Back on the blog after a day off. Here are a few gems I’ve found in the past couple of days.
I am clearly on the Eminem bandwagon of late. There was the Chrysler Super Bowl ad. And now there\’s a story in the Detroit Free Press about how a middle school girl scored an interview with Eminem for her school paper in suburban Detroit. Good for her, but also good for him.
Maybe this one is more interesting to me since I’ve had a couple of significant college hockey interactions for my day job. But there was a good New York Times story about how U.S. college hockey and major juniors in Canada are both trying to invade the turf of the other.
I didn’t know that the Dakotas were an iPhone deadzone.
I’ve seen this posted on Twitter a couple of times in the recent past, but the strange combination of cellos and Michael Jackson is pretty good. This is a pretty cool version of Smooth Criminal.
Expect much piling on on Deron Williams in the wake of Jerry Sloan retiring. But is it that simple? Adrian Wojnarowski from Yahoo! doesn\’t think so. There’s also a money quote from Kobe in there.
And I have to admit, I’m kind of interested in seeing the movie Cedar Rapids. Maybe it is because of all the times I have driven through there or flown into the Eastern Iowa Airport for a bad basketball game at Iowa.
One additional item I forgot to add. Esquire writer Chris Jones has been blogging and blogging frequently about writing. Here he talks to Wright Thompson about his process. I don’t know either of these guys (I’ve met Wright, but don’t know him well), but I thought the conversation was quite interesting.
Jeff Shelman 
Adrian Wojnarnowski does a great job getting the pulse of the players and writing about what’s going on. I have no idea how he does it, but he gets it done. That’s called journalism. His columns are a great read. He has done a fine job at Yahoo. I used to read him when he wrote for the Bergen Record, a daily paper in North Jersey. He certainly improved his game to another level at Yahoo.
I thought Adrian said it best here. It’s different times in sports. Coaches don’t have the hammer like they used to. It’s about the players, and it always will be. The late Chuck Daly mentioned how players are the CEOs of a team and it’s the coach’s job to manage each of their personalities. Sloan wasn’t going to deal with the times, and good for him. He shouldn’t have to compromise his values.