It looks a little weak, for some reason—or maybe it’s just me and these really are the two best basketball teams in the world.
Or maybe they are only the two toughest teams in the world—the only teams that made it this far in the Play-offs without crippling injuries to derail them and kill all their hopes. Consider that the East final and the West final were between a healthy team and a crippled team that simply couldn’t compete.
Some people will tell you that surviving the NBA play-offs is the most difficult feat in Sports, and I think they are right. Surviving the NFL play-offs is like watering your lawn compared to the stark brutality of playing 28 savage basketball games in five weeks.
Have a look at what happened to Dallas, and Sacramento, and Detroit, etc., etc. They all failed because they were not the same team in the play-offs as they were at the end of the regular season.
It would be like playing in the Super Bowl without your allpro running back, or the Stanley Cup finals with a 15-year-old substitute goalie. You are doomed to run out of gas before you get there.
On any given night, the Kings—with Chris Webber healthy—are simply a better, faster, and smarter team than Dallas, or the Lakers, or even the powerful Spurs. They are definitely fun to watch and also the most reliable team to bet on—as long as you bet exactly like I do.
Dallas is the same way. They could no more whip the best teams in the league for five straight weeks without their leading scorer and rebounder than I could if I cut off my right hand.
Wow! That is an impossibly stupid thing to say at this point in time, isn’t it? You bet it is, and I am now apologizing for it. Or maybe I am just too lazy to fix it, eh? How many players in the NBA worry constantly that they are simply too stupid to ever be a winner? I don’t think Chris Webber feels that way—or Dirk Nowitzki. No. They are trying to play championship professional basketball on only one Leg, and that is impossible.
Ah, but I have said those things long before tonight, eh? Yes sir. It was somewhere back in April, as I recall, that I predicted, with great confidence and accuracy, that San Antonio would win it ALL, including an all-Texas final in the west.
But so what? The White House won again, and now it will be Texas against New Jersey for the big Kahuna, starting on Wednesday night on the Spurs’ home court, with 30,000 whooping Texas people watching. Ho ho ho. Guess who will win, in five evil games—or 4–1 on the books, unless Tim Duncan gets hurt. And then it would be a whole different gig.
The Spurs are not going anywhere without Duncan. Period. If he got hurt, the Nets would probably reverse those numbers. They are too small to win legitimately. But remember that they are extremely fast, like water bugs, and they are definitely good enough to beat cripples—even Texas cripples.
It is horrible to think about Jason Kidd and Tim Duncan on the same team next year, and especially on the defending NBA champions. They would be unbeatable. Unless they get their legs broken, or get run over in some dark and lonely Parking facility by a speeding Hummer driven by a hit-and-run drunk who flees the scene and disappears forever.
Okay, okay, Yes, here it is. Send it. That is what I am saying to Anita, right now. She is getting aggressive about this deadline. So that’s it for tonight—and beware of speeding Hummers in the darkness. The end.
—June 2, 2003
When in Doubt, Bet the Dark Side
We were just settling in for a frenzy of high-dollar horse racing on Saturday when the Sheriff was called away by news of a massive jailbreak in downtown Aspen. At least two dangerous Rapists had slithered out of Jail and were said to be heading our way. It was hideous news, but we paid no attention to it and continued to gamble feverishly.…
The Belmont was about to start, and a great roar of applause went up as Funny Cide appeared. He was the hometown hero, heavily favored to win easily. After winning the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness, he had become a national hero from coast to coast.
Funny Cide was “the people’s favorite,” they said. He represented “the little guy,” the beer-drunk brute from Brooklyn who might run amok and kill his own children if Funny Cide lost, which seemed
to be almost impossible. In New York City they seriously believed he was a Sure Thing.
The villain of this Triple Crown story was the thoroughbred racing establishment, the mint julep, pink lemonade crowd that had ruled the sport from the beginning of time. Known in the business as the dreaded Kentucky Mafia of horse breeders & trainers & money barons, they hated the sight of Funny Cide and “would do almost anything to keep him from winning this race.” Rumors said they were Desperate—and the weapon they chose on this muddy Saturday morning was a finely bred 3-year-old colt from Churchill Downs named Empire Maker. He was the real thing.
