One Picture, Every Decade

I was checking out this picture of two floppy-haired bros shooting hoops against each other.

And I was looking at it really intense style and then I unlocked the key, which isn't how that metaphor works. But I uncovered the hidden message. I think it's a Da Vinci Code thing, because this picture recalls every era of NBA basketball, except for the 1940 which hardly count.

BREAK-DOWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWNNNNNNNNNNNNNN

• 50s - non-muscular, light skinned legs, a hallmark of the early all white NBA.
• 60s - unkempt 'power to the people' hair and ineffective headbandery recalls the Summer of Love
  
• 70s - faux-tro wine and gold Cleveland Cavaliers uniforms
• 80s - too short shorts
• 90s - a center part and five o'clock shadow, ladies
  
• 00s - pointlessly updated Los Angeles Lakers jerseys
• 10s - this picture was taken in 2010

So basically this is the perfect picture for our times. Every true NBA fan would have it tattooed on their back, with the annotations so that it makes sense.

The NBA is a melting pot. We put in European and Argentinean chocolates, melt those chocolates together, and then after they have combined to form a nice Euro-Argentine chocolate paste we spread it on wheat toast and maybe put a little honey on top of the chocolate paste and enjoy it. Maybe we have another piece or maybe we get diabetes, we can't see the future.

"Tomorrow never knows." -- Ringo Starr
"For real." -- Trey Kerby

Celebrities Like LeBron James

It's a scientific fact that sometimes celebrities like basketball. And sometimes even pseudo-celebrities like basketball, most notably Billy Crystal. In fact, both real and kind of celebrities sometimes like basketball so much that they sometimes attend games, even in Oakland. It happened just last night, when the Cleveland Cavaliers visited the Golden State Warriors. In the name of journalism, I checked in with these stars to see what they thought of LeBron James dunking a lot.

• Christopher Lee - "No, I'm not Ian McKlellan, who is a dear friend of mine. I am Sir Christopher Lee, perhaps better known as Saruman. Tis it noble of me to mention my roles? I carest not, for I have played Count Dooku AND Doctor Scaramanga. CHARLEMAGNE!"
• Mark Wahlberg - "Hey LeBron. That's a nice dunk. You jump pretty high. My brother jumped off a roof once. Say hi to your mother for me."
• Lynne Spears - "Sure he's a successful child prodigy now, but just wait."
• Andy Garcia (not pictured) - "Can I get some better seats please? Like something out of the upper bowl?
  

Surprising LeBron James Facts

Favorite Book: Shooting Stars

Favorite Movie: More Than a Game

Favorite Record: Music Inspired by More Than a Game

Play Count of "Forever" (according to iTunes since 8-27-09): 846

Basketball Championships Won by The Blowtorch Proprietors While Wearing LeBron James Shoes: 1

Basketball Championships Won by LeBron James While Wearing LeBron James Shoes: 1

Favorite Food: fusili with alfredo sauce

Favorite Gum (packaging): LeBron's Lightning Lemonade

Favorite Gum (taste): Quench Gum - Fruit Punch

Least Favorite Gum (taste): LeBron's Lightning Lemonade

Owns a Ferrari named "LeRrari".

Favorite LeBron from "The LeBrons": Business LeBron

Least Favorite LeBron from "The LeBrons": none

Favorite Harry Potter Book: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

Least Favorite Harry Potter Book: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

Favorite Comedian: LeBron James on Saturday Night Live

Least Favorite Comedian: LeBron James on the ESPYs

Headband is made of 2300 thread count Egyptian cotton.

The LeBron James Conspiracy

Remember this?
Enhance.Enhance.

Good. Now look at this.

It is blatantly obvious that I have uncovered another great deception in the NBA. There are only three logical explanations for this.

1. LeBron James has a twin brother named LaRon James who does not have perfect vision and is starting to bald. LaRon often stands in for LeBron when he feels the situation is either too dangerous or too inconsequential. We'll call this the Tony Clifton Scenario. This is the most likely.
   
