Wudder Sports Weekend Warrior Edition: Zeke Out Jerry Mad, Big Baller Trouble in Little China, Miami/Notre Dame, LeBron James, Sixers Games
In the wake of his star running back’s most recent failed appeal of a six-game suspension for domestic violence, Wudder Sports has nabbed a transcript of Cowboys owner Jerry Jones addressing Commissioner Roger Goodell at this week’s NFL owners meeting:
Ezekiel: Cowboys ‘17. "The path of the tight-faced man is beset on all sides by the bureaucracies of the overzealous and the tyranny of weasel men. Blessed is he who, in the name of vulgarity and ‘Boys wins, shepherds the weak through the valley of the darkness. For he is truly his rusher’s keeper and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to suspend and destroy my runner. And you will know I am the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon you.”
Jerry Jones is really starting to lean into his late-career Al Davis incarnation.
In the past 48 hours since the Zeke suspension was finally upheld, Jones has:
-told his fellow owners he’s the league’s “ranking owner”
-threatened to sue all his fellow owners over the Commissioner’s contract
-gotten himself kicked off the competition committee as a result of that threat
-publicly called Falcons owner Arthur Blank a liar
Jerruh aka Skeletor, and Arthur aka Scooby-Doo Villain's teams play Sunday in Atlanta.
I’m almost as excited for the pregame handshake shade as I am the game.
And with Dak Prescott taking snaps without his best weapon, on short notice, the Falcons should be able to pull off the win at home in their dome.
But we don't trust the Dirty Birds this season, so we'll take the Cowboys +3, still we'd love to be wrong and see the Falcons rise up.
“The King Stay the King”-D’Angelo Barksdale
LeBron James is in his FIFTEENTH season in the NBA.
LeBron James is currently averaging 30 points on 60% shooting, 7 rebounds, 9 assists, 1.5 blocks and 1.2 steals per game.
For a frame of reference as to how ridiculous that is, Michael Jordan’s fifteenth NBA season was spent:
-as a Washington Wizard point-forward sixth-man
-berating a high-school kid in practice (Kwame Brown) he foolishly selected #1 in the '01 Draft
-getting blocked by the rim on a breakaway dunk in the All-Star Game
-Getting scammed out of his Washington ownership stake to feed his own ego and giving away his shares to play on a non-playoff team
The Cleveland Cavaliers, as a team, particularly defensively, look absolutely terrible.
But we don't expect that to last.
And the KANG is still KING, until somebody knocks him off his throne.
And yes, we know he’s enrolled his kids in L.A. schools already, but that Laker team is gonna be sorry. If Bron is going to leave and trying to win, after a season in which it’s gonna be tough to do so in C-Town…why not consider a one-year deal to play in Philly, to see if Joel Embiid, Ben Simmons, Markelle Fultz, Dario Saric and Robert Covington could form a wave to overtake Golden State, while winning a title in a city that hasn’t won since Doctor J? Just sayin.
But while we're on Wire quotes...
“What I tell you about playin' them fuckin' away games?”-Avon Barksdale
Someone tell these colleges to stop sending these unpaid amateur athletes over to China for basketball exhibitions.
Did UCLA learn nothing from the Georgetown debacle a few years back?
Now the middle, most mediocre prospect of the three Big Baller Brand sons, LiAngelo Ball, along with two other teammates, are fending off an international incident on a shoplifting charge that could land them in a Claire Danes-Brokedown-Palace nightmarish locked-up-in-Asia scenario.
The only Americans that win on Chinese turf, are JR Smith’s sister, who had her own experience with the Chinese National Team:
And Stephon Marbury, Chinese Basketball Legend, last seen in America during the summer of 2009, shirtless, eating Vaseline on a live stream, while getting a shoulder massage as he wept with Kirk Franklin music playing in the background.
Fast-forward to the middle of this decade, and “Commissioner Ma”, as Marbury is now known in Beijing, is a legendary champion, getting his own statue outside a Chinese museum dedicated to his hooping exploits and team leadership abilities.
Perhaps that’s why former BYU star/Sacramento King bust Jimmer Fredette seemed to back off a potential scuffle with Steph while in his stomping grounds.
Did you know The Jimmer was playing in China before this?
Me neither.
The moral of the story is mind your p’s-and-q’s in Chairmen Mao’s town, my dudes.
If you notice, even this President realized his tough-guy talk in Fort Wayne, Indiana:
Wasn't gonna fly with President Xi while visiting the Forbidden City:
Here’s wishing Liangelo & Co get back stateside safely ASAP.
We hope Gelo can find a gig hooping in Greece or Spain after UCLA, because he can’t go back to China, nor should any NCAA program.
The 2017-18 Sixers though?!?
