You call that perfect?
Sean Storms, a collector with more money then sense, just spent $200,000 on a graded “perfect” Michael Jordan 1986-87 Fleer Card. The card is considered Jordan’s “rookie” card, even though his rookie season in the NBA was 1985-86.
Beckett, publisher of the most popular sports card price guide and the company that graded the card, published the story on their website about the card’s sale to Sean Storms. They claim in the article that the card is perfect, yet if you look the actual ratings of the card, it’s not really perfect. If it was perfect, it would rate solid 10’s in every category. This card doesn’t have solid 10’s. Beckett rated the card’s surface as a 9.5 out of 10. If it was in fact perfect, they would have assigned a perfect 10 to not only the Centering, Edges, and Corners, but the to the Surface too.
This card isn’t perfect.
If you want to impress me, show me a graded 1986-87 Fleer Michael Jordan with solid 10’s. You do that and I just might just start bowing like Obama in Japan.
One of my favorite basketball cards comes from the same set. It’s a 1986-87 Fleer Kurt Rambis card, number 89 in the set. It, like the Jordan card, is considered the Rambis rookie card. I was able to pick it up for fifty cents at a card show at the Ruritan in Mauginsvile, Maryland. It was quite a score because the card usually goes for around $2. I handed the gentleman selling the card a one dollar bill and not only did I get a mint Rambis rookie card, I got two shinny quarters as well.
It was a wonderful day.
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar has leukemia
The greatest basketball player to ever play the game, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, has announced that he has a rare form of leukemia, chronic myeloid leukemia. He’s taking an oral medication for the blood cancer. [ESPN]
King James
I’m pretty sure people will be talking about this shot long after LeBron James retires from the NBA, gets a pot belly, and invents his very own hot dog cooker or a solar powered crock-pot.
With time expiring, LeBron James of the Cleveland Cavaliers launches a three-pointer from around 23 feet to win the game. This ties the best-of-seven series with the Orlando Magic to one game each.
This is why you watch sports. You hope that you might luck out and see a shot like this happen with time expiring. The proverbial buzzer beater.
I just want to go on the record and say that LeBron James is an awesome basketball player. I realize I’m really sticking my neck out on this, but that’s just the way I roll.
Chuck Daly 1930 – 2009
Former NBA coach Chuck Daly passed away from late stage pancreatic cancer. He was 78.
Though I hated the Detroit Pistons when he was coaching them, I always liked Daly. Now that I think about it, it makes absolutely no sense. His Pistons were tough, physical, and liked to play a little dirty. They did this under the direction of Daly. They were the team he made them to be. So why would I like the man?
He also coached the Dream Team in the Olympics. The real one. The one with Michael Jordan, Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, and Christian Laettner.
He always wore really nice suites and he took great care with his hair. He was a very stylish man.
He went on to coach the New Jersey Nets and the Orlando Magic after the Pistons, but he didn’t win any championship with either of those two teams.
John Calipari is really kind of a douche
John Calipari held a press conference in Lexington, Kentucky yesterday announcing that he is the new men’s basketball coach at the University of Kentucky. He said that it had been his “dream” of coaching at Kentucky since he brought his UMass team to Kentucky back in 1992.
He wanted to come to Kentucky so badly that it only required an eight-year, $31.65 million contract to get him to leave Memphis. John Calipari is now the highest paid basketball coach in history. That is, until some other university’s athletic director is desperate enough to over-pay for a coach.
That’s a lot of money for a coach who has never won a championship. Actually, that’s a lot of money no matter which way you slice it.
If he wanted to go to Kentucky so badly, why didn’t he just jump ship for the same amount of money he was making over at Memphis? Why did he need such a massive pay raise to fulfill his dream? Only last year he signed a $2.35 million contract extension with Memphis that would take him through the 2012-13 season. Why doesn’t he have to honor that contract? I guess Kentucky is paying Memphis some kind of buyout on Calipari’s contract, but you’d think that being under contract would prohibit a coach from jumping ship like this.
This really puts the Memphis program in a bad situation. Not only will players who have already committed to Memphis now most likely break their commitment like Calipari and follow him to Kentucky, the university will have a hard time attracting a quality coach to replace him. They gave Calipari job nine years ago when nobody else would.
Memphis doesn’t deserve this.
One more reason not to watch the Olympics
Evidently there is a WNBA point guard named Becky Hammon that plays for the San Antonia Stars. She’s raised quit the stink in some circles because she will be going to the 2008 summer Olympics to play basketball. Why is the causing people to complain? Because even though she is American, she will be playing for Russia.
Some are calling her a traitor.
Though I wouldn’t go so far as to say that someone playing for another county’s Olympic teams rises to the level of being a traitor, it does demonstrate just how jive the Olympics has become.
It used to be about representing your country. It used to be about standing on the podium as your national anthem was played. I’m old enough to remember when the U.S. Hockey team beat the Russians at the 1980 winter Olympics at Lake Placid. It actually meant something.
Becky Hammon isn’t the first athlete to represent a country other then her own and I doubt she wont be the last. It just goes to show what happens when people put their own desires above that of everyone else. She obviously wants an Olympic gold medal and she doesn’t care how she has to get it.
The Olympics used to be exciting because the players were representing their country. The Olympic athletes with the USA logo on their uniform were representing all of us. Now that is simply not the case. The players who now go to the Olympics are in it only for themselves. Players like Becky Hammon.
Is she a traitor? No, she’s just selfish.
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