By Tim Peterson
Some quick hot takes for a 110 degree Saturday afternoon:
I just watched a full NBA game for the first time since the restart. Sorry, just more of a baseball guy these days. But I believe the Lakers may be in trouble.
Damian Lillard, CJ McCollum and Jusuf Nurkic are all playing well for a Portland Trail Blazers team that is going to be hungry to prove themselves. And have you seen the resurgence of Carmelo Anthony? Did you even know he was still in the league?
There is no home court advantage in the bubble so nothing there for the Blazers to worry about. Yes I know the narrative is that LeBron James always flips the switch in the playoffs and the Lakers record since the restart is meaningless. But shouldn’t they have been better than 3-5 in the Orlando bubble? After LeBron and Anthony Davis the Lakers don’t have another proven scorer. The drop off is significant. The Laker faithful will say Kyle Kuzma is the guy but he’s averaging 12 points game, 14 points less than Davis and James. What if AD is having an off night or God forbid gets hurt? Is Kuzma really the guy that can step up make clutch shots?
And who guards Lillard? Can anybody truly guard Lillard? This guy has become one of the best players in the game but still flies under the radar. Plus the Lakers have J.R. Smith on the roster. He’s not playing a lot of minutes but when he is I’m always expecting some brain dead move at any time. I’m almost surprised LeBron signed off on acquiring him after his experience with him in Cleveland.
I could be wrong. Honestly I hope I am. However a first round Laker playoff exit wouldn’t surprise me. If the Lakers do get bounced is it one of the team’s biggest disappointments ever or is it simply written off as a strange year and an aberration?
Love the NBA right now or hate it but I will give them credit for one thing. They have done a great job setting up the bubble and laying out regulations and restrictions in Orlando. There have been zero positive tests, zero! for the coronavirus out of 342 players tested since the last results were released August 5th.
**
Ok so on to baseball. Did you know that Clayton Kershaw has never allowed a home run to Albert Pujols or Mike Trout but has given up two to Madison Bumgarner? Kershaw? Where are we on this guy? He’s definitely no longer an ace, but he doesn’t need to be on a staff that includes Walker Buehler and Dustin May. In three starts he looked good in two of them and got shelled in the other. He’s still serviceable and can be a key component in the Dodgers winning a World Series. But I certainly wouldn’t hand him the ball to start a playoff series or a World Series or rely on him to win a Game Seven. At this point that would be Buehler.
Good news for the Dodgers. They’re in first place in the NL West with a 14-7 record and they’re doing it with Max Muncy batting .169 and Cody Bellinger hitting .181. Bellinger has shown some signs of life lately and when everybody gets going nobody should touch them in the division. Mookie Betts has been as good as advertised. Betts is the epitome of a five tool player and his arm may be the best in the league. Dave Roberts needs to stop messing around and bat him leadoff every game. 12 years is too long of a contract for anybody but for now, with Betts playing like this, I’m not going to complain. Heck, it’s not my money.
Although I’ve seen only one complete NBA game I’ve probably seen every Dodger game. Like I said baseball is more of my thing. That being said I just can’t get into the Angels. I’ve tried. I really have. But it doesn’t matter if there’s a sold out crowd, or no fans, Mike Scioscia managing the club or Joe Maddon at the helm, I just can’t do it. I’ve turned on an Angel game, watched a few pitches and suddenly found myself turning the channel to “The First 48”. Not sure what it is, the red uniforms, the rockpile out beyond the centerfield fence or the cute nickname of “The Halos”. It could be all of the above but either way for me it’s the Dodgers or bust.
**
I’m kind of bummed as I write this. I’m talking about the NBA playoffs and the MLB instead of the greatest sport ever – High School Football. Delay the major league baseball season, interrupt the NBA, cool, but postpone high school football? Now you’ve crossed the line. I understand CIF pushing back the season until January. I mean if a kid got sick the legal ramifications would be off the charts, but it doesn’t mean I have to like it.
I’ve covered all college sports including USC football, Professional soccer with the Galaxy in the MLS and the NFL – the LA Chargers, but nothing gets my blood pumping more than standing on the sidelines waiting for the kickoff of a high school football game. Best feeling in the world. January 2021 can’t come soon enough.
