My favorite Nike puppet

If you've been watching any playoff basketball this season, I'm sure you've noticed the Nike ads featuring the "Most Valuable Puppet" avatars of LeBron James and Kobe Bryant. If you haven't, here and here.

What I like most about this ad campaign is how the puppets' personalities truly reflect their human counterparts. Lil' Kobe's projects a mellow arrogance, flaunting his extensive playoff and championship experience. Lil' Lebron cannot contain his enthusiasm for the post-season, Ohio, and Chinese food.

I'm assuming these commercials will run through the end of the post-season. Over the course of the next week, we'll see if the real LeBron and Kobe can outlast their marionette mini-me's by meeting in the Finals.

The focus of this article, however, is my favorite Nike puppet - puppeT, singular. It's not about Kobe and LeBron. Flash back about 13 years, and you may recall a loud-mouthed, smack-talkin' figurine by the name of Lil' Penny!

In my mind, the Lil' Penny ad campaign represent some of my greatest memories of the '90s: Anfernee Hardaway's potential, Chris Rock one-liners, Tyra Banks, Gheorghe Muresan, and the most comfortable pair of shoes I've ever owned, the Nike Air Penny 2 (photo below). If all that doesn't give you a warm fuzzy feeling, I feel sorry for you.

Unfortunately for Penny, we remember little else from his career besides an eastern conference championship and the emotional scars from Shaquille O'Neal's departure for Hollywood and a series of less-than-mediocre comebacks after injury. At least we can still watch the commercials.

Hats off to Nike for creating a series of new (and likely more successful) puppets, but I'll never forget Lil' Penny and the puppet empire that could have been. "If the Academy don't recognize this, we got a problem."

Enduring a Wall Street Run

This brown guy participated in the American Heart Association's Wall Street 5K 3-mile (distance changed due to construction) run today. In this economy, there's something symbolic about thousands of people running through the streets of the financial district. I think I noticed a couple of guys in suits join the crowd (see photo). Maybe it was an investment banker trying to run away after a deal fell through. Maybe a CEO of a recent bail-out company trying to skip town before his multi-million dollar bonus was revoked. But I digress; this is not a business/economics blog.

Endurance sports are not something the general population considers a sport until the Olympics roll around. Perhaps the idea of intentionally subjecting oneself to grueling physical activity without the prospect of scoring points or necessarily winning anything is strange to us. We're so used to thinking of sports in terms of win-loss records and "the team."

For those who participate in endurance sports, it's all about personal accomplishment. Whether it's running, biking, or swimming, success is about pushing yourself to the limit to achieve your goals without regard to the guy next to you. Sure, it'd be nice to win the race, but getting to the finish line or beating your previous time is usually enough. When you're on the road and in the zone, you have nothing to prove to anyone except yourself.

At least that's been my experience.

Predictions

Alright brownies, I say that we should play a little game here. The Conference Finals are starting tonight, and I say we should predict. The proposed rules are simple and are as follows:

1. If the team you pick wins their series, you get 5 points
2. If you pick the incorrect team, but pick the number of games the series will go correctly, you will get 2 points
3. If you pick the correct team and the number of games correctly, you get 10 points
4. The first tie breaker will be the NBA Finals winner
   
5. The second tie breaker will be your two finals teams' average points per game
   
6. If theres a third tie breaker we should never play this game again

If you guys have any suggestions on rules, what the winner gets, etc... lets figure it out so we can agree on everything, and may the best Brown guy win.

PS- I propose the winner gets to give Jiggly a wet willy since he is not gonna win anyway!

Chancey Billups: Mr. Big Shot

Age ain’t nothing but a number. This certainly holds true for 12 year veteran Chauncey Billups who is headed to his 7th straight conference finals appearance. That’s right. I said seven. He holds himself in good company as only Magic Johnson and Kareem Abdul Jabbar have ever accomplished this amazing feat.

So what makes Chauncey so reliable year after year? He doesn’t have Chris Paul’s killer crossover; he doesn’t have Derrick Rose’s speed, and he doesn’t have Deron Williams’ vision. But what he does have is a basketball IQ and leadership mentality that is second to none among NBA point guards.