   
2. There is some bro who looks a lot like LeBron James and is trying to capitalize on his fame and money. We'll call this the Frank Abignale Scenario. This is the second most likely, which is why it is listed second.
   
   
3. LeBron James wears glasses. This is not very likely because he is superhuman and therefore has superhuman vision. While it might be a Superman kind of thing, that persona has been co-opted by too many other athletes that a brazen copyright infringement would not go unchecked in NBA back channels. This can be discredited.

Like I said, it's most likely that there is a LeBron James twin that no one knows about. The only differences betwixt the two are the glasses, loss of hair, and complete lack of athletic ability. If you have seen The Prestige, you'll quickly realize that this is something that has been planned since LeBron realized he could become famous. By using a twin he is able to be in two places at once, which is hugely marketable. Plus it will extend LeBron's career because it will save the wear and tear of travelling around the globe.

As the old saying says, you never know when a famous athlete will have a less athletic brother with wacky hair that the Phoenix Suns will want to draft.

LeBron, Kobe, and the Battle of Asia

Kinda worried about Asia, guys. Follow this chain of events:

First, Kobe Bryant forces the Lakers to sign Sun Yue as an olive branch of sorts to the Chinese. However, because it's Kobe, there's more to the signing. He knows that adding a Chinese player to the roster increases his visability in China. Following the signing, Kobe makes Sun Yue sit next to him on every airplane and bus ride they take, even though he doesn't speak a word of Chinese.

Then, LeBron James convinces Nike to run in ad campaign in China, depicting him as the rightful heir to the throne formerly inhabited by the Bearded Man and Young Girl. As all Chinese know, these two former rulers were ousted by the Angry Man who has tyrannically ruled over China for centuries. Not until LeBron have the Chinese had a worthy adversary to Angry Man.

Then, Kobe takes a tour of Asia where he promotes his super light shoe. At every turn he derides LeBron's shoe for being too clunky. The Chinese take a liking to Kobe's shoes, mostly because they look better with high-end denim. Also, they're not that upset with Angry Man, he's just misunderstood.

Angered that Kobe has usurped his throne as reigning shoe maven in China, LeBron installs a massive video screen in his house that allows him to interact with the Chinese in real time. The video screen is wired in to China's closed circuit television mainframe, which gives LeBron the ability to interrupt any program with very important news. As you can see, the Chinese are delighted.

Finally, Kobe commissions the construction of a large, friendly looking robot which has been embraced by the Chinese. Unbeknownst to them, however, the robot is programmed so that if LeBron ever interrupts a Kobe commeercial or program it will systematically destroy whichever metropolis it is near. Savvy as he is, Kobe informed LeBron of this robot's capabilities and programming, leaving the onus on LeBron to not invoke it's wrath, in essence limiting LeBron's television control.

As you can see, LeBron and Kobe are at a standstill in the Asian markets. This perilous truce could eventually lead to out and out destruction and sure retaliation. I encourage you to write your local councilman protesting the arms race in Asia and the Pacific Islands. It is only a matter of time before these two rivals incite a third World War.

LeBron James Listens to "I Gotta Feeling"

So yeah, like, I'm really looking forward to playing with Shaq. And to next summer.

I gotta feeling...

Y'all hear that?

That tonight's gonna be a good night...
Tonight's gonna be a good good night...

Aww yeah. This that Black Eyed Peas song, right?

I got my money
Let's spend it up
I LOVE THIS SONG! THIS IS THE BEST PART!!!!!!

Mike Brown Sons Shaq at a Freestyle Battle

Uh

Uh

I gets busy / Call me Big Shaq D

Or The Big Freestyle / Doesn't matter to me

Killin' fools on the mic since I been about six

Flow so ill / Get Tylenol sick

Rippin' rhymes, rhymin' raps like my name Jay-Z

I'm a bad mammajamma call me Shaq Ali

I done rocked this beat / Pass the mic to Coach

Call him Meek Mike / He too scared to approach

(Shaq drops the microphone and enters the crowd, celebrating his presumed victory.)

(After Shaq has returned to the stage, Mike Brown casually picks up the microphone.)