Meanwhile I’ll fill the time with coaches Q & As, returning players and other tidbits that I can find. Attention all coaches: Once your football schedules are finalized send them over. I’ll be happy to post them. What can I say? I need the content.
That’s my principle.
I can be reached at tim.midvalleysports@gmail.com or on Twitter @tspeterson40.
Yeah, it’s hard to get into an Angels team that’s 11 games behind the Oakland Athletics halfway through a short regular season.
Tim,Tim? Can’t get into the Angels. Go get a original Rally Monkey, a Thunder Stick and tickets to Disney to go to after a 1 pm game start. You will see the greatest player in baseball and you won’t get assaulted going to your car after the game.
Ah, yes, it’s nice to hear from you, Jerry. I understand that you had to remove some of your social media posts. One has to set a good example!
@ “Mr. Kobach”: Well done.
RV: Please clean up your posts. My girlfriend reads this site.
Again, I didn’t use any profanity.
Nice to see so many defending our beloved president on here. By the way thank you so much for your donations to our “We Build the Wall Fund.” It is a hoax that we stole any money and ask you to go to our Go Fund Me page to help us pay for our lawyers.
Again, there was no profanity there. The material that I found on Reddit concerning dead people’s ballots was from a fact-check.
Thanks for your time, Tim, Duane, and company.
I didn’t use any profanity in my last post, and I’ve never used any curse words or obscenities here.
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@ Publius & Anonymous: Both of you were right on the mark. DELETED
Full disclosure: The overall totals that I presented for the Michigan primary election came from an article in the “Click On Detroit” online newspaper; I obtained the information about the dead people’s ballots DELETED which was posted on Reddit.
Once again, DELETED
@ Tank: You must really hate California. But, it has to be a pretty good place since about 40 million people live here. California is home to 12 per cent of the U.S. population, and people wouldn’t have come to this state by the millions if it were as bad as you say it is.
California has generally had a vibrant economy, whether under Democratic or Republican governors and state legislators. And, although we have our issues with racism and social class inequality, our state is reasonably tolerant when compared to many other parts of the country.
Our political leaders are not perfect, but most of them try their best to serve their constituents.
The only reason why California and many other states will be implementing a “mass distribution of ballots” before the November election is that we’re in the middle of the worst pandemic we’ve experienced in 101 years.
People shouldn’t be forced to make a choice between their health and their right to vote, DELETED
There will be virtually no difference between this year’s mail-in ballots and your standard absentee ballots. (That’s certainly true in California, where absentee voting has been done for decades.)
You mark your ballot, you put it in a small security envelope which you must sign, and then you place the small envelope into a larger one for mailing. Last, before your ballot is counted, election officials check your signature on the envelope against the one they have on file, and they also check to make sure that you haven’t already voted.
My prediction is DELETED.
@ RAMS FAN: Absentee or mail-in ballots also have a useful purpose for people who are ill, disabled, lack transportation, or have work, school, or child-care issues on Election Day. Those who are afraid of contracting the worst virus to emerge during their lifetimes should also be permitted to vote by mail this year.
“Don’t use Covid as an excuse.” DELETED. We’re all vulnerable to the ravages of this disease, unless you possess a cure that you’re not telling us about.
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What you said about dead people voting in Michigan is misleading. Those citizens were still alive at the time they voted and mailed their ballots, but they died before the date of the primary election (which was Aug. 4).
This incident shows that the election system in Michigan actually worked well, because election officials discovered that the voters in question were deceased and the ballots were disqualified.
By the way, you’re talking about 846 out of a total of 1.6 million mail-in ballots which were cast in the Michigan primary election. In all, 2.5 million people voted there.
Even if those 846 ballots were counted, that wouldn’t constitute the “widespread election fraud” that DELETED. Those ballots amounted to a little over 3 hundredths of one per cent of the total number cast.
All eligible voters should be allowed to vote in the November election, and their ballots should be counted. Otherwise, we will no longer be a democratic republic.
Dude, this is a false story. Its been easily and readily disproved. Enough with the spreading of lies. You are the one that needs to be educated. “For one thing, the 846 rejected ballots were cast not by dead people but by living people who then died before Election Day. For another, those ballots — which were not counted in the final results — made up about 8% of the rejected ballots, not 8% of the votes cast. In fact, these ballots accounted for barely 0.03% of the total votes cast, and none were counted.”
