Sunday Thoughts (7-7-2019)

Back for another edition of Sunday Thoughts… This week was all about NBA Free Agency once again. And boy was it a crazy week! So lets talk about what passed through my head this week.

 

-If you don’t watch or follow the NBA, you’re doing life wrong! And this upcoming year is a good time to start. So many great teams to root for.

-Kawhi picking the Clippers (and bringing Paul George with him) set us up with a 2019-20 season in which 6 to 8 teams have a legit chance at winning the whole thing.

-Is the “Big 3” era over?

-Somehow, I feel like the Miami Big 3 of LeBron, Wade, and Bosh has become UNDERrated. Look up those highlights! Much more fun to watch the Warriors crew that just split up.

-The NBA is in such a great place right now with so many superstars and now bunch of completive teams.

-I wonder, if they were to re-do the “50 Greatest Players in NBA History” how many guys from the original group would still make? Not many in my opinion…. (blog idea)

-The Rockets are apparently rumored to be interested in bringing in Russell Westbrook… No thanks!

-I honestly don’t really buy it anyway… Even if they’re interested, that trade would be almost impossible to pull off unless Chris Paul is apart of it. And why would OKC want CP when they’d clearly be rebuilding??

-I went and saw Spiderman: Far From Home this weekend… I mean, it was good I guess. All the MCU movies are at least pretty good. But there are so many Spiderman staples missing from this version.

  • Peter Parker is supposed to be a photographer… Not the case in this series.
  • Zendaya is great. But MJ’s character is supposed be the popular girl, not this dark feminist buzz kill that they’ve made her into!
  • Aunt May is NOT supposed to be young and cool…
  • This isn’t necessarily wrong, but I hate the version of Spiderman that has exterior webs. Like, if he’s part spider, he should be able to shoot them without some fancy bracelet.
  • Where is Harry!? Where is Gwen!?

 

-As a college student, I come across a lot of frat guys. I just have never understood the whole Frat lifestyle. Especially the hazing stuff. Like, I get that kids want to fit in, but there are limits to how far I’ll go to be popular. If you want be to humiliate or harm myself, I’m just going to say no!

Frat guy: “Drink till you puke and you can hang out with us!”

Me: “Uhh no thanks, Im gonna go somewhere and not get sick…”

Frat guy: “Get naked and wrestle me!”

Me: “Yeah I’m gonna have to pass bro! I think I’ll go do something with clothes on in stead…”

Its that simple kids…

-Alright, lets close it out with my Album of the Week. Brought back one of my all time favorites this week. Phobia, from Breaking Benjamin…

 

-Hey guys, its almost time College Football season prep! Im giddy!

 

-Josh

Who’s Mad at Alex Morgan!?

When I woke up this morning, I did what I always do. I rolled over, grabbed my phone and started scrolling through Twitter. We’re at the point in the NBA Offseason where not much is happening, but something could happen any second now, and I’m on the edge of my seat waiting to see where Kawhi decides to go. So as I scrolled through Twitter, I was hoping to see some news about that. Instead I saw this…

If you didn’t already know, Alex Morgan scored a goal against England in the Semi-Final match of the World Cup. Then followed that goal with the celebration you see above. Personally, I loved the celebration! Obviously its a jab it the Brits and their smug tea drinking ways. But as a historian, I like to think she was taking it all the way back to the Boston Tea Party. Seeing as this was just a few days before we celibate our Nations liberation from the tyrannical British Empire… Ya know, just a reminder that we’ve been dominated them for over 200 years. Handing out L’s in two wars, saving their butts in a couple others, and owning them in just about every sport (even the one’s we don’t even care about). But even if she didn’t put as much thought into it as I am, it’s still a solid burn.

That’s not just my thoughts on the situation, but thats the thoughts of pretty much every one else I have seen offer up an opinion. I mean, some Brits weren’t too happy about it. There was this…

But this chick here is clearly just salty about the loss. Which is fine… I hate when my team loses too. I, too, act like a big baby every time the Warriors knock the Rockets out of the playoffs.

