One in the Chamber.
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IL Duce Morning Breakfast: "The Motto"
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Agenda Show Recap.
It was bright and early, Shirley each morning for the show. We set-up the night before and the show started Thursday morning at 9am. As we walked up to the convention center, it felt a little overwhelming seeing like the tour bus for Mighty Healthy parked on the corner. (dope!) But after getting in and settled it was tunnel vision after that. The first day went pretty well; we got to meet and talk with some cool new folks (shouts to Nino from The 5th Element & Mike from Laced) as well as old homies (shouts to Mocha Soul). Thanks for all the support and catch a sneak peek of a few things coming this summer from the show.
Day 2
Our booth neighbors, Proverse. Very cool people, check 'em out!
Anthony & Buck, dope.'s MVPs
Saints fans are everywhere. We actually ran into a few people from Louisiana. The Boot stand up! Lol
After the show, we took to L.A for some sight seeing and shopping. Still jealous that Bucko gets to wake up to this view every morning.
Breakfast at The Waffle. One of the most enchanting restaurants ever. Everyone looked like they were stolen from a Disney movie as props. But the food=GREAT.
Womp womp.
Got to drop in some of my favorite brand's stores, The Hundreds and Johnny Cupcakes. BIG inspiration. 
Photos from Day 1 after the link.
Day 1
These cool kids were in the place. Hey Jon and Angelia!
Marc and Ashley too!
So jealous of the freebies Marc got. 
Tee and Daphne tuckered out.
Hopefully I'll have some video to go along with the photos tomorrow for the 2nd and last day of the show. Until then! -the dealer
dope. Sports: (NBA) Early Season Trends - The West
I hate to use a Wild Wild West cliché, but it’s true. There are no clear favorites. No West coast version of the Heat. Talk to 3 different people, and you’ll get 5 different winners of the conference. The Lakers got older and took away their margin for error in Lamar Odom. The Mavs lost their defensive core with the departures of Tyson Chandler and their best perimeter defender DeShawn Stevenson, in addition to their spark off the bench (J. J. Barea). Oklahoma City has the same core, but the questions at point guard are becoming louder and louder. Indeed, this might be the best opportunity for a team that usually falls in the “also ran” category to sneak in and steal the Western Conference’s bid to the Championship game.
Lakers: For a team with a top tier shooting guard, power forward, and center, this team gets very little love. Yes, they are older. Yes, they have a new coaching staff. Yes, they lost their trump card in Lamar Odom (the player that made up for the inconsistency of play at either the Center or Power Forward position). But they are also the most seasoned winners in the conference. And they have one of the best players in history on their roster.
Moving forward, Mike Brown to implement his fantastic defense to pair with the fantastic offensive weapons they possess. If he can improve the already quality defense of the Lakers (John Hollinger had them rated as the 6th rated defense in the league last year) then the Lakers can get Kobe the ring to tie the King.
Oklahoma City: I don’t usually like to talk about locker room chemistry of a team as the main problem confronting its success. I’m not in anyone’s locker room, and I don’t know any of the team personally, so really all I have to base this off of is conjecture. So let’s just focus on on-court chemistry; the Thunder look like a body without a head at times. Westbrook didn’t start playing the point guard position in earnest until his sophomore (and last) season at UCLA. On more than one occasion over the past year and change Westbrook has looked more like a shooting guard initiating the offense instead of the All-star point guard he is. Westbrook has hesitated (or refused) to defer to the All-World, walking assist that is Kevin Durant. Many have called to move him to shooting guard, but to do so takes away from his advantage on the court. There isn’t much call for a 6’3” shooting guard with a shaky jumper. Even his athleticism would be muted having to face 6’5” 220-pound guys on a nightly basis. The rumors to trade him seem mainly driven by outsiders pondering on “what might be” for a team that has championship aspirations.
This team, as constructed can win the championship. They need an aggressive PG that can score. Take that away and you are left with one superstar, a very good player in James Harden, and an otherwise underwhelming frontcourt (Serge Ibaka hasn’t looked as effective as the high-energy, insanely athletic power forward that he was in last year’s postseason). Westbrook will be asked to take the temperature of his team, a characteristic present in all elite point guards. When they need a basket, he will need to show that aggressive attacking style that has come to define the young player. When they need him to run the offense (feed Durant or Harden in the right spots) he will have to show the restraint that has eluded him early in his career.
