Athlete Christmas Lists: Devin Brown

Dear Santa:

Pretty dope that you give everyone presents, even if most people don’t know ‘em. Could you give me these presents? Be pretty great if you did.

1. 1-year membership renewal, Kata Hajime Jiu-Jitsu Institute of New Orleans
2. Voltron kit
3. 1 bottle of fast-acting friendmaking pills, that I could give to people I meet to make new friends fast
4. Hangover on DVD
5. Goodwill toward MIMS

Sincerely yours,

Devin Brown, Kata Hajime Class of ’08

Andre Dawson Explains Kings of Leon To Your Dad

You got to understand, Paul, it ain’t like when we were kids. Nowadays, you just yell some mess about flaming sexes, the girls start losing they minds, and the boys’re gonna go wherever the girls are, am I right? I’m not sayin’ these Leon fellas can play a lick, but they give your boys somethin’ they can have together, separate from you and Lucille, and that’s gotta count for somethin’, right?

Now, look here, Paul: Way I see it, we got two choices. On the one hand, we can keep on hammerin’ away at the kids, talkin’ ’bout how what they need to do is deep-six these young Nashvile fellas and how what they should be doin’ is soul-kissin’ to Al Green. Or, we can have ourselves a nice sit in these beautiful pleather chairs you got here, and you can tell me what’s really on your mind.

How’s you and Lucille, Paul?

EDITOR’S NOTE: Andre Dawson is not a licensed psychologist or trained counselor; he’s just seen a lot, is all. If you have relationship-, parenting- or cutoff-man-related questions for the Hawk, please send them here.

Now that Shaq’s going to Cleveland, the grim truth about his gamma-irradiated nightmare-self can finally be told

A neat little sidebar running with Chris Broussard’s ESPN.com story about the impending trade of Shaquille O’Neal from Phoenix to Cleveland (dude just stays getting put alongside All-Eternity wings, huh?) provides a win-loss breakdown of the impact that the Emperor of Big Men has had when coming to a new team. Nestled within said sidebar is an interesting nugget about how Shaq’s arrival in the desert was a little different:

At first glance, you might think this a simple mistake — that in his/her haste to assemble the sidebar and get it posted up as soon as possible, the ESPN.com staffer accidentally wrote “abomination” when “aberration” was the intended choice.  (Mr. Todd Ruffin has cast his vote for this possibility.)

But the screen-grab was taken at about 8:30AM Eastern time; it’s now 12PM, and the word remains unchanged.  Which leads me to believe that there’s another, more frightening, way more stupidly obvious explanation:

When he was traded from Miami to Phoenix, Shaq realized he’d have to do battle with a variety of skilled, agile and quick big men in the Western Conference — many of whom are younger and more gifted than he is at this stage in his career.  And the Diesel knew he needed a leg up.

An upleg that came from a series of injections of an experimental, gamma-irradiated serum.

While the typically morally bankrupt Suns-employed doctors warned of potentially horrifying side effects, things worked out pretty well for Shaq, who averaged 18 points and 8 rebounds a game (those are Mehmet Okur numbers!) in his only full season with Phoenix.  But as the aforementioned sidebar indicates, it didn’t work out so hot for the Suns, who are now a not-so-good team that makes mad Internet kids sad, because does anybody remember Seven Seconds or Less and when fun times were going to last forever?

But now, Shaq’s revitalized unholy strength and speed come to a new city.  One can only hope that the rumored apocalyptic reptilian freakouts that allegedly led Steve Kerr to pull the trigger don’t manifest themselves in Cleveland.

Lord knows that downtown can’t take much more destruction.

Knicks fans, the future of excitement is now

Do you love New York, and also are a fan o’ tha Knixx?  If so, you must pretty stoked about the Summer of 2010.  I don’t know if you heard, but by clearing out cap space, making mad moves and shedding the bloody spectre of Zeke by winning the mother of all games of Risk with Florida International University Director of Athletics Pete Garcia, team president Donnie Walsh has Dominant Team Pringles pointed in the right direction.

