Category: Sports

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NFL Draft Sports

NFL Draft 2020

Bengals Selection

Sports fans haven’t had much to look forward to this year. However, the first major sporting event since the Coronavirus epidemic started was the NFL draft. This finally gave sports fans something to care about as their families surrounded the television to see which players their favorite team would acquire. The number one pick in the draft, Joe Burrow, went to the Cincinnati Bengals. He won the Heisman last year(awarded for best college player) and the national championship so he probably has the highest expectations out of anyone. My roommate from freshman year is a Bengals fan and he’s very excited for the upcoming season. The Bengals are also supposed to get back their superstar wide receiver A.J. Green this year, although it will take monster steps to recover from only winning a couple games last year. 

Packers Selection

Packer fans were not very happy with them taking a quarterback in the first round! We already have Aaron Rodgers, a hall-of-fame quarterback, so the incoming replacement isn’t even going to play until Rodgers retires, which could be in like five years. Most fans wanted them to draft help for Aaron Rodgers, particularly at wide receiver where the only reliable option is Davante Adams. People weren’t much happier with the second pick! They drafted a running back from Boston College who isn’t even going to start! I’m really surprised they didn’t draft a wide receiver with any of their first four picks, considering it’s one of their worst positions. Former Wisconsin star Jonathan Taylor got selected by the Colts in the second round. It’s really exciting for a Badgers player to get drafted so high, even if he’s not going to be on the Packers. The Colts could really use him though; their starting running back last year was Marlon Mack.

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Documentaries NBA Livestreams Sports

Sport Deprived

NBA Livestreams

My blogs are supposed to be centered around sports, however there is nothing happening in the sports world due to the devastating effects of the Coronavirus and it’s destroying my heart! But in these trying times for sports fans, there is still material we can watch to satisfy our hunger for sports. Recently, I’ve been watching classic NBA games on Youtube that are being released on the official NBA channel. They livestream a new game almost every day and upload the stream when the game is over. This is amazing news for NBA fans that like to just sit back and reminisce on the legends of the past and all the spectacular feats that were accomplished. They’ve been doing a sizable amount of Kobe Bryant games since he recently passed away and I’ve been loving every minute of it! Right before typing this blog I was watching a 2008 Western Conference Playoffs matchup between Kobe’s Lakers and the Nuggets led by Allen Iverson and Carmelo Anthony. It was such a blast to the past for me as I can remember watching matchups like this when I was a young kid (4th or 5th grade) and being inspired enough to go out to my driveway and try to recreate the plays that were happening on television. Games from this time period hit me in all the feels and I know I’m not alone based on the number of people watching and leaving comments on the YouTube videos.

Documentaries

Although if watching throwback games isn’t your cup of tea, you can always buy ESPN Plus for $5 a month and have access to hundreds of documentaries, some of which have little to do with sports and more about the opportunities/complexities of life. Even for people who aren’t fans of sports, the 30 for 30 on the Duke lacrosse team is one of the most fascinating and compelling documentaries I’ve ever seen. It’s about the examination of accusations of sexual misconduct at a party that were ultimately proven to be made up. There’s also a documentary series on OJ Simpson that has little to do with sports but goes deep into the murder case and the reactions of people when he was found not guily. None of this material will live up to the unpredictability and spontaneity of live sports, but it’s the closest we can get for a while!  

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Pandemic Sports

Coronavirus Pandemic: The Impact on the World of Sports

Overall Breakdown

With all of the hoopla surrounding this pandemic worldwide and the drastic effects its had on the sports world, I would be insane not to talk about the Coronavirus. It supposedly started in late December in 2019 when someone in China consumed part of a bat that had the virus. Unfortunately, due to the high level of contagiousness, it started spreading like wildfires! This lead to the building of a hospital in the place where it was most prevalent and spreading the quickest (Wuhan, China) in just ten days. Throughout the next few months it started spreading around the world due as travelers were going to different countries, not knowing how easily the virus can spread. There are currently over a thousand cases in the United States. This may not seem like a huge number but it’s scary when just a couple weeks ago there were only a handful.

The Sports World

Celebrities like actor Tom Hanks and basketball players Rudy Gobert and Donovan Mitchell tested positive for the coronavirus. March 11th, 2020 was a day for the history books! In the afternoon, the NCAA announced that their games will not feature a crowd at all besides the families of the players and essential staff. As a sports fan, I was devastated by this news! Now the fans don’t get to enjoy the wonderful game of college hoops. However, I was extremely intrigued by how this would translate to the television watching experience. Would it be awkward not hearing the crowd react to anything that’s happening besides the couple voices from the family? I thought it would be much more authentic being able to hear the ball bouncing and the players talking trash to one another. Unfortunately, we don’t get to find out what it will be like as the NCAA cancelled the tournament and all Power 5 games. The entire rest of the NBA season was also cancelled without promise of a rescheduling of the playoffs! I was really upset by this news since the Bucks are having the best year they’ve ever had, only to get ruined by a virus. It’s easy to tell our country is very apprehensive about the virus! Never before have sports seasons been outright cancelled because of a worldwide pandemic and the accompanying public paranoia has been enough to say that 2020 is off to a rocky start. Entire NBA teams that recently played the Utah Jazz (the team with Rudy Gobert and Donovan Mitchell) had to self-quarantine and the Jazz had to wait days before they could return to Salt Lake City after Rudy tested positive. 