Call me Meek Mike / Well I guess he's kinda right

Since I'll inherit this Earth cause my flow so tight

Ain't no Terry Porter / Ain't no S-V-G

Just remember, Bron's one, I'm two, you're three

See that's how it goes / I'ma put you in your place

Basically you're here just to take up space

Get back in shape / So your fat won't cost us

Or I'll have to sit you for Zydrunas Ilgauskas

A History of Bad Trades Throughout History

Lamar Odom trades the lives of many Trojans for a large horse, explaining "Hey guys, free horse!"

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Dick Rowe chooses to sign Brian Poole and The Tremeloes to a record contract, rather than The Beatles.

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I offer Danny Solecki a Jamal Mashburn/Dino Radja card package for a Grant Hill rookie card. He accepts.

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Cuba Gooding, Jr. willfully utters the line "Hey Michael! I'm wearing your underwear!" and receives several thousand dollars from Hanes. In return, he loses his dignity.

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The Cleveland Cavaliers acquire Shaquille O'Neal.

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Art Review: On the Beach

Summary
A man buried in sand up so that only his nose and mustache show is approached by a crab.

Insight
As many know, Adam Morrison's greatest contribution to the game of basketball is his mustache. Ergo, the mustache represents Morrison, who is currently a member of the Los Angeles Lakers. However, since Morrison is not a particularly skilled player, he is relegated to the bench. In essence, he is "buried" there, hence the sand.

We also notice the crab menacingly approaching the mustache and nose. In January of 2009, LeBron James was called for a travelling violation, which he explained was simply a "crab dribble." Clearly, the crab is a physical manifestation of LeBron James. The crab refers back to his attempted explanation, while its features (sharp claws, bright colors, enormous head) relate to LeBron's prominence in the NBA.

In this photograph, the crab appears poised to strike the mustache. Given the obvious Morrison/James connectionsin this scene, we can assume that the picture is a meditation on James' anger and frustration that such a peripheral athlete as Morrison might have the ultimate triumph, an NBA title, while being "buried" on the bench.

Estimated price at auction
$10,000-20,000

(Note: the value of this piece will increase if the Lakers win this year's championship and will further increase each year that James does not.)

A Few Words from V.A.S.T. CEO LeBron James

Hey America, CEO and co-founder of Variegated Advanced Scientific Technologies, LeBron James here. I just wanted to let you all know that our shrinking experiment has been a great success.

Also, the resizing program is going according to schedule. Mr. Bryant has already returned to 95% of his original size. We anticipate that the process will be completed early next week. Thank you for your support and concern.

Variegated Advanced Scientific Technologies' Shrinking Ray

Hi, I'm LeBron James, basketball player for the Cleveland Cavaliers, MVP of the NBA, but most importantly, CEO and founder of Variegated Advanced Scientific Technologies, V.A.S.T. for short.

For the past three years, V.A.S.T. has championed the advancement of science and technology, and has made many discoveries that will change your life. We've funded private space travel, travelled back and forth in time, and have even implanted hydraulic endoskeletons. And while our successes haven't yet been made public, all that changes today.

That's right. For the first time ever, V.A.S.T. will be performing a public testing of one of our newest products. We've been working on our shrinking ray for about a year now, and after doing some animal testing we've finally perfected the molecular biology that allows us to shrink any object to any size. In fact, that was the easy part. Getting the object back to normal size has been tricky, but we've got that covered too. So let's get this thing fired up.

Since this is such a new technology, we couldn't let our test subject know ahead of time what we'd be doing. However, this is totally safe, and my engineers have informed me that there is little to no chance of any injury. With that in mind, I'd like to present our test subject, Mr. Kobe Bryant.

As you can see in this "before" picture, Kobe fills out his suit quite well. It's perfectly tailored to his body, snug where it should be, but not restrictive. Keep that in mind while I set the V.A.S.T. shrinking ray to 85%. Here we go.

shoots Kobe with ray

Look at that! He's swimming in his clothes! And those headphones look enormous! Clearly, this is another in a long line of successes for V.A.S.T. Since we're not ready to debut our resizing program quite yet, we'll have to take Kobe back to our laboratories. But rest assured, he'll be back to full size in no time.

