Baller-in-Chief

(From Jason Gay for The Wall Street Journal Online)

Wow, that was a fabulous birthday basketball game President Obama threw himself the other day. LeBron James and Dwyane Wade. Magic Johnson and Bill Russell. Carmelo Anthony and Chris Paul.

Scott Baio and Noam Chomsky. Sally Quinn and the Arcade Fire. Warner Wolf and Joan from “Mad Men.”

Or something like that. Did anyone get a confirm on the president’s final roster? The dreamy White House contest was a closely guarded secret. The media were barred, tickets weren’t sold and nobody watched—it felt just like a Memphis Grizzlies home game.

But as Gilbert Arenas could tell you, you can’t hide zesty basketball gossip in D.C. A few details of the game have emerged. Here’s a run-down:

• Mr. Obama finished with 12 points and five rebounds. But the game’s highlight was a backboard-rattling windmill dunk over an embarrassed LeBron by recently retired Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens. The dunk was beautiful, but Justice Stevens yelling “Boo-ya”? Priceless.

• The Knicks agreed to let Amar’e Stoudemire play but only if the Treasury and the World Bank offered to pay the rest of Eddy Curry’s contract.

• Even at 76, Mr. Russell totally dominated young Mr. Anthony, scoring 14 points. No, we’re just making a little joke there. Mr. Russell scored 52.

• At halftime, Mr. Anthony was traded to Russia along with six former KGB spies.

• In what’s surely the first of many oversights, Messrs. James and Wade forgot to tell Chris Bosh about the game.

• Laker veteran Derek Fisher delighted his teammates with wild anecdotes from a similar contest in 1955 with President Eisenhower.

• Mark Cuban didn’t watch the game but was still fined $100,000 by David Stern for thinking about it.

• Impressively, a well-lubricated fan in a Phillies T-shirt managed to sneak in and rush the court, whereupon he was Tasered by the Secret Service and picked up on waivers by the Red Sox.

• When Nets owner Mikhail Prokhorov saw the lineup for the game, he angrily asked, “What is President Obama doing with my 2016 Nets roster?” whispered something intensely into his cuff, and was picked up within 15 seconds by a helicopter piloted by Mr. Stern and Sports Illustrated swimsuit model Esti Ginzburg.

• Brett Favre was invited, but at the last minute he texted the president and told him he’d retired. Then he called an hour later and said he wasn’t retired. Then he called and said he would wait until his ankle is healed. Now Mr. Favre is in a secret prison, facing a 10-year sentence for annoying Earth.

• The White House reported that Kobe Bryant was there but didn’t play. This is untrue. Mr. Bryant played 10 minutes when he was fouled hard by Mr. Wade. Angered that Mr. Wade didn’t apologize, Mr. Bryant grabbed a PA microphone and cursed out all of the players, grabbed a pair of beers, slid down an emergency inflatable sled and disappeared.

• It goes without saying, but the president’s game couldn’t have been pulled off without the magic recruiting touch of recently hired Knicks consultant Isiah Thomas.

(By Colin Orcutt for The Obama Presidency Blog at City University of New York School of Journalism)

So we know that Obama is the “sports president.” He’s been to a Wizards game, aired a video to kick off Monday Night Football, taken in an Oregon State Beavers basketball game (wifey’s brother coaches the guys team there)–he even went to a George Washington University men’s basketball game (insert a Guantanamo joke here at your own discretion). He’s definitely a hoops and football fan (he hosted a Super Bowl party after his inauguration). But I don’t believe he’s been to any hockey or baseball games yet. And certainly not any golf.

But, if the president has any good sense, he’ll book his tickets now for the next tournament Tiger Woods is playing in, and then every one following.

Because thanks to Tiger Woods, Obama’s Afghanistan policy was pushed to the back up role in the news rotation for a lot of Americans last week, replaced instead with the latest gossipy developments about Woods’ extramarital affairs.

Andy Borowitz wrote a sarcastic post about this for Huffington Post’s humor section. And Frank Rich picked up on it in his most recent Op-Ed:

As long as our wars remain sacrifice-free, safely buried in the back pages behind Tiger Woods and reality television stunts, he’ll be able to pursue [the bet he made about Afghanistan].

The reality is, there has been plenty of discourse about Obama’s decision to surge 30,000 more troops into Afghanistan–a good many of the New York Times opinion writers have weighed in at this point–but we’re in an updated news model now. While the Afghanistan speech coverage and reaction may be out there, in this updated model, it’s not finding its way to me.

