I.....Called It?

"The real fear pick here is Jason Smith"
-Me, about 30 seconds before the Heat drafted Jason Smith.

"Not so fast, smart aleck"
-The Heat, as they traded Smith for Daequan Cook five minutes later.

Geiger Counter

So tonight's the NBA Draft and everything I read says the heat are going to pick a 1 or 4. I gotta think Jason Williams has got to be a little nervous right now. But hey, he can take solace. White players in the NBA do just fine... look at Matt Geiger.

It seems the former Heat center is selling his house. Excuse me, he's selling his MANSION (and believe me when I tell you about the details, you'll understand why I use all caps). This guy has a 5 sq. mile estate, 40 tvs, nearly half of which are hooked to video game systems, bars everywhere, a herd of his own livestock, and a 330,000 gallon pool. I don't think some amusement parks have pools that big. Anyway, I guess chlorine's getting expensive so Matty is selling and moving to another place nearby. Now, again, this isn't Michael Jordan's house or Magic Johnson's house. It was Matt friggin' Geiger.

I guess living well really is the best revenge.

WOAH-kun

I stop paying attention to the Panthers for a minute and then they go and make a HUGE acquisition. The future London (Ontario) Monarchs or Kansas City T-Bones (now known as the Nashville Predators) have been having a fire sale of epic proportions and the Panthers have cashed in by snatching one of the top goalies in the league.

Say what you will, but the Cats have always seemed to be anchored by good goaltending. Johnny Beezer, Bobby Luongo, and now Tommy V. Maybe there is light at the end of the tunnel. Or whatever the South Florida equivalent is to a tunnel...

And Speaking Of Fish Frys....

"You remember Fernando Valenzuela? He started out a pitcher, ended up a truck."

-Albert Brooks

Maybe it's just the fact that there's nothing else to write about right now, but the Miami papers seem to have this obsession with Miguel Cabrera's waistline...but then again, the Dolphins/Hurricanes are between camps, the Heat/Panthers have shut it down for the offseason. That leaves the Marlins and that also leaves Miggy and his Pringles.

The only problem is that they're not wrong. Here's Miggy in 2003:

And here's the BEFORE picture, except that it's from four years in the future, where there are no flying cars unless he elects to leave his feet for anything. Also in a moment of unintentional comedy, the navigational direction for said photo gallery? "Click To View Larger Image" And it is indeed:

And while the Herald and the Sentinel have been attempting to stage an intervention all this week, White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen-- a friend of Cabrera's-- has also staged an intervention. As only Ozzie can: "When you're not hitting .340 with 40 home runs, they're going to call you a fat boy from Venezuela."

I just like to think it's all a helping hand to make Blog Sidekick look more to scale when he dons his Marlins jersey. I'll leave it up to the reader to decide whether that was a gratuitous pot-meet-kettle fat joke or me showing jealousy that there's never been an All-Star with my last name so I could get a legit badass jersey (not one of those awful fake custom dealies for three bills that cross the line of fandom into Xbox create-a-player alternate reality) with my own name on it.

To date in the last three decades, Dophins backup WR Marcus Mann came the closest, but he didn't make it out of preseason alive.

Fish Fry

Yeah, so... god damn it. Now that's 3 series in a row that the Marlins have lost. Tampa, Cleveland, and KC. The Indians, I get because they're playing incredible baseball right now. Tampa is questionable because they are arguably a step behind or on par with the Marlins talent-wise and are in the toughest division in baseball. But Kansas City? That's just unforgivable. It makes the mind boggle that we gave the friggin' Royals 2 of 3.

First you get "Mr. All or Nothing" Sergio Mitre, who's either lights out or off the pages bad. Friday night, we unfortunately got the latter. Then Saturday had Vanden Hurk get a win in a game he and the boys in the bullpen tried desperately to give away. In fact, Rick VDK pitched so well, he got a real nice reward today. A free trip back to Double A! And yesterday, Scott Olsen pitched like Mary-Kate Olsen. Well, at the end of the day, I'm not really expecting that much from the Teal Warriors this year, but at the same time, they're capable of much much better than this.

At least Miggy seems to be powering up again and HanRam has been living up to the potential he's got.

BoRing

Congratulations to former Heat forward Bruce Bowen and the Spurs who mugged, defeated the Cleveland Caveliers, while putting the rest of us to sleep. Not an unexpected result, but still all our best.

By the way, Bruce Bowen would have needed to hit LeBron with a bat with nails sticking out of it to get called for a foul. It's odd, last year, everyone (in Dallas) freaked out because D-Wade got so many calls. It's like the referees saw what happened last year and said, okay, this year, no one gets any calls. Funny how that works.

