Welcome back.

Suns Stuff

So this week we’ve run into the worst possible scenario, for me, your loyal Suns blogger. Thursday night our Suns meet the Pelicans on national television. Thursday night my lovely family will be in attendance at T-Mobile Arena in spectacular Las Vegas, Nevada when our Golden Knights meet the hated San Jose Sharks. I’ll record the Suns game. I’ll watch it when I’m home. I’ll write nothing. Because I cannot properly enjoy a game and write at the same time. Then I’ll go to bed. Because I’ll be tired.

So I’m not going to have anything to say about the New Orleans game. But we have a lot of other things to talk about.

Firstly, I was finally, FINALLY wrong. My streak at accurately predicting the Suns record has come to a close. If we beat the Pels we’ll be 8-6, I told you last week 9-5. It was a good run.

Still, I refuse to be upset that my favorite collection of paid hoop-fillers won their seventh game of the season more than a MONTH earlier than they did last year. In any event we’re officially on a losing streak. So we have to talk about the losing streak.

What went wrong vs. Boston?

I think we all suspected that we were not going to win this one. Boston shot under 30% from three, just their third such game of the season. But Phoenix bested the Celts by connecting on only 10 of their 36 attempts from behind the arc. In 2019 that’s going to lose you some games.

This was our worst game of the young season. And that’s ok, it was against the class of the Eastern Conference. The only thing that gave me pause was that Phoenix had four days off before hosting Boston. You would hope for a better performance. Aron Baynes went for 9, 6, and 5 against the C’s and I think that’s more in line with what we can expect the remainder of the season.

What went wrong in Sacramento?

Suns are good and Kings are not and this game does not change that, but you still hate to see it. I mean the real ‘hate to see it.’ Not the social media ‘hate to see it’ that the kids favor.

Ricky Rubio gets sixteen minutes and was unable to contribute anything of value in those sixteen minutes. Bogdan Bogdanovic goes for a career-high 31 points. That’s it. That’s all it is. That’s the loss. #analysis

Lingering injury concerns regarding Rubio will be ever-present in my mind the entirety of the season, regardless of what I read or am told. I can’t help it, I know I’ll worry about it. Like I said earlier in this article, and in prior articles, I always thought Baynes would come back to Earth.

Rubio offers so much more value in orchestrating that offense. And maybe I’m overstating it because of those years we muddled through without a true point guard. I truly do think the Suns are a playoff team with him. Without him they’re toast, not as bad as we’ve been subjected to in recent seasons, but obviously expectations would be tempered significantly.

So where does that leave us? Suns are going to beat New Orleans. I will leave this up here and refuse to edit regardless of outcome. So we’re going to be 8-6. After that we’ll be at Minnesota, at Denver, and we’ll host Washington.

Next time we chat our Phoenix Suns will sport a 10-7 record. NOT TOO BAD, SUNS FANS, NOT TOO BAD.

NBA Stuff

Carmelo Anthony is wearing the number ‘00.’

New unis abound.

The first person of color to ever play in the NBA has died at age 95.

Here’s how the NBA fared on Wednesday night’s television schedule against the Democratic Debate.

Patrick Beverly is a flopper.

A porn star advised the Oklahoma Thunder that one of their players owes her money.

The home of the Milwaukee Bucks is the first NBA arena to offer two dedicated sensory rooms for guests with sensory processing needs.

Steve Kerr compared Luka Doncic to James Harden and Larry Bird.

My Stuff

Ok, first things first. I owe you guys an apology. I genuinely enjoy reading the comments and interacting with readers. I feel like I’m one of the lucky ones. A great many message boards dissolve into racism, misogyny, and the like, routinely. This is a great platform, and what I think the internet should be.

That said, I JUST got around to reading the comments on last week’s article on Wednesday. Usually I’ll fire up the article first thing Friday morning. I’ve never concerned myself with clicks or shares, I like seeing a bunch of comments.

So of course I didn’t get around to engaging and there was great dialogue. I missed it. I also missed the opportunity to respond to each and every comment, artificially inflating how many people are talking about something I wrote.

I’m going to do this section a little bit differently. I’m just going to build this section based on the dialogue of the previous week. And last week a lot of people were sharing their thoughts on music and video games. If you want me to drop back in what I’m reading and what I’m watching, just advise. I’m for nothing else than good conversation.

What I’m listening to: I think I’ve shared this before, but I really do take your recs seriously. On Fridays at the office I grab a notepad and jot down the recommendations you drop in the comments. That notepad comes home with me on the weekend, and I reference it often.

