ACROSS THE CYBER UNIVERSE - REDUX

When I penned my first links-madness post, back in October, I fully intended to make it a regular column, much like the legit blogs do with their catchy world-wide web titles.  I figured then, that it would be a fairly easy way to score readers off other people’s work and in fact (for reasons that elude me), the original Cyber Universe post continues to accrue hits.  I am however, a purposeless fellow and while I’ve often considered a followup, the actual accomplishment of same has existed on the same astral plane as cleaning my shower curtains.  At any rate, it’s a shiny new day and I’m intending on hacking away at this in stages, in between life’s more pressing demands.  Before butchering the art of plagiarism however, I would like to mention just how satisfying last night’s overtime win was.  The start of the post-break stretch feels promising. On the other hand I was also buoyed by the first four games of the Grammys road trip and we all know how that wound up.  Without further ado, here’s a bunch of links, mon pebbles:

Darius at Forum Blue & Gold writes about Ron Artest playing with a freedom and decisiveness that’s been lacking for too many games.
Mark Medina at the LAT mentions Ron Artest being a focal point of the offense.
Brian Kamenetzky at the LOL says Ron had a flat out huge game. 
Anyone notice any redundancies? 
Dexter Fishmore at SS&R also remarked on Artest's stellar performance but added references to the untamed Oregon Territory, otters and a postmodern surrealist flavor.  Major props.

A little further off the beaten track, Basketbawful posted the Worst of Night; TBJ reports on Mark Cuban's plan to sign Justin Bieber and Free Darko has some thing about mad villainy which I think is about LeBron.  I tried linking the post specifically, but they must have some kind of anti-normal system and I'm getting real tired of all this copy/paste crap. 

Adding my two cents to all of the above posts, I'd also venture that Ron played real good last night.  Plus, there's been all kinds of crazy-ass trade stuff that happened right up to the deadline and I won't bother to further duplicate what's already been reported except to marvel at one of the least expected transactions.  A month after heckling Baron Davis from the sidelines, Donald Sterling banishes him to Cleveland.  Cold action from the slumlord.

Rounding the far turn and heading for home, I'd be remiss if I didn't avail myself of the opportunity for shameless self-promotion.  All of those heavy-hitter blogs at the top of the page certainly don't need my help and it's not like they'll be tossing me a link anytime soon.  So, unless facts and intelligent analysis matter to you, just skip ahead and read some of my favorite earlier Slava posts (favorite being code for that which doesn't make me cringe):

The Intangibles Exposed was SfS's inaugural post (an in-depth look at how the Japanese long-liners have decimated Cod fishing in the Atlantic).
Something Slava This Way Comes concerned the mighty Medvedenko and also featured a nifty painting by my dad, from his John Adams series of a couple decades ago.
Just the Game revolved around the first game of the regular season and tried to incorporate forewarning dreams about mechanical failure.
Across the Cyber Universe is of course, the feckless father of this firmament.
The Season of the Witch wove Donovan, a scary childhood experience and a Lakers slump, into a gray and dismal affair.
Lions in Winter was marginally inspired by a piece by Holly MacKenzie.  She never bothered to thank me.
All the Leaves are Green attempted to find commonality between two very different road trips.  Plus, my dog Muffin was in the photo.  Gone these many years.

I'm feeling pretty good right now - I've filled a page with repetitive drek and will consider something of an original nature for my next post which should be written in oh, about another week or so.  Sooner if someone from the Philippines, Iceland or Moldova leaves a comment.

THERE'S GONNA BE A SHOWDOWN

Yesterday’s post ended with a wish for the Lakers to find their soul.  The game wasn't all that epic but a satisfying win nonetheless.  It was the first OT of the season, bumpy at times, miscues and silly turnovers but the effort was there - an inside/out game with Gasol and Odom combining for 46 points and 36 boards.  Earlier in the day Mitch said he’d consider a trade.  An almost unheard of admission for a famously cagey GM.  Maybe he meant it, more likely it was sword rattling, but it seemed to get the players' attention.

Kobe spoke with Pau before the game about being more of a black swan than a white one and it’s actually a very sly suggestion.  He’s not asking the Spaniard to be a banger, an enforcer, a lion or a bear, but simply a darker shade of pale; malevolent as opposed to thuggish.  It’s a distinction that probably appeals to Gasol - I’ve always felt that a dark ribbon is embedded somewhere within his psyche.  Just as long as this isn’t some Johnny Weir swan sleeve duality thing. 