The Plot Thickens, And Then Possibly Stops Out Of Nowhere

Apparantly late last night, Daunte Culpepper was involved in a minor car accident out on the Sawgrass, complaining of a hand injury afterwards. No word yet on weather or not Journey's "Don't Stop Believing" was playing in the car at the time the accident happened.

But I think Daunte just got that release that he wanted, just not in the way that he intended getting it.

Wah!

Frustrated Culpepper seeks NFLPA union intervention

You've got to be kidding me. Daunte's gone into "Whiny Bitch" mode quicker than a defender returning his pass for a touchdown. Whatever dress Daunte puts on next season, she'll have a hard time fitting it over her gigantic knee brace.

Security

Daunte leaves minicamp under security. Well, that's a headline I wasn't expecting to see today. I'll leave it to you good reader to figure out what happened, but personally, I think Daunte brought one of Mike Vick's dogs for a demonstration.

Seriously, who the fuck shows up for work when you have been clearly told, "You're not welcome here."

You Say Goodbye, And I Say Hello

So far, it's just been another uneventful Dolphins minicamp. Plays have been learned, relationships have been forged, shorts have been run around in....and oh yeah, there's a whole quarterback working out for whom the team would be on the hook for 5.5 million for should he get a hangnail on the field...oh wait no, there he goes...and also is once again assuming his secondary role as E-MailBomber.

It is here where I have to tag out and quote Kelvin yesterday regarding Daunte being on the trading block:

Been dreaming of an overrated, old, injured QB manning your offense? Want to hear the term Pick 6 over and over? Like how the #8 looks on your team's colors? Boy have the Dolphins got the man for you!

This should pretty much play out over the next few days. Since the Dolphins like to pile up 6th and 7th round picks, it's nice that they'll have an early jump this year.

Families Love Orlando

A season and a half ago, Stan Van Gundy resigned from the Heat, claiming he wanted to spend more time with his family, which was a story that few people bought and resulted in Pat Riley winning an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor that day and an NBA Championship six months later. But for those who didn't see the PC that day, it was Riley at his Gordon Gecko best. Talking about crisis situations and the fact that he was uncertain he could return, thus lowering the bar for himself...all of which was a reminder that in another life, Riley would have been the greatest sermonist who ever lived were he to have gone that route.

Twenty years ago, both the cities of Orlando and Miami attempted to secure an NBA franchise. Twenty years ago, Orlando's method of procurement was to not only put forth their own expansion package, but to make sure they could make as many Miami-as-crime-central barbs as possible. This made people in Miami annoyed-- not mad, mind you, as we know what a cesspool Miami can be at times-- but that someone else was the one saying it. You see, the one thing Miami has any type of civic pride about is when someone who doesn't live here chooses to bag on us.

The point is that about twenty years ago was more or less the last time the two teams were anything resembling archrivals. Both teams were babies then and both teams were awful. Then came periods where both teams took turns being good and the other went into a down-cycle and each has only been a varying nuissance to the other at varying points.

That is, until today. Stan Van Gundy being the beneficiary of the Gainesville Hamlet Sweepstakes just made the matchup between these two teams interesting for the first time in years. Also, I'd be curious to know if now, finally at this point, if only to sell tickets, that if any further truth to Van Gundy's departure gets unraveled here. Although in the end, everyone's a winner: Miami gets a second-rounder, Van Gundy gets another job, Orlando gets a PR save, and we get a pretty good story that's about to happen.

Welcome to the planet... welcome to existence...

So I've gone ahead and joined the Hot Stormy Fish Tank crew. Allow me to introduce myself, I am Kelvin Cabrera. Resident of the city of New York. Graduate of Christopher Columbus High in the beautiful city of Miami. And like your party host, I too am a fan of all sports things Miami. Dolphins, Marlins, Heat, 'Canes, & Panthers.

Today, I come to you talking Dolphins...

So the Green Line has pulled into the Tri-Rail Station at Dolphins Stadium. I beat my head into the wall last year when Drew Brees went by the boards and we got the boobie prize known as Daunte Culpepper. Well, now it's a year later and everyone in Miami will be happy to know that the Cpep jerseys are now worthless. I don't mind the trade since they've now put money into Lemon as a 2nd/3rd QB and Beck (and don't get me started on THAT mess) is waiting in the wings.

We're still trying to pull out of the tailspin the Wannstedt era put us in and I hope to hell Green's
still got some of the goods that made him King of KC for a few years. Of course, it's all supposedly a place-holder while the World's Oldest Rookie gets ready to take over the franchise in '09 or whenever.

Summer workouts should be interesting. Let's see what we've got here.

Hostage Crisis Averted

Within 24 hours of each other, Trent Green finally was traded to the Dolphins and Paris Hilton was released from the big house.

Also, the Daunte Culpepper era might have a milk-level shelf life to it.