Wednesday, June 29, 2005

We have McCants!


It’s odd for me to spend a countless amount of time staring at the television screen, but being the big basketball fan I am, I decided to watch the NBA Draft and see which prospects get drafted into the NBA. I also wanted to see who the hometown Minnesota Timberwolves would draft with their two picks.

It seems that since the Timberwolves drafted Kevin Garnett in 1995, they have struggled to draft quality players that have been as good as Garnett has become. Since the 95’ draft, they have made many bonehead mistakes. Some examples are they have drafted very good players only to trade them during the draft for another player (Ray Allen traded for Stephon Marbury), they’ve drafted players whom they thought seemed like a good option at the time (William Avery), they have drafted useless high school talent (Ndudi Ebi) and lastly, they have drafted players for the sake of drafting them (Rick Rickert, a Minnesotan and native of Duluth).

This year though, I feel that the luck of the T-Wolves seems to have changed for the better. In this year’s version of the NBA Draft, the Timberwolves drafted Rashad McCants with the 14th pick and Bracey Wright with the 47th overall pick in the draft. McCants is a shooting guard from North Carolina (they won the NCAA championship), who is highly skilled for his position and should provide some big help for the Timberwolves. Wright is an early-entry junior from Indiana who led the Big 10 conference in scoring, but according to some experts, will have a tough time making it in the NBA. Many second round picks don’t make it far in the NBA anyways, so hearing this was not much of a shock to me.

When it comes to the Wolves picking McCants though, many sources say that he was the best shooting guard available in the draft, and that the Timberwolves hit it big by drafting him. I feel that he is a very talented player, and fans should be patient, seeing it will take him time to develop into a pure shooting guard (ie – Allan Houston). Although there it will take time for McCants to become highly-skilled, I am very happy that the Wolves drafted this college hoops star out of Chapel Hill.

With the signing of McCants, the Timberwolves are probably going to say “au voir” to the old sack of bones who is Latrell Sprewell (current Wolves shooting guard), as he will most likely be signing with another team for the 2005-06 season. I do not mind Sprewell going to another team, seeing he is past his prime and will soon be retiring from the NBA to continue his entrepreneurial work at Sprewell Motorsports.

I feel that the Timberwolves got rid of the old (that bring Sprewell) and brought in the new (draft pick Rashad McCants) and that this move will help their franchise a lot. McCants is a valuable draft pick, who has a very positive attitude and prosperous future in the NBA. He should also mesh very well with the Timberwolves team and heck, who knows...McCants just might become the next "Big Ticket" in Timberwolves lore.

Posted by Kyle at 11:06 PM | | Comments

Monday, June 06, 2005

My Rasheed Wallace Discovery...

"When it comes down to it, we'll smack 'em in the mouth with the trophy again."

"Some people say I'm mean and this and that. On one hand that's cool. That keeps away all the riffraff and all the bugaboos."

"A lot of them cats are felonious, man."

Those are quotes from one of the heaviest trash-talkers in the NBA today, Rasheed Wallace. Over the years, Wallace has earned this reputation by speaking his mind to referees, media, opposing players and any other specimen that gets in his way on and off the basketball court. In this year’s NBA playoffs, many people are wondering if the Detroit Pistons are going to repeat as champions, but I am curious about the next comment that is going to come out of Rasheed Wallace’s mouth.

If there is one guy who isn’t afraid to say anything to anybody, it would have to be the man they call, “Sheed”. In the NBA regular season, he managed to run his mouth to referees which have resulted in him getting the most technical fouls in the NBA this year (yeah, they put that on his biography on ESPN if you don’t believe me). His press conferences have been just as interesting as his action on the court as he preaches his own kind of “word” to the masses of reporters gathered around his locker after games.

During the NBA playoffs this year, I’ve come to the conclusion that the deeper the Pistons have gotten, Wallace has played better basketball on the court, helping his team win and has also had more sophisticated words for reporters after the game as well. Think I’m just joking here? Well I’ll explain this exciting phenomenon that I have discovered.

For starters, Wallace has averaged 14.4 points per game during the playoffs, and each series, his role has gotten ever so much more important. In the Pistons’ four wins against the Heat, Wallace scored 20+ points every game, and in the three losses, he scored significantly lesser points. Adding to this stat, he put up good overall numbers during this series and has played great defensive basketball in leading his team to victory (after all, the Pistons are “defending” their NBA title…okay, sorry for the pun there folks). With Rasheed stepping up his game for the playoffs, he has emerged as an emotional team leader for the Pistons, something every championship team should have and something the Pistons value.

As I just talked about, Rasheed has played great basketball on the court, but off the court is where he has excelled the most, and during the Miami Heat series, it showed. Over the course of this series, he managed to get fined $20,000 for comments about the games referees, he has guaranteed his team’s victory in an elimination game (and yes, they did win the next game) and has said so many swear words in one post game interview that prompted one reporter on TV to say, “Who is this guy?”.

