Holiday post

Just a few things I had on my mind when I took a break form the holiday madness.

I''m overjoyed that the Celtics didn't end up trading for Allen Iverson. Unless they were able to trade for him without giving up Green and Jefferson while still keeping all their future first round picks the trade would have given them a two year run where they were "interesting" but never truly title contenders, then they would have fallen back into mediocrity, completely undermining all the sacrifice they've made during the Danny Ainge era. If you want to reward the fans who've stood by the Celtics during their rough times, you have stop looking for quick fixes and make moves where the end result is a championship. Trading for AI would've resulted in two years of second round playoff losses, and no matter how fun it is to watch Iverson break a defenders ankles, winning a title is a lot more fun, and after Iverson's short run the team would quickly fall back into mediocrity. With the Iverson to Boston saga completely over I want to note that the argument for the trade which enraged me the most was the whole "Pierce would be fine playing with Iverson, because he had to share the ball with 'Toine" argument. I don;t know who originated this argument, it was either started by an Antoine hater, someone who didn;t ever watch those Celtics teams, or someone who doesn't truly understand the game. Anotine Walker deferred to Paul Pierce almost from day one. Antoine has always been willing to do what's best for the team to win. For all his faults, Walker was a winner, and he understood that Paul was the man on those teams, something that Iverson would never have been willing to accept.

As far as Iverson going to Denver, this is just a disaster waiting to happen. Iverson will do his best to be a team player and distributor once 'Melo comes back, but it's really not in his nature. Once the chips are on the line in the playoffs, Iverson will instinctively try to be "The Man" and the team will crumble, I'm predicting a first round loss again in the playoffs. Maybe in the Eastern Conerfence they could fool us for a while and make it to the confernce fuinals, but this team is not a good blend, Iverson will probably be aksing for a trade behind the scenes by the off-season, and if George Karl is still around, he might want to grant AI that wish.

So that's my final say on this whole Allen Iverson saga. Moving onto a far more interesting sport, I was driven top madness yesterday while watching the Cowboys/Eagles match-up. If I had seen Carrie Underwood one more time, I may have thrown my TV out the window. The only thing that enabled me to tough it out was the complete thrashing the Eagles laid on the 'Boys. I will admit that part of what annoyed me was just the idea of Romo hooking up with the very hot Underwood, who while hot as an American Idol contestant, is now almost twice as hot. Romo doesn;t deserve such a prize. Hopefully the hype around Romo and the rest of his fraud team will be dying down now. On the other side of the coin, I can;t be more happy for Jeff Garcia who has undergone a total redemption and now should get his own starting job in the NFL. Last night must've been extra sweet for him, beating TO, the man who publicly blased Garcia and questioned his sexuality. Garcia has always been a class act and it feels good to see him beat TeRash in a big spot like that.

I watched The DaVinci Code yesterday, and it kicked ass. I don;t what all the hullbaloo was about last summer when it came out, it was a good movie, kept you on the edge of your seat and would've been well wrth the trip to the theater. This strikes me as another situation wehere people wanted the movie to fail after all the hype before-hand. A phenomenon I've been accutely aware of ever since Waterworld in the mid-90s (which remains an underrated movie.)

Not to be the last one to announce it, but the Justin Timberlake video episod of Satruday Night Live was the funniest the show has been in years. It was like they pulled out all the stops, brought back some of the funniest skit and ideas from the last couple years and threw them all together for one episode. It goes beyond the "Dick in a Box" video (which was as good as anything on the show since Will Ferrell left.) They had a new Target sketch, which is probably the best current recurring sketch going right now, the brought back Jimmy Fallon for another phenomenal installment of the Barry Gibb talk show. And Justin Timberlake proved that he's a pretty funny guy, his best display of this was as the singing cup of soup collecting money for "homelessville."

I wanted to say a sad goodbye to James Brown, who gave us great music for so long, and more recently gave us some great moments of unintentional comedy. I'm not black, but I have to think that if I was, Say It Loud (I'm black and I'm Proud) would be my jam, as it is I'll just have to pump it when no ones around, with a little Living in America mixed in.

Thats all I got for today, hopefully I'll be back soon.

-Bender Out