According to accurate Internet reports, the Meltface Killah has already locked up the contractual rights to LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, Chris Bosh, a possibly re-energized DMX, “The Man of 1000 Holds” Dean Malenko, effeminate comedian Greg Proops and Randy Quaid, who, as we all know, is the Alpha Quaid.

But all that pales in comparison to the news this week that the Knicks may start the party a year early.  The New York Post reported Monday that Orlando Magic backup center Marcin Gortat is high on the team’s wish list, and that Walsh could look to spend New York’s $5 million mid-level exception on “The Polish Hammer,” a.k.a. “The Warlock,” a.k.a. “Maxi-Me,” a.k.a. “Marcin Ndegeocello.”

You’re probably thinking: Bummer. We’ve already given a multi-year mid-level contract to a backup center who showed flashes for one good season series, and that didn’t turn out too well.  But you’re forgetting one thing — the immeasurable cultural electricity and citywide excitement that could result from one simple event, one tiny little appearance that we could, as a fanbase, WILL INTO REALITY next summer if Walsh gets that deal done:

Marcin Gortat at Hot 97 Summer Jam.

To help you visualize how dope that would be, we here at this is the city line. have created a crude artist’s rendering:

And also filed this real photograph of Marcin giving the ladies something to think about:

Marcin Gortat = Drake 2.0?

Don’t blow this, Donnie.

Big LBJ Freestyle Visual Rap Song ’09, Part 1

What do you do when you’re LeBron James, master of all you survey, and you’ve got eight days off between the end of your Cavs squad’s four-game whitewashing of the Atlanta Hawks and the start of your Eastern Conference Finals matchup with Turkish Basketball Jones anchor Hedo Turkoglu‘s Orlando Magic?

You find creative ways to fill the time, that’s what.  Like stepping into a West Akron booth and cutting your own updated version of the late Big L’s “’98 Freestyle.”  The original features nowhere-near-suitable-for-work language and is utterly, utterly awesome.  Please to be listening:

Only one problem: Friggin’ recording engineers lost the masters of the session.  Luckily, a pair of reliable this is the city line. tipsters present for the proceedings — let’s call them “Molante,” for the sake of identity protection — scribbled down the King’s lyrics.  (Their stenography was impressive, capturing James’ undeniable passion and intriguing penchant for self-censoring, as well as his often questionable spelling.)

In the interest of taking you inside the mind of one of the most compelling athletes of these or any times, we’ve taken the liberty of producing a visual representation of the lines that LeBron spit.  We now share the first batch of images with you; the remaining verses are still in artist’s rendering, and will be made available as soon as possible.  For now, though, we hope you enjoy this THIS IS THE CITY LINE. EXCLUSIVE presentation.

Sounds to me like LeBron’s ready for Game 1 tonight.

To conserve energy, the Lakers decide not to transport any of their attractive fans to Game 3 in Utah

The move wasn’t effective on the court, but still, kudos to the Lakers for including their fanbase in “going green.”  Got to save the Earf, y’all.

Photo by Melissa Majchrzak/NBAE via Getty Images, via Yahoo! Sports NBA Photo Gallery.

THIS IS THE CITY LINE. EXCLUSIVE: A first look at “Meme-met” Okur

If you’re reading this blog, chances are you know a lot about Utah Jazz center/forward Mehmet Okur. Like, for example, that this is him:

Or that he has (at least statistically) had a pretty solid season, averaging more than 17 points and 8 rebounds in about 34 minutes per game this season, posting a very nice PER (18.23) that puts him just outside of the top-50 in the league as of Interweb press time.  Or that he and fellow NBA kindofstar Hedo Turkoglu both hail from Turkey, where they have risen to prominence hosting a hyperlocal Turkish version of The Basketball Jones, a popular Internet sports program.

