"[T]he president played basketball this morning with staff members and a few special guests, including [actors] George Clooney and Tobey Maguire," the pool report read this morning. Finally, a couple hours and a state later, a reporter asked the president the question on the minds of most Americans: Who won?
The president played it cool. "What basketball game?" said the president.
"With Clooney," the reporter responded.
"Of course George and I won but we're all winners because nobody got hurt," the president responded, after his remarks today in Reno, Nevada.
The game took place in Los Angeles, California, following the president's mega-fundraiser last night at Clooney's luxurious home.
Zeke Miller reports, "At Easter Egg Roll event, the ball-player-in-chief missed four of five 3-pointers, but you'll only see the one basket Obama made in the White House's video recap of the week." Miller's post is titled, "White House Scrubs Obama's Missed 3-Pointers In Weekly Video."
Tonight’s NCAA national championship game between storied basketball programs Kentucky and Kansas probably won’t top the 1992 East Regional final between Duke and Kentucky. Sportswriter and ESPN columnist Gene Wojciechowski meticulously recaps that March Madness landmark twenty years later in The Last Great Game: Duke vs. Kentucky and the 2.1 Seconds that Changed Basketball.
Fred Barnes reviews ACC Basketball by J. Samuel Walker in the Wall Street Journal:
At a home game in Chapel Hill, a North Carolina fan sneaked behind the bench and stuck chewing gum in the hair of South Carolina center Tom Owens. During an entire Virginia game, a local Charlottesville writer shouted insults at South Carolina coach Frank McGuire. The coach had to be physically restrained.
‘Sports diplomacy lives!” raved a former national security official traveling with the Georgetown University basketball team on a visit to China timed to coincide with Vice President Biden’s trip this week. That was before a brawl ended the Hoyas’ game against a professional Chinese team tied to the Chinese military.
LeBron James, who choked away the NBA championship with another dismal fourth-quarter performance on Sunday, is the most despised athlete in America, possibly the world. No, make that the solar system. I, like most basketball fans I know, rejoiced when the Dallas Mavericks beat the Heat last Sunday. It was the triumph of the team over a gaggle of hired guns, the triumph of a bunch of selfless unknowns over a galaxy of selfish superstars.
Here's some helpful analysis of President Obama's first pitch today. It specifically critiques last year's pitch, but since he's shown no signs of improvement in the last year, it's equally relevant today.
AFTER SYRACUSE'S BIG VICTORY last night, the women's NCAA tourney concludes tonight with the University of Connecticut taking on the University of Tennessee. In an effort to make this match-up seem like less of an afterthought, the defenders of women's basketball will be out in force.
"Women's basketball is the best pure form of basketball out there," they'll tell us. "They play the sport the way it's meant to be played, below the rim and with more team play as opposed to one-on-one."