Dallas: The Champion. They’ve lost a lot. And honestly I think that ownership is looking forward to next year to reload with Deron Williams AND Dwight Howard (they will only have a few players under contract after this season). In the meantime, they’re essentially a new team with all the faces changing places. I don’t really see them competing for a chance to defend their crown seriously (although I must admit the idea of Lamar Odom and Nowitzki playing together is pretty intriguing) but it would’ve been disrespectful not to include them in this post.
Their moves in free agency next year will be exciting to watch.
Memphis: The health of my pick to win the Western Conference took a serious injury when Zach Randolph went down with a torn MCL (an injury that takes 6-8 weeks to heal). I love this team simply because it’s a small-market team full of talent and guile. They have best frontcourt in the League with Rudy Gay, Randolph, and Marc Gasol. While they will miss Battier coming off the bench, Mayo (and perhaps eventually Jeremy Pargo doing his Nate Robinson impression) should still give the team depth. Point guard Mike Conley has steadily improved every year he has been in the league. Closest to being a complete team that the West has.
Or at least they were.
Zach Randolph’s injury makes this a difficult time for the Grizz. The addition of Mareese Speights was a clever move by their General Manager Chris Wallace (they only gave up a 2nd rounder and disappointing player Xavier Henry to cover for the loss of Randolph). Gay is back after missing their surprising 2011 playoff run, which is obviously an addition but will mean an adjustment to the lineups and the players subsequent roles. The development of OJ Mayo will determine how far this team will go. It’s time for the most ballyhooed high school player this side of LeBron James to show why players the caliber of Kobe Bryant were wowed by his talent when he was still a teenager. To date, he hasn’t been an utter disappointment (he has shown a real willingness to play defense, and his athleticism was “as advertised”), but he has fallen short of the high promise that cloaked his game early in his maturation. If he can finally take his game to the next level (perhaps the trade rumors will serve as a catalyst) and Randolph is able to be effective come playoff time, this team will win the west.
Spurs: Everything is relative. Either you think this team is filled with veterans that have been blessed to have 16 less games and the same nucleus that has a proven track record of success, or you think this old team has a condensed schedule with less time to rest through a sprint of a season that has needed a facelift for years but whose friends were too nice to say anything. All of that is semantics, what is real is that Manu Ginobili broke his shooting hand and will miss two months. Even if they do make the playoffs, they’ll have to play big minutes and will be a low seed doomed to face a younger, more talented team. Their window has more than likely closed.
Blazers: I’m going to be honest, I didn’t see this coming. Quietly, this team (led by new General Manager Chad Buchanan) has been put together nicely. They possess the best forward combination in Gerald Wallace and Lamarcus Aldridge, sealed the hole left by Brandon Roy with Jamal Crawford, and got more athletic and offensively more dangerous at the point guard with Raymond Felton instead of Andre Miller. Notice that among all those names, I didn’t call anyone who had been to a Conference Finals, much less an NBA Finals.
There is still the iffy position of Center that must be handled, but honestly not many teams have a center that they can consistently count on both sides of the court (Orlando, Lakers, and Denver complete the list). The team is lacking in experienced NBA winners and that can be a real concerned; but the team tucked away in the Northwest corner of the country is the best kept secret in the League.
Author: Brenden Whitted. Follow Brenden on Twitter: @WBHUalum
dope. Sports: (NBA) Early Season Trends - The East
Patience; that is what my new year’s resolution was. Begin to display more patience. The ideal has been lauded as being a virtue by society at large, and my own family. So when the NBA season started, I gorged myself on every game that I could rest my eyes upon. And, as my father, brother, and I recovered from the visual feast, we sat back and picked our teeth with the requisite impending analysis. I even raced to my computer to immediately begin writing on what I had seen; the shots hurried, the defensive assignments missed, the lack of chemistry, etc. But as I looked at what I was seeing, I realized that I was looking at a product of new teams with no training camps, and (some) players that weren’t physically ready to participate in an NBA game due to the lockout and its sudden end (see the play of Dirk Nowitzki). Combine that with my newfound emphasis on patience, and you get this post. Almost a tenth of a way through the new season (that looks weird to type after about a week) I feel like I’ve waited long enough to see past what I will simply title “lockout rust” and into what I think will be possible trends and who will be contenders come June.
