GQ - "Super Bowl 51: America Should Root for the Atlanta Falcons"
By Lang Whitaker
Saturday, January 28, 2017
The Migos
The FADER - "How Memes May Finally Get Migos A No. 1 Song"
migos performing bad and boujee in africa. nigeria lit as fuck. pic.twitter.com/85u46cSSnF— 🗡 (@6PAPl) December 21, 2016
Wednesday, January 25, 2017
Saturday, January 21, 2017
Kevin Garnett and Randy Moss
Randy Moss reflects on running the Minnesota streets with The Big Ticket (2:03)
KG and Randy Moss discuss the Zaza Pachulia hard foul on Russell Westbrook (2:17)
KG shares a story with Randy Moss about how Isiah Thomas helped influencer him in deciding on going pro straight out of high school (2:15)
KG has Randy Moss reflect on his days in high school and how he grew his love for both football and basketball (4:33)
Randy Moss gives his starters for the 2017 All-Star game in New Orleans (3:39)
KG welcomes Randy Moss to the Area 21 set for the night (1:45)
Harden "thrives on strength and guile"
Bleacher Report - "James Harden is Everywhere"
By Howard Beck
"Harden is not the NBA's most dazzling star, nor its most aesthetically pleasing, nor its most cuddly. He thrives on strength and guile, not outlandish athleticism. Purists will forever grumble about his foul-seeking and flailing. But there is no denying his brilliance or his killer efficiency.
Give Harden space, and he'll sink a 26-footer. Defend him tightly, and he'll be in the lane within two steps, sending up a soft floater. Send help, and he'll find the open man, every time.
"He has some of the most lethal footwork, especially with the ball in his hands," says Detroit's Reggie Jackson, a former teammate in OKC.
"There's no one like him," says Dallas Mavericks veteran Wes Matthews. "He's unique."
LeBron James is the greatest player of his generation. Curry is the game's greatest shooter. Russell Westbrook is a terror and Kevin Durant an athletic marvel. But Harden, with his abacus-rattling array of deep swishes and point-blank buckets, might just be the scruffy face of the Analytics Era, the star who most embodies the advanced-stats ethos.
...
"Even we thought it would come back to Earth," Morey says. "It hasn't. He continues to be one of the all-time greats at driving to the hoop, getting a layup, getting fouled or creating an open shot for someone. It's very basic, but that's pretty much the thing that separates him."
...
Those gaudy assist numbers? They shouldn't be much of a surprise, at least to those who have watched Harden closely over the years. Rival coaches say Harden was the Thunder's best playmaker—better than Durant or Westbrook."
Monday, January 16, 2017
Le'Veon Bell Running Theory
Sports Illustrated (The MMQB) - "Final Four Looks Fantastic"
By Peter King
Bell plays chess every day. He’s quite good. He plays speed chess mostly, and said he’d love one day to walk through the parks of chess-mad New York City and pick up some games against people who could challenge him. He thinks chess helps makes him a better football player because it allows him to think two and three moves ahead (which you have to do in chess). Three questions for Bell we didn’t use in the NBC story:
How can you be so calm, and wait near the line while the rest of the field in filled with frenetic players?
Bell: Truthfully I can’t even put it into words. I think it’s just me being confident in my ability and being able to get to my spot when I want to get to my spot. Obviously the offensive line is doing their job. I gotta put a lot of trust in those guys but it’s just me understanding the game of football and I’ve been in a lot of football games and got a lot of carries. That’s me being confident. I know the hole is gonna eventually open. They can’t play it perfectly every time, and I try to make them pay when they don’t.
How was your style born?
Bell: It’s not something that I thought about or really learned … I think when I was growing up five years old when I first starting playing, my uncle always taught me, ‘Find your lineman’s butt.’ When I started getting older—high school, college—I started evolving and understanding what he really meant. Just use your Iinemen, use your blockers so now it’s to the point where I’m literally getting to each spot and using my blocker where he’s at in between me and the defender. Obviously it makes those guys look amazing [when I go through the hole] and it makes me look good too at the same time so we’re all winning … It’s not get the ball and hit a hole; it’s kind of like gliding a little bit, it’s like taking my time, being patient being able to pick my holes, set up holes. Other people I’ve seen, I ask guys who they compare me to and there’s nobody ... That’s what I think makes me different.
