Your morning roundup for April 27, the day we let the idiots drive the national agenda.
• The Canucks bounced Kane and the Blackhawks out of the playoffs in a Game 7 watched by Real Sports Fans everywhere. This was quite a big deal for Vancouver fans, and in the runup to the game, people waxed analogical about both the prospect of blowing a 3-0 series lead ("Like a girl who marries this great guy, trusts him completely, buys a house together, has a family with him, then finds out he's a hit man for the mob") and the meaning of a victory ("[L]ike a death-row prisoner who was pardoned and is breathing free air again.") Meanwhile, what they're saying in Chicago about the defending and now deposed Stanley Cup champions tells me everything I need to know about the business of hockey in the age of Gary Bettman:
But this team is not that far away. It's two, maybe three moves from being elite again.
• Kobe Bryant, who you may have heard has another Serious Playoff Injury, dunked on Emeka Okafor's head last night. The last word on the game goes to Ron Artest, who is now talking like Rod Stewart songs:
We played young. Our legs. Our energy. Hungry. Young people, hungry.
• The Bulls dispatched the Pacers and looked very good for the first time in the playoffs, even though Carlos Boozer spent yet another game turning Tyler Hansbrough into Moses Malone. Everyone's talking about Rose's 25 and 6 — plus one stuff of Roy Hibbert that I think he may have blocked with his shoe — but after last night I don't think there's any debate that Joakim Noah is the most effective irritant the game has seen since Rodman teleported back to the mothership.
• Bryan Curtis talks to the wonderfully dyspeptic Robert Lipsyte, whose SportsWorld is as fresh today as it was in 1975. He has a new book out, An Accidental Sportswriter, which you should all read as well. For the uninitiated, here's Lipsyte on Bob Costas:
One of the Jock Culture's most treasured cheerleaders. … Just look how happy he seems bantering with those ex-athletes on pregame shows, a terrier playing with mastiffs and Great Danes.
• NFL Un-Lockout, Day 2: No one knows anything.
• Controversial Rex Ryan has a controversial new book out in which he says controversial things like, "We are the better team." Pass.
• Jon Gruden's "QB Camp" is the best thing on ESPN these days.
• In the third inning of last night's game in Charleston, W.V., Chosen Person Bryce Harper struck out looking and exchanged words with the pitcher, whereupon the players fled the benches like moneylenders from the temple.
• Larry Granillo finds a Baseball Digest article from 1992 in which professional concern troll Tom Verducci muses on the terrible effect Nintendo is having on our young pitchers.
• Gloria Allred is holding a press conference about something or other.
Image via Mocksession
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