Tag: Tom Brady

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From My Seat Sports

Of Dreams and Ja

CREDIT: Larry Kuzniewski

The Memphis Grizzlies’ annual Martin Luther King Day game is the most important sporting event in this city. It provides Memphis — and not just our beloved NBA franchise — a national platform, one from which the powerful and inspiring work of the National Civil Rights Museum (NCRM) is on full display. It’s the rare sporting event that feels bigger. Because it is.
Larry Kuzniewski

Ja Morant

And this year’s game felt especially right, even with FedExForum empty of fans, even with pandemic conditions still heavy worldwide, even with our nation’s capital becoming, yes, a fortress for the upcoming inauguration of our 46th president. In the game’s closing seconds, a dynamic Black player (Ja Morant) found a sharp-shooting white teammate (Grayson Allen) who buried a game-winning three-pointer to beat one of the league’s best young teams. If you looked west shortly before Allen’s game-winner, you saw the new year’s most beautiful sunset, a lovely metaphor for the Grizzlies’ comeback victory against, of course, the Phoenix Suns. It felt . . . just right.

The TNT studio hosts were especially sentimental, Kenny Smith being one of this year’s three NCRM Sports Legacy Honorees. A two-time NBA champion (as a Houston Rocket), Smith and his more-provocative colleague — Hall of Famer Charles Barkley — were effusive in their gratitude for the platform the NBA has provided them, as Black men, to speak about topics more important than James Harden taking his talents to Brooklyn. Best of all, Smith, Barkley, and friends see what is rising in Memphis (on the hardwood): Morant, one of the league’s top two or three players under the age of 25, and Jaren Jackson Jr. — a future All-Star himself — soon to return from knee surgery. The Grizzlies keep Memphis proud, one year to the next, but particularly on MLK Day. I’m choosing to see their win this week as an omen for a year we all rise, as Memphians and as human beings.

• Memphis Tiger coach Penny Hardaway is a past recipient of the NCRM Sports Legacy Award. That was an especially happy day at FedExForum, a packed crowd — it was 2018 — saluting a past hero, one already rumored to be returning to the college program where he played a generation ago. Hardaway is surely calling on days like that right now, as his current Tiger team tries to find its way through a season already damaged by COVID-19 (three January games postponed) and the Tulsa Golden Hurricane (two losses after the Tigers led at halftime). Now 6-5, the Tigers face four games in eight days before the calendar turns to February. And a coach with top-five aspirations for his program now must wonder if 20 wins are within reach, let alone an NCAA tournament bid. Hardaway was philosophical last week during a virtual press conference, identifying the same cloud the rest of us do these days when things turn sour: “We’re trying to play through a pandemic. It’s not the worst thing. We have to be mindful, continue to be safe. You just have to work through the rigors of what’s happening.”

• I’ve written in this space about Tom Brady being the first one-man dynasty in the history of American team sports. The 43-year-old quarterback has now proven that a New England Patriots uniform wasn’t required for this “dynasty” to happen, having led the Tampa Bay Buccaneers to the NFC Championship in his first season with the franchise. The game will be Brady’s 14th(!) conference title game. Perspective? You’ve heard of Joe Montana, John Elway, and Dan Marino. That trio played in 16 conference championships combined.

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Letter From The Editor Opinion

A Brief History of Midtown Kroger

My wife and I live on Idlewild Street, very near the new Midtown Kroger, so near, in fact, that Tom Brady could probably throw a football from our backyard into the parking lot. He’d have to clear a couple other backyards and some tall trees, but I believe he could do it.

Given our proximity, we have watched with great interest — and no small amount of trepidation — the process of demolition and construction that has transpired on Union as the Taj Mahal Kroger has come into being.

Our street, despite its connection to one of the city’s main thoroughfares, has always been a quiet one. There are only nine houses on the block. I know the names of all our neighbors, and the names of their kids. They ride bikes and play basketball in the street.

We all feared the new Kroger might mean the loss of our little enclave, especially when we learned another development was planned for the nearby corner of McLean and Union. This precipitated what came to be known “gate-gate” on nextdoor.com. It began with a proposal from McLean developer Ron Belz to gate South Idlewild (his childhood street) from Union. As residents of Idlewild, we thought, “Hell, yes!” Other neighbors were not so enthusiastic; in fact, they hated the idea, which I understand. After much back and forth, a compromise was reached. (Or, as my attorney wife says, “If you want a kitten, ask for a pony.”) It was agreed (and approved by city council) that Idlewild would be one-way north, which would theoretically prevent traffic leaving the new Kroger from using our street. Theoretically.

Then we watched as cranes and wrecking balls ate the old apartment tower and as a new temporary lot was constructed to service the old store. When construction on the new store began, we endured months of loud booms, and jackhammers, and literally earth-shaking pounding. Dust coated our outside window sills. The only consolation was that there was absolutely no traffic on our street.

