Annoyances

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1. ESPN commercial about the NBA Finals that says "After one of the biggest comebacks in playoff history..." ONE OF??? It's the NBA Finals. They were up by 24 AT HOME. 20 in the third quarter. Why not just call it the biggest comeback in NBA playoff history? I'm not positive if there was ever a bigger point deficit, but I think I heard it's the biggest 2nd half Finals comeback.
2. While the Euro 2008 soccer tournament is great, the Macarena sounding club scene music ESPN uses for it is like fingernails on a chalkboard.
3. The Stacy Keibler, Matt Hasselbeck, Chad Johnson, Tory Holt Reebok commercial. At least once a year you ask yourself "why would a famous person do a commercial like that?" (Rothlesberger Fathead commercial for example) This year it goes to Matt Hasselbeck. In the words of a close friend "I wanna shake the sh!t out of him" every time I see him dance in that commercial.
4. The stomach flu or similar. I felt like I was hit by a truck for the better part of a week.
   

What a Choke Job

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I don't know if the Cavaliers would have faired better in the West than the Lakers... I'll "go out on a limb" and say they wouldn't have finished with the top seed. But don't tell me from watching the Finals that the Cavaliers couldn't have beaten the Lakers had they made it to the Finals. The Lakers are as soft as sponge cake and the Cavs "great", "good", or "average" as some say, defense would've been way too much for the guys from LaLa Land to handle.

As a side note... Is Paul Pierce the biggest drama queen ever? Did you guys catch his Game 4 post game interview court side, where he looked up to the heavens almost in tears to explain how the Celtics were able to come back? This after "tweaking" his knee...errr...ankle after a missed jump shot 10 minutes earlier. Anyone who calls out Lebron for whining and selling fouls, needs to watch Pierce take a little contact. And count how many times MVP Kobe whines to the refs.

This also shows that everyone may be wrong in saying the West is so much better than the East. It may be more competitive because the teams are more even, but it isn't better. Now I don't mean from top to bottom, but the top teams in the East are as good as the top teams in the West. I like the Cavs, Pistons, and Celtics over the Lakers. If Lebron doesn't go into a historic shooting slump for two plus games, we might be on the verge of our first NBA championship.

Lesser of two evils

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Of all the possible matchups to crown an NBA champion, the last I wanted to see was Lakers v. Celtics. This despite knowing Boston and L.A. are the best two teams in their respective conferences and a clash between them was by far the most intriguing pairing possible - not to mention the sideshow created by the franchises’ four decades of basketball rivalry.

However, my singular sickness as a bitter Cleveland fan simply will not allow me to enjoy the rich getting richer. I cannot abide Boston winning their 17th championship or the Lakers their 15th. Who wants to deal with the lovefest after the idiotically named “Boston Three Party” gets a ring? Who wants to hear about the genius of L.A.’s front office ripping off Memphis in a sweetheart deal to get Pau Gasol? Does Phil Jackson really need more accolades? Do New England-area sports fans really need another championship parade? Can I root for both teams to lose?

I personally don’t care much about the history, the rivalry, the big market teams going at one another; all the hype-driven melodrama that ESPN and David Stern have been prayerfully anticipating since the beginning of the playoffs. There hasn’t been a Lakers-Celts championship series in over 20 years, and I’m too young to remember much of what transpired. The only good thing to come out of that long-ago series was the Sega Genesis game entitled, understandably enough, “Lakers versus. Celtics.” If I’m not mistaken, it was the first basketball video game to keep assists. So at least the rivalry has contributed something to popular culture.

Ultimately, I will watch this series, if not from wire-to-wire. It hasn’t been that hard to pick a side either, which initially surprised me. I will be rooting for the Lakers, the lesser of the two evils. I’m no fan of Kobe Bryant, but the man is an assassin, the type of cool on-court killer I’d love to see LeBron become. I wouldn’t hate seeing Kobe get a ring without Shaq. Plus the Lakers have better celebrity representation than Boston: Jack Nicholson may have been annoying in “The Departed,” but he was mesmerizing in one of my favorite flicks, “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.” The Celtics don’t have a visible star at courtside, ala Nicholson or Spike Lee. However, the Red Sox are represented by the loathsome Ben Affleck, so his detestable specter automatically hovers over Boston's other teams as well.

