Just when you thought Blake Griffin couldn’t come up with a more powerful display of athleticism he does this…

I feel like a 10 year old kid again. I think I even want a Blake Griffin jersey for my birthday.

This dunk was so humiliating my friends at POTSC.com need to feature a mug shot of Kendrick Perkins.

I’m a huge basketball fan. It is by far my favorite sport to play; however, I haven’t been an NBA fan since MJ left the scene the second time. Even at that I was a NBA playoff fan.

In my humble opinion the NBA should take a year off. Let their best players go play in other countries, and then resume their talks. I have a feeling that in the long run they’ll benefit from worldwide exposure and may see players become willing to discover why they play the game and owners who are willing to have some profit versus a loss.

“17 At the time for the banquet he sent his slave to tell those who had been invited, ‘Come, because everything is now ready.’ 18 But one after another they all began to make excuses.” Luke 14 NET

I have the tendency to make excuses.

The interesting thing about excuses is that while we use them in order to manipulate the perception others have, or even we have of reality so that we might magically make our errors and deficiencies disappear while instead we expose them and reveal our brokenness.

Excuses hold us in bondage in order to keep us from becoming something brand new. They help us tell a story that is not true about ourselves. While some use excuses as to why they can’t play basketball as well as Michael Jordan did the rest of us use them in order to derail working out our salvation in order to become perfect, holy, and living sacrifices.

What excuses are you making?

I don’t know if the point of this mashup is that Lebron is making excuses, or that Cleveland is making excuses, but it applies to both.

Thanks Bobbitt!

I have, thankfully, never been posterized. A posterization is a sports related term when someone on the other team makes an amazing play and you end up being the one being scored upon or knocked out. The moment in time ends up on a poster hung on some kids wall.

I love playing the game of basketball, and while I’m not a huge fan of the NBA until the playoffs begin I do like a good posterization every now and then. This past weekend, Blake Griffin, posterized two guys with two awesome dunks in the same game. The first dunk is just AMAZING!

I just read a blog post that Malia Obama, daughter of President Obama, is typically the first one picked when making kickball teams at recess even though she has suspect fielding skills. Funny stuff. I also just read where they cast lots to choose teams in 1 Chronicles 25. They weren’t really choosing teams, but they were choosing the order of the terms of service for the musicians in David’s royal court. The passage notes that the lots fell and no bias was made according to age or experience. It hit me at the end of the chapter that Romamtiezer and his family were the last ones picked. It could have been really disappointing.

It brought back memories of times when I wasn’t picked. I wasn’t picked to be in the gifted class. I wasn’t picked to be on the “A” All-Star basketball teams. I can remember fighting over unfair teams on the playground. There were a lot of tears shed, a lot of angry words said, and a lot of self-victimization. The enemy had a field day.

After Jesus comes on the scene and pronounces the arrival of a new Kingdom, a new economy, he describes that it works like this, “So the last will be first, and the first will be last.”

When you really think about it there are tremendous advantages to being the last one picked. Expectations are low. Little successes are celebrated as milestones. Mistakes are expected. It doesn’t mean we lower our expectations or strive for mediocrity. Instead we have the opportunity to learn from those picked before us. It just means that the yoke is easy, and when the yoke is easy, then work is fun, and when work is fun I believe we are our most productive. I wonder if Romamtiezer and the boys enjoyed their work more than the others?

What about you? Recall any “last one picked” stories? How might Jesus redeem them?