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Couch Tomato

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That's the one with the big orange round ball, right?

Bwah!! KAndre you are so funny. Yes it has a large orange ball. And in your little town you have a very tall Chinese man that is very very good. They made the playoffs last year and will probably make them this year

I can't believe I haven't really been following basketball this off season. It's my favorite sport. For instance, I went to see if I could see a Wolves game while I was in Minney.... and now I'm LOL because I didn't realize Kevin Garnett had been traded. Huh. I'm slacking. I guess I'll buy the league pass soon cuz I can't live without it.

Anyway, Isaiah Thomas. I have never liked him. I think he is such a phoney. He's been a horrid GM for New York and really he's left a lot of destruction in his wake everywhere. So different from his former team mate Joe Dumars. Anyway, never expected anything like this sexual harrassment case. I wonder what Mr Stern will do to the Knicks...if anything. He's been strangely quiet on this.

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Sooooooo, Ms. Couch, do you think my Magic will be facing your Lakers?

Gotta admit that I am late to the party this year, but I am surprised Orlando has gotten this far.

I still have all my tres chic Magic t-shirts, maybe I will put one on and look like a MagicMate!

I wish the Magic would move to Tampa; I would love to start taking my grandson to games, but driving to downtown Orlando, from Tampa, at rush hour, sux. And I-4 turns into a parking lot at the least little bit of anything, like a dead rabbit or a flat tire.

I do hope LeBron James' crampy leg is all better. The Magic are employing a sensible strategy - so what if LeBron can score 60 points? No one is gonna win a game 60 to something. Just stop the other guys from scoring. And it looks like he can actually hit his free throws, so the Shaq Massacre approach doesn't work.

It was driving me crazy trying to figure out why coach Van Gundy looks so different than the Jeff Van Gundy I remember who coached the Nicks. It is his brother.

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I think any of the 4 times can get there. The Lakers are fantastic 60% of the time. But they go into these lapses. So I have no idea if they have the will to do it. As long as they play hard then I don't care and the best team will win. But I get pissy when they don't seem to give effort.

I love Jeff Van Gundy's commentary. He is hilarious. I admit the brother seems a bit overwhelmed sometimes. I remember he got into this riff with Shaq this past year and Shaq says he panics when things aren't going right. And since then, a couple of his players have said he needsd to be the steady when the gale winds hit. But I'm rooting for Orlando to get by Th Cavs. They've already wrenched home court advantage so good for them!

That Michael Petrius comes from my other team, The Warriors. So I have a home connection too. Glad he's doing well.

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Oh, I am laughing, I just Googled Jeff Van Gundy to make sure it was the Knicks I was thinking of, and got reminded of the time he tried to break up a fight between Larry Johnson and Alonzo Mourning. Like a tiny terrier between two bulls. And he got knocked down and was hanging on to Alonzo's leg. Bwahahahaha! At least he was fearless!

So, there is no one on the Magic team today that I am familiar with. But I still remember the fun of Shaq and Penny and Ho Grant. Horace has a twin brother that played for another team, their jerseys said Ho Grant and Ha Grant, it was funny. If you were there.

Penny never did live up to the hype, but I liked him. When he was playing well, he was a pleasure to watch. I can still see his commercials with Little Penny - "That's Tyra Banks!!!!!"

How old is Tyra anyway? She still looks eerily the same.

My old Magic fandom attitudes came back, like, um, magic - Hey! We are happy just to get this far! It was an honor to lose to you!

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hee I remember all that. I started being a basketball fanatic back in 1978 or so. I used to love the Sixers and those classic epic battles between the Celtics and the Lakers. I laugh today when I heard the commentators praise those old teams like they never did any wrong -- like Magic never had a bad game or the Lakers never got blown out. Please! I sat through many a sunday massacre. heee. In fact my mom used to say that Riley had to pull out his cattle prod at halftime. And she said it a lot!!

I think Basketball has a great marketing arm. They are simply fantastic in their brand. Those new commercials that aks where will amazing happen are just fantastic. One is of magic..they kind show him by himself dribbling the ball and slowly bring back the entire scene of him doing that baby hook against the Celtics to WIN the game. I still remember that game. I remember sitting in my living room watching that game and screaming my fool head off. And the other one of Kobe with that lob pass to Shaq in the western conference finals against Portland. OMG that game is a classic - like one of my favorite games ever. It was a game 7 - lakers down like 14 in the 4th and Kobe went to work and that pass was the exclmation on the win. heee. I'm such a geek.