Here come the warm Spurs, fresh off a rare loss (Portland) and they won’t be happy about it - Duncan will be watching Pau like a bug-eyed viper, ready to pull the chair out if he tries a Pas de Deux.  The Spurs won by 15 the last time they were here, Duncan didn’t have a good night but everyone else in white did, constant attack mode through their new fastbreak offense - the point, shooting guard and small forward positions are basically interchangeable.  Add 17 points and 15 rebounds from starting center DeJuan Blair and 10 points from fearless rookie George Hill and the game was over, long before it was over.

Andrew Bynum says he wants to play, having sat out the Houston game with a left knee bone-bruise. Phil Jackson is hopeful, the preferred plan would be to go with a mismatch on Blair - conventional wisdom has always held that you can’t teach height.  Then again, you can’t teach six-foot-seven of relentless steamroller either.  If Bynum can’t go, Gasol will slide to the 5 and Odom will make his 33^rd start of the season.   Kobe will look to facilitate early (11 dimes against Houston) and assassinate late.

In other news today, Ron Artest does and does not want to be Mitch Kupchak’s trade toy.  This type of thing often has a galvanizing effect, 24 hours will tell.  It’s an interesting time.  The Spurs bring purpose and stability.  The Lakers bring the Black Swan.  Hello darkness, my old friend.

FRIDAY FEEDBAG (and random acts of linkage)

In any sport (save bog-snorkeling perhaps), things can turn on a dime. For the Lakers, a pretty poor month of December begat a ragged start to the New Year. Bad moon on the rise, Kobe calling out teammates, Jackson taking his own odd-angled shots (zen marble-mouth) and Ron reacting in his inimitable way to Phil’s motivational soapbox. You can touch a type-key blindly and find a post that perfectly breaks down some aspect of the game but the game’s not played by writers, it’s played by guys who’ve been doing it all of their still young lives and it’s ingrained more deeply than most of us can ever know. X’s & O’s aren’t necessarily going to bring you out of a skid, there’s a witches’ brew of real time moments and combined chemistries, a team finds its way for reasons unknown and we don’t need no stinkin’ critics, you blink an eye and don’t make it to your feed on time and the Spurs lose a couple and the Lakers win a couple and suddenly the gap’s not as wide. Make gone the absurdities and Rube Goldberg diagrams, the team’s back and playing with purpose.

The rest of the month bodes well for a team getting it back together, 8 games at home, 4 on the road, a few good teams but not what you’d call a tough schedule. Phil Jackson supposedly likes to compartmentalize, five games at a time. Good enough for me.  Tonight we play New Orleans again (we demolished them last week), New York will probably give us a game on Sunday, Cleveland could theoretically be a trap just because they’re so plain bad. A quick jaunt up to Golden State on a back-to-back but the one I’m really looking forward to is the Nets at Staples Center on Friday the 14^th.   The return of a couple guys who didn’t much like each other in L.A. but find themselves ironically linked once more on one of the league’s worst contractions attractions. Jordan Farmar seems to have found his niche and Sasha’s increased his numbers ten-fold since being traded. It’s hard to say what he’ll do back in Staples for the first time since leaving.  If he gets to the charity stripe and grooms his eyebrows there could be trouble.

When your main stomping ground’s a particular team, It’s usually an easy call to link specific blogs and sites. They will after all, blanket the day’s source material and fit conveniently into a narrative. Still, there’s so much good stuff out there and spending lost hours in the maze reveals so many read-worthy items, sometimes closely related to whatever’s currently on the menu or perhaps tangential but still tasty. I don’t even know what I’m writing half the time by the way. 

Breene Murphy examines the horror that is Sterling in the ClipperBlog.
Colin Stephenson writes about Sasha in the Star-Ledger.
Pick and Scroll features a pretty great Haiku Recap.
The guys at A Wolf Among Wolves write incredibly good stuff, all the time.
48 Minutes of Hell rolls the Spurs eclectic draft philosophy into a Pacers preview.
Yes, it's Lakers-centic but just the same, check out today's Lazenby's HoopsHype Blog.

Okay, it took me twice as long to post these links as it actually did to read them.  Stupid slow laptop.  I'm gonna have some lunch now 'cause I'm feeling really cranky.

