DimeBag: The Weekly Dime Mailbag, Volume XIV

HOW TO SUBMIT: E-mail dimebag@dimemag.com with your question/story/idea and include your name and hometown.

Word on the street is that I owe you a DimeBag or two. My apologies. The NBA season is back. No excuses. I will play like a champion.

Jason, St. Louis:

Will the Clippers have the same chemistry issues as the Heat did last year?

I have no idea. I hope not, for the sake of SportsCenter highlights. But at least I do know what happens when there isn’t any chemistry. Here’s an important and tangentially related story:

I got a haircut yesterday. My former barber retired, so I ventured into a new place. For the last few years, I’ve lacked haicut stability – a highly underrated security blanket for an insecure and overgrown child like myself. Bad haircuts are perpetual mood depressors: Someone comments on your excessively short hair, your last shred of confidence withers away for looking nine years old and you stumble through some sorry-sack excuse while you stare at your friend’s perfectly orchestrated mane. What a bastard. Have some sympathy. Tell me I look wise, or distinguished. Give me something.

So I walked in and meet my life re-shaper, praying that all will go well. I sat down, put on the anti-hair smock (or whatever it’s called) that conveniently (read: inconveniently) makes your phone inaccessible and prevents you from scratching every itch on your face. It just sits there, mocking the hell out of you. And it’s not like the itch goes away, or even stays the same. It gets WORSE. By the time I’ve eliminated this mortal enemy, I’ve left multiple red lines on my skin, possibly drawn blood and converted the itching to pain. Take that, itch. PAIN REPLACED YOU.

Anyway, the woman started touching my hair and spraying that water which assuredly possesses magical hair-cutting powers. Then she started touching my receding hairline, and I got nervous – somehow I thought if I remained insanely still, she wouldn’t notice it. And then, the bombshell from shaky confidence hell. She suggested a new hairstyle to accommodate my receding hairline, which, according to her endless buckets of wisdom, shouldn’t be happening to someone my age. Thank you, random woman.

So, you see? She was an awful teammate.

David, Los Angeles:

The Lakers started out 0-2 and look particularly awful. Are they making the playoffs?

NFL teams can overcome an 0-2 start to win the Super Bowl. 64 more games is plenty of time for an NBA team to right the ship. Except the Lakers won’t, because their fourth best player is Josh McRoberts. I don’t buy the whole “Andrew Bynum is out” excuse. Andrew Bynum plays basketball with the aggression of a wounded panda. I don’t care how many times Kobe Bryant cryogenically freezes his knees, he’s basically four years away from the prime onset age of osteoporosis. Due to the botched Chris Paul trade, Pau Gasol reminds me of one of those abused puppies on TV that you feel guilty for not adopting. This team was built for championships. Now they’re just a random amalgamation of Mitch Kupchak‘s past glory and quick fixes. Although the Ron Artest/Metta World Peace announcer dilemma is wondrous in all of its confusing glory. No one knows whether to call him “Metta,” “World Peace,” “Peace,” or “Artest.” In their last game against the Jazz, Kevin Harlan settled on “Metta…World…PEEEEAAACCCEEEEEEE!!!!” I think that wins.

And don’t forget that Kobe Bryant is the anti-championship: Superstar money, superstar attitude, regular star power. He’ll never not be the alpha dog, no matter how good his teammates are. On Christmas day, Hubie Brown was gushing his face off as Kobe and Mike Brown diagrammed a play with the other Lakers looking on. Except Hubie was delusional: Mike Brown stood idly by while Kobe coached. We suspected before the season that Kobe might not take a liking to Brown, let alone respect his attempt at coaching. This was that evidence. I look forward to Kobe giving pointers to Pau, whose anger will finally boil over and lead to an on-court profanity-laced tirade.

Joey, Washington:

I’ve been really putting a lot of thought into forming a well-developed team using the players in the NBA, and I’m not talking about some super-duper powerhouse consisting of Kobe, LeBron, Dwight etc. If you were to choose one elite player, two 2nd tier players, and a bunch of role players (1-10), what would that team be? Mine would look something like this:

PG- Russel Westbrook (2nd), SG- Jason Richardson, SF- Luol Deng, PF- Pau Gasol (2nd), C- Dwight Howard (1st), 6- Jamal Crawford, 7- Udonis Haslem, 8- Shane Battier, 9- Kyle Korver, 10-Anderson Varejao

Mine would be: PG: Chris Paul (1st ), SG: Eric Gordon (2nd) SF: Grant Hill PF: Kevin Love (2nd) C: Marcin Gortat 6: Jason Terry 7: Mario Chalmers 8: Taj Gibson 9: Nick Collison 10: James Jones

I love totally unfair and undefined NBA drafting exercises where I can arbitrarily defend my selections. Here are the roles of my players:

1) Chris Paul: Be Chris Paul.
2) Eric Gordon: Score a ton, NEVER handle the ball on the fast break, because you can’t and WE HAVE CHRIS PAUL.
3) Grant Hill: Continue to fool everyone into thinking you’re not on your last-last legs.
4) Kevin Love: Rebound, pick and pop with Paul, continue doing awesome commercials.
5) Marcin Gortat: Run the floor awkwardly, use your lanky arms to bother some shots, cover Kevin Love’s defensive deficiencies.
6) Jason Terry: Provide the scoring punch when Gordon is out of the game, launch a couple of 30-foot threes to get the crowd into the game and fool us into thinking you’re an efficient player.
7) Mario Chalmers: Celebrate in the knowledge that LeBron and Dwyane Wade will no longer berate you for missing open corner threes.
8) Taj Gibson: Shove someone inappropriately, throw an elbow – be the unnecessary instigator.
9) Nick Collison: Continue the fascinating trend of every other NBA player assuming you can’t play ball because you’re short and white, even though mountains of evidence prove otherwise.
10) James Jones: Same as Mario Chalmers and Nick Collison, minus the race thing. Instead, it’s because plenty of evidence does in fact prove that you are average at best.

Josh, Baltimore:

Maybe it’s just me, but I overrate players in real life based on how good they are in video games. So, is it just me?

I do the same. Ray Allen is pretty much the greatest player in NBA history. Every time I watch the Celtics, you have no idea how many times I’ve smacked the left trigger for a crossover to no avail. Crap, Ray, you can only dribble in NBA 2K12. I’ve also created myself on multiple occasions, been the starting shooting guard on the New York Knicks and led the team to multiple championships. D’Antoni still hasn’t given me a call. Doesn’t he see how cool my left elbow armband and high socks are? Even virtual-me is obnoxious.

But television is worse. It has permanently altered my perception of reality. I was on the subway and a man dressed in a suit entered the train, holding a briefcase. Immediately I assumed it was a bomb. How come all movie/TV briefcases explode? And because I’m a self-centered jackass, I immediately scanned my recent memory for people I pissed off. You know, because the guy in a suit holding a briefcase intended to kill me, but was covering his tracks by feigning something else. And then of course I had Jack Bauer fantasies, diving at the briefcase, disarming the suspect and chucking the briefcase just far enough down the train tunnel to avoid any deaths. And then every girl would want to go out with me. NO HAIRCUTTER LADY CAN RUIN THIS ONE.

That’s all for this week. Check back next week for Volume XV.

HOW TO SUBMIT: E-mail dimebag@dimemag.com with your question/story/idea and include your name and hometown. If you really insist on being a sketchy anonymous Internet weirdo, I guess I can’t stop you. So at least provide some sort of name and location.

Follow Dylan on Twitter at @DylanBotB.

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