Thank you everyone for being here. Remember V.A.S.T. isn't just for me, it's for all of us.

The Fable of Ben Wallace

In the Bible, there's the story of Samson and Delilah. Given his luscious locks, Samson is told he'll have unfathomable strength as long as he never cuts his hair. However, enticed by Delilah, his hair does get cut and he loses all his strength. Whoops.

However, I don't think the Bible mentions that before his haircut, Samson's productivity would drastically decrease to the point where he's considered one of the worst free agent signings in history. Or that he had an entire metropolitan fan base upset that he was a part of their team. And it's probably glossed over, but I'm pretty sure that Samson never had his hair in cornrows.

Oh, and Samson could shoot freethrows.

Frenchmen Hate Shiny Weapons

A lot of the time I just sit and think about various things about the NBA. This usually takes up between 4 and 6 hours of my day, or basically all the time when I'm not working.

Sometimes I think about what teams are good. Sometimes I think about what teams are bad. Sometimes I think about how Mo Williams and LeBron James have tattoos that look so much alike that it's not surprising they play well together.

Other times, I look at pictures of Dwight Howard rebounding. When he's rebounding it looks like he's standing in air. Look:

See, Dwight's just standing. Anderson Varejao, "Snickerface" to his family, is trying to grab the ball, but he can't because he can't levitate and stand like Dwight Howard. This is why Dwight is such a good rebounder.

Being a blogger who uses a lot of visual jokes, I also like to use Google, which is a prominent search engine like Lycos and Ask Jeeves. Just this morning I used Google Image Search (a subsidiary of Google) to see if I could find a wacky picture of Wally Szczerbiak since I just memorized how to spell his name. Turns out when you Google (image version) Wally Szczerbiak, you get a lot of pictures of Wally Szczerbiak without his shirt on, looking like a basketball player people would say looks like a model. It's actually quite funny. To save you a step, here is a hyperlink that will take you to the page I'm talking about if you click on it:

Click this hyperlink that I was talking about at the end of the previous paragraph.

Here's another funny observation that I had last night during the basketball game between the Cleveland Cavaliers and Orlando Magic. Because Wally Szczerbiak (see above) was doing well at basketball and his father happened to be in town, they showed a lot of crowd shots of Walt Szczerbiak. Within seconds of seeing him, I used my memory of people's faces to realize that he looks similar to Utah Jazz head coach Jerry Sloan.

This is Jerry Sloan:

This is Walt Szczerbiak:

As you can see from those two photographs that I displayed above, both men have very grey hair which is parted on the left side of their head. Additionally, their faces have similar bone structure and features. However, in that photograph of Walt Szczerbiak, he is sporting a dashing mustache, which I can assure you was not present during the Cleveland Cavaliers versus Orlando Magic game that took place last evening. Isn't this an astute observation?

One last thing that I noticed while using Google (image version) to look for a photograph of Walt Szczerbiak is that when he was younger he looked like character actor Casey Affleck, while he portrayed the titular character in the motion picture The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, a movie about the mastermind behind the World Wrestling Federation's Degeneration X being killed by the man who invented cars.

I will now show you a picture of Walt Szczerbiak when he was younger:

And this is Casey Affleck, brother of Ben Affleck, in the movie about wrestling:

Isn't the resemblance striking? The each have disheveled hair, gingivitis, and prostethic limbs. That's why I made that observation.

Thanks for reading!

1000 Words: Mo Williams Has Some Advice

The Blowtorch Presents ... Brian Eno and Joe Satriani Go NBA

Play The Blowtorch Presents...Brian Eno and Joe Satriani Go NBA

Wherein:

• A new co-host is introduced.
• Brian Eno produces various Joe Satriani riffs and licks.
• Trades are discussed.
• Eric Snow is addressed.
• Music from Jay-Z and Santogold
  

Also, subscribe to The Blowtorch Presents in iTunes and leave some reviews.