Wizards23 Update

Fourteen to go. Argh:

 

And now the new guy from Australia still has one more game to play down there.

NBA23 Update

I'm still watching Innsbruck 1976, but, now that NFL22 is over, I'm getting excited about paying attention to NBA23. I'm trying to remember who won NBA22. I'm going to look it up and confirm, but I think it was the Golden State Warriors. I'm pretty sure they are good again, but I will find out as I go through Zach Harper's "Power Rankings" for The Athletic, which I am thankful to get to read.

OK, I just checked, and I was right that the Warriors are good again, according to phenomenal Basketball Reference ...

You have to finish in your conference's top 10 to continue playing after the regular season. The NBA makes a big distinction between the "Play-In Tournament," which involves the seventh- through 10th-place regular-season finishers, and the "Playoffs," which involves the first- through sixth-place finishers plus the two Play-In survivors per conference. That's fine. I mean, it's all postseason/playoff stuff to me, but I'm fine with calling them whatever they want to be called.

Anyway, chase is that you want to be in the top 10 in your conference. The Warriors, at the moment, are. Even more importantly, the Wizards, at the moment, are! So I'm excited. If the Wizards fall out of the top 10, I probably will lose interest, but, for now, I'm excited.

Comments flow!

NBA23 Update

I intend to watch a lot more NBA this season, and there are two things I want to say about the league to get the 2022-23 ball rolling.

Number 1, the Washington Wizards have two players on their current roster with whom I share a birthday, and that's got to be a good sign. 

In 1995, I was living in Falls Church, Virginia, and around the time of Aug. 2 that year, someone attempted to break in to my apartment while we were all asleep upstairs. It was terrifying. Also at the time, my girlfriend and I were starting to split. And I had a pretty good little journaling discipline where I made myself write something I learned on that given day (in addition to listing everyone with whom I had an interaction, writing some memory and writing about where and how I would be spending that day if I could do so in however I wanted). Here's what I wrote for the "learned" prompt one of the days near Aug. 2:

continuing with page 701 of the dictionary in my cubicle:

•  eucharist - means communion.  it comes from a greek word meaning gratitude.

•  communion - an act of sharing of ideas, opinions or feelings; a religious fellowship; a group of christians with a common religious faith who observe the same rituals, a denomination; the christian sacrament in which consecrated bread and wine are partaken of in celebration of christ's last supper; the elements of the sacrament; the part of a mass or other religious ritual in which communion is received.

also, i learned - again, according to the pamphlet the u.s. government gave its soldiers - that in vietnam public displays of affection between men and women are widely frowned upon.  it is not uncommon, however, to see two male friends walking hand-in-hand.  also, indirect hinting is the best way to handle a request rather than being straightforward.  and, the common outstanding feature of vietnamese homes is an altar which holds a tablet bearing the names of all of that family's ancestors - at least as far back as the great-grandfather.  apparently, these altars can be as large as one-sixth of the floor space of an entire house.

Then here's what I journaled on my birthday in 1999:

A nice birthday. Spent it with my mom, my oldest brother, my sister-in-law, one of my nephews, one of my nieces. Broken-down car. No home. No girlfriend. Felt strange. Still focused on the haven'ts. My life is richer than for which I give it credit.

The car broke down somewhere in Tennessee or Alabama. I hustled and got myself a Greyhound seat that evening to Evansville and arrived in time for an impromptu birthday party with the fam. En route, the Greyhound made an extended stop on U.S. 41 on the north end of Madisonville for smokers on the bus to smoke in the parking lot of a hotel that no longer stands. It's a tenth of a mile from where my daughter is attending high school at this very moment. 

So, in summary, Number 1 that I want to say about NBA23 is, one just never knows. Season starts Oct. 18. Wizards tip next night, at Indiana.

Number 2, I really hope the Wizards sign DeMarcus Cousins.