I don’t know if today’s list of topics qualifies as a mélange, a mishmash or a hodgepodge. What I do know is that it will be bouncing around randomly.
Carmelo Anthony announced his retirement from professional basketball ending a 20-year career in the NBA. He appeared in 1260 games averaging 22.5 points per game. He played in 6 different cities and may have had one good defensive stop in each of those cities, but the jury is out on that pronouncement.
LeBron James and the Lakers were swept from the NBA playoffs by the Denver Nuggets. LeBron could be nudging close to soap opera status in the off-season if stories related to him in the immediate aftermath of the Lakers’ elimination “get legs” so to speak:
- One report has it that LeBron played through a foot/leg injury in the late season and may need surgery that will keep him out of the early part of next season.
- Some reports have it that the Lakers might want to trade LeBron and that he might be willing to accept a trade to a team that might get him another championship ring.
- Several reports speculated that he would retire. Upon hearing that rumor, Dwight Howard “urged” LeBron to come and join him in the Taiwanese Basketball League.
[Aside: Given LeBron’s ties to Nike and shoes made in the Peoples’ Republic of China, he will play basketball on Mars before he plays in Taiwan.]
Given just a few more speculative pieces about LeBron and he might qualify to play quarterback for the Green Bay Packers…
A TV station in Las Vegas reported that a deal has been struck that will move the Oakland A’s to Las Vegas. The new stadium there to house the team will cost $1.5B and the deal is described as:
“… a public-private partnership that “includes public financing constituting less than 25 percent of the cost,”
Here is the reason to curb your enthusiasm. This announcement comes from the Governor’s Office in Nevada, but the financing must come through the Nevada State Legislature and a bill to provide such funding has yet to be introduced let alone debated or approved. This is certainly a step in the direction of moving the A’s out of Oakland and into Las Vegas; but still, keep Yogi Berra in mind:
- It ain’t over ‘till it’s over!
Here is a link to the report from that Las Vegas TV station:
A while back, I mentioned that George Washington University decided to change its nickname. No longer will they be “The Colonials”; they have chosen to become “The Revolutionaries” instead. This “tempest in a spittoon” has been ongoing for almost 5 years on campus with students objecting to the name “Colonials” because:
“Colonials were active purveyors of colonialism and were complicit in militarized and racialized violence, oppression and hierarchy. Colonialism has historically and contemporaneously built upon usurping land, labor and autonomy from racialized communities through dehumanizing violence and suppression.”
Here is my reaction to that statement:
- “Colonials were active purveyors of colonialism…” That is tautological nonsense. That is equivalent to saying, “The longer it takes, the longer it takes.”
- How will changing the name of a university affect in even the smallest way the folks who suffered “dehumanizing violence” as their “land, labor and autonomy” were usurped?
- The new nickname – – The Revolutionaries – – usurped land and autonomy to create a nation where college students could engage in this sort of fanciful thinking. Oh, and by the way, those Revolutionaries inflicted more than a little violence in the process.
- These activists who brought about this change are not opposed to violence or usurpation. They just chose sides in two disputes and decided that violence and usurpation were OK if it was perpetrated by their side but not OK if it was perpetrated by the other side.
Somewhere in the afterlife, I picture George Washington looking upon this multi-year debate at his eponymous university and asking himself:
- “This is what we fought for?”
Finally, as the activists have succeeded in being revolutionaries and achieving their objective of a name-change, let me offer this closing remark from the playwright, Tom Stoppard:
“I learned three things in Zurich during the war. I wrote them down. Firstly, you’re either a revolutionary or you’re not, and if you’re not you might as well be an artist as anything else. Secondly, if you can’t be an artist, you might as well be a revolutionary … I forget the third thing.”
But don’t get me wrong, I love sports………