Cheech Tremendous

You think like a smart mark, Benoit fanboy instead of how 90% of the audience views things. Benoit beating HHH AND Shawn, in MSG, at Wrestlemania 20, is about a million times more important and memorable than beating Lesnar on Smackdown and it's preposterous to think otherwise. It doesn't matter that it wasn't a singles match, because the buildup and execution of the story worked perfectly. Benoit got everything he deserved out that match, that angle and his title run in general. Lesnar's story through Mania would have been comprised as well. The money match was Goldberg-Lesnar, and they were doing that come hell or high water. Had Benoit stayed he would have just taken Eddie's spot, which would have screwed up BOTH of the Mania title matches. Benoit owned HHH during 2004. The reason they never had the big singles blowoff match on PPV was because no one viewed HHH as a credible threat anymore, or at least not as something they'd want to pay to see. I don't like to defend the E's booking most of the time, but that whole 2004 run was decently arranged. How would you have done it differently?

I've never heard of Biohazard, and he's the only member of the group I've never heard of. The music could be decent (I dig Nugent, Bonham and Bach), but I highly doubt it.

That's just ridiculous. Back yourself up or don't say anything at all. Benoit-Lesnar was booked the way it should have been, and both men ended up better because of it.

Can't believe I forgot Soriano. He's possibly #1. Yeah but Soriano is always getting dogged for not being able to hit on the road, having no OBP skills and being poor defensively, but he's not that bad especially when you figure in his speed and power. He's strung together 5 or so good seasons in a row. He's more overpaid than overrated. Most analysts thought he'd die when he moved to RFK, but things have been fine thus far.

The Yankees have built their team around guys who are at the back ends of the career now for the past few years and it has yet to come back and bite them. I was merely stating that the injury bug is likely to hit them eventually, as they've just been postpoing the inevitable with the construction of their team the past few years. It's not so much a knock as it is an observation.

The Yankees are bound for injuries this year. Sheffield has already gone down, and now possibly Matsui. Randy Johnson hasn't looked right either. That's the problem with building around aging veterans... you never know when they are going to start breaking down.

I slept through about 90% of that show, and I actually wish I would have slept through it all. A lot of the stuff mentioned in this thread is bad because of poor booking or execution. Fall Brawl is just boring, with nothing redeemable at all. Raven-Saturn seems like Steamboat-Flair circa 1989 in comparison to the rest of the crap on that show. The whole thing felt like the bookers showed up on Sunday afternoon and realized that no one had booked a card yet, so they just kept sending guys out there to fill time until they came up with a main event.

He's big.

It's an historic moment in baseball whether you like Bonds or not. I would much prefer to see Bonds tie and break the Babe's record than Skip Bayless screaming about how Vince Young will win three Super Bowls.

Odom has to be part of the deal because his contract is comparable, and he's conservatively 20 times the player that Chandler is. If you want to match it up properly, it's Odom vs Chandler, with Bynum/Mihm being the throw ins vs someone like Deng and the # 1 overall pick the Bulls will likely get thanks to Isiah. Theoretically if I'm going to get stuck with a shitty contract, I want the best player available with a shitty contract, not say a Tim Thomas or Malik Rose just to name a few. You can't just trade a $20 million player for draft picks and lower end players in the NBA. That's why I still feel that the Lakers don't have the players to make a deal work. The T'Wolves would be taking back almost $20 million in players, and only one of them would contribute in any sort of meaningul way (Odom) and he's not even an All-Star caliber player. At least with the Chicago deal, they'd only have to take on about half the amount of salary, get a future all-star (be it Gordon or Hinrich), and two high draft picks around which they could start re-building their team. At least that's something to be optimistic about.

Bynum's rookie numbers were much worse than Chandler's, and he didn't have the same pedigree that Chandler had coming out of high school. The fact is, we don't have any evidence at this point that Bynum is going to be great, or good, or even passable. We literally know nothing about him. His lack of PT ultimately shows that Phil is just not comfortable playing him yet. Why would Minnesota take that over a known commodity (Chandler), or a high first round pick that is assuredly better than Bynum? And it seems unfair that you would complain about Chandler's contract in one breath, while pumping Odom as a key part of the deal. Odom has a horrible contract, and barely makes much less than Garnett does with half the ability. The idea behind trading Garnett is re-tooling for the future. You don't want to screw your salary cap right off the bat.

That's why you aren't a GM, considering Chandler's contract and all. It's horrible, in all honesty. They were both on the playoff roster. Bynum played in the final game and Mihm was a possibility for Game 7. I hope you know Mihm was hurt. Thanks for trying! And it's why you are a Lakers fanboy and not a GM. I've never heard Bynum described as anything other than a project. He has shown some things in his limited time, but not enough that I would declare him the next Shaq (or even the next Chandler) at this point. Chandler's contract is not that bad. He makes a lot of money, but it's the going rate for a talented 7 footer. Mihm and Bynum may have been on the playoff roster, but they were irrelevant parts of the team. That series wouldn't have gone any differently had those guys been in the games.

That's like the black abyss of OBP.

