Washington Wizards rookie point guard John Wall is one smooth customer.  He is in the middle of answering a reporter’s question when someone dares to rip a fart right in front of him.  While he does pause mid-sentence for a brief second, he keeps going with the answer with only a mild smirk entering his face.  Definition of smooth, yes?  Check it:

Like silk.  This kid is going to be a superstar if he keeps his cool like that.  Oh wait…whats that?  He doesn’t always keep his cool you say?  Well dang. There goes that.

You can find some pretty fantastic things while browsing the interwebs.  Things like this classic 1987 commercial for the NBA featuring the yacht rock sounds of Hall and Oates providing a soundtrack to some highlight footage of players like Michael Jordan, Larry Bird, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and others. Isn’t everything just 100 times more awesome with a Hall and Oates soundtrack?  They could be the soundtrack to a funeral and people would leave it saying what an awesome time they had.  Enjoy the old timey footage follks.  Apparently today is video Wednesday on the Deuce.

Young Washington National, Bryce Harper, played in his first simulated game against real major leaguers yesterday afternoon and do you want to guess how he fared in his two at bats?  Well he struck out twice.  Disappointing?  Totally! Surprising?  Not in the least.

It just can’t be surprising if you’ve followed sports in this town for the last twenty years.  DC has been full of young athletes with promise that only serve to let us down over and over again.  We have had several high draft picks or young phenoms that have come into this town and failed, sometimes in spectacular fashion.  DC might actually be one of the worst cities in all of sports in terms of positively assisting in a young athlete’s growth.

Plus, he’s super young (big strike against him), he’s super confident (can he handle not having immediate success), and he’s super inexperienced (can he handle injuries, can he handle the life in the big city, can he handle his money). The odds really are stacked against this kid unless the stars align.

The stars rarely align in DC however. If history is our guide, Harper will be yet another huge disappointment. So let’s look at a brief history of the other highly touted disappointments DC has had, at least in recent memory:

Stephen Strasburg

Ok, so sure, its a little early to judge the whole career of this kid but c’mon, he blew out his arm in his first taste of the majors.  That is a huge disappointment.  Especially from a pitcher who can only be compared to the likes of Doc Gooden, who never took care of his body and in fact abused it to hell with drugs and partying but still managed to avoid Tommy John surgery his entire career.  This city named the day that Strasburg pitched “Strasmas!” for crying out loud. What a huge disappointment that in his FIRST YEAR he blew out his arm.

Sure he could recover from it and be as good or even better than what he was those first few starts he had for the Nationals.  On the other hand, he couldn’t.  Knowing DC superstar disappointment history…he probably won’t. As of right now, this whole city is disappointed that Livan Hernandez will be tossing out the first pitch on opening day instead of Strasburg.

Alexander Ovechkin

This guy was supposed to be a combination of Wayne Gretzky and Mario Lemieux with a dash of pre-concussion Eric Lindros in there.  A big guy, unafraid to mix it up, who was agile, fast and an unstoppable scorer.  He was supposed to be the best. For a little while, there might’ve been an argument that he was the best, this year however, he isn’t even close.

With 24 goals in 63 games, Sidney Crosby is STILL ahead of him even though he’s been out with a concussion for what seems like half the year.

This isn’t even the real problem with Ovechkin however.  All of this season stats could just be a massive, season-long slump. A blip on the career of an incredible player.  Its way too early to tell.  The real problem with Ovechkin is that he has never won anything, anywhere.

Great players are supposed to elevate the talent around them…or at least win a championship at some point.  That Ovechkin hasn’t been able to do that yet, despite teams full of massive talent and promise, is INCREDIBLY disappointing. Read the rest of this entry

Welcome to New York, ‘Melo. One good thing about him coming to New York is the fact that fans will be able to get something to eat in the Garden again. Eddy Curry’s off to Minnesota. If Prince isn’t careful, he might find himself covered in BBQ sauce and sitting in Curry’s belly like Jonah. You hungry muthafucka!

Anthony may be the half-savior of New York but he should still be initiated and hazed like anyone else joining a new team. Chelsea makes all new players and staff sing in front of the team. Maybe he can perform Q-Tip’s Knicks anthem:

Nah that’s way too easy. If Anthony’s not going to reenact the “Stop Snitching” video, he should be forced to remake this with Keenan Cahill, Isiah Thomas and James Dolan:

Making Anthony front JD and the Straight Shot would be cruel and unusual punishment. I would have mentioned Spike Lee but I saw him on stage at the Prince show in December. No one needs to see him dance again.

By the way, how did Mikhail Prokhorov not fly Anthony to the Alps to party with a bunch of Albanian girls fresh out of a shipping container and Jay-Z? That’s some straight oligarch fail. Roman Abramovich would have been all over it.

H/T to Complex Magazine.

If you watched ESPN in the early 2000′s you may have observed a humorless man with an enormous forehead pontificating about the state of the NBA. It wasn’t that Stephen A. Smith was particularly “good,” but when your competition is Jalen Rose and Jon Barry, it’s not exactly tough to stand out.

Okay, fine, Stephen A. Smith gives decent-enough interviews, and he is perhaps even a little less afraid to call athletes out then people like Michael Wilbon, who practically gives Magic Johnson a handjob every time ABC broadcasts a Celtics or Lakers game (really the only two teams that they air). Wilbon also won’t criticize his famous athlete friends (cough, Donovan McNabb, cough). When Allen Iverson’s Philadelphia homecoming soured, Stephen A. Smith reported AI’s problems anyway. Journalists totally need to backstab their friends more!

Also, he did manage to make ESPN look ridiculous (not too difficult) when he reported days before ESPN that Lebron James, and Chris Bosh would be joining the Miami Heat and giving South Beach jersey chasers an instant orgasm.

It was reported by my sources (gestures to homeless person consuming cheap scotch) that Stephen A. was reduced to giving interviews in Philadelphia soup kitchens until recently. Good for him. With a face made for radio, it’s perhaps only natural that Stephen A. will be taking his talents to the airwaves and the “series of tubes” we call the internet instead of making our ears and eyes bleed on NBA Live.

“Words cannot express how excited I am to return to ESPN,” said Smith.

I am speechless, everybody! Oh, maybe just a quick word…

“The five-plus years I spent here in my previous stint were unquestionably the best years of my professional career. To have the opportunity to return to a place where I have an abundance of friends – with individuals whose contributions to my life, both professionally and personally, deserves far more credit than I can describe – simply makes my return that much more special. I’m sincerely grateful. And very, very ready. As in right now. Let’s go!”

Stephen A. does sound elated, and perhaps relieved. With that ESPN money coming back in at least he can maybe afford to hire bodyguards again.