Excitement.

Let’s hit it!

 

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The roundup:

LaVar Ball escalated (continued?) his beef with Joel Embiid this weekend:

“He gets fined every time he says a cuss word. Like I said, his vocabulary is limited. I bet you he can’t say ‘F you’ more than I can say it to him—’cause his ass will be broke. When you’re working for somebody, shut your mouth.”

OK few things:

1) LaVar isn’t working for someone because his son is… working for someone. And because he started a dumb sneaker brand nobody likes.

2) He’s a great WWE heel and I sort of enjoy him.

3) Nothing bad can come of this. It’s borderline tongue-in-cheek with both Embiid and Ball, and it sets up excellent courtside dynamics when the Sixers play the Lakers. All-in on this.

4) Liliano or whatever the fuck his name is looks like a little boy and no way he’s going to be an NBA player.

 

https://twitter.com/SInow/status/886709483875028992

This is the most Iverson thing ever. That whole league was basically built around Iverson playing a homecoming game in Philly (never mind the pesky little problem of Iverson already having played like 8 homecoming games in Philly, say nothing of his countless AI nights). How hurt could he possibly be to not put on the sneakers for a few minutes and stand out there and throw up alley-oops in a shitty 3-on-3 game? Imagine buying tickets to this. For real, imagine being one of the saps who bought tickets for the sole purpose of seeing AI play one last time.

Still, he showed up and did his Jimmy Duggan routine:

I love AI as much as the next guy, but can we please space out our AI appearances a bit? It feel like it’s every three months that he gets this exact same ovation at the Wells Fargo Center. He’s like Paul McCartney nowadays– just a cheap carnival trick to draw a crowd.

Add injury to insult: After the game, Allen Iverson and Ice Cube refused to address the media (this is a sentence I fully expected to write at some point). Dan Levy of Billy Penn explains:

After telling the media that Iverson and Ice Cube would come out to talk after the final game, a Big3 media staffer said the group was not going to address the media. I guess A.I. doesn’t need any more, ahem, practice in front of a microphone.

The group didn’t have Dr. J talk to the media either, so he stood behind a curtain five feet from where two of his players sat to answer questions about Philly and Iverson. I think we made eye contact at one point as I looked across to see if he was still there. It was a special moment for both of us, surely.

The Big3 has done a lot right, but tonight was a PR disaster. Fans left angry, the media left irate and instead of handling the Iverson no-show on the court well by controlling the message, the Big3 looked incredibly small-time. An odd decision for an organization that needs publicity to thrive.

The Big 3 having a PR disaster is like OJ having legal troubles– it’s just sort of a built-in feature. I’d feign outrage if this were important enough to care about.

 

You’re not going to believe this, but Ezekiel Elliot may be a piece of shit:

Things are already looking up this season.

 

https://twitter.com/sinow/status/886703589112115200

This actually gets me irrationally angry. First of all, it’s not life-sized. No way that thing is 7-feet tall. That room likely has 8-foot ceilings, and there’s at least two feet of clearance between the ceiling and Embiid’s head. It has two sets of knees. The jersey font is all wrong. And while I appreciate the perhaps unintentional broken foot as attention to detail, this thing is mostly a disaster. Stuff like this – quirky replicates of familiar things – are cool when the attention to detail is outrageously accurate, like someone including the breast enlargement scars on a massive mermaid sand sculpture. But this balloon Jojo, quite frankly, sucks. Most clowns would drive laps around this guy (presumably in a comically small car with a horn). Do better.

 

Tim McManus was asked who he thought has the hottest seat in the NFC East in an ESPN.com Q&A:

Eagles head coach Doug Pederson. There were a few factors working against Pederson last season. It was his first year as a head coach in the NFL. He was tasked with implementing a new system and building a new culture, all while breaking in a rookie quarterback in Carson Wentz, who leaped from third-stringer to starter when Sam Bradford was traded to Minnesota a week before the start of the regular season. With a year of experience under his (and his quarterback’s) belt and with more offensive weapons at his disposal, it should be easier sledding for Pederson in Year 2. That’s good, because the expectations are up. Owner Jeffrey Lurie believes he has a special quarterback in Wentz, and while he’s publicly preaching patience, he also is itching to return his franchise to prominence. With a potential franchise QB in place, a rare window of opportunity could be opening. Pederson needs to show that he is the right man to take advantage of it. Another 7-9 season just won’t do.

Tim isn’t the sort of guy to just throw shit at a wall for the sake of stirring it, so I’d put at least a little stock in the notion that Pederson does have a little something to prove this year.

 

I could listen to a Despacito takeoff about virtually anything. The bikinis just add to it.

 

Michael Irvin wants to be an MMA fighter. I will seriously pay for Brian Dawkins to be the opponent.

 

R. Kelly may have kidnapped women for his cult.

 

Doug Pederson is actively trying to set unreasonable high expectations for himself.

 

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