Brooklyn We Go Hard

That motivational spur to do anything that's one little iota of productive is sorely lacking (at least for me) these days.

The monsoon-like, inclement weather doesn't seem to help. I Got up a quarter past nine today, stared into oblivion, then went back to bed and slept until 2 pm. Tight.

This weekend I encountered an old jewish man from Brooklyn who claimed to be a legendary gangster.

He was educating me at frenetic, relentless pace, with little lessons of self-defense. He also ran off all the old-school stories from when he used to scrap out in the schoolyard. Ever see the movie "Porkys?" That's also indicative of the fact that jewish cats CAN scrap.

But this elderly dude definitely took a journey-ride into the past. Memories about certain areas of the Big City of Dreams, ones which were completely split between italians and the jewish, began to resurface for him.

One thing this old guy tried to explain is that while Jewish folks have never been synonymous with tough, "a jewish kid fights you alone with his bare hands, while an italian kid doesn't fight you unless he's got 10 of his buddies with him." Got 'em.

While Old Man River wasn't trying to paint every italian person with the same brush, I think he was targeting a specified brand of italian (or wannabe italian, some of whom happen to be jewish) kids.

You know, the kind that all stick together, jack up the techno in their souped-up autmobiles and engage nonfighters into face fights at slapdash, shady bars?

These kids usually have more bread than panera, more dough than King Pizza, more cake than carvel, more cheese than Chucky, more paper than the Rain Forest, and more green than blades of grass in the spring.

Yet these private school problem childs swear they're from hard-scrabble areas as they smoke their cigarettes and don crystal ear rings. Oh, and if you need to get through big crowd of these idiots in traffic at bar, forget about it. It won't happen. At least not with one of them TRYING to act hard.

Not unless you carry with you a blowout trimmer and a bottle of juicehead repellent, where ever it is they sell it.

No question, Stephen Curry is a bad motherfucker.

Doubters and detractors, please Youtube "Stephen Curry outscores Chattanooga 27-26 in a half" before reading.

Curry continues to take the college hoops world by storm, as we witnessed the other night at MSG. Don't let those skinny arms deceive you.

Curry started the game in out-of-character fashion.

He wasn't dialing in threes from a different area code but he was creating offense throughout. The kid that scored 44 on his "off day" against Oklahoma waited until the final 4:13 to take over, when he scored 13 of his 27 points.

He froze a pair of defenders and dropped mammoth threes, giving the Madison Square Garden crowd what they had distinctively paid to see. He also handed out 10 dimes as Davidson gutted out another "W" at the Jimmy V Classic in the New York, NY Mecca of basketball.

Boy, he was worth the price of admission times two, as the Wildcats handed Bobby "DWI" Huggins--who spent some of last year scouring New York for young talent and came up big-- an exasperating 68-65 loss.

Just when they began to prove Curry was a mortal who breathes the same air as the rest of us (as Loyala Md. did, although they went Plaxico Burress and shot themselves in the foot by doing so), Curry cooked West Virginia like...well...Curry chicken.

WVU, a team widely recognized for their shooting prowess, shot a meager 17-for-29 (58.6 percent) from the line. All they had to do was shoot their freebies at a 20 or 21-for-29 clip to prevent another plethora of Stephen Curry headlines from emerging.

So, the beat continues.

That kid that a number of major D1 schools, including the alma mater of his quick-strike, lights-out shooting father, Virginia Tech, didn't want to take a gamble on (fearing he was too small and frail to emerge as an impact player), is evolving into the face of college basketball.

The joke is on them. Many, many, high-end coaches in the Virginia and North Carolina area are feeling dumb right now, as they did during last year's NCAA tournament.

Stephen Curry became the Stephen Curry that I know in those last [five] minutes despite all of the shortcomings in his performance tonight," Davidson coach Bob McKillop said.

Curry continues to laugh his way to the next game, the next marquee performance, and the 2009 NBA draft. (He's projected to go no.12 in Nbadraft.net's Mock Draft).

Devin Ebanks, the super-long kid from Long Island City, scored 13 points and hauled down 17 boards to pace West Virginia.