All Hail Hideki!

The almighty New York Yankees won the World Series last night! Hideki Matsui was named MVP. He had 6 RBI's in this game, which the Yankees won, 7-3. Woo hoo!

In 2009, Barack Obama was inaugurated, the Lakers won the NBA championship, and now the Yankees have won the World Series. All is right with the world. Well, almost. USC has lost two games this year, and probably won't win the Pac-10 title. Other than that, tho, it's been a great year.

I watched the game at a bar in Sherman Oaks with a friend who is about the biggest Yankees fan I have ever met, which is saying something. It was her 27th birthday, and the Yankees won their 27th World Series. It was, she said, the best birthday ever.

I bought her dinner. It was the least I could do.

Today in Los Angeles

Sometimes I feel like I have to take a step back from life, take a deep breath, and realize what an amazing thing it is to be living in the 21st Century in the United States of America.

Today in Los Angeles, three notable things happened:

1. The Los Angeles Lakers won their 15th NBA championship. Go Lakers! It just occurred to me that "Lakers" is an odd name for a team that is based in a desert. Regardless, they won! Congrats Kobe, Phil, and the rest of the team!

2. There was a gay pride march on the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall riots, with the mayors of Los Angeles and San Francisco both in attendance.

3. Not far from the gay pride march, there were protests by Iranians against the results of the elections in Iran. Los Angeles has a large Iranian population. The Mayor of the most famous LA suburb, Beverly Hills, is an Iranian Jew (what makes him particularly cool is that both of his kids went to USC).

Celebration, protest, and revolution.

One hell of a day.

Why We Love Kobe

Lakers beat Oklahoma City Thunder, 105-98

The mighty Los Angeles Lakers beat the Oklahoma City Thunder yesterday, 105-98. Kobe Bryant made a little history; he is the youngest player to reach 23,000 points. That's a lot of points, but normally I wouldn't post about an everyday Lakers game, even with Kobe notching another milestone. What caught my eye was that they played the Oklahoma City Thunder. Let me repeat that:

Oklahoma City has a basketball team called the Thunder.

Oklahoma City has a basketball team called the Thunder?

When did this happen? How did this happen? Did some team in some obscure city move over the last year and I completely missed it? And here I thot I was paying more attention to sports. This is what I get for letting my subscription to Sports Illustrated lapse.

"Oklahoma City Thunder" sounds like a minor league hockey team, or maybe an arena football team. Triple-A baseball, maybe. NBA team? Huh?

And I like to think of myself as one of the people in a blue state who tries not to ignore what happens in the flyover red states. I've been close to Oklahoma in the last year; I visited Denver twice. I'm not quite sure how close to Oklahoma that is, but it's a lot closer than LA is, that's for damn sure. Hello, friends and relatives in Denver! You're supposed to let me know about these major developments in your time zone!

I'm guessing that the Oklahoma City Thunder won't be playing in the playoffs, so I doubt I'll be paying them much attention again, unless the Lakers play them again. But now I'm curious about where this team came from. Not quite curious enough to do any research, but maybe curious enough to pay more attention the next time I see the name in the media.

Update: a co-worker suspects that maybe the LA Times made a mistake, and the Lakers actually played another team, and the copy editor didn't catch that the name of the team was wrong. That's possible, but it seems unlikely. This same co-worker thinks that maybe the Oklahoma City Thunder were just created, sort of like spontaneous combustion, and we didn't notice because there has been so much in the news lately. Again, unlikely, but maybe possible. The mystery deepens.

Quote of the day

"On a lighter note, I've got to go review this documentary I'm doing with Spike Lee after the game and I didn't feel like sitting next to him and hearing him talk trash about the Knicks. That was added incentive as well, seriously."

Kobe Bryant, explaining part of his motivation for scoring 61 points against the Knicks, as the Lakers won, 126-117. Bryant set a record for most points scored in a single game at Madison Square Garden. He sank all 20 of his free throws.

Maybe Spike Lee should schedule his meetings with the opposition outside the NBA season. Really good idea to do that when the Knicks are playing sub-.500 ball and the opposition has one of the best records in basketball.

Lakers don't win

The Lakers did not win the NBA Championship. The other team won. The other team is from a city west of the Rockies and north of the Mason Dixon line. Congrats to the other team. I think it was their year. Of course, we didn't expect the Lakers to even make it to the Finals this year, so that is a moral victory, of sorts.

Lakers stay alive!

The Lakers won last night, and are therefore still in the Finals. Whew! That's good news.

This may be a test of my Zero Sum Karma Theory of Professional Sports Championships. The Zero Sum Karma Theory says that there is only so much karma allotted to each city for professional sports championships, so if a city wins one, that city uses up its karma for the year, so there won't be any more championships for that city that year.

The Zero Sum Karma Theory has never been really clearly defined, nor has it ever really been investigated to see if it is historically accurate. So I don't know if it's true or not. For example, the Red Sox won the World Series last year, but that was 2007. This current NBA season started in 2007, so does that count?

I think I'm going to define the Zero Sum Karma Theory by calendar years, i.e. the karma kicks in on January 1 and kicks out on December 31. So, by that standard, since this is a new calendar year, the Red Sox win last year would not count against the Celtics this year. Which is a bummer for the Lakers. But the Lakers still have a chance! Just two more games!

Lakers are in the Finals!

GO LAKERS!