The Belmont is always a big race, but this year it was gigantic. If Funny Cide won, he would pick up an additional $5,000,000 bonus from Visa for winning racing’s Triple Crown, in addition to the $1.9 million he had already won, all in a single year. Funny Cide was on the brink of Immortality.
But not everybody saw it that way, including me. In my heart I was for the darling of New York, but my brain was telling me to bet on Empire Maker. He was a creature of the huge and sinister blue-blood racing establishment. I knew these people; I grew up with them, and I know they are capable of Anything.
Thoroughbred horses are extremely delicate animals. At three years old, they are like pimply teenagers just getting into the business. They are flaky and temperamental and bitchy, just like us, and most of them are flat-out useless. If they break a leg, which is common, you have to execute them, right there on the spot. Put a bullet through their brains and haul them away to a glue factory and keep a stiff upper lip. That is how it works in the horse-racing business life. It is a profoundly Darwinian world, where there are many losers and winners.
Betting the Belmont was a classic example of the “heart vs. head” syndrome that I have struggled with all my life. Funny Cide was the heaviest favorite to win the Belmont since Native Dancer and Secretariat, a solid 4–5 and falling. Funny Cide was America’s horse.
Nevertheless, he got run down at the top of the stretch by Empire Maker and was never heard from again. He faded to a well-beaten third, and so did that $5,000,000 bonus from Visa. When in doubt, bet the dark side. It is the nature of this business we have chosen.
—June 10, 2003
Welcome to the Big Darkness
Hi, folks, my name is still Thompson and I still drink gin with ER Nurses at night—but in one particular way I am a New Man, a different man, a more dangerous man than I was the last time we talked. And that was a few weeks ago, eh?
Indeed, I can walk again, and I like it, because last month I felt an acute spasmodic pain in my spine when I walked. There was nothing cute about it, no socially redeeming factor. It just plain sucked.
But I have just returned from an extremely intense few weeks at the world-renowned Steadman-Hawkins Clinic in Vail, Colorado (Yes, where Kobe Bryant …), where I had radical surgery to repair what was beginning to give me some pain. Great pain on some days, and I finally decided to get rid of it.
I am no stranger to organ replacement, and I always find it refreshing, always a happy improvement over Pain.
I hate pain, despite my ability to tolerate it beyond all known parameters, which is not necessarily a good thing. I once gouged about two-thirds of my hip socket into mush for five straight years, until I finally felt enough pain to have the bastard replaced.
And Titanium turned out to be far more comfortable and flexible than the human spine anyway, especially mine. It is lighter, stronger, and far more adaptable in every way than bone or steel or anything else in the human body—and I am installing it in my own body as rapidly as possible without doing anything stupid.
My alloy spine replacement is about 70 percent finished, and after it’s completed, I will take a break. And maybe have a look at this weird and degrading Kobe Bryant story, which interests me. The more I learn about this case, the more I understand that this is not about Rape at all. It is about money, pure money, and nothing else. Nobody is going to jail in this case, but some people are going to Pay.
The downward spiral of Dumbness in America is about to hit a new low. You thought O. J. was bad? Wait until we get a taste of the K. B. scandal. It will be like a feeding frenzy and a long parade of whores and cannibals.
When I went into the clinic last April 30, George Bush was about 50 points ahead of his closest Democratic opponent in next year’s Presidential Election—and when I finally escaped from the horrible place, less than three weeks later, Bush’s job approval ratings had been cut in half—and even down into single digits, in some states—and the Republican Party was panicked and on the run. It was a staggering reversal in a very short time, even shorter than it took for his equally crooked father to drop from 93 percent approval down to as low as 43 percent and even 41 percent in the last doomed days of the first doomed Bush Administration. After that he was Bill Clinton’s punching bag.
Richard Nixon could tell us a lot about peaking too early. He was a master of it; it beat him every time. He never learned and neither did Bush the Elder.