But thats pretty much it, salty Brits. I think Piers Morgan joined in on the criticism… But my god who cares about that guy!? I literally haven’t seen one American criticize the celebration. That’s not to say that American opinions are the only ones that matter, I mean I may feel that way but thats not the point. The point is that the only reason anyone is upset with Alex Morgan over this celebration is that they LOST. So I really don’t understand who Miss Morgan is referring to in her comments. We’re on your side girl!

And look, I’m not the biggest soccer guy… I haven’t watched a second of the Women’s World Cup and I don’t really plan to in the future. But having said that, I LOVE this team’s confidence. Im a big Alex Morgan fan. She’s good and she knows it! Thats as American as it gets. I even like how she worded her comments above. The part about guys grabbing their sacks… Hilarious! I want to see more celebrations like this too, I mean I’m not gonna watch the games… But I’ll check out the highlights (of the celebrations, not the soccer).

And lastly, I don’t know how busy soccer players are… I know there are tons of leagues and FIFA play seems to always be going on. So maybe she’s actually oblivious to how people react to male athletes celebrating… But she clearly doesn’t know about Major League Baseball’s “unwritten rules.” Or the NFL celebration controversies from a couple years ago. Men get criticized for celebrating CONSTANTLY!

My advice to Alex… Don’t worry about a few dummies running their mouth about what you do or don’t do on the field (pitch? idk). And understand that those dummies don’t speak for the vast majority of sports fans. Keep dominating, and keep rubbing your loser opponents nose in it. #America!

I could probably think of more to say about the subject… But an NBA Summer League game just came on and, while its meaningless, its infinitely more interesting than this.

Austin Rivers, my favorite Rocket??

Memphis Grizzlies v Houston Rockets

Alright, so we’re a couple of days into the official NBA Offseason and boy oh boy has there been some news… We have a new superstar duo in Brooklyn of all places with Durant and Kyrie. Jimmy Butler decided he doesn’t care about winning and took his talents to South Beach. We have Point Guards on the move everywhere it seems with Kemba heading to Boston, D’Angelo Russell to Golden State (weird), and Terry Rozier to… wait, why am I talking about Terry Rozier??? Never mind forget that last part. Point being, guys are on the move and guys are getting PAID!

From a Rockets perspective though, its actually been pretty quite. The only “splash” type of move that Houston supposedly had a chance at was Jimmy Butler. The interest has been there for years, and it was reported that Butler was going to meet with the Rockets within the first couple of days into free agency. Unfortunately, that meeting never happened. But it’s not like Houston lost anything, so it wasn’t really that big of a deal.

While there are still a few options for Daryl Morey to look at as he tries to improve this already contending team into an actual Championship team, so far he’s only re-signed a few role players from last year. The Son of Houston Gerald Green was signed to another vet minimum contract and Danuel House was (somewhat surprisingly) brought back at just 11mil over 3 years. Because of their financial situation, it was thought that Morey would have to make some difficult decisions on which of these role players would be brought back. After House signed for slightly more than the minimum, I assumed that was it for Austin Rivers in Houston. Looking at some of the contracts that backup guards were getting, it just wasn’t realistic to think Rivers would come back for the minimum. I mean Seth Curry, who I really like as a player, got 32mil over 4 years from Dallas. Elfrid Payton got 16mil over 2 years from NY. Cory Joseph got over 30mil from Sacramento… Cory freakin’ Joseph, who apparently played for an NBA team last year, got over 30mil. Thats crazy. Austin Rivers is better than all of those guys in my opinion.

Then this news dropped.

 

Not only did he re-sign, but he re-signed for the minimum! Which allows Houston to keep what they have left of the Non-Taxpayer MLE (around 5-6mil) to help fill other needs on the roster. This is great news! But confusing at first… Like, why didn’t he get offered more by some team with cap space and a need for a vet guard?

Then Austin Rivers drops this on his Instagram.

