NBA

Kim Kardashian Redefines Fail Tail

I have to imagine that every long time reader of Us Versus Them knew exactly which post would be headlining Wednesday when you heard that Kim Kardashian was filing for divorce. This is about the only way a tail as epic as Kim Kardashian’s could fail.

72 days?

You make a commitment that is supposed to last for the rest of your life and you quit after 72 days? What the hell did they talk about before the wedding? What made her think her relationship might be forever then change her mind so quickly?

How do you go from true love and throwing a $10 million wedding to calling the whole thing off that quickly? If Kim Kardashian owed me money, I’d have my eye on her. Hell, I wouldn’t let her watch my laptop at Starbucks while I went to the bathroom. She might just say the hell with it and leave my stuff out there. LeBron James in the fourth quarter thinks she should have been more focused. Sarah Palin resigning as Governor of Alaska thinks Kim could have stuck it out. Bernie Madoff thinks Kim might have her personal principles in the wrong place.

I knew this was coming though. I thought young Kris Humphries might have been in a little over his head when I heard about a week after the wedding that he didn’t know Kim had been married before. That is usually something that comes out during that “getting to know you” phase of engagement. I’ve just got my fingers crossed that he was familiar with the fact that there might be a video out there with Ray J...and she wasn’t singing a duet. Fine, she kinda was. Hell, Actually, I’m mad at him if he did review the tape. As a professional athlete, he should be an expert a breaking down game tape. He should have known he was getting a Sebastian Telfair type player. Looks like he’s built for the game, but possessing questionable skills on the next level.

Also, it is never a good idea to let a woman buy herself her own engagement ring.

There are certain things that as a man, you just have to do. Find the answer to the question, “what was that noise?”. Step up in a fight when someone disrespects your lady. And when it is time to get married, you get the ring. Forget who wears the pants, Kim took this dudes balls from the jump. Here’s the question I asked on Twitter the other day. (You already follow right? If you don’t go ahead and click here to catch up with the rest of Team Us.) If Kim bought herself her own ring, does she give the ring back to herself now that she got a divorce. Or does she put it away to let the next dude give it to her?

The funny thing is that this is the first day of what was supposed to be the NBA season. I consider Kris Humphries the first casualty of the lost NBA season. Look, the dude is a 5 points, 5 rebounds guy. He’s not exactly pulling in that Kobe money. Kris made good money last year, a little over 3 million (side note: 5 and 5 dudes who get paid a guaranteed 3 million stacks a year are the problem with the NBA). $3 million is a lot of money until you start to live like you make $20 million and your money comes to a full stop.

You best believe that Kim pulled up with joint account when Kris’ checks didn’t start showing up and was like…”baby…why do we have $85,000 in the account? Where is the rest of it? Wait, that’s all of it? Can you bring me the folder from my room. Yeah. It’s right there in my top drawer. Just bring it here and we’ll go through it together.”

See, David Stern? The lockout is ruining families. Kim Kardashian thought she was a star maker and when she got 2 months in and realized that Kris still has about 0.0% name recognition she dropped his ass to the waiver wire like she was about to miss a league trade deadline.

Here’s the final point. Another way we should have seen it coming. Let’s play a little game of “one of these kids is not like the others” with Kimmy K’s exes.

Ray J:

Reggie Bush:

Kris Humphries:

Hmmmmm. Which one looks like Kim might be able to take him in a fist fight? Look, I’m not saying Kim Kardashian has a “type” but if the next dude she dates isn’t a brown skinned brother with a perfectly round head he might want to assume it might not be long term.

The worst part? Now Lamar Odom isn’t his brother in law, he’s the competition on the basketball court. You know pro athletes will use any edge to get the win. In fact, I have a video from when Lamar Odom told his boys on the Lakers that Kim told the family all the dirty details about why the relationship wouldn’t work:

Haaaaaa. It wasn’t pretty.

