When Your Team Shares a Name With the Leader of the KKK, it May Not Be Best to Call for a "White-Out"

When I checked my email this morning I noticed I had received two emails from Wizards Wire advising me that the Wizards had a "White-Out Playoff Offer" for me. The first thing I thought of when I saw the "Wizards" were advertising a "White-Out" was the Ku Klux Klan related controversy which sprang up during the process of renaming the "Bullets" the "Wizards. Pastor Morris Shearin, the first vice president of the Washington, D.C., NAACP and a member of the board of the national NAACP, raised protest over the Washington franchise's rebranding as the "Wizards" because an "Imperial Wizard" is the supreme leader of the Ku Klan Klan.*

Maybe it's just me, but in light of the above controversy, I found the following release from the Wizards reasonably comedic:

All persons attending the games at Verizon Center are advised that 'White-Out' conditions are expected in downtown, Washington DC.

I feel like I don't really need to say anything about how Klan members, including the "Imperial Wizard" dress in all white themselves. If you're one of those people who wear actual wizard-styled hats while cheering on the Wizards, I would recommend leaving your white wizard-styled hat at home during the "White-Out."

In spite of the low levels of hilarity the "White Out" produces, the only thing it really changes is Wizards fans will now have the privilege of watching the refs cheat Lebron and Cavs to inevitable, horrible victory while dressed in white. I feel bad because I know the Cavs are going to win the series and I also know the Cavs are going to win the series because of the increased number of "Lebron calls" that Lebron gets in the playoffs, especially against the Wizards.

*Bonus: The finalists in the 1997 Bullets renaming contest were the Dragons, Express, Stallions, Sea Dogs, and Wizards. Can you guess which of the finalists aside from Wizards also brought the scorn of the NAACP? The answer is the Dragons. A "Grand Dragon" is the Klan leader of a specific state, operating directly under the powers of the Imperial Wizard. This begs the question, how the hell did the two highest KKK titles end up as finalists in the naming contest for an NBA team in Washington DC?

The Kool-Aid Man Has Some Serious Skillz

So I was watching the greatest show of all time, Scooby Doo, when this commercial came on the air:

OH YEAAHHHHH! Man that crossover was naZtee with a capital Z. The Kool-Aid Man can do it all, cross you up on the court, and quench your thirst off it. His trademarked "OH YEAAHHHH!" is almost as good as the famous, "OH, BAY-BEE!" of Duke Tango, the guy who announces for And 1 Streetball.

That commercial was effective, at least on me. I had mixed up a batch of Kool-Aid earlier in the day to drink with breakfast since there was no orange juice. Upon seeing the commercial I immediately got up and poured myself a glass of that delicious red flavored liquid.

Here's a bonus "classic" Kool-Aid commercial from the 70s. "HEY! KOOL-AID!"

DeShawn Stevenson Answers the All Important Question I Asked Him

The same email I recieved from the Wizards informing me that Caron would be retunring also held DeShawn Stevenson's answers to his mailbag, where fans get to write in and ask DeShawn questions about anything and everything. Who's question did he answer first? Professor Swag's of course. Yeahhhh. My question was eloquently stated as per usual:

Nick M. aka Professor Swag: What is your favorite thing that you have ever bought?

DeShawn Stevenson: My favorite thing that I ever bought was probably my first car. I got it when I first came in the league, it was a nice Lexus truck.

Having the opportunity to ask DeShawn Stevenson a question isn't the type of thing a couch bound "journalist" gets to do every day, I had to make sure to pick the right question. I must have spent five good minutes thinking of questions along the lines of "If I were DeShawn Stevenson, what would I want to talk about more than anything?" The first thing I did was narrow it down to, "Who would a person who tatoos Stevenson and 2 on his back jersey style want to talk about?" The answer was clearly that Mr. Stevenson #2 would want to talk about Mr. Stevenson #2. Still, I needed to go further. Next, I recalled the picture (above) from DeShawn's (in?)famous MySpace page. This narrowed it down pretty significantly to today's offical Professor Swag question of the day: "What would a man who sports a grill spelling about Papa Smurf in diamondz and poses with an American Exrpress Black Card want to talk about?"
A) Money
B) Spending Money
C) Something That Doesn't Involve Money
D) Both A) and B).

DeShawn's answer was somewhat predictable, I was guessing (insert nice brand) car as my first choice, with house as my second choice. At the end of the day I'm just glad that I have the inution needed to understand what the modern NBA player wants to talk about. DeShawn has probably been my favorite player this season before he answered my question, and he has certainly sealed up the spot for the season now. Caron and Antawn have ranked 2 and 3 respectively. Gil plummeted from 1 to 4 this season, I don't really want to get into that though.

