:: Life on Planet Dan-E ::

:: Friday, July 23, 2004 ::

I haven't written a decent entry in a while since the baseball park stuff... oh by the way, if you wanna see the photos they're up on at http://photos.yahoo.com/dan_hyphen_e/ ... since school and trying to find a job has been keeping me pretty busy.

Even those who are sports-retarded know by now that Shaquille O'Neal was traded to the MIami Heat recently. Seriously Shaq? Quit following me. In a similar way that I'm now a Marlins fan, I'm also a Heat fan and I couldn't help but get caught up in their very surprising and impressive season. Now, as much as I love the Lakers, I just wasn't sure that they'd win the NBA title so naturally I needed a backup.

So I'm probably the only (admittedly casual) Heat fan here that feels blasé about the Shaq trade. LA had seven good years with him and everything points to the fact that since his best years are behind him, the odds of the Heat winning everything this year or next are still slim.

Which bring me to my rant: NOW he wants to get in shape? NOW he's motivated? NOW he's hungry. NOW he wants to be part of a "team?" Where was this last year? Or the year before? This is the guy who, missed a part of the first half of the 2002 season due to toe surgury. A surgury for an injury that he had for most of the previous season that he could have had performed immediately after the season ended. But no, he put it off till September 11, 2002 knowing full well that he'd miss significant time. His rationale being (paraphrasing) "since I got injured on company time I'm gonna heal on company time."

His lack of fitness is well known. As much deserved flak Kobe receieved for being shut down during the finals, Shaps lack of conditioning gave him on one big game, since he's now unable to recover as quickly as he used to...

I'm watching a rerun of the ESPy's (the sports version of the Oscars) right now as I type this and I just saw a moving tribute to former football player and war hero Pat Tillman and a feature on a guy named George Weah. You guys who read my blog on Tillman a couple of months ago know about how I feel about the guy. On the other hand, George Weah is someone I've never heard of since he's considered one of the greatest soccer players in the world. (I'd rather watch paint dry than watch soccer.) Weah comes from a war-torn part of Africa the feature on him showed how he used his wealth and influence to to try to right the immeasurable injustices that's tearing apart his country. He sacrificed his own safety and that of his family to try to influence this change. I'm not doing it justice. All I know is that when he came up to receive his award, that moment simultaneously rendered sports irrelevant while showing that sports just might be able to change the world. Beautiful.

What was I talking about?

:: Miscellaneous Ramblings by Dan-E at 2:47 PM [+] :: | 0 comments
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