As any good Jeff Jarvis disciple will tell you, with the advent of Facebook, Twitter and the like, stories and news make their way to the reader. And so, less and less readers make their way to the stories. I personally haven’t checked my Google Reader in weeks; it used to be a daily occurrence (then again, so did sleep, so perhaps my normalcy level isn’t the best standard at this point).

Last week, one of the people I’m following on Twitter tweeted that excess of Tiger Woods updates he’d received from CNN led him to unsubscribe from their feed. I read no such complaints about Afghanistan social network traffic.

You could argue that it’s a reflection of the demographic that uses social networking perhaps, but I find that the demographic is expanding and argument is starting to show gray hairs.

What I think really happened is that Tiger Woods spared Obama some short-term scrutiny. I am not saying I either agree or disagree with his decision, but nothing happens in the presidency anymore that doesn’t garner at least a dull roar and a tea party. Whatever Obama had decided, there would have been loud voiced naysayers. Woods muted their effect.

And, since it will be hard to measure the results of Obama’s plan anytime soon, you could argue that by averting some of the public reaction, perhaps Woods improved Obama’s chance at a re-election bid. A bit of a stretch perhaps, but not entirely.

Either way, I firmly believe that some Obama staffers were at least a little happy with the timing of Woods’ accident. And if next week Woods is suddenly bestowed the title of “Distraction Czar,” (also known as the social secretary) remember, you heard it here first.

(From Eamonn Brennan for Yahoo Sports)

If you’re a hoops fan, you have at least one reason to enjoy our current president: Basketball is Obama’s favorite sport, and he approaches it with the reverence of someone who both plays and spectates, someone who appreciates the game from all angles. But you knew all this before Barack Obama became president.

What you also probably knew, or maybe you haven’t noticed, is that for whatever reason, former Duke guard and Obama personal staffer Reggie Love can’t convince Barack to wear a pair of shorts on the court. I don’t get it. Here’s yet more photographic evidence of Obama’s absolute allergy to shorts:

That’s Obama and Love, and as you’ll see, Love looks ready for some pickup. He’s got his swag right. Even if those Nike runners look like they’d be really bad for ankle on the basketball court, still, he’s ready to go.

Obama at least appears athletic, but he also looks like he’s getting ready to go for a brisk morning walk with his dog. If he walked on to the basketball court looking like that, the people I play with would laugh. (This scenario assumes it’s not Barack Obama we’re laughing at; I don’t think the DePaul student center crowd would really go for ridicule, given the hypothetical. But you know what I mean.)

Maybe dude’s legs are just really skinny. Who knows?

As reported by Yannis Koutroupis at Hoopsworld.com:

Artest has done a great job of staying in touch with his fan base and the public, keeping them up-to-date with what happens in his life. One detail that he left out though was his run in with President Obama on the basketball court at the White House.

“I actually snuck in the White House one time,” joked Artest on 790 the Ticket in Miami. “I saw Barack Obama playing basketball. I snuck in the back, and he tried to go up for a lay-up and I blocked his shot and ran out. And, Secret Service was trying to catch me and they couldn’t catch me. I promise you, they couldn’t catch me. I blocked Obama’s shot; fullcourt block, get it outta here (laughs).”

When Artest isn’t making up stories about meeting our Commander-in-Chief he’s running up his cell phone bill by being the most reachable player in the league.

By Claude Johnson

ForeignPolicy.com suggests the funny rhetorical title question in an article earlier today about the G8 Summit in Italy:

Before the G-8 summit began, intrepid Guardian reporter John Hooper infiltrated the L’Aquila barracks hosting world leaders and discovered a makeshift basketball court constructed especially to make Barack Obama feel welcome.

As Hooper’s quick photo makes clear, it is little more than a portable hoop on some concrete, but given that L’Aquila is an earthquake zone and that there was doubt Italy would finish its preparations in time for the summit, host Silvio Berlusconi deserves some credit for trying.

Each G-8 leader was limited to an entourage of 25, but that should be more than enough to get some real games going during the breaks. If anyone actually plays, will the game help blow off steam or add to the drama?

Hat tip: The indispensible Baller-in-Chief

What’s funny is wondering at what height the Italians set the adjustable rim on the portable basket, which could indeed result in some dunking.

Would a 7-foot rim be low enough for the shortest G8ers, Nicolas Sarkozy (France), Silvio Berlusconi (Italy), Dmitry Medvedev (Russia), Taro Aso (Japan), and Angela Merkel (Germany)?  The others — Obama (U.S.A.), Stephen Harper (Canada), Gordon Brown (UK), Fedrik Reinfeldt (Sweden), and Jose Manuel Barroso (President of the European Commission) — seem to tower over the others.

What could be even funnier is if they had Berlusconi-style cheerleaders for such a game, or games, if they ever even take place.