Kim K is back on the market. Here’s to hoping she recovers from the emotional roller coaster by hitting the gym and going on a worldwide “don’t forget I have the most banging body in the entire U.S. of A publicity tour.”

Fingers crossed.

-Brock

Man Up Monday: The NBA Lockout

Brock Hardon 6 Comments

2011 is going to be known as the year of the lockout. Remember the NFL lockout from this summer? That felt like an outrage. The closer the NFL got to missing games, the more pressure there was. You just knew they were going to work it out. The NBA lockout doesn’t feel like that though. They already cancelled the first few weeks of the season and now they are talking about cancelling the Christmas games.

If I was the NBA I would take a look around and be really worried. Does anyone really care that the NBA season might not happen? I’m actually not that worried. Sure, sports are going to get really slow next April if the NBA doesn’t come back. Sportscenter will be talking about Olympic curling and the WNBA draft, and it will make the time period when we ONLY have baseball longer, but we will find a way to deal. I do have some questions for a few NBA players though.

Doesn’t LeBron James know it is going to be harder to get his 7 rings if he loses a year?

Hell, looking at LeBron’s hairline, my man might come back to the league rocking the forced baldy when he gets back. Just like Michael Jordan. You know the forced baldy right? There are men who shave their heads by choice, there are others who go with the baldy because they have no other choice.

Why is Derek Fisher working so hard for a decision in the lockout? Is it because he knows his career should have been over two seasons ago? If there isn’t a season this year, Derek Fisher will never play again.

My man in the back is covering his face because he is thinking about what Derek would look like on the court in 2013.

Doesn’t Glen Davis realize he might be about a 350 pound D cup if he doesn’t get back into an NBA camp soon?

Seriously, this lockout is an emergency situation for this kid. He’s always been big baby and that is WITH him on a basketball court for 82 games a year for the last 4 years. You give the dude a year off, and he’s gonna need his own wing in the locker room.

By the way, the lockout negotiations his all new levels of bullshit last week. I actually thought there was going to be some progress when the two sides met three times last week and really got those 16 hour days in. Then all of a sudden David Stern missed the meeting with a “flu” and all hell breaks out in the negotiations. The sides come back out of the room and suddenly the owners have ultimatums, suddenly everything they discussed on the previous two days gets thrown out…on the day David Stern isn’t there. Do the owners really think they are gonna finish this off with a big game of “Good Cop, Bad Cop?” You know in the next meeting David Stern is going to come back to the meetings as the “good guy” who can “talk some sense into the owners” once he comes back. Come on Stern, we aren’t falling for that.

I know, I know, you had to try.

So NBA, you need to Man Up, the worst thing you can do is cancel the season and realize that no one cares. That might hurt. Let’s get it done and start heading for some December basketball. A shorter season might be more interesting anyway. A team with a few 6 game winning streaks is suddenly in the playoffs. A lot of squads might be able to make a 55 game sprint. That might make every game worth watching, instead of just the playoffs.

NBA…Man Up!

-Brock

Man Up Monday – Come on Bruh Edition: LeBron James

Brock Hardon 5 Comments

The end of the NBA season is always tough for me. We are officially in what I like to call “the drought”. It is officially baseball season, there is apparently only a little bit of hockey left too. This may be the worst drought ever with the NFL lockout in full effect and no football on its way. I guess I’ll have college football to look forward to, but I just moved to the west coast and those games are gonna be coming on at 9am. As sad as that is, I have a job to do. My twitter feed started blowing up at about 8:30 Pacific last night. There was only one man who could have possibly gotten the Man Up Monday treatment this week.

LeBron, LeBron, LeBron. This is gonna sting a little bit.