ACROSS THE CYBER UNIVERSE

It's been a couple weeks since last posting, sloth and apathy making poor bedfellows for getting it done. So much easier in the few free late night hours to read rather than write. Some ideas have come and gone or accumulated in dusty storage and a vague determination was made to find an original topic and stick with it.  Instead, the obequious rehash of  happenings that have already been covered elsewhere - sourcing in the age of internet is like shooting fish in a barrel. Plus, there’s grand opportunity for linkage.

It makes sense to start with Artest who’s been omnipresent lately, from lobbying for better mental health programs in schools to getting a key to the city of sin for same, written about in greater detail in the K-Bros, LOL blog. Ron-Ron’s determined to auction off his ring for charity (cue Mark Medina’s LAT piece) and has waxed poetic about football after his NBA days are done, to be followed by a foray into the sweet science of boxing . I’d link future plans for our readers but it’s been a week or two since I read about his Man of La Mancha dream and I have no desire to go that far back to parse out the various credits.

Our man Sasha suffered a concussion during Thursday’s practice, a supposedly inadvertent elbow in the face courtesy of Lamar. I’m a bit surprised he’s letting a little face boo-boo keep him out of action, especially in light of his recent determination to be the league’s new enforcer (see SfS’s own exclusive interview! ). One of the blog's rare, endangered readers commented that he’d seen Sasha play and he didn’t look bulked up at all. Well c’mon! Our inside sources are impeccable. He probably just chickened out and stopped boosting HGH. At any rate I assume he’s heading back to outside shots and eyebrow grooming at the charity stripe. After all, it looks like Derrick Caracter is on his way to earning whatever scraps are available at the 4.

There’s been some actual basketball action as of late. The Lakers played a hi-energy game and squeaked out the win against Sactown in Vegas on Wednesday. Kobe’s getting his legs back, Artest, Pau and Odom all looked sharp and it’s all wrapped up in much finer detail by Forum Blue and Gold’s Jeff Skibiski.  Ebanks made a good case for himself with 10 points in 15 minutes, Blake had some nice assist action, Barnes was active across the board and Brown shot his jumpers with renewed confidence. On the negative side, Sasha’s return to kinetic bomber did not impress at 1-4.

Some of my favorite reading as of late has been from non-Laker-centric blogs. Freedarko’s celebrating the imminent release of their new book, ‘The Undisputed Guide to Basketball History’ with a couple weeks’ worth of essays on Dream. All good stuff but I especially liked a piece by Jack Hamilton linking O.J. Simpson and the 1994 finals.

Basketbawful has been on a tear of terribles, a technicolor photo of Birdman’s new neck tat snagged my attention like a wreck in the breakdown lane. I’ve always been a fan of Anderson in general and was specifically intrigued by his penchant for reciting Gimme Back My Bullets for hours on end during his dark days of banishment. This flaming Free Bird monstrosity however threatens to eat up his face - I think the dude’s gone into some William Burroughs abyss -‘the neck that exploded’.

I’ve also been following A Wolf Among Wolves, excellent and good-humored commentary on the T-Wolves who’ve put together a nice preseason so far with Rambis’s hybrid run-n-gun triangle. A pretty entertaining group of players with Love, Beasley, Webster, Ridnour and the Darko/Koufos/Pekovic eastern-euro trifecta.   Check out the article on Beasley facing down free-throw gremlins.  Good stuff.

Seems only right to end full circle with Mr. Artest who’s established himself as one of the preeminent interviews on this coast or any. He recently weighed in on the subject of current player dominance, saying Kobe’s first and Durant’s second in the league. When asked about LeBron, he talked about guarding the second-best Durant. When reporters persisted with where LeBron ranked on Artest’s list, Ron said "you got to ask him.".  Probably feeling lost in circular-speak, yet another reporter tried nailing down an answer, only to be faced with a puzzled look and the assertion that "I only count to two. I’ve been out of school for 10 years. I only count to two." Don’t be messing with Ron’s head. It’s a losing battle.

It's Saturday morning and there's a game against Denver tonight.  Might serve as inspiration to write something that's not wholly ripped off.  And at any rate, a chance to see if the birdman's new colors cause acid-flashbacks.

Update, 1/31/11.  For some inexplicable reason, this particular post continues to accrue a steady trickle of hits, long after its publication.  It was written as a toss-off links piece, with some thought for a continuing series (eventually abandoned).  Maybe it's still getting hits due to some search criteria, maybe there's a link in the post that somebody uses.  I have no clue.  I am curious though.