Then came the opening of the glorious new Kroger, and possibly the largest traffic fustercluck in the history of Midtown. Getting a parking place at Midtown Kroger was like winning the lottery. People were coming from all over — tourists from Bartlett and Southaven, and probably from Switzerland and Romania. City traffic personnel were brought in to direct cars in and out of the lot. Both sides of our street were filled with the parked cars of Kroger shoppers. Grocery carts were left on our sidewalks. Worst of all, hundreds of people just ignored the one-way signs (and red lights and stanchions half-way across the street) and drove south on Idlewild.

Yelling “WRONG WAY” at cars became the neighborhood mantra. At first, if you stopped someone and gently told them they were going the wrong way, they’d look embarrassed and surprised and say “Oops, sorry.” Then they started doing it on purpose, and began speeding up the street to avoid being caught. They no longer said “Sorry” when accosted. They said “Bite me,” or worse. It was the wild west on Idlewild.

But after complaints were made to MPD, everything changed. Officers parked on the street every day and began issuing tickets, dozens of tickets. The city of Memphis had to have made thousands of dollars nailing Kroger scofflaws. We residents took to going outside and high-fiving each other and taking photos of the violaters meekly accepting their tickets. Revenge was sweet.

And now? Knock on wood, things finally appear to be normalizing. You can find parking in the Kroger lot most of the time, and Idlewild is calm again, with only the occasional evil-doer driving the wrong way. The new Kroger is a grand and cavernous store with lovely windows that showcase the beautiful Idlewild Presbyterian Church across the street. And there appears, at long last, to be peace in the valley. At least, until the first time snow is predicted.

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Letter From The Editor Opinion

2015: The Year That Was …

It was a heck of a year, 2015. In television, we saw the departure of NBC news anchor Brian Williams, whose fanciful anecdotes became the stuff of Internet memes. Then Jon Stewart left The Daily Show and David Letterman departed CBS after decades of stupid people tricks, leaving a void on late-night screens that their replacements will be hard-pressed to fill.

Early in the year, the long-awaited 50 Shades of Grey hit movie theaters and proved that kinky sex could be boring if you cast the right actors for the job. And “Uptown Funk” became the first Memphis-produced No. 1 song since “Disco Duck,” back in the 1970s. Hopefully, some enterprising Memphis musician will write “Uptown Duck” and keep the magic alive in 2016.

This was the year that Bruce Jenner became Caitlyn Jenner and posed for the cover of Vanity Fair, putting the T of LGBT into more conversations than ever before. Shortly thereafter, the Supreme Court struck a blow for L, G, and B by ruling that gay marriage was legal in all 50 states — except for that one county in Kentucky where Kim Davis was the clerk. By refusing to issue gay marriage licenses, Davis got her 15 minutes of fame, and later, some well-deserved jail-time.

On the pervert front, Subway spokesman Jared Fogle, Josh Duggar of 19 Kids and Counting, and Bill “Dr. Huxtable” Cosby had their sexual deviances exposed and suffered varying consequences. Hopefully, we will not hear their names again, except in a court dossier.

The New England Patriots and Tom Brady survived “Deflategate” and won another Super Bowl; Stephen Curry and the Golden State Warriors jump-shot their way to the top of the NBA; and the Kansas City Royals won the World Series. Also, some team won the National Hockey League championship, but I’m too lazy to look it up, and you don’t care because you live in Memphis.

Unsurprisingly, we in the United States endured another year of mass shootings and mass death in churches, schools, malls, military bases, Planned Parenthood offices — and a California facility for the mentally disabled. The latter incident was perpetrated by Islamist terrorists and therefore became the incident that was the sole focus of right-wing media and the GOP candidates. They, of course, ignored the one common denominator of all the shootings, no matter the politics, religion, or mental state of the perpetrator: easy access to high-powered weapons. The NRA-owned GOP Congress then decided that even people on the terror no-fly list should continue to have access to guns. Because freedom.

Donald Trump gamed the presidential nomination process by dominating media coverage of the GOP race with his outrageous comments, each of which only seemed to increase his strength in the polls. As 2016 approaches, the GOP establishment is in near-panic mode, and will probably be forced to support Marco Rubio, the least wacky of the remaining viable candidates, and the only one they see having a chance to beat the Democratic nominee.

In Tennessee, the boneheads in Nashville played their usual tune, turning down federal money to expand Medicaid, and focusing on loosening gun laws, dumbing down our education system, fighting gay marriage, and taking on the horrific encroachment of Sharia law.

In Memphis, we elected a new mayor and got Bass Pro to fill the Pyramid with outdoorsy stuff. We learned to love Tiger football, and are struggling to learn how to live with mediocre basketball.

