upcoming movies

i recently watched thor. it was fairly predictable and kinda cheesy, but also had funny moments, visually nice to look at, and overall entertaining. i don't think it was as good as iron man, but it wasn't horrible either. probably didn't need to watch it at night and paid the full price admission, but it was an impulse thing where i wanted to watch something and so i went with my gf.

one of my favorite parts of going to the movies is seeing all the movie trailers. there were a lot that i forgot were coming out. there were a bunch of other superhero movies (of course that makes sense because we were watching a superhero movie. haha). i'm still a bit hesitant regarding green lantern, but do want to watch captain america and x-men: first class. i want to be more excited about the new pirates movie, but as of right now, i'm not so much. i dunno, maybe it's because i have a feeling it'll be hard to understand them. just from watching the trailer, they all have the weird pirate accent. haha. i'm also on the fence for super 8. i do want to watch cowboys and aliens though as well as the last harry potter movie. oh yea, there's also the new transformers movie.

i guess this is just to say that there are too many movies coming out this summer that look interesting to me. i'm gonna have to pick and choose which ones to go watch. dunno what to do. haha

changing of the guards?

with the spurs, lakers, and celtics now out of the playoffs, it looks like it's the time of the changing of the guards in the nba. it is interesting to note that in the past 12 years, only once has the lakers, spurs, or celtics not play in the nba finals. and that one year ('05/'06) it was the heat and mavs with wade and dirk as the stars. there is still a good chance that there can be a rematch of that '05/'06 finals this year, but what we've seen during this years playoffs is that there are a lot of younger teams to be reckoned with. 


i saw this from hoopism.com and thought it was a neat graphic. it broke down the average age of each team and age weighted for minutes played per each team (meaning the age of the players who play the most minutes per game). here are the teams that made the playoffs this year and their average age (per minutes played):


[east]
chicago bulls: 27.01
miami heat: 29.48
boston celtics: 29.96
orlando magic: 29.07
atlanta hawks: 27.83
new york knicks: 25.78
philadelphia 76ers: 25.11
indiana pacers: 25.4


[west]
san antonio spurs: 29.36
los angeles lakers: 30.6
dallas mavericks: 31.5
oklahoma city thunder: 24.11
denver nuggets: 27.72
portland trailblazers: 27.21
new orleans hornets: 26.84
memphis grizzlies: 25.51


and the remaining teams left along with the age of their stars:


[chicago bulls]

derrick rose: 22

carlos boozer: 29

luol deng: 26

[miami heat]

lebron james: 26

dwyane wade: 29

chris bosh: 27

[dallas mavericks]

dirk nowitzki: 32

jason kidd: 38

jason terry: 33

[oklahoma city thunder]

kevin durant: 22

russell westbrook: 22

serge ibaka: 21

the mavericks are the oldest team and they are playing the youngest team in the thunder. it'll be interesting to see if the young legs of the thunder team will out last the veteran mavericks. out east, the heat and bulls are fairly even in age with the slight youth going towards the bulls. 

i still think that the "older teams" of the lakers, spurs, celtics may have one more run at it (as well as the mavericks if they lose this year), but the shift is slowly occurring and new stars are starting to shine.

la lakers

after watching the lakers get swept by the mavs, i felt like i needed to write something.

as i've written before, the lakers were my favorite team growing up. even though i grew up in the bay area they were the team that was always on tv and they had an exciting fun team and were good and winning championships, so it was easy to root for them. i'll admit that i was a bandwangon fan to start and simply kept on rooting for them. however, at the start of this nba season, i decided that i was going to turn in my lakers fandom and go back to my roots and root for the warriors. my gf didn't get how i could just do that (to just drop a team like that), and honestly, it was a little weird since i basically followed them for most of my life.

but i guess for me, i've always been a bigger basketball/nba fan than my individual team fan. so even though i rooted for the lakers (and now warriors), it's easier for me to see the good and bad sides of the teams. i watch for good basketball and enjoy analyzing the plays and commentating on the game. my emotions don't get as caught up as other folks and if my team got destroyed, then it's easier for me to give credit to the other team and move on.

which brings me back to the lakers game yesterday. they got punked. they simply got outworked and outplayed. their defense and rotations were lazy and the mavs made them pay by draining 3 after 3. i know what it's like to be frustrated when your game isn't going well and i know emotions run high. it's no fun to see a team blow you out, so i could see why bynum and odom did what they did... but still, what bynum did was cheap and uncalled for. there's one thing to play tough and passionate, but another thing to try and hurt a guy. if you lose, lose with class. that doesn't mean you turn over and give up, but you still gotta keep your emotions in check. and if not, at least show some character afterwards. i didn't like what bynum had to say after the game. made me loose a little respect for the kid. but, he's still young and hopefully he'll learn.


what was interesting for me though, was that now i'm on the other side of not being a lakers fan, i could see why people don't like lakers fans. i read a bunch of sports blogs and so i see peoples comments. and sure enough, it's the lakers fans that come off as arrogant and sore losers. i guess it's cause they have been spoiled by so many years of winning that they don't know how to handle losses. they get too emotionally caught up in their team that they have a hard time giving credit to where credit is due. i know it's not just lakers fans that are like that (and not all of them are that blinded), but that's just what it seems like. they're not as humble as can be.

but as for the lakers themselves, people are talking about blowing the team up, and i think that's crazy talk. yes, they are old, but they are still talented. and i'm pretty sure they'll land a big free agent (cp3 or d12) and they'll continue to be big bullies in the league.

anyway, it's been an entertaining playoffs so far. definitely not what i expected. and that's a good thing!