LeBron James was in the discussion to be one of the greatest, if not the greatest player ever about two weeks ago. Even Scottie Pippen said so. The Heat had beat the Celtics, looked strong against Chicago and looked like they were ready to show everyone that the big three experiment was going to pay off. Instead, everything fell apart. By everything, I mean specifically, LeBron James. Dwyane Wade looked great. He was making crazy blocks, faster than everyone else on the break, stepped up when his team needed him, everything. Chris Bosh was ready. He was solid all the way through. Hitting big shots. Being a real presence on the blocks. But the King? The King was no where to be found. I don’t know what was wrong with him, but the dude just looked…regular. Average. Common. Okay. We are used to this guy dominating. There are times where he is completely unstoppable. Shooting from the outside, running to the front of the rim, stopping the other teams best player on defense. I was in the arena when LeBron James destroyed the Detroit Pistons for 48 points to launch the Cavs to the NBA Finals back in 2007. At the time I thought I was there when LeBron “turned the corner”. But apparently that still hasn’t happened. This time, he didn’t score at the end of the game, he couldn’t dribble past anyone, he couldn’t shoot from outside, and he couldn’t find a way to dominate the game. It was actually kinda sad.

It is mighty hard to be the King when you’ve never won anything. Right now I’d rather roll with Bernard King, the Burger King, some King Crab, a plate of Chicken a la King, and the King Jerry Lawler. I mean if Jason Terry was willing to get his tattoo of the Championship trophy lasered off if the Mavericks lost, LeBron should at least consider getting “Chosen 1″ burned off of his back or at least changed to something more fitting. Frozen 1. Losin 1. Option 2. Something. The guy really brought it on himself. You could see him getting nervous. You could see him cracking under the pressure. You could see that he wasn’t quite ready. He didn’t want the pressure, no one on that team wanted to take the shot other than Dwyane Wade. It was a little sad really.

The Heat wanted to be the bad boys. They wanted to be the bad guys. They wanted to be villains. They wanted to wear the black hats.

Chris still wanted to wear a brown hat, but that is beside the point. Speaking of Chris. Did everyone stick around long enough to catch this one?

Oh man, could it have been anyone else. I guess now we know who Eric Spolstra was talking about when he said they were crying in the locker room a few months ago. Chris Bosh was the locker room leader on that one. I understand that the loss of a championship is emotional. I understand you might have to rock a good man cry after that, but dropping to your knees? Having to be held up as you get wobbly legged as if you are a baby? That’s simply unacceptable.

LeBron has a lot of issues now. I actually wanted to see the guy win just to see how he would play once he got the monkey off his back. To see what it is like to play when he is completely free and not worried if he is going to be on the long list of “greatest to never win one”. I know what his lesson is going to be for next season though. No celebrations until it is over. After the Celtics series, LeBron wanted to let everyone know he was justified for going to Miami to get a Championship. In game 2, he thought he had the game locked up, but let it all go away. He can’t celebrate until he puts that trophy in the air. At this point, if he ever gets one, I fully expect a Jordan-like tears of joy celebration.

LeBron James…Man Up! You just wrote another chapter in your legacy. Unfortunately, you are cementing the fact that you can’t handle the big stage. Somehow, you went to Miami and made Dwyane Wade look bad. Everyone loves Dwyane Wade. My boy JT had the line of the night though. “If the Heat can just Dwyane Wade a little help in the off season, they should be alright next year. Haaaaa. Man, I thought last off season was bad with The Decision, but LeBron is going to have a long, long year living this one down.

By the way, a special Man Up to Dan Gilbert, the owner of the Cavaliers who sent a message to LeBron telling him there are no shortcuts in life. Hey Dan, just because the guy you hate lost, it doesn’t mean that your team doesn’t suck. I’ve had more drinks in one night than your team had wins last season. Just be quiet. Thanks.

LeBron, turn off the fake swagger. Show up. Get to work. Win some games. Stay humble. Get out of your own head when you get close. You spend too much time worried about the future and how you are going to win your next five titles before you win the first one. It is impossible to win 6 championships at once. That actually is a lot of pressure. Next year, why don’t you show up and try to win just one.

Man Up.

-Brock

———————————

This just in, LeBron was spotted in a park playing checkers. He had to be restrained because he wouldn’t stop yelling “King Me! King Me! King Me!”.

