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Basketball

the-bachelor

It can be difficult to explain my obsession to even my closest friends, let alone the anonymous masses of the Internet, but I’ll do my best. You see, I’m obsessed with The Bachelor.

Yes, I’m openly admitting I find enjoyment in watching ABC’s reality dating television show, whose target audience is middle aged women with too much time on their hands. For those unacquainted, The Bachelor features a hulking ball of muscle that spouts clichés about love as he casually courts 27 women, who are hopped up on cheap champaign and pheromones, with the intention of finding a bride. The show isn’t entertaining merely because of the alcohol fueled diatribes about love or the over-the-top romantic settings in which the producers set each date. It’s the ability to play along at home.

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Kobe

Courtesy of Sports Illustrated

The Mamba is back. The king has returned to his throne in Los Angeles, and not a moment too soon in one of the tightest Western Conference races we have ever seen. In the first-ever real battle for the city’s heart, Kobe has staked the claim that the Clippers “will be the Los Angeles team when I’m dead and gone.” Even with his legendarily freakish, near-sociopathic work ethic, questions linger about his effectiveness returning from a serious injury at 35 years old. Meanwhile, in the dreadful Eastern Conference, major Internet forces are making light of Jason Kidd’s coaching style. Also, Carmelo Anthony is not an effective LeBron-style point-forward, so who can run an offense with him in it?

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paul-george

With a career-high 43 points last night acting as a bolded semicolon in the middle of a wonderfully crafted sentence of a season, we have officially entered the Paul George age of the LeBron epoch. Not to be outdone, Kevin Durant showed up with his fourth career triple-double. Jason Kidd has successfully transferred some of his craftiness as a player to the bench, and subsequently to the floor as well. The Eastern Conference is a desolate wasteland. Also, Tim Duncan is a technically skilled basketball player who should consider becoming a pitching coach upon retirement.

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Courtesy of Antigua Observer

Courtesy of Antigua Observer

#thereturn managed to last almost two months before it quickly became #therelapse, albeit in a different knee. The downfall of Derrick Rose spells trouble for the Chicago Bulls and for Luol Deng’s future there, and the Eastern Conference becomes significantly weaker as a result. Meanwhile, Kobe inked a two-year contract extension which may limit Carmelo Anthony’s prospects of escaping Dolan-land for a contender in the summer of 2014, and his capricious comrade J.R. Smith surprisingly starred in a shoe commercial which serves as one of the best examples of self-deprecating humor you will ever see. Also, Chris Webber just gets basketball and makes an absolute farce of sports media pregame coverage in proving it.

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Hey, these guys haven't played a minute together this season!

Hey, these guys haven’t played a minute together this season!

My church had a potluck (Make something that could possibly be tasty and bring it so you can eat things that are definitely tasty—I’m sure somebody needed that explanation) Sunday night. I wore my Lakers t-shirt. I think I wore it because they played Sacramento that evening (Yes, that’s true–they even won!). Anyway, people kept asking me “OMG Jordy are you a Lakers fan?!!?!!? Each time, it took me a minute or so to realize that I WAS WEARING A LAKERS SHIRT. Of course they’d ask me if I was a fan of the team!

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James Dolan

 

Two weeks into the NBA season, and the landscape has a few peaks and valleys: Indiana is the lone undefeated team left in the league, while Chicago is 3-3. Even though we are early in the season, as it stands now, Philadelphia and Charlotte, respectively, have the 4 and 5 seeds in the Eastern Conference. Kevin Durant is going full-MJ, and Kevin Love is the second-leading scorer in the league right now. LeBron is still LeBron, putting up 33 in three quarters of action. The Knicks are still the Knicks, and James Dolan is still their owner. Reddit can be a clever place when it wants to be.

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Kobe Bryant stares into Nick Young's soul just before the Laker rapture.

Kobe Bryant stares into Nick Young’s soul just before the Laker rapture.

Because of the fluid nature of academia, which mirrors the National Basketball Association and how much can change day-to-day, TwH will track the NBA’s oddities and biggest stories each week with this, the 3-Pointer. It’s a cop-out name for an NBA weekly column, but it just makes so much sense. The weird, the wild and the wonderful all rolled into one, the 3-Pointer will act as a league thermometer, sure only to get hotter as the season moves forward. This week, we focus on the magnificent MC-W, the toils of Anthony Bennett and injuries in a post-Adrian Peterson/Derrick Rose world.

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Clips

The final installment of the TwH NBA preview brings us way out west, to the Pacific Division. Standing in the shadow of Kobe’s territory, the Clippers look to win over the Staples Center fans with one of the most appealing one-two combos in recent memory. The Warriors will be looking to firebomb opponents with 3-pointers from every angle, but will that reliance doom them come playoff time? Also, what about Steph Curry’s ankles? Boogie Cousins is one of the most polarizing figures in a basketball town with a history of polarizing figures (and some pretty good basketball). Can he keep a cool enough head to flash the Kings back a decade? And finally, will anyone willingly watch a Suns game who does not live in the greater Phoenix market?

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Los Angeles Clippers v San Antonio Spurs - Game One

Division-by-division we go, with the emphasis of this edition placed on the Southwest Division, one of the most competitive in the league. Will the Big Fundamental tutor Kawhi Leonard in the nuances of the Spurs’ culture of excellence? James Harden’s development will continue, but how will Houston gel following the Dwightmare? Is Dirk finished (and what will Mark Cuban do now, if that is the case)? Will Anthony Davis ever manscape his trademarked unibrow? Is Marc Gasol finally – finally – the BEST Gasol? TwH addresses these questions and more.

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Coach Cal

“Revenge is like serving cold cuts.” – Tony Soprano

An editor at Tuesdays with Horry reported to me a few weeks ago that University of Kentucky basketball coach John Calipari was spotted at a Dunkin Donuts in the Big Apple. Unless Calipari was hammering out a point-shaving deal with the Five Families (not unheard of in UK basketball history, and not above the suspicion of the editor who told me about the Cal sighting), his squad this year promises to be nearly unstoppable. The problem with UK’s team last year was that, with the exception of Kyle Wiltjer (who has since transferred to Gonzaga), the team was a mix of highly touted but underperforming freshmen. While people claim that such is always the risk with Cal’s rip-and-run, one-and-done recruiting philosophy, they fail to realize that last year was the first where Cal had to deal almost exclusively with freshmen: the three previous teams had veterans like Patrick Patterson and Darius Miller to provide some level of cohesion amid a sea of talent. No one would seriously argue that Willie Cauley-Stein is Patrick Patterson, but we’ll take the former when we have a historically talented recruiting class coming in, even without Andrew Wiggins. The SEC and the country as a whole is on notice: UK is coming for revenge, and I don’t anticipate it being pretty.

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