The Odd Couples -- Kobe/LeBron and Ron/Keith

I'd like to get this one last post in tonight before tomorrow night's big (ok, "big") Lakers-Knicks tilt at the Garden, in re: which I think we were planning on each watching and talking about on the blog. It looked like a game the Knicks might be able to steal, coming as a back-to-back after the actually big Lakers-Cavs matchup, but then L.A. lost tonight mainly by refusing to expend any energy at all, so the back-to-back aspect of things may not be a huge issue after all. That said, Phil Jackson is not going to be happy with the team tonight, and Pau Gasol is going to be especially angry at himself for missing the tying free throws with twenty-four seconds to play. The question is what this does to their mental state, though, because, let's be frank, this is a fragile team. Lamar Odom goes into funks, Ron Artest gets distracted, Pau and Andrew Bynum allow their frustration to take hold of them, and Kobe is prone to doing too much when his teammates go into their various fugues. Derek Fisher used to be a stabilizing force, but he's just not good enough to be that anymore. If I had to make a prediction, I'd predict a blowout. I honestly can't tell you who's going to blow out who, but I think one team or the other loses by 20 tomorrow night.

I think your comment about the Jordan Path, and how LeBron seems to be attempting to follow it squarely, is dead-on, and I unfortunately don't think I have much to add there. I do think it's funny how the puppet versions of Kobe and LeBron are basically the opposite of how they seem to be in real life. Kobe's puppet is outlandish, a braggart, loud, a little nutty. LeBron's puppet kind of plays the put-upon older brother. The best recent illustration of this is during the shoe-fire video: when the fireman tells Kobe that his shoe is "too hot", we cut to LeBron, who just goes "here we go". And indeed, there goes Kobe. I'm not sure who made this choice and why, but for whatever reason, I can't imagine the puppets being quite as funny if the characters were reversed. Here's the video, if you (not you, Migs; you, Dear Reader) somehow haven't seen it:



So as long as I'm talking about the relationship between two media figures, let me jump back to Ron Darling and Keith Hernandez. If I had to guess (and I do -- I'm a blogger!), I would think they hate each other professionally and are completely indifferent to each other personally, because three hours of a broadcast is about all the time they want to spend together. Ron, and I'm not just saying this because he went to Yale (believe me, I'm the last person to be awed by an Ivy League pedigree), has a much more intellectual approach to the game than Keith does. (I'm not in the habit of addressing guys by their first names, but for Ron and Keith, it just seems to fit. Something about broadcasters, I guess.) Keith feels the game. It's an emotional experience from start to end, and his analysis (or lack thereof, if you want to be harsh about it) reflects that. He's not quite Joe Morgan, but this isn't a guy known for Hershiseran analysis of pitch sequences, bullpen machinations, big-picture roster moves, and so forth.


This, I think, is why he puts his foot in his mouth from time to time, like his famous "women don't belong in the dugout" incident. He's just not going to think before he talks. It's not in his skillset. Even his apology for the women comment included the line "You know I love you ladies out there." He clearly doesn't get what it was that was offensive about what he said in the first place, and why "I love you ladies" doesn't make anyone feel better about it. Ron Darling, I am confident, would understand, and in fact does already understand, to the point where he'd never say something insane like that in the first place.

That's is why I imagine that the Darling-Hernandez relationship must resemble how I'd feel if I were forced to sit in a tiny room and talk about sports for three hours with Bill Simmons. His belief that luck is actually a thing in the universe, his dismissal of new ways of thinking about sports (unless it fits his conclusions), his ... well, I don't really need to catalogue all of it. It's been done better than I ever could by the likes of Jonathan Lethem, Bethlehem Shoals, and Sherman Alexie for New York Magazine. And it'll just get me riled up.

The point is that I think I'd end up stabbing Simmons in the press room. Since I see myself as Ron Darling and Simmons as Keith, I hope my point has been made clear.

Of course, my entire worldview necessitates that I dismiss all the above as rank speculation, for entertainment purposes only, because I have no idea how Ron and Keith feel about each other beyond that they apparently can cohabitate during Mets games just fine.