Did you know you have to knock when you visit Lebron’s house? Yeah, even the doorbell doesn’t ring.

I’ll probably drop these all day. Why don’t you follow Us Versus Them on Twitter so you don’t miss out?

www.twitter.com/uvtblog

Man Up Monday: Scottie Pippen

Brock Hardon 7 Comments

In “whooooa playa, we didn’t ask you that” news, Scottie Pippen decided to chime in on the always popular greatest player ever debate. Scottie Pippen was on the Mike and Mike show and said that Michael Jordan may be the best scorer ever, but Lebron James may be the best all around player ever.

I know LeBron has really taken over for the Miami Heat in the last few weeks, I know LeBron is a genetic freak, I know LeBron is finally playing some nasty defense, but Scottie might be a little premature on this one. Now I don’t know if Scottie didn’t get much chance to run back game film because he was actually on the court with Jordan, but if I can recall the mid 90′s Jordan was the nastiest dude on the court for the better part of a decade. I’m not going to say the Bulls would have won 8 straight if MJ hadn’t taken his baseball break, but it sure looks like it. Meanwhile LeBron is like the chick you have sex with knowing she isn’t the one…no ring.

The real problem is Scottie just comes off looking bitter. Where is the loyalty? Didn’t he and Jordan work for 6 rings? Didn’t MJ get Scottie on the list for the top 50 players of all time. Didn’t having the best player of all time on the court with him let Scottie get loose for 8 or 9 years? Doesn’t that count for anything? Apparently not. That made me wonder, why is Scottie so bitter? Is it because MJ is rolling in the millions from the Jordan Brand and owner of the Charlotte Bobcats while Scottie Pippen is “Special Liaison in charge of reminding people when we could win championships” for the Chicago Bulls? Is it because Scottie ended up on one of Gary Coleman’s final projects “Midget Mascots”?

That is Gary Coleman over there rocking shorts over sweatpants by the way, and as bad as this looks in a still picture, it is even worse in motion when Gary clocks Scottie with the phone. I covered this about a year ago, but it is worth running back.

That might be the best “WTF” moment ever. I know Mike did Space Jam, but that was a much higher quality film then Midget Mascots.

So we asked Mike what he thought about the comment. Jordan really ran the full gamut of emotions. He actually went through all 5 stages of grief when he heard the news.

Denial:

Anger:

Bargaining:

Depression:

and finally, “Fool if you don’t stop talking junk, I’m gonna choke the shit out of you”:

‘

The real reason Scottie is getting the Man Up Treatment is because he started to backpedal after the issue blew up. Scottie is now claiming that he was saying he could see LeBron being the best one day based on his skills and physical ability. Sure, I like watching LeBron truck through people like a Tight End too, but that doesn’t mean he can hold his own with MJ yet. Jordan had a nasty flu and still scored 38 on the Utah Jazz in the Finals. LeBron said he had a cold last week and was talking about it. I don’t bring up the fact I have a cold when I go to work, and I’m not a world class athlete.

So Scottie Pippen, you just look bitter. You look like you are trying to make up for two decades of people thinking you were #2 by trying to take down the greatest of all time. It just doesn’t look good Scottie. There are certain things you just don’t debate, this is one of them. Next week, Scottie Pippen is going to try to convince everyone bacon isn’t delicious. He’s going to be wrong then too.

Scottie Pippen, MAN UP!

-Brock

Man Up Monday: What Did I Miss?

Brock Hardon 17 Comments

Your boy Brock made the West Coast relocation a reality, got myself together, and now I’m back. That means all of you can stop pretending that you care about the reasons I’m not hitting you with new posts. Thanks for the support though. Might take me a second to get warmed up, so let’s get it.

So the second I shut the place down, all hell breaks lose.

OBAMA vs. OSAMA:

As soon as I put down the keyboard I see my Twitter blow up on a Sunday night saying that the President has a major announcement. Work Blitzer is on CNN saying the President had an important announcement. Then he said the President would be coming out in five minutes. Then it was at 11pm. Finally, President Obama came striding down the hallway to let the world know Osama Bin Laden had been found, caught, and killed.

