I'm tired of high school players in the NBA.

Sure, some people would call me a hater or jealous, but I don't really care. I don't like all these high school players coming in the NBA. I feel that there should be some sort of logic that goes into selecting draft picks. Don't get me wrong: LeBron James, Kobe Bryant, and Kevin Garnett weren't going to get too much out of going to college except a championship and even more hype than they had due to anticipation. But just because they did it doesn't mean every high schooler should be able to make the jump. Most of them just aren't ready.

As good as Tracy McGrady is, once I really started paying attention to his game, I felt like he should have gone to college. Offensively, he's one of the most gifted players in the league, but he doesn't play a lick of defense. Somehow I can't help feeling that if he'd gone to a big time college program, they would have drilled defense into him. Imagine how much better he'd be right now if he'd spent a year or two in school, just learning that. Or how to attack a zone, as he openly admitted he didn't know how to do. If he'd gone to school, he'd know how to attack one because that's every college defense...a zone defense of some kind. He would have seen them all and learned how to attack them. And if I feel that Tracy McGrady should have gone to school, you can imagine how i feel about such busts as Kwame Brown, Eddy Curry, and Tyson Chandler. These three jokers are pretty much a prime example of why kids need to go to school.

The difference between those three and Kobe, KG, and LeBron is that as high schoolers, you could just see how great they'd become. You knew that there wasn't much point to them going to college. Bryant's and Garnett's careers would have pretty much turned out the same. It's just that they would have hit the ground running instead of not doing much except teasing us with what was to come. Let's face it, for Kobe Bryant's first three years, he wasn't anything close to good, let alone great. He wasn't even the best two-guard on his team. And don't get me started on his shot selection. Then, it all came together. He could have come into the league after his junior year in college and things would have turned out exactly the same as they did, except he'd be on another team. Kevin Garnett was pretty much the same. If he had been able to get in school, he could have used a year or two and then, he would have done pretty much everything he's done. LeBron...well, that man's just a beast. And he's only 19.

Every other high school player since has had the word "project" attached to their names. Go ahead and check. I'll wait. When you come back, you'll see I'm right, except for Tracy McGrady. Any other one you want to name...project. BUT...everyone's looking at their potential. Conversely, you have a lot of college seniors that come in and don't do much. One line of thinking about that is that they stayed in school because their draft status never reached where they wanted it to, so they kept going back. Therefore, they're not that good. That's one way to look at it. Personally, if I were a general manager, I'd take that junior or senior over a high schooler, just because I've seen what they can do in a tougher environment, in bigger games, against tougher competition. The high school players are good, but do you know how easy it is to make a high school team? At 26 and out of shape, I could walk into a tryout next week and make the team. It's that easy. My point is, they look good against kids who aren't as good. Show me how good they are against people as good or better than they are. If you can excel there, then you've PROVEN that you're ready for the NBA. The elite...the best of the best. College upperclassmen have shown that. Even those who failed to excel. But they can say that they've excelled at a high level. At the very least, you have respect what John Wallace did at Syracuse, even if he was an NBA bust. What did Korleone Young ever do? Or the O'Bannons...even though they weren't seniors, they were winners at UCLA. Miles Simon from Arizona, Ray Jackson and Jimmy King from Michigan, even Joe Forte from North Carolina. You knew they could at least play at the college level. Kwame Brown hasn't even shown me that, let alone at the NBA level. My point here is, you made a safer bet with those guys than you did with high school kids. For instance, even though Marcus Camby isn't a dominant player in the NBA and Tim Duncan is, in college you saw Camby dominate Duncan when they were in college. Who did Jonathan Bender ever dominate? And scoring 31 in the McDonald's Game doesn't count.

