Linkin’ Center: Fearing Deer, Pigs, & 80’s Commercials

For those who don’t know, the Milwaukee Bucks came up with a great awful slogan this year: Fear The Deer.  Apparently it was either that or “The Buck Don’t Suck.”  In a bizarre real-life twist, while their final playoff game was being watched at a Milwaukee bar, two deer literally smashed through the establishment’s glass front doors, charging into the place and causing, well, fear.

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Great quotes in an ESPNLosAngeles article from Jazz’s starting center, Kyrylo Fesenko, who normally would be lucky to see any game time.  Since regular starter Mehmet Okur is out, the star-struck Fesenko has been pushed into the spotlight.  He was caught watching the “kiss-cam” and other things on the JumboTron:

“I’m not checking it out during the meeting, but when the huddle is broken and the players are sitting, I’ll look — it’s fun.”

Add in the Los Angeles celebrities populating the court side seats:

“I was really flattered that Sylvester Stallone shook my hand while we were passing by on Sunday. That’s really huge that Sylvester Stallone shook my hand. I was speechless; I wanted to say something but nothing came out.”

[He] experienced his highlight moment of the game when he committed a loose-ball foul with 1.2 seconds remaining in the half, 90 feet from the Lakers’ basket. The play prompted Jack Nicholson to scream from his courtside seat, “He hit his arm, what the [expletive] are you looking at! Get in the [expletive] game!” The smile on Fesenko’s face when he was told Nicholson was heckling him was as wide as a tourist strolling down the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

What does he think about Utah’s notoriously tough coach, Jerry Sloan?

“He was in the NBA when my mom was born, so he probably knows more than me. I saw tapes of him as a player and I wouldn’t want to play against him.”

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The All-Defensive Teams were announced today, and here are the results:

I can’t believe Kobe’s on the 1st team.  Don’t get me wrong, he can be a great defender, but he hasn’t consistently done it for a full season in years.  In fact, any time he does a good job defensively, it’s inevitable that the sportscasters will say how Kobe can be a great defender “when he puts his mind to it.”  I’d bet good money that you can’t find a game in recent years where a commentator lauded the Black Mamba’s defensive abilities without that caveat.  I mean a decent argument could be made that he’s not even the strongest defender on his own team (my guess is both Ron Artest and Andrew Bynum do more defensively for the Lakers).

For the most part the lists are pretty good, but here are a few guys who I think should get more pub for their defensive efforts:  Kendrick Perkins (who I just wrote about yesterday), Joakim Noah, Luc Richard Mbah a Moute (Milwaukee Bucks), Marcus Camby (not a great one-on-one defender, but still huge as a help defender as he showed when he was traded from Sucksville, aka the Clippers, to a team that wins, the Portland Trailblazers), Ron Artest, Dallas’ Brendan Haywood, Chicago’s Kirk Hinrich, Portland’s Nick Batum, and as we saw in the Lakers/Thunder series, aka his nationwide coming-out-party, Serge Ibaka.

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Yahoo’s Ball Don’t Lie, inspired by the ridiculous white-hot Kobe Bryant shoot, is doing a great collection of the 20 Most Bloggable NBA Photos Of The Internet Age.  So far they’ve put up #s 16-20 and also 11-15.  Here’s a taste:

16. Andrei Kirilenko chillin’ on a jet ski next to a pig.

There’s really not much else to be said about this picture that hasn’t been said already. I can’t even think of a place on Earth where you can ride on a jet ski while there are pigs on a beach. Then again, if you play in the NBA, I’m assuming you can afford to have pigs delivered to wherever you happen to be vacationing. It’s one of those perks you never hear about, but then once you do, you’re super jealous. Don’t act like you wouldn’t love a pig just hanging out with you all the time because you would. You totally would.

Oh, and for those who haven’t seen the Kobe photos from the LA Times Magazine article, here’s a sample of those too:

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Lastly, my friend Eyal wanted me to post this 80s shoe commercial.  Since I posted Shai 2010 Mock Draft picks, I figure I gotta be fair and post something from Eyal too.

Actually, he wanted me to do a whole post full of 80’s bball-related commercials, but the key to my life-long mediocrity has been to never give people exactly what they want.  So instead I’ll toss this up here too.  It’s a commercial from the 00’s, but it features 80’s-like footage.