Like I said, I didn’t get around to reading the comments until late this week. So I only got to one, musically. For two days on my commute I listened to nothing but Vintage Trouble.

I liked it. After running through a little bit of their catalog I checked out some live performances. I was unsure of what genre they fall into (I think there’s too many genres by the way) so I Googled it. Most people call them R&B. But it’s more than that. There’s rock and roll there. Soul. Either way, it’s fast and fun, easy to listen to. It’s an older sound which I enjoy. I mostly listen to the 60’s station here in Vegas. I can’t tell you what the call sign is, but it’s the fourth preset on my car stereo if that helps. Vintage Trouble sounds like they’re from another era. Good rec, TCB.

By the time you read this I’ll have listening to a little bit of Pretty City, a rec from sun-arc. I’ll drop some thoughts in the comments.

What I’m playing: So like I told you last week, I bought a PS4. I bought it to play exclusives. My best friend has a PS4, he’s recommending games all the time. I’m always saddened when I learn that I can’t play a rec’d game on my Xbox.

A couple of weeks ago I ran through Cormac McCarthy’s The Road once again. Then the itch came to wander through a post-apocalytic wasteland. The Last of Us was immediately on my radar. I was advised of a Black Friday sale where you can pick up a PS4 and a trio of games, including The Last of Us, for $199. I went a different route and picked up a used console for $100. Just got it set up Wednesday. Sprung for three months of Playstation Now and I have Alienation, Resogun, and a pair of God of War games downloaded. Exclusives, twin-stick shooters, and shmups. That’s what I’m here for. I’ll grab Last of Us for $10 on BF.

So now I have a Switch, Xbox, and PS4. I don’t need all that. In retrospect I probably should have had the PS4 shipped to the office. My wife saw it come to the door. She knows I have three consoles. I’ll bet she’s not happy about that. Whatever, she’ll live.

What I’m Thinking

Ok, I have a couple of things I want to talk about. First thing is Charles Barkley.

If you’re unaware, here’s the short version. This week Charles Barkley was in a bar. He made a joke about domestic violence. A reporter tweeted out the joke. A great many people did not like what Chuck said.

After that, what always happens in this case, without fail, happened. People dug through the reporter’s tweets, found some racist stuff, and things spiraled from there.

Now I’ve nothing to say about Chuck’s comments or the reporter’s tweets. That’s not what I find curious. They’ll not suffer consequences at their places of employment. I’m not saying they should or shouldn’t. They just won’t.

I find the psychology of the situation fascinating though. Not Chuck’s. I think I know what was going on in his head at the time. Nothing. I think nothing is going on in Chuck’s head most of the time.

But the reporter is very interesting to me. So she hears this disturbing thing. She goes to her phone. She’s ready to share this with the world. Does she know that those things she said in the past are out there? You have to think she doesn’t. Right?

Or does she think that there’s no way people unearth the tweets? This sort of thing happens all the time. She’s highly educated, very successful. I don’t think that could be it.

My best guess is that she considers herself a very different person today and cannot begin to comprehend that once upon a time she was capable of saying such things. I’m not excusing saying such things, but I suppose I can understand where one person could get to a place where they simply accept that such comments could not possibly exist.

But I’ll never understand the concept of not running through and cleaning up your social media accounts. The day after I graduated from Ball State University, I deleted 1000 pictures from my Facebook page. It was easy. I looked at the pictures of nearly six years of parties and knew that I would never give that guy a job.

Ok, the other thing I want to talk about is HOAs.

There was a lot of dialogue last week on this topic. I was surprised and pleased. For what it’s worth the recall efforts are in full swing. Most correspondence is centered around ousting four members of the board. Five people serve. The other four are incumbents, so I’m assuming no one is looking to replace me at the time.

I read some anti-HOA comments last week. I get that. My wife and I found a house we loved. We considered the HOA and discussed, like all things, whether or not that was a reason to not buy a house we wanted to buy. We decided it was not a good reason to pass on the house.

One reader mentioned that they don’t want to be told what to do with their house. I can respect that perspective. Personally, I don’t want to live next to someone that can do anything and everything they want to do with their house. Including letting it fall into heinous disrepair. So I’m happy to pay for that protection. And I understand why others don’t. And we’re both right.

I started volunteering two years ago for two reasons. One was to serve my community. The second was to write the policies for which I’ll be expected to adhere. I do exactly that. All those rules we just got on what flags are appropriate to fly? I wrote that.

One reader put it best, though. “Sucks that people don’t read their mail.” It does. And that’s a big part of the problem. Gotta know what you’re paying for.

By the way, the recall effort has its own website now. They’ll be canvassing this weekend. Should be fun!

Until next week.