Really, my rooting interest comes down to Boston’s whiny fanbase, who had the gall to cry about their World Series woes pre-2004, an era in which the Patriots were winning three of four Super Bowls. The region’s teams have won five championships in the past decade, and played for the title in all three major sports during the last nine months. If Cleveland fans are the Israelites trudging through the sports’ desert, than Boston fans are some other biblical figures quietly reposing in a green pasture where there’s plenty of water and food. (I could not think of a specific analogy here.) You get what I’m saying: They are comfortable and arrogant and I don’t like it.

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I can't remember the last time I was interested in boxing enough to make a plan or pay to watch a fight. It was probably back around the Tyson Ear Eating Era. Even then it was more about watching a trainwreck. I seldom had an rooting interest in a particular boxer.

That being said I really do enjoy Kelly Pavlik. I and I genuinley root for him. I am sure it mostly due to geography. I/we don't consider Youngstown really being part of Cleveland untill it's convenient, i.e. Tressel, Springsteen's song, now Pavlik).
It's easy to love this guy:
Wearing the Buckeye shorts.
He's from a small blue collar town.
Skinny white guy.
He sleeps on his parents tiny couch in thier tiny house before the fight.
And he's a true Cleveland Fan.

The fact that he is about as tall as Pucky, and weighs slightly more than me is stunning.

I think one of my favorite things about him is that he is one of us, in the sense of being a Cleveland Sports Fan. Seeing him throw out the first pitch at the tribe game, the toin coss (Inside Madden joke from 1995) at the Browns game was pretty cool. But interviews after showed he is a true fan of these teams and these athletes, just like us. He has grown up with the same sports heartache's as us, and he is from a town that gets no respect.

In that way it makes him more like me than Lebron is. It's that, that I enjoy about Pavlik, and that, that bugs me about Lebron.

Stark runs through the Indians...

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Jason Stark today runs through the AL Central teams and here's his take on the Indians. Personally I think the bats have to come around, right? Right? I would love to have CC back but it's looking less and less likely.
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CLEVELAND INDIANS

WHAT WE EXPECTED: We expected this to be the deepest pitching staff in baseball. We expected this relief crew to be the best bullpen in the AL Central. We expected Travis Hafner to bounce back. And we expected a team that won 96 games last year to take that next step. Hey, it all seemed logical at the time.

WHAT'S ACTUALLY HAPPENED: The best starting pitcher in town has been -- who else? -- Cliff Lee. C.C. Sabathia has almost as many starts in which he's given up nine runs (two) as he has wins (three). Injuries (Fausto Carmona, Jake Westbrook and Joe Borowski) have tested that pitching depth. The bullpen has the second-highest ERA (4.44) in the AL. And Hafner (hitting .217, with 2 homers) headed for the DL last week with a sore shoulder -- and a lower OPS (.677) than Marco Scutaro or Jack Hannahan.

BEST REASON TO THINK THEY'LL WIN: Even though Westbrook figures to be out indefinitely, this rotation is still as good as any in baseball. Carmona (hip) returns by the end of the month. Sabathia (2.08 ERA in his past eight starts) is himself again. And this team's sixth and seventh starters -- Aaron Laffey and Jeremy Sowers -- are better than some teams' third and fourth starters.

BEST REASON TO THINK THEY WON'T WIN: You think the White Sox have trouble scoring? Sheesh, the Indians hit just .218 for the entire month of May. They've already played 30 games in which they scored three runs or fewer. (They only did that 56 times all last year.) And their rotation injuries might make it impossible for them to deal a starting pitcher for an impact bat. "They've got problems," said one scout. "[Victor] Martinez is playing hurt. Asdrubal Cabrera hasn't done anything. Casey Blake is really just a bench player. And [Ryan] Garko and Hafner aren't hitting a lick. Their whole lineup is scuffling at once. And they don't have enough pitching to overcome all that."

WATCH THIS PLOT LINE FROM NOW TO OCTOBER: Could this team really unload Sabathia? Only if it thinks it has no shot to win. But clubs that have spoken with the Indians report they're already floating Sabathia's name just to "measure his value," even though they're also saying they're not ready to open the shop yet. So clearly, it's not impossible. "There's no other pitcher who could get traded in July who can impact the postseason like him," says an official of one team.