Gate Fatigue

Happy Saturday!! Life's been busy and it's nice to have a day off. Hope yours is even better.

So far, my beta readers' response to the latest edit of The Curse is positive. The first third is in much better shape, making it an even better read. Of course, they found a few issues, including different looking quotation marks. One set is straight and the other is curled. That's what happens when you edit in Open Office and finish up in Microsoft Word, because both programs are on different machines. At least everything they're flagging is minor.

Now let's get to what the title means. Must every scandal under the sun end with "Gate"? We have Deflate-Gate, Bounty-Gate, Spy-Gate, This-Gate, That-Gate...ENOUGH ALREADY!!! It's not just sports either. Can we come up with something else? The Watergate scandal happened in 1972. That was 43 years ago. Enough of the "Gates"! It's past time to let it go. At least on the Mike & Mike Show, their hashtag is #shrinkage. It may be sophomoric, but it's more entertaining the Deflate-Gate.

Time to get off my soapbox. The 8-38 Minnesota Timberwolves are the NBA Kings of the Cellar right now. They're 3-7 in their last ten games and 3-22 since December 12. The 9-38 New York Knicks are a half game back. They're 4-6 in their last ten games, but they're 4-2 in their last six. Both teams would have to lose all of their remaining games to tie or break the 1973 Philadelphia 76ers' 9-73 record, so it's safe for another year. An honorable mention goes to the 16-29 Sacramento Kings. They're 1-9 in their last ten games, with an 8 game losing streak.

The 0-18 Central Arkansas Bears and the 0-20 FAMU Rattlers are the NCAA Divison 1 Kings of the Cellar. The 0-19 UC Santa Barbara Gauchos and Illinois State Redbirds are the Queens of the Cellar. Who will remain winless?

I've been searching for a website to find historical scores the way the old football scores are listed. For basketball, the search parameters on the website I use aren't the same. I can get historical scores for one year and that's it. For example, today in 1955, the Milwaukee Hawks beat the Boston Celtics 88-79. No player stats are listed, but that's alright.

In my research, what I thought was interesting, was for that game, the Celtics had a player named Skippy Whitaker. There aren't too many people named Skippy anymore. The University of Kentucky alum only played one season in the NBA, in a grand total of 3 games. For his brief career, he was 1-6 for 2 points and no free throw attempts. He played only 15 minutes of game time.

This Super Bowl is much harder to pick than last year. I picked Denver (oops) because of their offense. If I had to pick now, it would be New England, but not for the same reason I picked Denver. The Legion of Boom is not to be taken lightly, but the Patriots have a better defense than Denver did.Can Brady, Blount, and Gronk handle Seattle's defensive speed? That's why they play the game.

Have a great day!!!