An Interruption in a Series to Make it have Betterness

For those of you anticipating Transformers: Told Using Past Sporting News, Part 2 of a Series, I have some bad news. Change the 2 to a 3 in the aforementioned title and wait two weeks for the release. But there is some delightful news; to replace it, we bring in 300: Told Using Past Sporting News, Part 2 of a Series. (I just realized I used a semicolon in that last sentence. Thanks a lot, college.) Anyways, here we go:



300: Told Using Past Sporting News, Part 2 of a Series

I think everyone saw the movie, but here is how I see 300: the beginning of the grassroots basketball movement (with King Leonidas playing the role of Sonny Vaccaro). Vaccaro wishes to gather the best high school players at his ABCD Camp (now defunct) every summer in early July in Teaneck,NJ. However, Phil Knight, the greatest proprietor of the game and all of sports (aka King Xerxes), wishes to control the ABCD Camp besides his already vast empire (running shoes, Dunks, Michael Vick playing high school football under the watchful eye of Don Shula and Urban Meyer and somehow never getting a slap on the wrist for the dog fighting (of course, he wasn't really the star of this team)). A messenger from Knight brings in an autographed poster by five Nike endorsed superstars: his Airness, the Round Mound of Rebound, Moses, Silk Wilkes, and Coop, who would not have been used in the movie had it taken place after he was hired as coach of the Los Angeles Sparks. (Somehow in the movie, they chose to represent them as skulls (sans skin or flesh) with crowns on them? What absurdity!)

Back to our story. Sonny decides he doesn't like the ring of Nike ABCD Camp and the inclusion of such terrible players, so the high school versions of LeBron, OJ Mayo, Greg Oden (hard to believe there ever was one), Melo, and Kobe (they are Spartan soldiers) take the messengers to school (LBJ ran the point and finished with a triple-double of 25 points, 12 boards and 15 assists and Oden also had a triple-double with 18 points, 15 boards and 11 blocks), killing one messenger who actually got the job from knowing Knight and didn't like basketball, Steve Prefontaine.

Sonny then goes to Adi Dassler and the adidas board of directors (the Priests) and asks the Oracle (played by Kareem Abdul Jabbar) to create an AAU team with these talented youngsters that could dominate the Persian squad and send them back to Tehran sans trophies at the upcoming tournament. The oracle says they can't create the AAU team because they are in the middle of the regular season, even with a guarantee of big prize money if they take 1st. Since no one will let them play, Sonny takes his boys out for some barnstorming at Hot Gates in Harlem with Reebok apparel, where they are joined by a WNBA team from Athens. Though Athens brought a lot of players, they didn't bring superstars like the ones that Vaccaro did. Vaccaro shored up his lineup by adding high school versions of Mike Conley, Ben Gordon, Kevin Love, Luc Richard Mbah a Moute, Juan Diego Palacios, Dajuan Wagner, and Kevin Durant. Also, Vaccaro had Rick Pitino and his full-court pressure defense to coach his young talented squad. Quite a solid group with great bench depth, a team that Jay Bilas believes has tremendous upside potential.

While waiting for the run to start, Vaccaro see one of Knight's private planes attempting to land at JFK. However, there is a huge storm, and the plane crashes, causing Pitino and his players to get hyped up to play a team missing some of its best...but Vaccaro remains stoic, waiting for his payday. The Spartan AAU Club later sees that only a fraction of Knight's squads is gone (though it looked like a lot more), and a lot of great talent wasn't even close to the crash.
Also during the shootaround, Vaccaro is approached by Jay Williams, playing the role of Ephialtes with his fucked up leg caused by the motorcycle accident, shows up asking for a tryout, telling Sonny that his experience as a Duke player against this defense will help them. But Vaccaro says his leg is too fucked up, and besides, have you seen the fucking lineup, Jay? It is absolutely delightful in every way possible. Williams is pissed, so he goes to Phil Knight saying that Coach K taught him how to beat this offense (even though Coach K just bribed the refs so that Duke could win(also, Coach K plays Ephialtes' father, and they also do not accept American Express in Sparta)), so Knight, not knowing anything about basketball, gives him a contract and a clipboard, showing him all the trophies that Nike AAU teams have brought in (including lesbians who look pretty hot in one profile shot, but turn them 180 and you start vomiting incessantly). Jay is overcome with joy and takes the job.