Tyson Chandler and Eddy Curry are entering their fourth year in the league. I hated that they got drafted by the Bulls since the day I heard their names called. The Bulls are my favorite team and it pains me to watch them, because they haven't shown me anything since they got in the league. Tyson Chandler will be a Marcus Camby-type for years to come, which isn't bad. Eddy Curry is...well, he's not going to be a headliner, either. Now looking back at the 2001 Draft, you'll see that Tyson Chandler was selected second, before Pau Gasol. In retrospect, that was a bad pick. At the time, though, would you have picked Kwame Brown (1st), Tyson Chandler (2nd) or Eddy Curry (4th) before Jason Richardson (5th) , Shane Battier (6th) , or Joe Johnson (10th)? This was a weak draft and they still shouldn't have been that high. Even today, how are those guys better than, say...Brendan Haywood? I maintain to this day that Shane Battier should have gone first. If that draft could be redone now, Pau Gasol would have gone first and Tony Parker would have gone second. There isn't a team in the league that would have drafted those three in the first round, if at all.

And this is more or less my argument for why these kids need to go to school. The NBA needs an age limit. Their games speak for themselves. I don't even need to give examples, except for maybe more name dropping. Darius Miles (still not producing), Jermaine O'Neal (five years on the bench), DeShawn Stevenson (someone tell me what his number is...I'll give you 20 bucks if you can name it without researching it first) DeSagana Diop (how can this waste still not post up?) Kedrick Brown (okay...not bad), Leon Smith (Who?) Al Harrington (overrated, to date...maxed out as a sixth man for Indiana), Amare Stoudamire (the exception that proves the rule), Qyntel Woods (tell me one thing he's done...ever) and last as well as least, Korleone f'n Young.

Okay, have I made my point? Kids...take your butts to school and learn how to do what you're doing. You'll make more money that way, I assure you. And GMs...stop drafting high schoolers, unless they're can't miss kids like LeBron is or Kobe and KG were. Remember, the rule of thumb is if you're focused on "potential" or the word "project" comes up in your thoughts, draft someone else. That way, you won't have these kids uglying up the game more than it already is.

Model yourselves after someone who wasn't on the And 1 Mixtapes. You see where that got you. And the NBA don't owe you snotnosed punks nothing.

I forgot this thing was even here. But I need an outlet, so here it is.

This past Wednesday, George W. Bush was elected President of the United States for the first time. It took me a minute, but I'm calm again. I don't like the fact that he's in office and I don't like the fact that this time I actually have to start calling him President, because now he actually is. However, no matter how I feel about W, (I hate him, incidentally) that wasn't what upset me the most about this past election.

Eleven states had a vote on whether to ban gay marriage. Eleven states passed it overwhelmingly, including my home state of Mississippi (shocker!) and Georgia, where I currently reside. It's not a surprise, but it is disheartening to see how easily it went through.

My fellow Americans...you are a bunch of bigots.

I can't believe that you really can't see that through all of your religious spouting and moral posturing. The "Christian right" saw to it that this thing got passed and for what? So gay people can't get married. I fail to see how that's a problem to anyone. Christians, however, feel that it is their religious duty to discriminate and exclude a group from all the rights and privleges that they are entitled to as an American. Gay people go to work and pay their taxes. They laugh, they love, they cry, they pray, they do everything that straight people do except have sex with the opposite sex. I have yet to be convinced how someone's sex life is anyone else's business.

What these people fail to see is that they are taking a bigoted stance in the name of a man who was anything but. This is why Jesus (assuming he's real) is in Heaven and at the right hand of God and you are nothing more than a meatbag who's only a few thousand miles away from a fiery death at the business end of a meteor. Now, since Christians were the ones who got this thing over, I'm using their language to talk to them. You like to say what would Jesus do? Well, what WOULD Jesus do? Do you really think Jesus would have voted for that amendment in 11 states? What happened to love? What happened to tolerance? Weren't some of Jesus' last words before he left this earth to love one another? What happened to that? You people aren't following Jesus, though. You aren't heeding his teachings. You're sad, evil, people being led around by other men. Pat Robertson, Creflo Dollar, T.D. Jakes....TV evangelists. You worship man, you don't worship God. If you were heeding anything Jesus said, you'd love one another because that should come before almost anything else. Love God, love each other. Then, everything else, because if you're loving God and loving each other, everything else should fall into place. You're also judging your fellow man, which if I understand it correctly is something that's reserved for The Lord and The Lord alone. That means you're trying to take the place of God and last time I checked, that was a Hell-worthy trespass. And don't tell me anything about what The Bible says, because it was written BY MAN. And if you haven't learned by now, man has an agenda. If you love each other, what else do you need to know? All you people need to do is love God and love each other. That's it. Discrimination doesn't work into the equation.

