Book Review and the NBA

I guess one good thing about being sick for two weeks is you suddenly have plenty of time to read. First up is The Last Season by Phil Jackson, the coach of Kobe's Team (previously known as the Los Angeles Lakers.)

This was a fun read. I'm into sports but have never really read sports books, so when I saw this on Amazon for 5 bucks I couldn't pass it up. The book is a compilation of journal entries written by the Zenmeister during the Lakers ill-fated 2004 season (the year Karl Malone defected from the Jazz to join a team that actually had a chance to win the Finals). Very interesting to get an inside account of what life is like in the NBA; the egos, the arguments, the tantrums -- Kobe is even more immature than you would think. So are most of these guys.

Jackson is an interesting person himself. He has a passion for the sport and coaching, yet somehow keeps himself distanced from everyone and everything. He also claims to be a basketball purist, interested only in team ball and unselfish play, making it hard to understand how he could return to the Lakers and orchestrate one of the most individualistic, show-boating teams in history.

(Disclaimer: If you're not into the NBA, the rest of this post won't be even remotely interesting to you)

And while we're on the subject of the NBA, let me just take a moment to say this:

I AM WAY SMARTER THAN ALL THE SPORTSWRITERS AND SO-CALLED EXPERTS OUT THERE.

I'm not even kidding. These guys don't know anything. Here were my predictions at the beginning of the playoffs, as soon as the match-ups were decided:

Round One
EAST WEST
Detroit over Milwaukee in 4 San Antonio over Kings in 5
Miami over Chicago in 5 Phoenix over Lakers in 6
NJ over Indiana in 6 Clippers over Denver in 7
Cleveland over Wash in 6 Dallas over Memphis in 5

Round Two
Miami over NJ in 5
Detroit over Cleveland in 6
Phoenix over Clips in 6
Dallas over S.A. in 7

Conference Finals
Dallas over Phoenix in 6
Miami over Detroit in 7

Finals
Dallas vs. Miami

A blue city name means I got the winner right, a blue number means I either nailed the amount of games or I got closer than Bill Simmons of ESPN.com, who I used as a comparison (because he's my favorite writer). Simmons had the Lakers playing Dallas in the conf. finals and losing, and a Detroit/Dallas finals. As you can see, I got every team right, including Miami and Dallas in the Finals. If we were to scrore predictions giving one point for choosing the correct team and another for calling the game number, I would have 23 points. Simmons would have 15. And he did better than most.

Check these chumps out: ESPN EXPERT PICKS . The 5 resident experts at ESPN.com gave their picks for each series in the playoffs. They were wrong most of the time. Only one had Miami beating Detroit, only two had Dallas beating San Antonio, and 3 of them picked New Jersey to beat the Heat. Instead the Heat won in 5.

Who are these guys? How can they be "experts" when they can't even call half the games right? Would you trust a mechanic who is right less than half the time? How about a doctor who diagnoses correctly only 40% of the time? Er...ok, those are both poor examples. Forget I said that.

Anyways, I guess my point is that people should pay me to watch sports and then tell them what I think. Really. This needs to happen. Because as far as I'm concerned, I've just exposed the leading experts as frauds. You'll notice that I left my Finals pick unidentified. That's because it is right, and I refuse to share my talent of foresight without some sort of compensation.

Interested parties can contact me through a comment on this blog. Special rates for David Stern, ABC Network execs, and Charles Barkley if he gives me a cut. I'm your Rain Man Charles.