For more on the year just past — and predictions for the year ahead — in Memphis, check out the pages of this, our special year-end double issue.

The new year is upon us, bright and shiny and filled with hope. We at the Flyer are glad you’re with us after 26 years in Memphis, and we’re looking forward to another run around the calendar. Let’s get after it.

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

The Rant (January 29, 2015)

CREDIT: Jerry Coli | Dreamstime.com

The president just signed historic accords with India on climate legislation and nuclear trade, before making a pit stop to pay respects to the leaders of America’s gas station, Saudi Arabia.

Mitt Romney is considering a third run for president so the American people can finally get it right.

ISIS is on the move in Syria, and the government of Yemen just collapsed.

Bibi Netanyahu, also known as George W. Bush in wingtips, is campaigning for reelection as Israeli Prime Minister, only in front of the U.S. Congress — without prior knowledge or approval by the White House — as the guest of John Boehner.

In Iowa, Sarah Palin made an incomprehensible speech at Representative Steve King’s “Freedom Summit,” then told The Washington Post that she was “seriously interested,” in running for president.

And a crippling blizzard is headed for the east coast that New York Mayor Bill de Blasio warned may be “one of the largest snowstorms in the history of this city.” Memphis freaks out over three inches of snow. Try an expected three feet, which would set records from Philadelphia to Boston and affect nearly 30 million people. Take that Al Gore.

Jerry Coli | Dreamstime.com

Tom Brady New England Patriots

But screw all that: The NFL discovered that during their conference championship game, the New England Patriots used under-inflated footballs. I could write four paragraphs of balls jokes, but that’s far too easy. And since this has been the lead news story on every network for a week, I’ve heard every smarmy, double-entendre testicle reference in the history of broadcast news, from Rachel Maddow to Jimmy Fallon. I now know more about Bill Belichick than I ever intended.

I guess I’m as big a football fan as the next jerk, only I’m not emotionally invested in the outcome. I enjoy watching pro football because it’s a brutish and violent game played by mutants. If you asked me my favorite team, I guess it would be the Packers, because the citizen/stockholders of Green Bay actually own the team. If you ask me my least favorite team, it would be those with the loud-mouth owners who give high-fives in their luxury boxes while actually believing that what they say has any bearing on the game. Also, those owners that mix their personal, partisan politics with sport.

The NFL is just a billionaire’s playground where team owners play their own, exclusive version of fantasy football. It’s become an industry that has grown like kudzu around what was once a game. Since pro football is the American substitute for gladiatorial war, it has become the perfect vessel for carpet-bombing advertisements, and nothing does it better than the Super Bowl. Can I use that word without sending somebody a check?

Billions of dollars will be spent in and around the Super Bowl on product placement, branding, Hollywood-produced ads, entertainment galas, including the world’s biggest halftime show, and particularly sports betting. Only the outcome is pertinent. The game is secondary to the commerce. With record amounts of cash spent on commercials, the Super Bowl serves as the quasi-Black Friday for awards season.

The game will be played in Glendale, Arizona, at the University of Phoenix Stadium. Of course, the University of Phoenix is a for-profit, online, kollege of knowledge with no actual campus, and thus has no football team to play in its stadium. Like good corporate citizens, they merely bought the naming rights and changed it from what was Cardinals Stadium. So, the Super Bowl played in the University of Phoenix Stadium is like a scam within a scam. Everybody gets paid. Except for the entertainers. The Wall Street Journal reported that the NFL approached Rihanna, Coldplay, and Katy Perry to play the halftime show, but asked the musicians to “contribute a portion of their post-Super Bowl tour income to the league,” or alternately, “make some other financial contribution,” in exchange for the halftime gig. Perry is this year’s special attraction. I sure hope she’s not paying those greedy bastards to play.

In summary, the Patriots are cheaters owned by Robert Kraft of Kraft Foods, whose net worth is around $4 billion, and who has a son who worked for Bain Capital in the ’80s. They have a coach with a shady reputation and a quarterback who’s married to a Brazilian supermodel, makes $40 million a year in salary and endorsements, is said to have a near-genius IQ, and “did not alter the ball in any way,” even though he admitted he preferred them slightly deflated in a previous interview. When asked if he was a cheater, Brady said, “I don’t believe so.”

They play the Seattle Seahawks, owned by low-key Microsoft billionaire Paul Allen, who also owns the NBA Trailblazers. According to SeatGeek, the average ticket price is going for $3,262. Wouldn’t it be ironic if the monster snowstorm headed for Boston caused widespread power outages on Super Sunday? I hope by then they will have finally stopped talking about “Deflategate.” The only thing I have to add to that conversation is that Tom Brady’s balls aren’t as big as he thought. The Santa Ana winds are doing biblical-like, wildfire damage in California, and there’s a measles outbreak in Disneyland. And I’ll take the Seahawks and the points.