Watching their games stress me out worse than a Chip Kelly offseason.
Don’t get me wrong, I thank the Basketball Gods every day that Joel Embiid is healthy enough to play.
And Ben Simmons is a gift that was well worth the wait and keeps on giving.
Speaking of Ben Simmons, he had some interesting stuff to say about the American collegiate basketball system in a sit-down conversation with Maverick Carter.
Did we mention Ben is with Klutch Sports, the agency founded by Rich Paul, close friend/business partner of LeBron James? Just sayin.
The Sixers will be playing in the Oracle Arena against the reigning champion Golden State Warriors on Saturday night.
That has “learning experience loss” written all over it.
They should be heading into Oakland riding a six-game winning streak.
But instead, they lost, no blew, another game in the final minute. That's their fourth such game, eleven games into the season.
We’re not sure why Brett Brown didn’t use a timeout in the final 15 seconds.
The Sixers are the top team in efficiency coming out of timeouts in the NBA, while their extremely young core has only played together in ten NBA games.
But maybe Brett’s trying to build some trust and independence in them early, to help them later on, since an 82-game-season-plus-postseason isn't a sprint but a marathon.
All that being said, we trust the process to cover a 14 ½ point spread out West.
For the first time in this century, Miami plays Notre Dame for big stakes, in this weekend’s premier collegiate football game.
We’ve been gearing up for this one.
Watched a re-run of the Catholics-vs-Convicts ESPN 30-for-30.
Thoroughly enjoyed old U/Ravens teammates Ed Reed, and the Woodbury Thundering Herd’s Bryant McKinnie, telling the tale of when McKinnie pounded heavyweight champion Shannon Briggs in a back-alley brawl during their college days on The Dan Le Batard Show Thursday:
But in a way, all that did was remind me of what this game is missing:
-Authentic animosity between teams and fanbases.
-Players with personality that you knew.
-A chance things could descend into chaos like the brawl before the ’88 game.
This is not your father’s, or even older cousin’s, The U vs. Notre Dame.
That being said, it’s a big one all the same.
While we’d love to pick Miami, they’re gonna need to stop ND’s rushing attack, with CFB’s best offensive-line and have at least three players rock the “turnover chain”, to win this game.
That’s too many variables necessary for us to feel good picking against Notre Dame, giving only three vs. the home-dawg Canes.
Southern Cal at COLORADO
Why is Colorado, or Utah for that matter, but especially Colorado, even in the Pac-12, which should still be the Pac-10?
What value has either program added since they were allowed to hop in?
I won’t bore you with analysis on this one.
Colorado is sorry, per usual.
USC has responded to another preseason-hype season, after a surprisingly good finish in the prior year during the post-Carroll era, with a disappointing campaign.
But if they can’t cover 13.5 in Boulder during an early afternoon game?
They might as well not even fly back on that DEN-to-LAX plane.
Historically the program pedigrees may not add up to Miami/Notre Dame, but it could very easily be argued that Georgia at Auburn is a better matchup.
This is the kind of game that Georgia would regularly lose when now-Miami-coach Marc Richt was at the helm.
Have the DAWGS shaken off those big-game fleas under former Bama DC Kirby Smart? Maybe so, maybe not.
Smart remembers the crazy things that can happen when Auburn is a home underdog in a rivalry game:
We’ll take the Tigers and two-and-a-half at home.
Speaking of home dawgs, we know the Saints are supposed to be good again, but good enough to be a Southeastern Dome team with no D and a 39-year-old QB, giving three points on a cold day on the frozen turf up in Buffalo? We say no.
To recap, this week's Nostrabombus Picks:
Saturday
AUBURN (+2) over Georgia (3:30 Eastern)
USC (-13.5) over COLORADO (4 PM Eastern)
Notre Dame (-3) over MIAMI (8 PM Eastern)
Sixers (+14.5) over Warriors (10:35 PM Eastern)
Sunday
BUFFALO (+3) over New Orleans (1 PM Eastern)
Dallas (+3) over ATLANTA (4:25 PM Eastern)
Nostrabombus Last Week: 5 Wins, 1 Loss
Nostrabombus Season: 20 Wins, 13 Losses
Enjoy your weekend, we’ll be back next week with a musical tribute treat, plus our obligatory preview heading into DALLAS WEEK.
Last, but certainly never least, we’d like to dedicate this edition of Wudder Sports to a class-act, future Hall of Famer, Phillies and Blue Jays legend that we lost four days ago, the one-and-only Roy “Doc” Halladay.
I don’t think I can add much that hasn’t already been said by teammates, loved ones or in tributes already authored by others this week.
But on this Veteran’s Day, we’d like to thank him for a different kind of service.
Peace & Love,
Bomb