Now for the last 10 years we’ve been looking in caves, trying to figure out how Bin Laden was camping out for a decade while getting dialysis, and looking to see if he was still in Pakistan or somewhere else. Caves! Now I don’t know how government intelligence works, but I’ll tell you how the rest of the world works. Bin Laden was the leader of Al Qaeda, the boss. When you are the big brother, you get to pick your bunk, you get the front seat in the car and you get the big slice of pizza. So if that is the way a 10 year old works things out with his 8 year old little brother, you think Bin Laden is going to stay in a cave without his family or any comforts of home? Sheeeeeit, Bin Laden was exactly where I expected to find him. Kicking it in a mansion listening to a pre-release of Dr. Dre’s Detox album on his Beats by Dr. Dre headphones. He had a few wives up in there with him and everything. Dude was really kicking it.

Then the inevitable happened. Fox News went on ahead and got the leader of the free world mixed up with the most notorious criminal on the planet.

I know Bin Laden is dead, but let me give everyone a tip on how to never make this mistake again. Our President is named Barack Obama. That’s his last name. You can call him President Obama if you would like. The former head of Al Qaeda is named Osama Bin Laden. His last name is Bin Laden. Unless you went to high school with him, unless he is one of your boys from back home, unless you are somewhere in the top 5 of Al Qaeda and Bin Laden is your homeboy, I think calling the dude Osama is a little too familiar. Why the hell does everyone want to call him by his first name? See how it becomes easy? Barack sounds nothing like Osama. Obama does not resemble Bin Laden. Boom. See, it is no longer easy to make that mistake. Don’t say I never did anything for you.

Lakers get swept out of the Playoffs:

Now the second I get to L.A., what do I get? I get the Lakers getting beat twice at home then deciding that it isn’t worth it to try to fight their way back. Which is crazy because you know Kobe wanted it. Kobe always wants it.

He didn’t even pull out his wolf face in the series. Along the way the Lakers did the impossible. They made Dirk Nowitzki look like a beast. The one thing we could depend on in the NBA West is that the Dallas Mavs are soft. Chief softy #1 was Dirk Nowitski.

Now people are talking about Dirk like he’s one of the greatest ever. That’s pretty ridiculous. I will say, the only reason I would like to see the Mavs win is to see Mark Cuban completely lose his mind on national TV. The guy might actually make his own head explode if he gets to hold the championship.

What happened to the Lakers? I have my theories.

My Epic First Night in LA:

Now I’ve had some good nights in the past. I like to have a good time with the best of them. But when you run a blog like this you don’t expect to run into three UvT quality babes in one night. Now I know there are famous people who hang out in L.A., but I just couldn’t anticipate getting it all in at once. Bottom line, I run into Teyana Taylor, who gets down like this. The body is just as official in real life. Then, I’m backstage at the Dirty Money concert with the Ciroc flowing all night and get some close up time with Dawn Richard. She gets down in the show like this:

Finally, I roll to the afterparty and find out that out here in LA some clubs have clubs inside the club that you don’t even know are there. I mean we walk into a fully rocking club go straight through a damn near secret corridor and end up in a completely different club playing completely different music. I’m not just talking different rooms playing different music. I’m talking about “where the hell did this room come from” type stuff. So before I leave, I need to dispose of the copious volume of Ciroc I had consumed that night. I try to go to the regular club bathroom and got directed to some wild back storage room. I’m talking vacuum cleaners, hot water heaters, lockers, utility sinks, it is pretty much the wildest setup I’ve ever seen. Why the hell am I in the storage room? It actually gets better. There is some wild ass chick back there who is of the drunk and talking shit variety. She proceeds to tell an Asian chick in a bustier that she’s hot and needs to take some pictures of her. The directions are, and I quote, “tits out, shoulders back, and work that ass”. Then the group pictures started. I thought it was great but it got better. The door opens and a head pops in. Who is it. Christina Freaking Milian. She is as bad in person as anything I’ve ever posted to this site. We had a little convo, I let her know how much I appreciated her body of work. I’m just getting started.