Varrejo eats dick.

This Year's Badger Basketball Themed "READ" Poster Not As Good as Last Year's Badger Basketball Team Themed "READ" Poster

Last year's poster is on top, this year's on the bottom. Sorry the quality on this year's picture is a little crunchy, there's no online pictures of it that I could find, so this is a cameraphone representation of the poster. I picked it up from the front desk at College Library. I don't know if they have it at other libraries, but I would imagine they have to. I think the "READ" themed poster is to promote the American Library Association's National Library Week, which is from April 12-18 this year. Julie Andrews of Marry Poppins fame is this year's Honorary Chair.

Getting back to the 2008 Big Ten Champion Badger basketball team endorsed "READ" poster, my complaint with this year's poster is they gave Coach Bo Ryan, and from left to right Joe Krabbenhoft, Jason Bohannan, Marcus Landry, Brian Butch, and Trevon Hughes a much "realer" book that was afforded Alando Tucker last year. I can't say I've read Alando's Book, Professional Sports Team Histories: BASKETBALL but I can say with a more than reasonable amount of certainty that BASKETBALL is below the reading level of the modern college student. BASKETBALL seems like the kind of book a kid who likes sports would do a 7th grade book report on. At the same time, the book isn't really fair to Alando Tucker since he's not the dumbass college athlete he ends up being portrayed as on the poster. He graduated with a degree in Life Science Communications from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. I don't know how "real" a major Life Science Communications is but it most certainly carries with it a more strenuous course load than the football team's major of choice, Agricultural Journalism, so you have to give him some credit. I don't imagine there are that many other First Team All-Americans who actually graduate like Alando did either.

This year's book, Clemente: The Passion and Grace of Baseball's Last Hero, seems to be more on the level of the college students holding them. Still, it doesn't have the charm of BASKETBALL because it doesn't drive home the same "I'm a basketball player and I like reading books about basketball!" message since it's not about basketball on any level. It's still a fine poster, just not a classic.

Bonus: After searching the UW library system via MadCat I could only locate four copies of Clemente, two of the 2006 edition, and two of the 2007 edition. You'll notice that there are six copies of the book in the poster. This means that at least two the books in the picture could not have been from the University of Wisconsin-Madison library system.

Three of the UW's copies are located in College Library, one in the Main Collection, Room 3191, one in Open Book Sports and Fitness, Room 1250, and one in Ethnic Studies, Room 1193. The last is in the Historical Society stacks. Two copies call number status's are "Not Checked Out" and the other two are "In Process" as of March 7. I wonder if people saw the poster and decided to check out the book in response. It can't be a coincidence that they're "in process" right after the poster came out.

A Tribute to That Guy From And 1 Streetball Who Screams "OH BAY-BEE!"

To me, And 1 Streetball is like Haagen-Dazs to a fat lady on a diet: I know I should have nothing to do with it, but I can't help but indulge myself in it's delights. Furthermore, when I say I'm just gonna have a little "taste" of Streetball action, I inevitably find myself watching for as long as its on. You're probably thinking "15 consecutive minutes is the most any sane person can muster to view And 1 Streetball, much less any thing else that airs on ESPN 2." To this I say, "OHH BAY-BEE!"

More than the awesome player nicknames, high-flying dunks, constant alley-oops, ridiculous dribbling techniques that takes carrying the ball to the X-treme, and remarkable lack of defensive effort, what draws me in to wasting fractions of my life watching And 1 Streetball is that guy who screams "OHH BAY-BEE!" Every time "Hot Sauce" pulls his signature move "tha Boomerang" (Hot Sauce pretends to throw a one-handed pass past over a defender's shoulder. However the ball rises straight in the air and returns to him while the defender turns his head to look for the ball), every time "Helicopter" windmills on a fast break, and every time "8th Wonder" thunderously dunks an offensive rebound over some pretending ass, bitch-made defender, you can count on the signature "OH BAY-BEE!" to be emphatically yelled.

What distinguishes "Oh Bay-Bee!" guy from "traditional" announcers? First of all, he roams the court with a cordless mic, refusing to be constrained by things like a "scorer's table," or an "announcer's booth," and can be often times seen yelling encouragement to the player with the ball from directly behind said player. Secondly, his utter lack of journalistic skill can only be described as charming. Finally and most remarkable, is his ability to draw people into watching the sports equivalent of an Ashlee Simpson song through outright enthusiasm for a game which isn't "real," but somehow has a degree of credibility.

In case you are personally unfamiliar with this grand-champion of American culture, here's a video of his art performed. Good "OH BAY-BEE!"s come at 24 and 35 seconds.