This season we are witnessing exactly how valuable Billups’ basketball IQ and leadership are to the Denver Nuggets. Billups has completely transformed this team and has led them to a franchise record of 54 wins. But it's not the regular season where Billups’s impact and basketball IQ will be felt. After all, the Nuggets won 50 games last season, so 54 wins is not that much more. But lets take a look at last years playoff run (which was nonexistent) versus this years playoff run. Last year, the Nuggets got completely embarrassed by the Lakers in the first round. Lakers 4 - Nuggets 0. This year, they're 8-2 in the playoffs, winning the majority of their games convincingly. And the two games they lost were very close. Before Billups, the Nuggets lacked maturity - when things got tougher in the playoffs, they couldn't handle it. They shut down, and they lost their cool. This year, it's the Nuggets who have executed. That's no accident - that's Billups's influence.

The Nuggets and Lakers will be an exciting matchup with a much different outcome than last year. If I were the Lakers, I’d brace myself for a tough series. The Nuggets have the firepower, defense, and front line that will cause the Lakers significant problems. Oh yeah, and if that’s not enough, they have a world-class point guard and floor general in Chauncey Billups.

Nuggets in 6.

A Fair Fan vs. Fanfare

This post is in response to Speaking of Fanfare. After I finished reading this article, I had the same reaction as I had this morning when I heard James Harrison's reasoning for deciding not to make the trip to the White House with the rest of his teammates, WTF?? Oh, and just to set the record straight, I was one of the two fellow Florida brown guys that was called out.

Now I do agree with my fellow brownie that there are many people out there that go for the best team at the time they start following sports and then ride into the sunset. However, I do not feel that this is the majority and this sure as hell is not me!

Lets start with baseball. My favorite team is the Atlanta Braves, who I started watching religiously starting at the age of 4 (circa 1986) mainly because of the national coverage of TBS. Now lets take the win-loss records of the Braves from 86-90 (before 1991, the first year of Atlanta's started their run of 14 consecutive division titles).

• 1986: 72 wins 89 losses (last place in division)
• 1987: 69 wins 92 losses (5th place in division)
• 1988: 54 wins 106 losses (last place in division)
• 1989: 63 wins 97 losses (last place in division)
• 1990: 65 wins 97 losses (last place in division)

I shed tears every game they lost. As you can obviously see from those gruesome records above, that is why I have no more tears left to offer. The bottom line is, I think I paid my dues for this one. Also, neither the Florida Marlins nor the Tampa Bay Rays existed until 1993 and 1998, respectively.

Lets go to basketball now. My favorite team is the Chicago Bulls, who I started watching in the late 80s on WGN. I will admit that I was completely mesmerized by Michael Jordan, but who wasn't? Yes, the Bulls do differ from the Braves in that they were a legit team in the NBA when I started watching. However, they were not the best in the late 80s. MJ was not even known as the best player back then. He did not get that label until they won their first championship in '91. Before that, they were losing to the Pistons in the playoffs year after year. Again, more tears and heartbreak. Any Orlando Magic or Miami Heat Sighting? Not until 1990, but my 'loyalty' to the Bulls had already been established.

Now the last of my favorite teams, the Miami Dolphins. Wow, a Florida team? But why? Maybe its because they were the only professional sports team to exist in the state of Florida 20 years ago. And this team has not even come close to winning a championship in my lifetime (poor Dan Marino). Yet more heartbreak, but in this case, still waiting for the euphoria.

My fellow brown guy has a bit of point, as I mentioned earlier, but he is talking about a small minority of fans. People connect with their teams in various ways. Something always sparks the bond, and it does not always have to be the city, town, or country you live in. It could be a nation wide cable network where you just see more of a particular team on television, it could be a player that catches your eye, or maybe you just like that team's style of play. No matter what your reason or story is for picking your favorite team, I think most of us struggle before we feel the euphoria of winning it all. And its that struggle that makes us cry over them even more, makes us hope even more, makes us love them even more, and makes us become more and more 'loyal' to them, as each disappointing year passes.

So to all of you "Speaking of Fanfare" and James Harrison fans, I am not a fan!