Take Your Best Shot, for the Good of the Game

If today’s much-ballyhooed showdown between the Lakers and Miami Heat at Staples Center is all about shot selection, then Patrick Reusse of the Minneapolis Star Tribune has a few tips to offer Kobe Bryant, Shaquille O’Neal and friends.

“Good shots,” Reusse writes, “rise up majestically, as if on wings, perfect parabolas uncanny in their timing and accompanied naturally by a chorus that rises in sweet voice until the ball finds its target in a crescendo of swish!

“Bad shots are furtive, slobbering and unshaven, launched from the shadows or panicked into flight like pigeons scattered by a city bus. They always come too soon or too late and, contrary to physics, change direction in mid-flight. The only sound before the inevitable CLANG! is the groan of a suffering head coach.”

More Lakers-Heat: Just to warm things up a little more, Greg Cote of the Miami Herald points out that “Both teams are on big streaks, too, with the Heat having won [10] games in a row and the Lakers having endured 21 straight games of Kobe’s shameless ball hogging.”

Trivia time: What was Waldi the Dachshund’s claim to sporting noteworthiness?

Uniformly bad: When they play the Pacers at Indiana today, the Detroit Pistons will be wearing throwback uniforms from the so-called “bolt era,” but the Detroit News suggests the team might have put a little more thought into its choice:

“In the three seasons they wore the lightning-bolt jerseys [1978-81] the Pistons had a 67-179 record. The Pacers, by contrast, will be wearing jerseys from 1987-1988, the season they won their first division title.”

Picture this: It was nice of the Cleveland Browns to send out holiday cards to season-ticket holders, writes Roger Brown of the Cleveland Plain Dealer. Pity, though, that the Browns put them in the mail early and that the greeting therefore includes “a happy, jolly Butch Davis, who resigned as head coach and fled town three weeks ago.”

Striking out: Count Washington City Councilwoman Carol Schwartz among those unimpressed by baseball’s return to the nation’s capital.

“We’ve gone from the world’s lousiest deal to still the world’s lousiest deal,” she told the Washington Times. “I congratulate baseball’s major league negotiators and condemn our minor league negotiators. They cleaned our clock.”

Yuletide or tongue-tied: The Denver Broncos play the Tennessee Titans today, even though it’s Christmas, and that has kind of confused Bronco cornerback Champ Bailey.

“I don’t think we should be playing,” Bailey told the Colorado Springs Gazette. “But if I was home and not playing football, I’d want to see a game.”

Trivia answer: Waldi the Dachshund was the first Olympic mascot, at the Munich Games in 1972.

And finally: Commenting on the retirement of Zippy Chippy, the thoroughbred who ran and lost 100 races, the Seattle Times’ Dwight Perry said, “Fellow horses, we hear, are already missing his presence, saying Zippy was the glue that held the barn area together.”