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No offense to the great Mr. Abdul-Jabbar, who lost his priceless collection of over 3000 Jazz albums in a tragic 1983 house fire, but even HE must be impressed by Baron Davis' Jazz-scorching performance on Friday night.
Many of Kareem's LP's were replaced by a legion of sympathetic friends and fans, and after last night, Baron Davis' fan base is growing exponentially. Baron's 32 Points led the Warriors to a surprisingly definitive 125-105 victory over Utah to cut the Jazz' series lead to 2-1. Besides being the game's leading scorer, Davis also put up 9 Assists, 4 Rebounds, and 6 Steals.
The Warriors dominated all but about 5 minutes of this game, behind Davis' refuse-to-lose attitude. Davis was slicing and dicing heroic Derek Fisher and the Utah Defense with a tenacity that would have made O.J. envious. And on this night, Davis was finishing these penetrations with gusto.
Baron had a series of three highlight-reel plays that really brought down the house. The first one included a seamless 360-degree turn, the second was a laws-of-science-defying reverse lay-up. and the third, which might just be one of the greatest dunks in History, was a tomahawk facial of 6' 9" shot-blocking machine Andrei Kirilenko. The Golden State bench was doubling over in gleeful pain at the sheer nastiness of this slam, over a guy who has 16 blocked shots in this Series already. Apparently, Baron even excited himself, because after the shot, he grabbed his jersey and lifted it up to expose his (erect?) nipples. His over-exuberant display earned him a Technical Foul, but the game was well in hand at that point, and if ever someone deserves to celebrate, it's Davis. Remember, the Warriors hadn't even BEEN to the Playoffs in 13 years, and a loss in Game 3 would have meant the end of this magical run.
Speaking of magical runs, the Bruins won another Championship, sort of, and they did it at U$C.
The gameshow "Jeopardy" just held their College Tournament -- in the Galen Center on Figueroa -- and "Cliff" from UCLA was the Winner, much to the chagrin of all the resident UCLA-haters.
The Bruin bested contestants from Notre Dame and Stanford, leaving the trojan audience in serious distress. The trojan marching band and their Cheerleaders all had to sit there and watch UCLA triumph in their faces, just like what just happened in Football, Basketball, and Baseball.
Of course with an academic endeavor like this, was there ever any doubt that the Final would be trojan-less? To re-revive an old joke that Letterman revived last night: The trojans DO have "Honor Students:" They say "Yes, Your Honor," "No, Your Honor," all the time. So the trojan faithful had to do the nearly unthinkable and root for a student from Stanford, and even worse, a student from Notre Dame, just to see them both choke and go down in shameful defeat to the trojans' most-hated Rival of all.
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Once again, we hope that Kareem isn't offended by today's sub-headline. We like and respect the man, AND, the fire was 24 years ago, AND we believe that the collection was somewhat restored, AND, judging from his appearance in "Airplane!," he must have a great sense of humor.
"Tell your DAD to try dragging Walton and Lanier up and down the court for 48 minutes..."
And while we're in pre-emptive apology mode: Hey Mollie -- The above photo is about as daring as we have gotten in years. If it's "too much," please let us know and we'll promptly (but sadly) pull it down.
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