In ending this story, the Pistons did end up beating the Heat in game seven of the eastern conference finals series tonight 88-82, and Wallace yet again, played an important role in helping his team to victory. Oh, and in Rasheed-like fashion, during his post-game interview, Wallace wore a belt, like he had just won a heavyweight prize fight, thus adding the final chapter and putting an end to the Pistons/Heat series. .

Rasheed shouldn’t get too excited about this series win though because he has an even tougher task ahead of him in the San Antonio Spurs. This NBA finals series between the Pistons/Spurs should be very interesting and will probably be a dogfight from start to finish, but as I say, it’s not about how the Pistons play against the Spurs; it’s what comes out of Rasheed’s mouth that counts.

Posted by Kyle at 11:55 PM | | Comments

Friday, June 03, 2005

The best college in the land...

Today I booted up my computer, and decided to log onto MSN Messenger to check my mail and whatnot. Upon doing this, I found an article written by The Princeton Review that had listings of the best colleges in the United States. Inside this article, they ranked schools in different categories (ex - parties, academics, best price, etc.) and had lots of general information listed about the schools on these lists. The small town college of Wisconsin-River Falls, where I attend school was nowhere to be found on any of the main pages (wow, what a shock that was), but after doing some searching, I found some information about the school:

The Princeton Review - Unviersity of Wisconsin-River Falls...

Student Body:
"River Falls definitely has small-town charm with a li'l bit of a cosmo kick! Students come here from high schools ranging from 50 to 5,000 [students], and they definitely intermingle," reports one upbeat undergraduate. "I feel the majority of students learn to leave their prejudices behind. It's too small of a campus not to." Diversity is an issue for some; many UWRF students "come from farming communities" to form a "mainly Caucasian crowd," although "the increasing Hmong community in the Twin Cities is sending many students to River Falls, definitely increasing the diversity."

Campus Life:
The combination of a small-town setting and a student population drawn primarily from the surrounding region means many students leave campus on the weekends. Writes one undergrad, "During the week, school is lots of fun, but the major problem with this campus is that everyone leaves on the weekend, so there is nothing to do." Another student tells us, "On this campus, you have to be able to entertain yourself on weekends. There are always house parties, but if you're looking for something else to do, there's a movie theatre, pool hall, bowling alley, a few good restaurants, and lots of bars." Students report that Wednesday and Thursday "are the big party nights." For fun, writes an undergrad, "my friends and I hang out, play games, cook food and serve it to the public [or] go sledding" during Wisconsin's long cold winter. Students agree, "The campus itself is absolutely beautiful . . . . There's nothing like waking up in the morning, throwing open your shades and seeing sky—no buildings, no people." When they need a more urban setting, undergrads head for the Twin Cities or Hudson, Wisconsin. Many undergrads, especially those among UWRF's sizeable commuter population, complain that "the school needs to have more places to park."

So after reading the short description about UWRF, I picked apart the article, and explained what a couple of the phrases (underlined ones) really mean:

cosmo kick - Cosmo means "world", so basically they're saying River Falls is a small town with a "world kick". Ummm...last time I checked, this college was just a regular small-town college with people from mostly Minnesota and Wisconsin. The only cosmo kick I saw would have to have been a person on my floor who was born in Wisconsin, and ended up moving to Japan a couple years ago...he was known as an Albino-Wisconsinite-Japanese.

one - I liked how they said "one upbeat graduate", because maybe there is only one of those people walking around the campus.

everyone leaves - Well, at least they stated the obvious here...everybody does leave this school on weekends and this place turns into some sort of...ghost-campus with your occasional nerd leaving the dorm to go study in the library.

nothing to do - I will say though that if you look hard, there are actually things to do on weekends here (umm...errr like go to the library and study).

lots of bars - Come to River-Falls, because just like any other college town, we too have lots of bars. I also bet the parents really wanted to read this article to know that there are many local watering holes for their son/daughter.

Wednesday - When I first came to this place, I found out that Thursday is the true party night. However, I have never seen people partying on Wednesday nights around campus...am I missing something here or is there some bangin underground party that I wasn't invited to?

Cook food and serve it to the public - Sounds like a knock-my-socks off activity if you'd ask me...although they never offered me any food when they did this one...bastards.

no buildings, no people - Yeah, they really must have gotten desperate here for words that best described River-Falls. I will say that every morning when I woke up, I did see sky, but I also saw buildings and people walking down the street to class...so yeah, this description is complete bull**** too.

So yeah, after reading this article, you have gotten a "true" description of what Wisconsin-River Falls really has to offer. When I initially read this article, it didn't say much, but after adding in my glossary of words listed within the article, as Fat Joe would say, the article means "So Much More" now.

Posted by Kyle at 5:30 PM | | Comments