I hope Seattle wins, I watch Seattle lose.

As you all know by now, I'm Jersey born and bred. But back in college, I spent a couple summers in the Puget Sound area, one in Seattle. I didn't live in Central District, where I get the sense most of these guys are from (I lived near UW), but I'll be damned if this doesn't remind me of my memories of living with a bunch of middle-aged townies, sitting on a dock at night staring at Lake Union, getting lost on my runs and just generally enjoying life. The only one of these guys who is at all familiar to me is Vitamin D. Unfortunately, I never saw him in concert (I also missed Devin that summer... what a fool I was), so it's nice to be introduced to him knowing what the city is like on my own. Spotted at Noz's place.

On a related note, I know some of you have been watching the Lakers-Nuggets series. You should know that J.R. Smith and Dahntay Jones are from my area. One of my friends from high school was buddies with Jones in some form or fashion, as I recall. Given all that, I should be glad that two hometown guys are in the Western Conference Finals. Except Dahntay Jones just isn't very good, and has resorted to bush-league tactics to stop Kobe and J.R. just talks too much for me. If you look at Jones' face after he was taken out post-tripping Kobe, you could see him cover his face in shame. So sad. But too much talk from overeager role players, hard fouls, as well as atrocious and inconsistent refereeing, seem to be a theme this year in the playoffs. Or does this always happen? I forget.