40 thoughts on “February 8, 2021: Meh.”

  1. "Karl-Anthony Towns rejoined the Wolves on their recent road trip, with his return from COVID-19 seemingly imminent."

    This is a lost season, again, but at least this young man seems to have recovered from Covid.

  2. Closed circuit to NBB: if you want to borrow a book from me on kindle, go back and check my post on the Feb. 6 Cup of Coffee.

      1. So, the epilogue to this story. I had learned that you could loan out books to people via kindle and I thought this would be a great way to share books amongst our little group. But, when I tried to share books with NBB, I found that loaning books was not a universal feature, only *some* books could be loaned. I should have known that would be the case, but my plan, as usual, was half-bakef.

  3. I was disappointed with the halftime show. Seemed poorly produced and not really the celebration/spectacle that past half time shows have been. The game itself was sloppy. Didn't really have a rooting interest, but gotta tip my hat to the ancient quarterback. In a way, I am happy to see him win another ring outside of the Patriots legacy. For now, he is one up on his old coach.

    1. The mind blowing thing about Brady is that he has more rings than any one team. There were about 35 Super Bowls played before he entered the league and as of now, he's played in 18% of them and won 13% of them. It is really hard to say that he hasn't had the best career in the history of the NFL. Seven titles. Ten appearances. Ten! That's crazy.

      1. Russell made 12 appearances in the NBA Finals, winning 11. Sam Jones played in 10 with Russell. Kareem played in 10. LeBron has played in 10. But, if you are an elite NBA player, getting to the Finals is a lot easier than playing in the Super Bowl, especially when the league has 8 or 9 teams (when Russell played). To get to 10 Super Bowls is almost inconceivable.

        Yogi Berra played in 14 WS and won ten rings, mainly as a catcher. That's pretty astounding as well.

        1. Always hard to compare other professional sports, but in terms of basketball, one elite player can make such a big difference as there are only 5 guys on the court. Looking at baseball, there is not nearly the level of parity in the league as compared to the NFL during Brady's career. I think there is a strong argument for Brady being the best professional athlete of all time. Not saying he is, but there is a good argument. The argument against it has been he played on a legacy team for a legacy coach, but this year kind of diminishes that point. I think Tiger and Jack Nicklaus have a strong case as golf is a 100% individual sport and they dominated.

        2. I saw this somewhere else yesterday:

          Calvin Johnson was drafted, played his entire career, retired, and was elected to the Football Hall of Fame, all in the time between Brady's 3rd and 10th Super Bowl. Bonkers.

      2. Yes, this puts to rest the greatest quarterback of all time debate, if it wasn't already established. The impressive thing is it has not seemed to be one system he has run for 20 years. There have been seasons they need him to put up 40 pts a game and other seasons he has a great defense and just needs to game manage. I think when it comes to great quarterbacks, poise is the difference maker, and this guy has more poise than anyone. This is what separates him from Farve, Arodge, Manning, etc. The only other guy in NFL history who I might even consider as the guy I want behind center in the big game would be Montana, who was the best big game quarterback prior to Brady.

        1. When you say "all time"--the game has changed so much since I was a kid that it's really impossible to compare. The "Tom Brady" when I was a kid, I suppose, was Bart Starr. If Starr threw twenty passes in a game, it was a lot. Now they often throw that many passes by halftime. But it's certainly hard to argue with Brady's record, and the length of time he's been able to stay on top.

      3. Also two of those Super Bowl losses are where the NYG pulled an amazing catch out of their ass to help win the game. No doubt that's part of football and they still count as loses, but man, two losses determined by fluky for the ages catches.

        1. This was the only blowout that Brady played in. The other nine were really close, including that ATL game, which was an improbable (!!!) win. So, I think his winning 7 of these was a pretty representative number (and maybe even more) of wins he should have expected given the nature of the games.

          1. Yes. He had some bad breaks but also some good ones. When is the last time one of his kickers missed a lock in the 4th quarter?

          2. Right. 7 wins does seem about right. But it's amazing how close he was to 9 wins (or flip it, 2 wins)

  4. How distance learning is going this morning.

    Me: It's time to log into your class.
    Jalapeno: I do not f***ing care.