LAMBS MAN, why don’t supply sources for your claims? That way we can see where you get your information from. From my perspective, your advice to “google it” reeks of laziness and lack of confidence in the source on your part. I would love if my friends on the right would actually stop talking politics on this site and just go on twitter with that DELETED. Just saying.
@SGV
Tim I apologize for political commentary but I have to respond to stupidity. SGV one thing Trump and his supporters have never been accused of is backing down from a fight. Ie China, Iran, Russia. Second, please educate yourself about the difference between absentee ballots and mass mail in voting. Just last week Michigan rejected 846 mail in ballots from confirmed DEAD people! Go ahead and Google it if you know how. Absentee ballots have a very useful purpose for people out of the country, traveling a lot, and security concerns(Trump fits all 3 categories) Mass mail in ballots have no real useful purpose. Don’t use Covid as an excuse. If you can protest, go to the beach, go grocery shopping you can vote in person. Please, don’t even get me started about the hypocrisy of the left.
SGV,
Anyone can request a mail-in ballot. That’s different than a mass distribution of ballots. In CA it probably doesn’t matter, being a lost cause down the lib DELETED. Just don’t scream about the popular vote again while consoling each other in your cry room.
The swallowing snakes can be found in abundance in CA. You’ve swallowed their kool-aid, obviously.
Have to agree about the hypocricy of the right. All talk and bluster but in real life don’t fight, lie to get off having to serve and lately blame the post office for making a rigged election by using mail in voting during Covid but the big liar himself asked for mail in ballots so he could vote! It is weird how much these snakes can swallow.
?
As you pound out your little made up story, did you feel any better about yourself? I doubt it. Cowards like you really just hate themselves. Your a good example of what the “participation trophy” generation has to deal with – no self worth.
No, there isn’t any hysteria about the coronavirus pandemic here.
I would like to report the death toll as it now stands, for the benefit of those who somehow still don’t take the pandemic seriously:
In the United States: 172,146
In California: 11,242
In Los Angeles County: 5,254
Source: Microsoft News, on Monday, Aug. 17.
In addition, researchers at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Md. stated that the coronavirus is currently the third-leading cause of death in the U.S., behind only heart disease and cancer.
This disease is for real, and it preys on the ignorant, the careless, people who live in crowded conditions, and anyone who’s in the wrong place at the wrong time.
@ NWO & SGV: I agree with most of what both of you said.
If we are going to have any sort of high school sports in early 2021, we have to slow the disease down to almost a slow crawl. Our mask-wearing and social distancing will have to continue into the forseeable future.
If we can make substantial progress by mid-fall, then we might have a chance to limit the interaction between the coronavirus and whatever seasonal flu strain is going to hit us. Any effective treatments for COVID-19 that can be made widely available within the next several months will also be extremely helpful.
If the disease flares up again in the fall because of another failure by us to mitigate its spread, and/or due to its interaction with the seasonal flu, we can forget about having any on-campus academic instruction or sports this entire school year. (You might be right on target there, SGV.)
I also think that coronavirus testing is going to be crucial in our return to semi-normal life. As far as our schools are concerned, I believe that students, teachers, administrators, and staff members will have to test negative in order to be allowed back on campus.
Unfortunately, we are nowhere close to addressing the need for testing. Hopefully, the state of California, working in conjunction with county health departments and school districts, will be able to fill the testing void. Help from the federal government on this matter will probably not be forthcoming any time soon.
@ Really?: Stock market performance is often one of the worst predictors of how our economy will do in the future. In my opinion, better indicators include gross domestic product, job growth, and unemployment numbers. The U.S. economy is not doing well at the moment, by any of those measures.
Corporate leaders (and shareholders) can frequently maintain profitability by laying off employees, an action which can be good for the corporate types but is horrible for the workers and their families.
I know who Tank is. I saw him at the supermarket wearing a face shield, mask and surgical gloves. I was behind him in line as he paid with food stamps. He got mad when the checker would not allow his Virginia Slims smokes with his stamps. He was parked in a disabled spot with a placard but waddled just fine. He is the typical Trumper. Posts like a tough guy but in real life claims some disability to avoid any real fight. All blowhards and phonies.
I have to agree with SGV. I love sports like everyone on here, I’ve played baseball and football at the D3 level back in the late 80’s, I have coached both sports at youth and high school levels, and I would not feel comfortable at all trying to hit the field in 2020. Also decided to roll my Rams season tickets over to 2021. I think the majority of people still are uncomfortable with crowds and not having a vaccine. Just my opinion.