Knight sends an emissary, Bo Jackson, who wears football shoulder pads and wields a baseball bat, to give a warning to Vaccaro's team, but he sees the sweet bulletin board they have with the newspaper clippings from all their wins at Hell's Gate so far (think: dead bodies holding bricks together in a wall). He says that Knight's squad will win anyways because they have so many good players. Kevin Durant then uses his length and athleticism to cut off Jackson's arm with a nasty crossover during a game of one on one, permanently ending Jackson's career as a two-sport athlete.
Pitino sends some of his players (along with a few WNBA players) to scout out Knight's team, which took the NBA's Injured List restriction of 3 and multiplied it by 333.329.33. The WNBA players are scared, because they only have fundamentals, not the athleticism required to deal with Knight's lineup. The first sent to scrimmage them really sucks, and Vaccaro's squad manages to shut them out (a la The Green Team in 2004 beating the Wild Cardz). Many more squads are sent to play Vaccaro's ABCD Crew for the start of the Hell's Gate Invitational, brought to you by Cisco Systems. Teams are continually brought in and the ABCD Crew marches on with victory after victory. Finally, Knight starts bringing out a team filled with giant animals: a larger version of Sloth from The Goonies (Gheorghe Muresan), an elephant (Manute Bol), and a rhinoceros (Hasheem Thabeet). All are handedly defeated by double-teaming down to the post by Conley and Gordon (starting this game to do just that.)
Knight then gives Vaccaro a chance to develop high schoolers for Nike at the Nike All-American Camp, as long as he kneels before Knight. Vaccaro tells Knight about his knee replacement and says that he can't...and he wouldn't if he could. Knight is pissed, and Jay Williams offers him a second chance to join. However, Vaccaro still refuses. Knight then decides to "bring the rain"...in two forms: clones of JJ Redick draining 3's (COLLEGE JJ REDICK, NOT NBA) and Pacman Jones clones who have been given LSD, $81000 in singles, and told to believe they are in a high-class strip joint in Vegas. However, Vaccaro throws a dagger into Knight's operation, telling the world that he actually bribed some kids to join his AAU teams as a North Korean assassin kills the ABCD squad. (the WNBA players decided to start fighting after the ABCD players are on vacation, where still no one cares about them.) A messenger (Dilios in the movie, Luc Richard Mbah a Moute in this because he is a prince) goes back to the ABCD Camp main campus, convincing even more players and convincing David Stern to send the whole NBA that hasn't been taken by Knight. The new squad easily captures the title and accepts a trophy from Myles Brand.

And that is how the NBA switched its main apparel provider from Nike to Reebok.

New Idea: Good Summer League=Endorsements?

Look, I try to not insult people too much (sorry about that Cho Chang, but snitches gotta die), but this is absolutely ridiculous. JJ Redick had so little impact during his rookie season that most Duke fans forgot who he was. He put up raucous numbers like 6.0 PPG, 1.2 APG, and .5 APG. He also shot 38.8% from 3. And he played 42 games. 42 FUCKING GAMES! How the hell do you look back fondly at a first round pick who could barely get off the bench to play in 42 games after playing 4 years ? Well, JJ did look better in the Pepsi Pro Summer League, going for 19.8 PPG and 3.8 APG (1st and 3rd in the League, respectively), but then this happens:

http://www.betterbasketball.com/basketball-shooting-video/

Yes, that's right. JJ Redick got an endorsement for having a good summer league. What the fuck is that? Yes, he was the greatest 3-point shooter in the history of college basketball, but he's done jack squat as a pro to merit this extra dough. If anyone should be in that video, it should be Reggie Miller, who is about to (maybe) come back and stand behind the 3-point line waiting for Pierce, Allen, or Garnett to dish it off from the triple team. He was the best 3-point shooter in NBA history, much more meaningful than Redick, who has given every indication that he will bust quicker than the buttons on Eric "Badlands" Bookers shirt after a matza ball eating contest.

A (or is it An) SAT Analogy

Football:Soccer::Bighead:Wallbangers

In what is quite possibly the strangest commercial ever shown on Fox Soccer Channel, "Soccer does the most obvious adapting of one commercial for another group of people: the effects are EXACTLY the same as the Big Head commercials. If you got Cristiano Ronaldo to be asking questions to a camera as if the camera were Helen Keller, it would have an identical storyboard to the American version (also, an English dude does the voiceover.).

Here is the video: