On Wednesday, FC Porto, last year’s third-place Portuguese club who only made it into the UEFA Champions League by virtue of the Play-off round, beat reigning Bundesliga kings Bayern Munich, with noted machinist Pep Guardiola at the managerial helm. The German giants had lost only three games all season coming into the match, depending on when you started counting, and looked poised to similarly dismantle the ostensibly outmatched Porto. But a funny thing happened on the way to the semi-final.
Courtesy of The Augusta Chronicle
Today, as I’m writing this, the Masters have begun. People have come from all around the globe to experience the flowering dogwood, the spectacularly manicured lawns and a cheap Southern staple known as a pimento cheese sandwich. It’s also a rite of Spring and carries the connotation of a certain unofficial changing of the seasons for some. To be sure, this is a golf tournament, but the significance it has taken on over the years for a certain demographic (read: white people) as an event has rendered it a sacred retreat, a place to escape a world constantly screaming at their privilege through social media and otherwise. It’s an event that admires and supports privilege through a tangible avatar, the sexualization of female patrons, and Gone With the Wind-like romanticism provided by CBS and ESPN. All of this is a problem.
Right now, there is someone somewhere out there with wrists of God who walks among us. Maybe he’s sharing a favorite father-daughter moment. Maybe he’s napping on a boat or out hunting quail or quietly flexing to himself in a bedroom mirror or playing the absolute worst golf of his life. Maybe he’s thinking about a dragon tattoo or the implications of that new Kendrick Lamar record. Maybe he’s snorkeling.
The 2015 MotoGP season gets underway this coming Sunday. Persian Gulf winds will blow sands across the straights. The sun will bleach out the day before giving way to the pitch black of night. Powered by more than 450 million lumens, Losail International Circuit will come alive with the power of enough energy to light a city street from Doha to Moscow. Maybe a few hundred participants, hangers-on, questionable expats, and natives with the money will see it happen in person because that’s how motorsports works in the Middle East. And it’ll be enormously entertaining because, even sitting in an uncomfortable thatched chair at home, grand prix bike racing’s circus is a blast to watch. There’s no feeling in sports quite the equal of anticipation’s release.
And yet, it won’t feel complete. Casey Stoner may be doing a lot of things right now. You know what he isn’t doing? He’s not riding a motorcycle competitively. He may not be riding one at all. He may not even be thinking about it. And it’s our fault.
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There’s not much to get excited about in the second half of February. If you’re in most of the Northern Hemisphere, it’s cold; football is over, if you’re that kind of person; there’s hockey and basketball and soccer, sure, but all of that’s just waiting around and tying up narrative loose ends; the grotesque excess of awards shows has Twitter at full buzz; there are no holidays off.
But there is a magical place that exists around this time every year that suspends reality for a few hours on Sunday and takes you away to bring out the best in motorsports. Thousands of people flock to the seaside to attend and see the world’s best on one of racing’s most picturesque venues. Here, the sands are just that little bit whiter, the grass a little bit greener, the ocean a little bit bluer. Competitors must contend with seagulls as much as each other. You can soak in the history even as you watch it happen in real time on television. It’s the antidote to your winter bunker mentality blues.
Yes, the World Superbike Championship was back at Phillip Island this weekend. Were you expecting something else?
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In the last week, we have borne witness to two diametrically opposing yet clear examples of efficiency. Last Friday, Klay Thompson scored 37 points in a single quarter against the Sacramento Kings, breaking an NBA record jointly held previously by George Gervin and Carmelo Anthony. His ruthless shooting, 13-13 in all, slammed the door on the Kings in what had been a close contest. Several days later, at Super Bowl Media Day, Marshawn Lynch of the Seattle Seahawks conducted a full-scale display in performance art, pirouetting with reporters, fielding questions and answering them all the same way: “I’m just here so I won’t get fined.” His own unrelenting strategy captivated some and enraged others, and, like Thompson before him, sent the internet into a frenzy, triggering all sorts of ostensible #hottakes, including, I suppose, this one. But which outright disregard for others was more methodical?
America is the best place, and if you disagree, you’re wrong. I say that not because I’m American (although I am, and damn proud) but because in America, not only do more people watch the Super Bowl than vote for their president* (*not a real statistic, but I’m 100,000% positive it’s true), but also will create a massive scandal that allows them to talk about “deflated balls” in the media for two weeks straight.
Foxsports.com
We are not Lleyton Hewitt. Or, at the very least, I’m not, and I imagine the overwhelming majority of my readership is not as well. This is true for a lot of reasons; I am not Australian, nor am I the youngest men’s world No. 1 in history. I have yet to win a Grand Slam singles title, despite my wildest dreams, nor is my middle name Glynn. Most of all, however, I am not Lleyton Hewitt because I will never know what it’s like to play tennis on speedboats in the Sydney Harbor with Roger Federer.
bostonherald.com
Forget 50 Shades of Grey. Forget… other popular and mainstream erotic novels (?). A Gronking to Remember is here — well, was here — and it will make you forget every other book you’ve ever read in your life. This modern masterpiece was penned by acclaimed (read: several of her Kindle novels have five stars on Amazon) author Lacey Noonan, the wordsmith behind other great works such as Hot Boxed: How I Found Love on Amazon and I Don’t Care If My Best Friend’s Mom is a Sasquatch, She’s Hot and I’m Taking a Shower With Her. However, her most recent work, centered around Patriots tight end Rob Gronkowski, was apparently way too steamy for Amazon, as the book (which cost a whopping $3 on e-reader) seems to have been pulled from the website. Luckily for all of you, I managed to sneak in a download before that happened.
In A Gronking…, Noonan introduces us to Connecticut housewife Leigh, who catches one glimpse of the patented Gronk spike (or the “football throw down thing,” as she so eloquently puts it) on a football Sunday and falls in love at first sight, much to the chagrin of her beleagured Jets-fan husband, with whom her marriage is already on the rocks.
Anyway, once she sees the Gronk spike, it’s all over.
From sports.yahoo.com
Trading away team headcases is a time-honored NBA tradition. From Dennis Rodman’s Detroit exit in 1993 (and then from San Antonio to Chicago in 1995) to Ron Artest’s unceremonious trade out of Indiana in 2005, getting rid of serviceable but troublesome players allows both teams and players to move on from the skeletons of a marriage gone awry. In situations like these, a player’s future success (Rodman’s with the later three-peat Bulls, Artest’s with the Lakers) tends not to cast the trade in a bad light because the team had decided it simply could not function the same way anymore.
On Monday, two teams expurgated veritable Anthony Fremonts, as the Cleveland Cavaliers dealt Dion Waiters to the Oklahoma City Thunder while acquiring J.R. Smith from the New York Knicks as part of a three-team trade which also involved Iman Shumpert. Both Smith and Waiters had endured franchise-altering waves in the last few months, and now each is set to test exactly how much a change of scenery can do to help a player’s psyche, to the betterment or detriment of their new teams.
Tuesdays With Horry 