What you might not know about Mr. Okur is that he loves Internet memes, often confusing teammates like Andrei Kirilenko by discussing lulz-generating memes with which they are not familiar.  He has also recently signed up for a user account at Encyclopedia Dramatica under the username “LiveOrMemoWrecks,” though it appears he has not yet begun contributing to the satiric Wiki-based community.  He’s even taken to personally participating in a number of memes, which one has to assume that Jazz head coach Jerry Sloan will not find amusing.

Thanks to the particular brand of investigative journalism you can find only at a Web site categorized on WeFollow under the hashtags “#sports,” “#sportsblogs” and “#comedy,” this is the city line. has unearthed several of Mr. Okur’s meme contributions.  As always, the door remains open to future discovery — if you, or anyone you know, come across what you believe to be an Okur-generated meme, titcl. staff asks that you please e-mail us so that we may add your findings to our ever-growing collection.

An important note: This site doesn’t purport to be especially adept in meme analytics — we tend to leave such critical dissection to experts like goathair and Carles.  That said, we would respectfully submit that these entries have limited stickiness, and that in their production, Mr. Okur has evinced no real talent for crafting higher-level memes.  We will, however, let you be the judge of that.  Without further ado:

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EDITOR’S NOTE: While there has been no photo-editing of this digital image in accordance with any specific meme, titcl. staffers believe Okur may have submitted the photo to the Tumblr site White NBA Players Who Look Like Abusive Husbands, which is rumored to be in negotiations for a book deal.

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Analysis-Free Postings RE: the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament, Vol. 3

I saw this during Brian Doyle‘s Deadspin live blog of UConn v. Chattanooga today:

“4:14 - Yet another Sonic commercial. You’re wasting your money Sonic. I don’t know where the closest Sonic is but I assume it’s at least a six hour drive away.”

Since I’ve discussed the preponderance-of-Sonic-commercials-versus-relative-lack-of-Sonic-restaurants conundrum with such Internet luminaries as the jerk who uses Seattle-era Patrick Ewing photos that put my sadger on 100, thousand, trillion in his excellent “Morning Bell” posts at Hardwood Paroxysm and the guy who has had serious discussions about hosting an episode of the Weekly Fix podcast about Bloodsport on which I am all but guaranteed an appearance, I decided to head over to the apparently hilarious drive-in chain’s Web site and find out how far a trip it would be for me if I was to SUPER CRAVE their particular brand of side-splitting tater tots. The results:

So the closest Sonic to me is 238+ miles away.  Let’s assume I’m driving at a safe velocity, but a little above the speed limit — 95 MPH.  By my math, that puts the round trip at about 5.05263 hours.  Not too bad, provided I purchase $210 worth of products to last me the full way home and still have an ass-load left when I get back.

What’s amazing is that, with all due respect to Mr. Doyle, I don’t think Sonic has wasted their money — at least, not if I’m sort of the standard consumer (which I sort of am).  Because I’m pissed that there’s no close-by Sonic.  I want there to be a Sonic nearby REALLY bad.  I’d love to eat some.  I’d be all like, “NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM.”

So it sounds like money well spent.

Thanks, Internet, college and fast-food-2K7-related-updates-of-olde-tymey-restaurant-memes!  Check back throughout the tourney for more stupid, thoughtless missives!

Analysis-Free Postings RE: the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament, Vol. 2

University of California freshman Jorge Gutierrez has a dangerous mind.

(Hardy Wilson / San Francisco Chronicle photo; Edited by this is the city line. staff)

Below, a photo of Gutierrez working on his hand-to-hand combat skills to ensure his ability to walk down the street:

Thanks, Internet, college and 1995!  Check back throughout the tourney for more stupid, thoughtless missives!

Analysis-Free Postings RE: the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament, Vol. 1

Butler forward Matt Howard, the Horizon League Player of the Year

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Wes, the big gawky kid from Rebound that Martin Lawrence tells to get mean.

At the 1:08 mark of this exclusive video, you can see Butler Coach Whateverhisnameis telling Howard to get mean in preparation for the Bulldogs’ first-round matchup against LSU:

Thanks, Internet, college and Martin Lawrence!  Check back throughout the tourney for more stupid, thoughtless missives!