January 29^th – February 4^th

-Blake Griffin dunks over Kendrick Perkins (January 30^th): For those of you who haven’t seen the dunk, check it out on Youtube. Everything about it is just nasty. And more and more, Griffin is trying for these semi-impossible dunks. 3-4 times a game he will take off from outside the paint with defenders littering the path to the basket. Griffin, now an advertising star involved with everything from KIA Motors to Funny or Die, seems to be trying to market himself with ridiculous dunks. It doesn’t spoil the times when he completes the dunk and makes your jaw drop, but it’s worth noting that Griffin misses these dunks more than he makes them – and some of the attempts are just downright foolish. Then again, type “Blake Griffin Misses a Dunk” into Youtube, and nothing will come up but videos of made dunks. In addition, there should be some sort of consensus for what a “dunk” is. Including this dunk over Perkins, Griffin’s two best career dunks aren’t really dunks at all (his other being last year’s tomahawk over Timothy Mosgov). They’re throw downs more than rim rattlers, and I think a person should have to touch the rim to constitute a dunk. But after researching this, I found out I’m wrong. A “slam dunk” is defined as: “A shot in which a player thrusts the ball emphatically down through the basket.” I’m not so sure about the “emphatically” part, as I’ve seen Aaron Gray throw down some dunks that were closer to “pathetic” than “emphatic”, but Griffin’s masterpiece over Perkins is nothing if not empathically thrusting the ball through the basket. The whole sequence is perfect, from Serge Ibaka mistakenly showing on a pick and roll that Russell Westbrook had already fought through, to CP3’s deft bounce pass, to Kendrick’s defensive instincts leading him into the poster, to Deandre Jordan’s instant bear hug, to Blake snapping out of that bear hug like a bad ass, to the announcer’s “Oh me, oh my!” – everything went off as if it were scripted. Griffin’s dunk was so nasty that everyone immediately forgot about Lebron James jumping over John Lucas III for an alley-oop dunk – LESS THAN 24 HOURS AFTER IT HAPPENED! Anything to steal a little of the spotlight from LBJ is welcome in my book, and Griffin’s dunk is the type that inspires people to borrow their nephew’s Fisher Price hoop and fly through the living room in slow motion. A fun game to play is inviting over a friend you love to rag on and make them play the Perkins to your Griffin. Make sure your testicles are directly in your friend’s face – ya know, for authenticity’s sake.

-Super Bowl Squares: Super Bowl XLVI (the only institution still repping Roman Numerals) is not until February 4^th, but the betting window opened two weeks ago. The most common Super Bowl bet is numbered squares, just a 10x10 grid of possible scores, and it’s by far the wager I hate the most, mainly because you can get screwed before the game even takes place. By betting on something as uncontrollable as exact scores, you’re already taking a wild chance. To tack on the possibility that your numbers can be way more unlikely than the others is a real kick in the nuts. If you’re forking over money to wager on something, you shouldn’t get the feeling you’ve been cheated, like you would when you get 5 and 2 as your numbers. You know the guy who gets 5 and 2: he’s the guy pounding beers in the corner at your Super Bowl party, only cheering during the commercials and secretly hoping some sort of terrorist plot blows up the stadium. But it’s worth looking into to see just how bad 5 and 2 are. Which are the best and worst numbers, and by how much? I found a site that tallied the data from all 266 NFL games so far this season (including the ten playoff games that have already happened). The result showed that (7, 0) is the best combination, closely followed (0, 3). This is news to no one, but the amount by which those numbers beat out the other numbers is absurd. 266 games offered 1,064 quarter scores. Of those 1,064…275 were comprised by the number combinations (7, 0) and (3, 0). Over 25% of the scores were represented by these two number combos alone. Since those numbers go backwards and forwards, the numbers represent only 4 squares on the 10x10 grid. So 4% of the squares ARE ACCOUNTING FOR 25% OF THE PROBABILITY. Take that fact along with the truth of a few other combinations, like: (2,2) (5,5) (9,9) (9,2) – which haven’t happened even once. Not one quarter score, in any NFL game, all season long, has ended in any of those number combinations. If you get (5,5) as your square, you might as well flush your money down the toilet and do something else with your Sunday. You’re fucked. But as for my previously-held belief that 5 and 2 are the worst numbers, I was wrong. There’s hope: that combination actually happened one time this year. One time. But I guess one time is all it takes.

-Soccer Riot in Egypt (February 1^st): Apparently, people in Egypt care a bit more about sports than Americans. After a soccer match between Al-Masry and Al-Ahly, the city of Port Said erupted into a war zone, leaving 74 confirmed dead and hundreds injured. I’m not sure what it is about soccer that lends to the image of the drunk hooligan causing problems, but I would tie it to the utter inanity of the sport. The game is so relaxed and spread out – the “football pitch” is far too big – and the exciting moments so few and far between, that I don’t blame people for drowning in alcohol and attaching emotion to a game bereft of it. The rules of the sport are ridiculous – ONLY THE REF KNOWS HOW MUCH TIME IS LEFT? WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT ALL ABOUT?! – but more importantly, the game doesn’t lend to an audience. I think, by necessity, soccer crowds plan to get rowdy, because that is the only way to justify being there. Egypt’s violence was probably a result of their recent struggles with governmental leadership and pre-existing regional unrest, but something should be said against soccer’s ability to provoke such nasty fervor. I think it’s high-time we send David Beckham’s sorry ass on a peacekeeping mission to suggest that people stop caring about soccer altogether. In America, we seem to get along just fine without soccer. Come on, I mean…soccer? We have drugs and prostitution and gangs and all those good, wholesome, American things to kill each other over. We don’t need soccer.