But wow! This goofy child-president we have on our hands now: he is demonstrably a fool and a failure, and this is only the summer of ’03. By the summer of 2004 he may not even be living in the White House. Gone, gone, like the snows of yesteryear.
The Rumsfeld-Cheney axis has self-destructed right in front of our eyes, along with the once-proud Perle-Wolfowitz bund that is turning to wax. They somehow managed to blow it all, like a gang of kids on a looting spree, between January and July, or even faster. It is genuinely incredible. The U.S. Treasury is empty, we are losing that stupid, fraudulent, chickenshit War in Iraq, and every country in the world except a handful of Corrupt Brits despises us. We are losers, and that is the one unforgiveable sin in America.
Beyond that, we have lost the respect of the world and lost two disastrous wars in three years. Afghanistan is lost, Iraq is a permanent war Zone, our national Economy is crashing all around us, the Pentagon’s “war strategy” has failed miserably, nobody has any money to spend, and our once-mighty America is paralyzed by Mutinies in Iraq and even Fort Bragg.
The American nation is in the worst condition I can remember in my lifetime, and our prospects for the immediate future are even worse. I am surprised and embarrassed to be a part of the first American generation to leave the country in far worse shape than it was when we first came into it. Our highway system is crumbling, our police are dishonest, our children are poor, our vaunted Social Security, once the envy of the world, has been looted and neglected and destroyed by the same gang of ignorant, greed-crazed bastards who brought us Vietnam, Afghanistan, the disastrous Gaza Strip, and ignominious defeat all over the world.
The Stock Market will never come back, our Armies will never again be Number One, and our children will drink filthy water for the rest of our lives.
The Bush family must be very proud of themselves today, but I am not. Big Darkness, soon come. Take my word for it.
—July 21, 2003
The Nation’s Capital
ESPN Editor’s Note: The opinions voiced below are those of the infamous Doctor Thompson and are absolutely not the views of this network or the editors. That is free journalism.
I know this is hard for some people to accept, but the fact is that Football season is right on top of us again. The first game on TV is scheduled for August 9, less than two weeks from now. It will not be real Football, of course, but it will look like real football, and it will sound like real football—and if you cross your eyes and blow on your thumb hard enough, it will almost be possible to bet on it.
Only a real addict can look forward to that kind of desperate scratching and sniffing, and I am one of them. I am a student of the NFL game. I have been with it since the very beginning, since the start of the modern TV era.
In any case, I had an extremely busy schedule last week. It combined the best and the worst of everything and led into a frenzy of involvements. I was still recovering from my alloy spine replacement procedure when the real wo
rld suddenly caught up with me and called me back into action. There was no way to avoid it. I had no choice.
The real shocker of the week, for me, was and remains the stunning collapse of the evil Bush administration, which I view with mixed feelings.
In truth, I could be a lot happier about the collapse of Bush and his people and his whole house of cards and everything he stands for, if it didn’t also mean the certain collapse of the U.S. economy, and the vital infrastructure, and indeed the whole “American way of life.”
It will not be anything like the collapse and Impeachment of Richard Nixon, which had little or no impact on day-to-day life in this country. Nothing really changed then, except Some people went to prison, of course, but that was to be expected, considering the crimes they committed and the shameful damage they caused. They were criminals, and the righteous American people punished them for it. Our system worked and we were all heroes.
Ah, but that was twenty-nine (29) years ago, Bubba, and many things have changed. The utter collapse of this Profoundly criminal Bush conspiracy will come none too soon for people like me, though it may already be too late. The massive plundering of the U.S. Treasury and all its resources has been almost on a scale that is criminally insane and has literally destroyed the lives of millions of American people and American families. Exactly. You and me, sport—we are the ones who are going to suffer, and suffer massively. This is going to be just like the Book of Revelation said it was going to be—the end of the world as we knew it.
Okay, Okay, don’t get away from yourself, Doc. That was an extremely heavy riff. Not all sports fans are in perfect agreement with your aggressive political opinions, so let’s try to tread lightly for a while. You are, after all, a professional sportswriter, and you have work to do. Ho ho ho.
Hey Rube Page 22