Shit, I’m out of practice, I was supposed to tell someone to Man Up.

I’m gonna go with Bynum needing some pushups.

Man Up!

-Brock

Chris Bosh In A Nutshell

Brock Hardon 12 Comments

Chris Bosh decided to do a little performance art to summarize his status here at UvT. It is an amazing piece of work. He summarizes himself in a mere 20 seconds. It is a silent expression of himself and everything he has to offer.

Wait, I must let the art speak for itself.

Brilliant.

-Brock

——————-UPDATE——————

Violation of a prohibition on Hate Speech? Really Youtube? Because someone tagged it “gay”?

—————–UPDATE to the UPDATE——————-

Can’t be stopped bitches! New link up top!

Man Up Monday: New York Knicks

Brock Hardon 6 Comments

This is starting to feel like deja vu. But if the New York Knickerbockers are going to continue to embarrass themselves, I’m going to continue to talk about it.

Just to keep it real before I launch in here, let me acknowledge the fact that the Knicks are a lot better than they were next year. They have been really bad for that last 8 years or so. They made it through the Starbury era, the Isiah Thomas era, they bottomed out the squad to take a shot a LeBron and missed out on that, and now they have put all their chips in with Amare and Melo.

You know what? I actually don’t have a problem with the Knicks today. Sure, they got swept the hell up out of the playoffs faster than any other team in the league today. Sure, they let the no big man, old ass Celtics squad beat them down like they didn’t belong in the playoffs in the first place. But the Knicks are actually on the road back. They can actually fill up MSG, people actually care about the games, and they have a marketable star or two. I want to talk about Knicks fans though.

The Knicks fan is an extension of the New Yorker. I’m not talking about the celebrity Knicks fans who sit on the floor and barely pay attention. I’m talking about the average New Yorker. These are the most ridiculous people on the planet. They talk about NY like the rest of us give a damn, and they think their own situation is go great, that the rest of us have studies the intricacies of New York and are supposed to actually understand what they are talking about.

True Story:

I’m in New York, in Manhattan, literally on Broadway downtown walking around and ready to take the train uptown. It is summertime, so it is nice outside. People are wearing short sleeved shirts, women are in skirts. It is a great day in NY. So I start looking for the nearest train station and can’t find one and don’t see on e close. So I do what any rational person would do, I ask the nearest person for directions.

Brock: “Excuse me. Do you know where the train station is?”

NY: “Do I know where the train station is? What does my tattoo say?”

At this point I know I’ve asked the wrong person. I’m caught up in this New York attitude B.S. already.

Brock: “Uhhhh. The Bronx”

Yes, dude had a full forearm tattoo that said “BRONX” all the way up his arm.

NY: Dasrite son. I’m from the Bronx.

Brock: That’s great. What does that have to do with the question.

NY: I’m from the freaking Bronx, of course I know where the train station is.

[uncomfortable pause - literally and figuratively]

Brock: You gonna tall me or not player?

See, that’s the NY bullshit. Did this dude really rep his hood on walking directions to the train?

Which brings me to Knick fan.

You have to love the downward spiral they experienced over the last week and a half. From the Knicks actually being competitive. To Carmelo saying “all the Celtics did was hold serve on their home court”, to the full on bailout of the Knicks being better next year. Well, it will have to be next year because this year is over.

At this point, the Knicks fans are just rooting against the Denver Nuggets. I would be embarrassing it would be if the Nuggets made it farther than the Knicks. Luckily the Nuggets look like they will join the Knicks any day now.

Knicks fan…Man Up! You team still sucks, you still need at least one more piece, and at least two years before you will be competitive. So while the Knicks still suck, why don’t you go ahead and turn down the rhetoric. Thanks.

-Brock