Outlook

I’m hopeful that we’ll get better at controlling the virus and make progress in preventing its further unfurling. Scientists are working on vaccines for it so maybe we’ll have better protection from it in the coming weeks when it gets tested and people are more informed on the perils. When I first heard about the virus a couple months ago, I never thought it would reach the heights it has and didn’t even know there was a circumstance possible that could shut down all sports with such rapidity.

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Sports

The Milwaukee Bucks

I have been a Bucks fan all of my life! After I fell in love with basketball in second grade they have been my NBA team to root for; I prefer the NBA over college basketball. Unfortunately, the Bucks haven’t been very good since I’ve been old enough to watch television and understand what’s going on with sports. I’ve been through the dark ages of Milwaukee basketball (2006-2014) when their best players in that entire span were Micheal Redd, Brandon Jennings, and Monta Ellis. However the past few years the Bucks have been on the rise, making improvements in their record each of the past four years and continuing to advance further into the playoffs. 

The Milwaukee Bucks have been having a great year so far! They have the best record in the NBA with 48 wins and 8 losses and are on pace to be one of the favorites to win the title. They are lead by the reigning MVP of the league, Giannis Antetokoumpo, who at 6’11 and with long arms, is almost impossible to stop when going to the hoop. He’s the poster child of the Bucks franchise and the best player they’ve had since Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in the 70’s. The body transformation of this guy from when he came into the league to now is absolutely astronomical! He has trained relentlessly to become one of the best players in the NBA and lead the Bucks to the position they’re now in. Their second best player, Kris Middleton, made the all star team for the first time this year and is one of the best up and coming shooting guards in the league. Other important rotational players they have include Pat Connaughton, Brook Lopez, Eric Bledsoe, and Wesley Matthews and they’re led by second year coach Mike Budenholzer. 

I’m really excited for the playoffs this year! The Bucks are slated to play the Orlando Magic in the first round which they should easily be able to handle. The toughest opponent they will face in the East is probably the Boston Celtics, who are a well-rounded defensive based team that has given the Bucks problems in the past. They’re led by all stars Kemba Walker and Jayson Tatum, players who will be tough for them to guard. Another challenging foe for the Bucks may be the Lakers in the finals, who are carried by legends such as Lebron James and Anthony Davis. Both of these guys are genetic freaks of nature that make you wonder how humans can be so perfectly crafted to play the game of basketball. There is an emotional weight behind the Lakers journey this year with the death of Kobe and there will definitely be many NBA fans rooting for the Lakers so they can win one for Kobe. If the finals ends up being Bucks vs Lakers, I think we’ll have a very competitive series that will be one for the ages. I would be very happy if the Bucks made the finals! They haven’t been there since 1974 and it would be a monumental achievement. 

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Sports Uncategorized

My First Blog Post

Kobe Bryant’s Death

If you’re a basketball fan like me, the death of Kobe Bryant probably hit you like a pile of bricks! On January 26th, 2020 the sports world would change forever when a private helicopter carrying Lakers star Kobe Bryant, his daughter Gianna, and seven others brutally crashed into a hill in the Hollywood area. I remember I was at work when I read the news on Twitter and it didn’t seem real. I conversed with my fellow co-workers and everyone was completely shocked when they heard this information. I still haven’t internalized the totality of it sitting here on my bed typing over a week later. Kobe was my entire childhood and although I was usually rooting against his teams he shaped so many of my great sports memories as a kid and contributed a great deal to the American culture as a whole. Even disregarding the sports world, Kobe was a great father to his kids and a father figure for kids who grew up without a dad in their life.

The crash happened on a route his family had flown many times before: from the Southern Los Angeles area to the Northern Los Angeles suburbs. They were flying to a basketball game for Kobe’s daughter Gianna under very foggy conditions that they needed special permission to fly in. The pilot was instructed to hold before landing by the air traffic controller because of the air traffic going around. The pilot told air traffic control he was “going to climb higher to avoid a cloud layer” and that was his last transmission. Furthermore, helicopter crashes are more difficult to investigate since they don’t have the same “black box” recorders that are prevalent in planes. This tragedy has people all over America utterly devastated and people have been showing their thanks for Kobe in a multitude of ways. Buildings in Los Angeles have been displaying his picture, along with the Burj Khalifa in Dubai (the tallest building in the world). Fans gathered outside of the Staples Center to throw their Kobe’s shoes/jerseys in a pile in remembrance of the legend. Although it’s very sad that’s he’s gone, he left behind an iconic legacy that will be cherished for the rest of time.

Love you Kobe

Be yourself; Everyone else is already taken.

— Oscar Wilde.

This is the first post on my new blog. I’m just getting this new blog going, so stay tuned for more. Subscribe below to get notified when I post new updates.

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