You think you’re like any other player in sports today?
Bell: I said earlier in the week [to Tyler Dunne of Bleacher Report] that my game, when it comes to be able to change the game and play the game differently in that way, is a lot like Steph Curry. Steph Curry changed the game of basketball; now everybody wants to shoot the three ball, now basketball revolves around the three … I think I’ll compare my game to his in that aspect just because I have a touch on running the ball a lot differently but very effectively in a sense of run the football--running between tackles, outside zone, inside zone, catching the ball out of the backfield. I’m just a little different in that aspect.
...
From NBC's Sunday Night Football telecast:
So we all just gonna ignore how the Le'Veon Bell frogger clearly runs into the Chiefs things several times? He lost repeatedly. pic.twitter.com/OmdC8VWfk1— Tom Downey (@WhatGoingDowney) January 16, 2017
Sunday, January 15, 2017
2003 Retro Nostalgia
Nice Kicks - "Nike Air Zoom Generation “First Game” // Release Date & Details"
Nice Kicks - "Inside The Design Process Of LeBron’s Nike Air Zoom Generation"
...
New York Times - "With LeBron 14 Release, Nike Is Bypassing the Shoe Store"
"James and Nike are hoping to tap into a similar nostalgia with the reintroduction of James’s rookie-year sneaker, the Air Zoom Generation, the first sneakers Nike made for James. James is one of the few players, including Jordan, to get a retro release of his own shoe line while he is still playing.
“There is more inherent demand for LeBron’s retro shoe than any of his shoes in the last three years,” Luber said.
Neil Schwartz, vice president at SportsOneSource, a market research firm for athletic footwear and apparel, said LeBron was the most popular basketball shoe frontman among active players, ahead of Kevin Durant (Nike), James Harden (Adidas) and Stephen Curry (Under Armour). But James is nowhere near being the king of basketball shoes.
“LeBron is not approaching Jordan in popularity,” Schwartz said. “He’s not even close.”"
Thursday, January 12, 2017
Sunday, January 8, 2017
New York City Living
Gothamist - "Chuck Klosterman Talks Trump, Linklater & Not Leaving New York"
Q: You’re basically known as a Brooklyn writer. Has your opinion on the city changed as a result of your evolution from bachelor to husband to father, or has the city itself changing affected you more?
Chuck Klosterman: I think the biggest difference is, when I moved to New York I spent all of my free time in bars. Bars are open until four in the morning here, and you don’t have to drive anywhere, and it was just a crazy fun time, so I experienced the kind of New York that exists from 5pm until 3am. Now, I have two kids. I experience the New York from 6 a.m. until 9:30 p.m. and it’s a wholly different city. You meet a lot of interesting people in a lot of parks, but it’s pretty complicated to raise kids here. When you’re a single person, and the only person you have to worry about is yourself and having a good time, you live in the “other” part of New York. I don’t even know what that other part is like anymore. When I walk through the East Village or the Lower East Side, I see all the places, some of them have different names, but they’re still fundamentally the same, but it now seems as distant to me as when I first moved here, and I was like “What the fuck are these places?” It’s weird that I’ve been fourteen years here. It seems like I just got here, but I’d probably say the same if I lived in Omaha for fourteen years.
Q: The prospect of moving out West occurs in this new book.
CK: Ironically it may not happen. We were pretty much set on moving, and then my wife got a new job and it was too good to pass up. I was sort of interested in having a simpler life, although my life was never better than the period when I was here. Once you’ve lived in New York, it radically changes your opinion on every other place in the country. It becomes very difficult at times to get your mind out of that space. Say I go do a reading or a lecture at a college in North Carolina, and I’ll get done and get back to the hotel at 10:30, and I’ll ask the concierge, “Where can I go to eat now?” And they’ll say, “Nowhere.” Then I’ll remember this is how the rest of the world is. This is the only place where it’s not bizarre to have steak at two in the morning.
Thursday, January 5, 2017
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