Anyway, Penny Hardaway unfortunately had so many injuries he never was able to live up to his promise. So did the other one... Grant Hill. I think Grant Hill could have been mentioned with the all time greats if he had been able to have a career without injury.

I love all sports but with basketball I can sit there and watch the Thunder and the Grizzlies and enjoy it. heee.

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Well damn. But being a Clay fan, I can almost laugh at the headlines this morning...

For a game where the Cavs had another big lead, and the Magic pulled up to them and there were seconds to go, and LeBron sank a buzzer-beater basket for the Cav's win - the headline is "Cavs stun Magic 96-95."

I think the Cavs should be stunned that they lost the first game at home, and only won the second one in the last second, to a team that once again came from way behind. And the Cavs have that Super Star.

Oh well, 1-1 is a lot better than 0-2. And now we will have home court advantage!!!!! I wonder if you can still get a free taco at Taco Bell if the Magic score more than 100 points.

This would be much more fun with beer and nachos with extra cheese and jalapenos.

Couchie, I can remember being at a Philadelphia Warriors/Boston Celtics game - Wilt vs Bill Russell - the Boston fans who came down to Philly for the game threw raw eggs on the floor and stopped the game, because they were losing.

Oh wait, I can't be that old, maybe I saw it on TV! :-)

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EEEEEE!!!!!!!!! I watched the end of the game in little glimpses - knowing full well that 18 seconds can last for 20 minutes.

And a good-sized lead can vanish just like that!

Must not get hopes up.

Anyway, Penny Hardaway unfortunately had so many injuries he never was able to live up to his promise. So did the other one... Grant Hill. I think Grant Hill could have been mentioned with the all time greats if he had been able to have a career without injury.

Yeah, Penny tended to get injuries, he was sorta willowy and not gnarly. But moved like water when he was playing well. I do think there was tension between him and Shaq, though. I love Shaq now, but he had not learned to share when he was with the Magic.

Injuries - other teams used to have "injure Shaq" as part of their game plan, Matt Geiger admitted he was intent on that, and he broke Shaq's thumb.

Years ago the Heat played the Magic here in Tampa as an exhibition game, and my grandson was very disappointed that Shaq showed up at halftime, dressed in a business suit. They had used Shaq as a draw. I explained that Shaq had no intention of getting hurt in a pre-season game.

Sniff. Paul Porter is still the Magic announcer. I recognised his voice, and checked - he is a big part of the game, for me.

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I read a couple of articles about the Magic-Cavs series today - the feeling is that the network and the NBA want a LeBron-Kobe finals, and people in Orlando are getting sick of the Lebron hype. A reporter asked Van Gundy about it, and he said he would never say the officiating is lop-sided because he would get fined $25,000 if he did. :-O

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yeah it's pretty obvious that everybody wants a Lebron/Kobe finals including Nike with their little puppet Lebron/Kobe commercials. And some of those calls WERE ridiculous... of course they did nothing to help my team last night LOL. The thing is for some odd reason the Cavelier/Laker games are never compelling and I think the two from thispast season neither of them played particularly well. Anyway, I'm rooting for Orlando.....need some fresh faces in the finals!

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Howard has been whistled for 66 fouls in playoffs; LeBron has been called for 18

Yup. Bullshit. Right there at the end of the 4th quarter, LeBron threw his shoulder into a Magic player, and the Magic caught the foul.

And if I had a dollar for every time the announcers said LeBron James I wouldn't have to work for a couple of weeks.

Anyway, we only have to win one more. I was quite resigned to losing, but now I am pissed off.

Yayyyyyy!!!!!!!!!

And I think a Magic-Lakers series would be quite good.

Got to practice saying Turkoglu correctly.

g'nite!

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The sports news is just like American Idol - the Magic didn't win, LeBron James lost!

I feel bad for Dwight Howard - the Cavs are pretty clear they are going to hack-a-Dwight him - because Howard is shooting 59% on free throws, but that is better than the 99.99% he is shooting when he dunks. :-O

"If we can meet him a little bit earlier and try to hold our ground, that will be to our advantage. The tough part about it is, a couple of times we've tried it, he's a big strong guy. He's not moving you out of his way so you need to meet him with some force. At times there's going to be some big-time contact in there and hopefully the officials don't call it."
That's from the Cav's coach.......

Heeee....I was looking for Little Penny and Tyra commercials, here are some old NBA commercials - I didn't realise Spike Lee made the Little Penny stuff, and Chris Rock was Little Penny!

NBA Commercials

I have not seen the Kobe-James commercials, perhaps they are on hold here!