Now...minorities. Especially black people. What are you thinking? My fellow black people apparently feel that they need to vote discrimination into the Constitution, too. Well, apparently, my black people haven't learned anything over the years. It wasn't that long ago that our people were on this end of the equation. Remember, when white people came to Africa, they thought we were heathens because we didn't worship their God. So they justified their wholesale capture of us by saying they were saving our souls. And it wasn't just us...they did our Native American brothers (North and South America alike) the same way. We were told we were half a man and things like that. We were told that God made us to be less than a man. Once again, discrimination was justified through religion. Wasn't even our religion. This mentality is still with us today, though racists who believe that the white man is king and everyone else is lesser and that God made it that way. So it baffles my mind to see that black people, who were so unjustly treated for a good 500 years (still hasn't stopped, really) by white Anglo-Saxon Protestants under the heading of religion would so quickly side with them to discriminate someone else. You saw how it was wrong when it was YOU, but when it's someone else you, conveniently forget.

All in the name of religion. You people need to drop religion. Isn't spirituality good enough for you? Can't you just have a relationship with God or Allah or Yahweh or Jehovah and not bother anyone else with your mess? Can't you go to a foreign country without trying to convert everyone? Can't someone live a totally foreign lifestyle than you and have it be okay? Everyone doesn't have to look or act or dress or think the same. It's really okay. Apparently God doesn't mind, because he made it that way, right? If you truly have faith in God, then you'll know that he's got it under control. He doesn't need your help and it's not your job unless he informs you otherwise. Your job is to worship him and act right. Hating people is not acting right. Making discrimination a part of government is not acting right. Leave people alone. Live and let live. Not live and stress others. Besides, pestering people isn't exactly the best way to help people see your side. If you come at them right, they'll see it on their own. Or not. And if you weren't so busy trying to tell everyone how wrong they are for being different, perhaps you'd see that you weren't so right yourself.

Look, there's a lot going wrong in this world. There's too much hate, too much anger. Things like this don't help any, and we're not going to make it if we keep on like this. Whether it's something like kicking out your gay son or whether it's flying planes into buildings, we can't keep on like this. It's not going to be long before we're all dead because of hate or fear or just dislike of things that are different. It's a lot easier to just let everyone get on with their lives. No one's trying to hurt anybody and we all want the same things. Just because we look or sound different or sleep with other men or women doesn't make us bad. And it's not like it hurts you in any way. If it does, please explain it to me. In the meantime, just know that it takes more energy to hate than it does to just shut up and go about your own life, because what it all boils down to is, it's no one's business what goes on in someone else's bedroom. That's between them and, I guess in the end, God. And really...if you don't care what goes on in a straight man's bedroom, why should you care what goes on in a gay man's bedroom?

Unless, there's something about yourself that you need to figure out...

Love everybody, ya'll...

Thad

Cactus Jack.

Yesterday, I bought the Mick Foley DVD with a whole mess of Cactus Jack, Mankind, and Dude Love matches on it. I haven't watched it all yet, but what I have seen of it, I've decided that while I like and respect Mick Foley, there's only so much of his matches that I can watch.

There are a lot of different kinds of wrestling matches. You got your traditional WWF style match. You got ECW matches, WCW matches, WWF Hardcore matches, scientific matches, Japanese style matches, stiff matches...the list goes on and on. Personally, I just find myself watching any kind of match that tells a "story" as they put it. I guess that's the problem I have with most of the matches on this DVD. It's just brawling and garbage wrestling and that gets old, fast.