It’s Trump’s fault? Anything else anyone feels like blaming him for? You’ve come to right place. This is now MidValley Care Unit for the hysterical.
Wear your mask when posting comments, please.
The desire for high school sports to commence is contingent on schools being able to safely have students back on campus. I’am not sure that has been done anywhere in this country yet. Until our daughters and sons are sitting at their desks in a classroom for a semester the whole sports discussion is pointless. Parents are uneasy about hugging their own teenage children right now and some on here opine about tackle football? We are at least a year away in socal from having any high school sports. This coming flu season will prove that. People still not taking it seriously.
As President Harry S. Truman said, “the buck stops here.“ Today it stops and goes into those people manipulating the stock market. Come the end of the year you could see the market crash to levels never seen before. Why make this comment? Well truthfully, it is a the writing on the wall. All these companies filing Chapter 11/13 etc. yet the markets in their sectors are doing fine holding their own. I wonder. Look, if we want everything to open up and not worry about the problems of morality , financial abuses and not allow litigious actions. We should just start at the top. Make all those people who don’t think their will be any sickness, disability and/or death to go and expose themselves to the most ill patients in the ICU’s. We can get them food and water for free in their own bubble. The first people should be all those including our president and his cabinet, senators and congressmen and women as well as their wives and husbands. Since we must have our children, teachers and friends exposed to make America Great Again. This how we can begin beatIng this virus and get back to normalcy playing our sports and enjoying life again.
@ Tim: I agree with you completely. One of the biggest threats when it comes to breaking school district budgets, besides employee salaries and benefits, is the cost of liability insurance.
Those insurance premiums would only go up for school districts that get hit by legal judgments or have to settle cases in order to avoid going to trial.
@ Bottom Line: I’ve never seen or heard of a “one-kid-infected” standard that was ever used by a public health agency to close everything down. I believe Tim was speaking in a hypothetical manner. (Please correct me if I’m wrong.)
If high school football practices were to begin in our area now, I can almost 100% guarantee that far more than one player would become infected. We are still seeing well over 1,000 new cases of the coronavirus every day in Los Angeles County.
And, football is a contact sport which isn’t conducive to the social distancing that’s required to slow, and eventually stop, the spread of this highly contagious disease.
These are the current coronavirus infection totals for young people in L.A. County (not including youngsters who live in Long Beach or Pasadena, which have their own health departments):
Ages newborn to 4: 3,287
Ages 5 to 11: 7,279
Ages 12 to 17: 9,133
As you can see, thousands of young people have been infected in our county alone.
I’m all for having a high school football season early next year, but it will happen only if the daily number of new cases goes WAY down. (And that probably means down to well below 100 a day, so our county public health workers can then effectively conduct contact tracing and quarantines.)
If we can get to that point, we could possibly commence play while taking precautions such as wearing masks and enforcing at least some social distancing in the stands.
Things would be even better if effective treatments for the coronavirus can be developed and widely distributed before the end of this year. A vaccine still appears to be a long shot at this point.
From T. Peterson: Obviously if there was a Coronavirus outbreak there would be more than one kid. My point is if there was just one kid…even just one…there would be lawsuits all over the place. And if the cases rose, so would litigation. That’s the main reason why they can’t play. It’s for safety too but also way too risky when it comes to lawsuits. This isn’t just my opinion. It was also confirmed to me by several coaches.
One kid infected is an example of how uneducated and how so many are willing to adopt the latest Trump lies. The virus started with ONE KID! This virus spreads faster than Trump lies. Schools in the south that have opened are closing even though they are willing to infect not just one kid but millions. Even they see the folly and fantasy of trying to open up and play football. Keep sticking your head in the sand pal the virus knows you can’t ignore it, it will infect your rear end hanging out.
Well said!
If we have to worry about ONE KID contracting the virus, we’ll never have football in January. The virus is never going to disappear, because nobody knows how to kill it when it’s in the body. HIV and the Flu are treated with drugs that MINIMIZE their effect in the body, but it is not gone entirely. That ONE KID INFECTED standard is a sign of mass hysteria, and we can’t get high school sports back until more realistic viewpoints prevail.