Back to the Grind

I'm no good at taking holidays.

I find that when I try to take a well-deserved break from my life, I end up doing, or wanting to do, the same old things I do all the time, and I think that makes me no good at taking holidays.

Example: I spent most of my time in Mexico watching basketball and listening to the Stone Roses.

Of course, this is mostly because I forgot to put sunscreen on my legs the first day I was there, and as I finished my 9+ hours of just laying on the beach, I realized I almost burnt my legs off.

No worries though - a bar was near, and the bar had League Pass, and I was content.

Days later, when I was back to walking around, I found myself on Isla Mujeres, a small island off the east coast far removed from anything basketball-related. I was walking down a street littered with food stands and residents selling homemade wares, and I saw a little boy walking right in front of me wearing a basketball jersey and shorts, dribbling a basketball, being chided by his parents to keep up with them. He was an American tourist like me, and he caught my eye, dribbling past fake defenders and jumping around with the ball, and then he starts to commentate to his fake audience, to my surprise:

"Brandon Roy, drives to the hoop for a slam dunk!!"

The more things change, the more things stay the same.

Some thoughts from the past week:

- Did anybody else see Caron Butler deliberately punch Brandon Roy in the nuts, and why the hell wasn't he punished for it? Look:



The broadcast I saw only replayed it once, and the sound was off, so I couldn't tell if there were any prison-rules references made by the announcers. Roy tried to come back later in the game, but couldn't stay for long, and he's been out ever since. I understand how the refs may not have seen the play, but why wasn't Butler suspended after the fact, after review of the tape by the league office? Because Butler's an all-star, and his team is in the playoff race, and Portland was on the receiving end. I shouldn't have asked.

- Did anybody else see the back-to-back Warriors v Lakers games? If these teams meet in the first round, my head might explode. Just an overload of wildly entertaining, excellent basketball. And speaking of the first round of the playoffs, consider that there is a total of ONE AND A HALF GAMES seperating the first seed from the sixth seed. Seriously, look. I think Popovich was right: the word "upset" will have lost its meaning.

- Apparently back in Portland people were freaking out because Greg Oden allegedly played in a pickup game at his local 24-Hour Fitness. Blazers management is angry; Blazer fans are disappointed; I couldn't care less. The story is that he was riding a stationary bike and looking despondent, as usual, when he glanced into the gym and saw people playing a game he used to play, called basketball, and decided to give it a shot.

I can't imagine he was taking it all that serious anyways, considering they were just normal people playing ball at 24-Hour Fitness, and he is Greg Oden and 7 feet tall, whose last big concern was that he was getting too big and strong.

TJH