Miscellaneous Thoughts

Last week I mentioned that there were at 15-20 players in the past 20 years with Kobe Bryant’s physical talent. Well, I don’t want to throw out any hollow statements to my many readers. So here is the list of players that I believe could have been as good as Kobe if they had they his mental makeup. These are all players that entered the league since 1990 in order of when they were drafted. If you don’t like the list…tough. Let me know your thoughts and how else you would change it. But if you are a Lakers fan who thinks Kobe was sent straight from the basketball gods with no equal, then I don’t want to hear from you.

Harold Miner
Anfernee “Penny” Hardaway
Isaiah Rider
Calbert Cheney
Grant Hill
Eddie Jones
Jerry Stackhouse
Michael Finley
Tracy McGrady
Vince Carter
Corey Maggette
Jason Richardson
Joe Johnson
LeBron James
Carmelo Anthony
Dwayne Wade
Josh Howard
Andre Iguodala
J.R. Smith
Gerald Green
Brandon Roy
Rudy Gay
Kevin Durant

Bullpen revisited:
I wrote not long ago about how this year’s Diamondbacks team could be the most exciting watch this summer. I half expected that those words would work as a reverse jinx and that the bullpen would return to being average and the Diamondbacks could start thinking about competing for the division. Well, they’ve gotten worse. This recent homestand was amazing. We saw four straight walk off games, two straight 1-0 games and two team records were broken. I have to believe that ticket sales skyrocket when this team comes into visiting ballparks. As a matter of fact, I think the front office should be all over trying to collect some sort of gift tax for these games.

World Cup:
I am stoked for the upcoming World Cup. But, it is not because of ESPN’s attempts to brainwash America into thinking that they love soccer and even care about this tournament because they spent a kajillion dollars on the broadcasting rights. No, I am looking forward to this because I really do enjoy watching soccer. I grew up playing soccer, but never really got to watch it on television like all of the other sports that I loved, except for the World Cup. It only came on every four years, and I always seemed to stumble onto the games by accident at five or six o’clock in the morning during the summer. When I realized it was on, I would wake up as early as possible to watch these games in the wee hours of the morning. It was awesome, and I look forward to doing the same thing this year.