Bron-Y-Aur
"There are two tragedies in life. One is not to get your heart's desire. The other is to get it." --George Bernard Shaw

Conspiracy theorists can finally breath easy. The Knicks didn't win the NBA lottery last night. While Cleveland goes bonkers over LBJ, their lottery victory may have secured an even more valuable key to their future success...Jeff Van Gundy.

It seems the two finalists to coach the Cleveland LeBrons are Van Gundy and Paul Silas. I know that Silas is supposed to be a hot coaching commodity but let's face it; unlike Van Gundy, he has a career losing record as a coach during the regular season and unlike Van Gundy, a career losing record as a coach during the post season. Van Gundy is a great teacher and, as evidenced by their complete collapse once he left the Knicks, always got more out of his players than what they were worth on the court. Even without LeBron, Van Gundy could mean another fifteen victories next year.

Speaking of LeBron, lately I've been wondering whether or not his mom is a Led Zeppelin fan. What the hell does "LeBron" mean? Zeppelin did a song one time called Bron-Y-Aur Stomp which was supposed to be about Bron-Y-Aur, which means "breast of gold" in Welsh. It was also the name of a cottage in Wales where Zeppelin recorded their third album. Bron is also Olde English for "breast" but gaelic for "sorrow" -- Frankly, it's a mystery and if I had one question to ask at a Cleveland Cavs press conference, that would be it: LeBron, are you "the breast" or "the sorrow"?

Did anyone else know before last night that Cavs owner Gordon Gund is blind? In 1970, a progressive degenerative disease of the retina called retinitus pigmentosa (RP) took what remained of Gund's vision when he was 30 years old. In 1986, the Cavs had the #1 pick as a result of a trade with the Philadelphia 76ers, and used it on Brad Daugherty. Then they nabbed Ron Harper with their own pick, and acquired the draft rights to Mark Price. Later that summer they hired Lenny Wilkens to be their head coach.

Whether the Pistons take Carmelo Anthony or Darko Milicic with the second pick of the draft, their history indicates the selection will be a winner. The other two times they had the #2 pick, they took Dave Bing in 1966 and Isiah Thomas in 1981, both Hall of Famers. That's a pretty good track record.

Knicks fans, on the other hand, have to look at this draft with trepidation. Another moronic draft day trade (getting permament DLer Antonio McDyess instead of Rookie of the Year Amare Stoudemire) or just another idiotic selection (1999, Frederick Weis)? The Knicks have many well-documented needs but the best player they can get with their #9 pick this year is Michael Sweetney. If history is any indication though, the Knicks might end up with Iceland's Jon Stefansson.

*****

There are two commercials currently running that annoy the hell out of me. One of them was shown last night in the middle of the NBA Draft Lottery show. It's for something called Jack Daniels Original Hard Cola. They say it's about "no pretense". First of all, this is about a beverage commonly coined as "alcopop" or "malternative". The music played in the background of the commercial is the kind of music you listen to on a Sunday afternoon with a bad hangover, not this sort of "gathering" of fake hipsters having the kind of self-conscious fun that people have when they are trying to hard to have fun or look cool in the process. The bottom line is that this is a malt beverage that is called a hard cola but uses the name of a well-known whiskey product to give it a false credibility. If that isn't all about pretense, I don't know what is.

The other commercial is one I frequently see during sporting events on television: The Gevalia commercial that begins with a guy coming up to another guy with two cups of coffee in his hands and asks the other guy if he wants some coffee. There are so many surreal aspects of this commercial, I almost don't know where to begin.

First of all, when was the last time a co-worker came up to your office with two cups of coffee in his hands and offered you one? What kind of company is this where people are wandering the halls with two cups of coffee in their hands? Even if it did happen, I'd be real suspicious of his motivations. Is this a new secret gay ritual? Is it spiked with the date rape drug? Is the man offering the cup of coffee an al-Qaeda operative looking to poison me?

Then, when the guy sensibly declines the coffee, the other guy sniffs at the coffee, as though it suddenly dawns on him that something might be wrong with it. What is he hoping to discover, that the second cup has the faint scent of arsenic in it?

Worse still, after declining the weird co-worker's coffee, this guy suddenly gets up and decides he's going to go home for his own coffee. Right in the middle of the workday. Can you imagine that? "I've got alot of paper work and two staff meetings but you know what, the hell with it, I'm going home for some real coffee!"

So the guy goes dancing out into the streets, just happening to pass all these places selling coffee he doesn't want, and then he hops a bus that just happens to be pulling up to the stop the minute he gets there and seconds later, he's home to a pot of coffee that magically, is already brewed and waiting!

Is this some kind of coffee fetishist's wet dream, or what?

ODDS AND ENDS:

The Mess are 4-1 since Mike Piazza went down with his right groin muscle tear. Does this mean they're back in the pennant race if Roberto Alomar breaks his leg?

When people point out Michael Jordan's #1 selection of Kwame Brown as evidence of what a lousy front office guy he is, they should note Kwame's improvement from his rookie season to this past season and consider his age and inexperience. Kwame's rookie season PPG average was 4.5 and he averaged 3.5 rebounds. This season, he average 7.4 ppg and 5.3 rebounds. At that rate of improvement, in two seasons, he would be averaging 20.1 points per game and 12.1 rebounds.

After the Game 2 debacle in San Antonio, ESPN cites ultra-jackass Joey Crawford as a "notoriously hot tempered" referee. Is it just me or does this make no sense at all? Why is someone whose job it is to "supervise" play taking the spotlight with his zero-tolerance attitude? What does it tell you when Joey walked over to Nick Van Exel of the Mavericks during pregame warm-ups and said, "Don't mess with me tonight. Because, like Muhammed Ali, I'm a baaaad man"? It tells me that Joey Crawford should be hanging out with Judge Judy instead of controlling NBA playoff games.