The Magic have not gotten this far since 1995. Maybe I can sell all my Magic stuff on ebay, if they win! :-)

That was a good game last night - too good, I like a nice commanding lead, those buzzer-beater things are hard to watch.

Good luck to the Lakers tonight!!!!!!!!!!! even if the Magic go on to get beat there, I can see really interesting people in the crowd! I sat in a front row floor seat once, for the second half of a game. You can't really see the game as well as from the bottom rows of the second level - that's when you can see the officiating, for better or for worse - but damn, those players are very large and very sweaty and very fine!

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Congrats to the Lakers!!!!!!

Cruising through the net, looks like a lot of people are upset about the Kobe/James stuff, and questioning the calls.

An Orlando columnist says LeBron tripped over a shoelace while leaving the Orlando arena, and Dwight Howard got the foul and LeBron gets to shoot the free throws at the beginning of the next game. :-O

Feeling seems to be that Kobe is great and has good teammates, while poor LeBron is surrounded by dreck and so the refs are evening that up with bad calls at Stern's request.

I think Clive is behind the whole thing because he signed LeBron and Kobe to do a covers album.

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I can't bear to watch the game, so I am working and just checking the SI.com live feed once in a while. The comments are hilarious.

Turned on the TV - the Cavs are losing by 12 to 18 points, third quarter, and the announcers are acting as if they are on the verge of winning.

Favorite SI.com comment - "In order for Cavs to win Magic need to Cooperate and stop scoring".

It is felt that the Lakers will demolish either team.

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yay for Orlando. I was really rooting on them. Just didn't want to deal with theLebron vs Kobe stuff..and well of course I want my team in it. heee. Wonder if they will have Lebron the puppet sitting at home watching the finals on TV :cryingwlaughter:

I think everyone will be pulling for Orlando as the Lakers are hated like the Yankess heee... and hell they beat them twice in the regular season. So I don't see any demolishing coming. Orlando is more than capable of demolishing the Lakers. Anyway... looking forward to it.

I have to give Lebron props for that game 5 though. He was spectacular.

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I was not relaxing until there were only 10 seconds left. Reggie Miller or the Heat could score 16 points against the Magic in the last few seconds, using fouls and voodoo charms or something.

Heeeee on the LeBron puppet - I think the hype worked against him, it just pissed the Magic off and gave them a focus. Yes, LeBron was great in that game, but no one can win all by themselves.

Man, Rich DeVos (owns Amway, owns the Magic) got old. And yay! for Van Gundy! I was afraid the team was gonna do that down by 20 points at halftime thing again, and somehow he fixed that. Van Gundy looked like a happy little kid. With a mustache.

Also gotta say that Phil Jackson looks old, too, I did not recognise him.

Well, I'm happy! If I am doing better next season, and have a better vehicle, maybe I can take Jacob to a game or two on the weekend. Driving back from Orlando at night is a bummer.

Thanks for rooting for my guys, and let the games begin! Next week!

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Well, Couchie, good luck to both teams tonight - Lakers are favored in 6.

I will be watching the new Burn Notice and just peeking at the score from time to time.

I just don't want to get swept. And I want to see stars on the sidelines. I'm setting the bar real low.

In other news, I read that LeBron walked off the Magic court without shaking hands or anything because he was sending a message to the Cavs - he wanted to win, and the Cavs didn't get him any help - it had nothing to do with being a poor sport. Um-hum. Uh-huh.

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Well, Couchie, good luck to both teams tonight - Lakers are favored in 6.

I will be watching the new Burn Notice and just peeking at the score from time to time.

I just don't want to get swept. And I want to see stars on the sidelines. I'm setting the bar real low.

In other news, I read that LeBron walked off the Magic court without shaking hands or anything because he was sending a message to the Cavs - he wanted to win, and the Cavs didn't get him any help - it had nothing to do with being a poor sport. Um-hum. Uh-huh.

hey I feel the same way. I don't want to get swept either!! heee. I want my team to win but I just want them to give it their all. Last year they wilted under the bright lights. Hopefully that experience will help them this year. No more 40 point blowouts!!

As for Lebron, yeah he walked out without shaking hands or speaking to the media. I'm pretty sure it was because he was very disappointed but it's easy to be gracious when you're winning and everyone is kissing your ass. Anyway,I thought the next day his explanation was even more whacked..I'm a winner and don't want to shake the hands of somebody who just beat me. And to top it off he didn't get fined by the NBA cuz it was Lebron. Other people have gotten fined 10K for doing the same - no questions asked.

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