Agreed, the Red Sox should've cut Kevin Millar and kept Mientkiewicz Intangibles are dumb, yeah, but there's room for a cheerleader-type guy like Millar. It's not like he's the drizzling shits out there, he's just not as dynamic of a player as his personality would make you think. For being one of the fan favorites and outspoken clubhouse guys of the Red Sox, he was just kinda there on the field, so I guess people found him overrated. BLAH BLAH WINNING IS ALL THAT MATTERS. I'm sure his teammates wanted him around, but what do they know Not even that, he was very streaky and had long, long cold runs when you could have Mientkiewicz out there possibly being productive. I'd highly doubt that. You seem to be forgetting that Mientkiewicz is horrible. There is no way he should be taking at bats away from Millar, Youkilis, Olerud or anyone else they've had playing 1B that past couple of years. He's a late inning, defensive replacement only.

I feel that way about all the changes. Honestly, I could care less about the original, or the SE, or whatever else. They are all the same movies to me. I remember reading that list of the stuff they changed when the DVDs were coming out that got the whole internet community bitching and thinking to myself, "I wouldn't have noticed one thing on this list if someone hadn't told me."

You have to remember that some of the 5 mic scores were given initially when the album was reviewed, but the majority were given an honorary 5 mics in some anniversary issue a few years back. DLS is Dead was given 5 when it first came out. It wasn't being compared to 3 Feet High in the sense that one had to get the rating and one didn't. For whatever reason, the mag doesn't see 3 Feet High as a definitive 5 mic classic. As for Grip It... I'm sort of perplexed. The s/t album, as someone else mentioned, is just a better version of Grip It. Seems like one of those picks to establish some sort of street or undergrond credibility. Either way, one of the versions probably deserves inclusion as it is the Straight Outta Compton or Raising Hell of southern rap. As for the Source, I don't read it anymore. At one time it was a decent and credible mag for hip hop long before it became Benzino's personal vehicle for getting himself over. I still maintain that their crebibility is impeccable when it comes to reviews though.

But these are Kobe's Lakers now. Why waste his prime waiting to see if some high school kid matures into a dominant center? You have a chance to go out and get arguably the best player in the NBA. Not only is he a fantastic player, but he has the right sort of attitude to play with Kobe instead of against him. Win one or two titles now and reassess in a few years. It's stupid for teams who are close to winning now to hold on to guys with upside.

Nine boxes of the Topps set, or nine copies of the Alex Gordon card? For some reason, I doubt that 1/10 of the Gordon cards in existence are sitting at your local Walmart.

No, not at all. Selling a ton of albums does not make an album great, nor does being overlooked by the popular majority preclude it from being great. If you scan down that list, a lot of those albums didn't sell that much and are sort of unknown to the general public (EPMD, Jungle Brothers, Main Source, the D.O.C.). It's more about the impact they had on the genre as a whole and on those who followed them. These are albums that can be pointed to as genre changing or as a defining a point in a stellar career. Whether that lead to mainstream success at all is irrelevant.

The rating system tries to identify a classic album, something of lasting impact and importance. Just because something is good doesn't mean it should be mentioned in the same breath as some of the aforementioned classics, or at least that's how I've always interpreted it. Mos Def doesn't really have anything in his catalgoue that can be identified as defining moment in hip hop.

I wouldn't even call it a mini-feud. It was just a one off match from Smackdown, as far as I can recall and had no real lasting impact. Benoit winning would have had the same impact as Guerrero ending up having, and nothing of the magnitude of beating Shawn and HHH at WM20. It's a function of everyone on the net overrating Benoit. They look at Benoit, a great worker, and Lesnar, another great worker and start screaming "5 stars! Match of the year! Greatest fued in 10 years!" without actually thinking about what sort of impact it would actually have. Look, I love Benoit as much as the next guy, but you can't build a promotion around him and beating Lesnar has far less impact than beating HHH.

They really should ban the guy from ever voting again. Same thing with whoever voted for PJ Brown last year for MVP. It just undermines the whole process having someone totally screw up the voting. It's all anyone focuses on instead of the other 124 that got it right.

Jay-Z has 2 albums rated 5 mics. I personally find the Black Album to be on the same level as Blueprint and Reasonable Doubt, but I seem to be in the minority on this one. DMX doesn't deserve much credit. His first album was his best, but not historically important.

Benoit actually got a decent reign. He may not have been the absoulte focus of every show, but he was made to look like a million dollars throughout his run, and that's more than you can say for most champs. You have to remember that he was never meant to be the focus of the promotion. His win was more a "thank you" reign than anything else.

There is an article over on espn.com ranking the top 10 PGs in the history of the NBA, as voted on by their staff. Anyone have any thoughts? The results are listed below. Magic 10 10 10 10 9 10 10 10 10 9 10 10 10 128 Oscar 9 9 9 8 10 9 9 -- 9 10 9 9 9 109 Isiah 8 8 8 9 3 8 7 5 5 2 6 7 8 84 Stockton 5 5 7 5 8 2 8 9 8 7 8 6 3 81 Cousy -- 7 5 7 6 6 4 8 7 6 5 8 7 76 Frazier 4 6 -- 6 2 3 6 7 6 3 7 4 6 60 Kidd 6 4 6 3 5 5 5 4 4 8 2 3 2 57 Tiny -- 1 4 4 1 7 2 6 2 5 -- 1 4 37 Nash -- 2 -- 2 4 4 1 3 3 4 4 2 5 34 Payton -- 3 2 -- 7 1 -- 1 -- 1 3 5 -- 23