I'm probably going to say this every couple of weeks for the next 24 years, but I think my baby is getting it.
Can he walk? No. Crawl? No. Sing Justin Bieber songs? Yes, but that's age appropriate. Can he talk? No. Can he toss out witty bons mots . . . Hey! Shut up already with the questions. He's just a frickin' baby.
Last week a fever followed by a cold increased his wah-wah quotient but when the heat subsided and the boogers dried he perked right up and became pretty with it for a five-month-old.
He turned himself into a human bowling ball, rolling halfway across a room to get to something he wanted (never mind that it was a used Kleenex tissue lying beside a garbage can). We started him on solid foods and he's already a pro, gumming down a more varied diet than I eat:
Sports Baby: salmon and broccoli
Daddy: beer and that sticky white cheddar popcorn with the ironic* name Smart Food
The biggest and best change is in the smiles and laughs. It used to be that finding his giggle button to release a laugh was a lot like a drunken freshman stumbling upon his girlfriend's bingo button and unleashing all heaven on the unsuspecting lass — total fluke and one-and-done, the same steps the following night yielding nothing more than awkward stares, crying, and eventually a wet diaper (I'm talking about the baby now again, I think).
But now Sports Baby laughs when you tickle underneath his chin. He smiles back whenever we smile at him. He scopes out pretty girls, saving the biggest grins for them.
He's no longer a little ball of snot, as my cousin recently called a friend's baby. He's a little ball of awesome.
And speaking of ballers, I thought that Saturday night's NBA slam dunk contest was really good. All of those guys were brining it.
Blake Griffin won with his now famous Kia commercial with Baron Davis throwing him an alley-oop through the car's sunroof as Blake jumped over the hood. Showmanship aside, I actually thought it was one of the weaker dunks of the night and Blake's dunk coach Kenny (the Jet) Smith blamed Baron's pass for messing up the slam (they should have known that the best guy to make a pass inside a car is Stephon Marbury).
Blake had the buzz, but all four of the participants pulled off fantastic dunks. Usually there are at least a couple of duds in there but not this year (accepting the now-inevitable missed attempts that come before many of the makes). In fact, some have argued that DeMar DeRozan and Serge Ibaka, the two guys who didn't make the cut for the finals, had the best dunks of the night.
Check out Ibaka's legit free throw line dunk:
And DeRozan's "Showstopper":
Like Sports Baby, all of the the contestants are finally getting it after several hit-and-miss years. Now if only the NBA would get it too. Here comes the part where this blog becomes like every other sports blog as I offer a solution that no one will care about to a problem that probably doesn't even exist. Anyway, if dunkers are going to bring it like they did on Saturday I think the contest needs a new format.
First of all, it's stupid that DeRozan and Ibaka didn't get to do as many dunks as Griffin and Javale McGee because their "scores" weren't as high after the first round. The scoring is bupkis (more on that in a second), so there's no way it should be used to eliminate dunkers before the end of the show. There are only four of them anyway. Give them all three dunks so they know what they are preparing for and can bring their best stuff out when they want to.
As for the scoring, the whole Table of Judges throwing up an 8, 9 or 10 thing isn't working anymore, not when all of the dunkers are doing good stuff.
Here's my solution: have the judges rank all of the dunks from best to worst and give the trophy to the person whose cumulative total rank for all of their dunks (or two of their dunks) is the best.
The math would be a little more complicated but all it would come down to is the person with the most dunks favoured by the most judges would win. After every dunk each judge would just have to decide where it fit in. Was Ibaka's free throw line dunk better than Blake's arm in rim dunk? Was the Showstopper (seen here again, but this time in beautiful super slo mo) better than McGee's two balls, two hoops (also in slo mo) dunk?
A cool offshoot would be that on top of having one person win there would also be one particular dunk that would be crowned dunk of the night. Another benefit would be that the first guy to go wouldn't get screwed because the judges have nothing to compare him to. This happened to DeRozan, who criminally got a 44 out of 50, one of the worst scores of the night, for this bit of awesomeness.
The whole process would give the contest more of a narrative arc as well because each dunk would be compared and contrasted to those which came before it.
Problem solved.
Now if you'll excuse me my dinner is served. And poured.
*Sorry to my Dad, an English prof, if this is the wrong use of the word ironic. I feel like he's the only person on earth who has it nailed. You should have heard him rip that Alanis Morissette a new one. "Those are just coincidences! No wonder your boyfriend dumped you!"
Follow me on Twitter @Sports_Andy
Dad is always right(:
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