When ECW was on the air, I liked it. It was always a treat to see something that wasn't WWF or WCW on national television. And while WWF kept their wrestlers tightly reined in and WCW didn't let their best wrestlers get a whole lot of TV time, ECW let their wrestlers cut loose all the time. Not only that, their wrestlers got to do things that most promoters would never allow a wrestler to do, like jump from the ring into the crowd or allow fans to bring weapons for the wrestlers to use. In ECW, it was pretty commonplace to see Rob Van Dam do a somersault plancha from the top rope to the fifth row. ECW was also home to some of the most brutal matches ever seen in this country. This had a good side and a bad side. The good side is, you're going to get to see some real extreme shit. The bad side is that everyone in ECW wanted to do it. So when you see one match that has two guys using everything that they can get their hands on the win a match, it's cool. But when the next 5 matches all go the same way, it gets boring. That's what this DVD was like.

A lot of fans like that kind of thing. Me, I like a variety of different things in my wrestling. Most importantly, I want it all to make sense. For instance, I don't like seeing two wrestlers throw every big time move they can think of at each other, only for them to kick out at two. That's stupid. I'm a firm believer that you should build up to the big moves. It makes them that much more important, not to mention devastating. So if in one match a guy blasts a guy with a chair at the end to win the match, but in the match before it, the four guys in the ring are blasting each other with chairs for 20 straight minutes, to no effect, it means nothing. And really, chairs for 20 minutes...the novelty gets lost along the way.

So in watching most of this DVD...well, I watched the second one first. That was the one that had all the WWF stuff on it. There were some real classics on this disc. You got Shawn Michaels/Mankind, you got Mankind/Undertaker Hell in a Cell, you got HHH/Cactus Jack. These matches were all brutal matches, but they were brutal without overdoing it. They all had a purpose in mind. Something they were trying to convey to you. They all meant something. Then, I went over the first disc. This one has a lot of WCW and ECW matches on it. And well...Mick Foley liked a lot of these matches and a lot of his fans liked these matches, but they did nothing for me. For instance, one match has Cactus Jack and Raven taking on Terry Funk and Tommy Dreamer. Honestly, if you'd never seen this match, but you'd ever seen any combination of these men wrestle each other before, you never would have missed anything. For 20 minutes, these men walked around the ring picking up trash from the ring and the crowd and hit each other with it, bleeding all over the place. I was not impressed. There was nothing in this match that I felt that I couldn't have gone the rest of my life without seeing. There was no rhyme or reason to any of it and nothing stood out. Hell, I saw a match on Raw with Foley and Funk that stood out more. Funk moonsaulted from the second level bleachers onto Foley on the floor. Foley piledrove Funk on a table. Anyway, the majority of the disc went like that.

I respect Foley's ability to take so much abuse, but when looked at in that setting or context, it makes him look stupid. In the WWF, sure he'd take some crazy bump, but it was just one or two bumps and there was a buildup. Except in the Hell in a Cell. When you spend the whole match getting hit with stuff or flying all over the place and there's no real point, well...people can criticize The Rock all they want to, but when he reaches 35, he'll still be able to walk. The Rock once said something like "I can connect with the crowd and don't have to jump off of ladders to do it."

Another plus to the WWF part of his career was that you got to see other sides of the man. You got to see exactly how funny this man is and how entertaining he truly can be when he's not getting stitched up or herniating another disc in his back. When it's all said and done, we may or may not remember the Exploding Ring Death Match in Japan, but we will remember the Foley patented "Cheap Pop." We'll also remember that Hell in a Cell match, too, but that's because it's...I mean, really...that man is crazy.

I'm not really disappointed with this stuff because I knew what I was getting to when I saw it. I just never thought that a match involving Maxx Payne or the Nasty Boys would be a selling point for anything I own. A lot of the stuff on here does add to some of the stories in his book, where he talked about some of these matches and promos featured. The thing about it all is, there's only so much garbage wrestling that one can watch. Especially when that person is used to and prefers stuff that is NOT garbage wrestling. I still do like Mick Foley, though and I still respect him and consider him one of the greats. It's just that his body of work sometimes leaves a lot to be desired.