    1. To be fair, it is almost time for me to log into my MS Teams meeting and I just can't give a blankity rip either.

    2. This could really describe any work or education related activity on the Monday following the Superbowl.

    3. My sympathies. 15-year old is reaching the point of total system failure. This is just not working for a lot of kids. (Including all of mine.)
      All the computer time has resulted in a blossoming of language no parent should be hearing.

      1. One of his favorites is, "Nobody ever loved you!" Which . . . just seems weird to me.

        He's just SO ill-equipped to do school this way and I regularly find myself wondering whether he has some sort of learning issue (when I have to explain something in math that the teacher totally walked them through step-by-step earlier that day) or if it's just that he wasn't paying any attention yet again.

        1. I'm still surprised at how little cursing that Pete seems to know, and how careful he seems to be about what he does know. Even if you use "hell" as a noun, he admonishes you for using bad words.

          1. This is where my kids are. I'm always surprised by it. I feel like it's a good thing though.

  5. Got my home-away-from-home work setup in place this morning, and so far my earliest takeaway is that I really miss my standup workstation. After two days of heaving driving, it's a pain in the butt (literally) to be sitting here working today. I'm going to have to be diligent about getting up and walking on a regular basis

  6. Back in Thanksgiving, I started this challenge with family/running friends called the Holiday Hustle. The challenge was to run/walk 50K/30M before the end of the year.

    Like with most races you need a prize/medal. I had been collecting road-bling (shiny pieces of metal on the roads) while road-biking and had two full jars of materials. Using cords/shoelaces/etc and the road bling, I made medals for everyone who met the challenge (or close enough).

    It was a lot of fun and chance to connect with family/friends in these COVID times. Some of these people would have gotten the miles in anyways. One woman ran 500 miles! Also, there were people who weren't doing anything that got in their miles as a couple.

    I asked everyone to send a photo with their road-bling-medal, and NBBW put together the following collage:
    https://www.dropbox.com/s/inqnoxj74lgeje6/Holiday%20Hustle%202.m4v?dl=0

  7. Today all of my children are finally out of quarantine, and back at school! Except for Aquinas, who of course got regular sick over the weekend, and so is stuck at home today (but he was back at school last week).

      1. You know, puking, headache, stomachache, lying on the couch moaning all day, all the good stuff.

    1. I don't see anything to recommend him, but I guess he can be AAA roster filler. The only way a move like that can hurt you is if you fool yourself into thinking he can play, and so don't make other moves that might actually help.

  8. KG on today’s NBA:

    What’s your take on the current state of the N.B.A. game? The game is at another level. I know you said that you made the team with Vancouver, but I want you to get on a court, sprint corner to corner, stop on a dime and shoot a 3. I want you to do 10 of those. Then I want you to focus on how tired you are. Because these players do that for 48 minutes. I don’t think guys from 20 years ago could play in this game. Twenty years ago, guys used their hands to control players. Now you can’t use your hands. That makes defense damn near impossible. Can you imagine not hand-checking Michael Jordan? Naw. The fact that you can’t touch players gives the offensive player so much flexibility. Defensive players have to take angles away and stuff like that. But if you have any creativity and ambition, you can be a great offensive player in this league. The fadeaways, one-leg runners, the one-leg balance shots — that’s stuff that Dirk Nowitzki brought to our game. And now when I watch Joker6 play, it feels like he has taken that Dirkness and mixed it with his own talent. And Steph Curry revolutionized things with being able to shoot it from distance with such consistency. Klay Thompson. Dame Lillard. These guards changed the game. I don’t know if even the guards from 20 or 30 years ago could play in this time right here. It’s creative. It’s competitive. It’s saucy. You’ll get dropped! A [expletive] will cross you over and break your A.C.L. these days. The game is in a great place.

    With an answer like that, can you believe that he was Paul Pierce’s teammate?

      1. So fun and refreshing to see an all-time great appreciate the talent it takes to succeed today.

        An aside from tonight’s game, to get back to yelling at kids to get off my lawn - how great is the old, simple Mavs logo compared to today’s?

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