 

I mean, how awesome is that!? In a league where 99.9% of the players simply play for the highest bidder (which I am totally okay with and would do the same in their situation), this guy sacrifices more money to be on a team that can win. I don’t have the facts, but I would be SHOCKED if he wasn’t offered somewhere between 6 and 8 mil per year by another team. Now, it is just a 2 year deal with a player option for the second. So its likely that he thinks with another solid year in Houston he’ll be able to make this money up with a longer, more lucrative contract next offseason. But nonetheless, its really cool to see a guy make this kind of sacrifice to return to a locker room that is constantly made out to be toxic. Austin is a smart guy, he grew up in NBA locker rooms coached by his father, if this was a “toxic” locker room, I don’t think we would be seeing players making sacrifices to stay apart of it.

So to answer the question posed in the title of this blog… Is Austin Rivers my favorite Rocket now? You know, thats tough to answer. As I get older it becomes more and more difficult for me to have a “favorite player.” That title pretty much just goes to whoever is helping the Rockets win the most. Currently, and for the foreseeable future, that guy is James Harden. As long as he’s leading this team to the playoffs every year, he’s my guy. But with this decision, Austin became a player that I will always root for, regardless of how he’s playing or even who he plays with in the future (hopefully always Houston). I might even have to go hit up the NBA store for a #25 throwback jersey. Im not a big jersey guy, but out of the respect Rivers earned from me this week, I think I can find a nice place on my wall for one.

 

Sunday Thoughts (6-30-2019)

The final week of June is never all that eventful outside of NBA Free Agency rumors. Thats definitely the case this year as well. This week felt like at least two weeks, I’m not sure why but it just dragged on and on it seemed. That being said, here’s some of what passed through my brain the past 7 days… Plus, the debut of what will be a recurring “thought,” my Album of the Week.

 

– As I type this, we are less than 2 hours away from the beginning of NBA Free Agency. This is probably the craziest FA season since LeBron’s first time leaving Cleveland, if not ever.

freeagents

– Players likely to be changing teams include; Kevin Durant, Kawhi Leonard, Jimmy Butler, Kyrie Irving, Kemba Walker, and DeAngelo Russell. Clay Thompson will have the opportunity to change teams as well, but he’s likely to stay in Golden State. Same goes for Kris Middleton in Milwaukee. Overall, close to half of the league will be available as FA’s tonight. The NBA landscape is about to change.

– UPDATE: Looks like KD and Kyrie are both headed to Brooklyn… Thoughts and prayers to Knicks fans!

– Jimmy Butler is the guy I am paying the most attention to. The Tomball, Texas native is supposed to meet with Houston about potentially joining the team that plays just about 30 minutes away from where he grew up. Rumors are coming in that Jimmy’s preferred new team is the Miami Heat. While I think that would be a really bad decision for Butler, it kind of makes sense… He just looks like someone who would want to live in Miami. I don’t mean that in a good or a bad way (I don’t think).

– Major League Baseball’s Allstar break is quickly approaching. With that comes the Home Run Derby. I always here fans saying that competing in the Derby could mess up a swing… I just don’t get that. Its just like batting practice for them. If anything, it should make them better… Also, its fun! Chill out and enjoy it. Christian Yelich agrees:

– I was lucky enough to get tickets to the Astros vs Pirates game this past Tuesday. I got to set in the club level section above the 3rd base dugout (no, I did not pay for them). It was really nice, but I can’t say I appreciated the smugness of the ushers and stadium employees. I got scolded for stopping to tie my shoe… “SIR! You cannot stand in front of that wall!” Apparently they need to keep that wall available for…. I don’t know something important. I kindly suggested she relax a little bit, she declined.

– If you like movies and music (rare, I know) you’re gonna want to check out this trailer for Yesterday. Brilliant concept, looks like a really fun movie. Trailer has been out for awhile, but I’ll share it here anyway. Defiantly gonna hit the theaters once this drops next month.

 

– I thought it’d be fun to share one album that I have been listening to each week. There’s no criteria whatsoever. Sometimes could be something new, but usually won’t be… For this week, we’re going with Mumford & Sons newest album, Delta. Pretty good stuff.

 

– NBA Free Agency is here… Buckle up!

 

-Josh