East
The Eastern Conference is better than the West. More top tier talent, and more teams closer to the overall goal of being complete (although no team is without at least one serious foundational issue on their way to building a championship). The Heat, Bulls, and Boston are all reprising their roles from last year as the top of the heap. All return substantially similar casts from the teams that showed well at the end of last year. The B-List of the conference starts with Atlanta, New York, and Orlando (in order of appearance on the list NBA rankings at the conclusion of the regular season).
Heat: Let’s start with the class of the East and of the NBA at large. While they’ve just lost their first game of the season, the Heat look to be in mid-season form (the winners of 11 out of 14 form). Keeping the same nucleus, plus adding Shane Battier and emerging spark Norris Cole and the team is constructed to be great. They still have the problem of a lack of an offense from the Center position, but LeBron and Wade’s concentration on getting baskets in the post area more than make up for that deficiency from the Juwan Howard/Joel Anthony hybrid that is the Heat Center. Their main problem has also regained its top tiered game; the zone defense still causes fits for the Heat. It made an absolute drubbing of the Celtics a respectable ending score, and it harassed them into its first loss vs the talented Hawks. Coach Erik Spoelstra was lauded for his implementation of West Virginia’s football spread offense. He had the right idea going with learning from colleges, just the wrong sport. The Heat need more than a general idea, they need a structured offense to execute vs teams that will undoubtedly employ a defense that takes away the Heat’s ability to dive to the cup as well as highlights their dearth of consistent perimeter shooting. They’ll get deeper and better at the point guard position as Mario Chalmers continues his steady play and Cole replaces what I think at one time was Mike Bibby. Add Battier for even more quality defense on the NBA’s best and (provided the team solves their glaring offensive issue) the team possesses all the requisite talent to win the championship.
Bulls: The Bulls addressed their main problem position of shooting guard in the offseason by getting Richard Hamilton. Hamilton wasn’t the top SG free agent (that award goes to Jamal Crawford), but he was the best person for their system; an effective scorer who doesn’t need to dominate the ball to score. They owned the League’s best record last year, and are back to their winning ways winning four of their first five games. Their lineup is sound, with talent at every position…so why don’t I believe in this team? This team still bears a striking resemblance to the LeBronnaires, a team clearly driven by one player. Except…that isn’t true. Chicago won 19 of the 27 times when Derrick Rose was not the leading scorer (on the five occasions when he shared the lead, the team was undefeated). But in the playoffs versus the League’s best teams, who do you trust on this team to be the consistent jab to go with the haymaker that is Rose? If Hamilton can stretch defenses a bit (for a great shooter, he is the owner of a pedestrian 34.6% 3pt field goal percentage), maybe the Bulls can finish this season stronger than their last playoff appearance ended.
Celtics: They are the Celtics. They’ve lost Big Baby (a player instrumental to their title run) but replaced him with an equally talented Baton Rouge product in Brandon Bass. The team is a year older, and it looks like this is officially the last year the window will be open (although that sentence is supplanting “This will be Cher’s final performance” as the most overused and inaccurate statement possible) on their title years. Fewer games in the regular season would seem to favor the older teams, but the compressed nature of the contests means that it’s going to be a sprint which may exhaust the formerly deep team. If the Celts can stay healthy (a huge “if” considering Paul Pierce already missed the first few games with a heel injury), the Celts are the dangerous, hungry team eager to move to the pantheon of Celtics great teams.
Hawks: Even with the loss of Crawford to free agency, I proposed the theory that the Hawks were the most talented team from top to bottom in the League. They have a borderline superstar (closer to the mortal side I grant you) in Joe Johnson, a vastly underrated post player in Al Horford, a defensive Wunderkind in Josh Smith, and depth with Tracy McGrady, Jannero Pagro, and Marvin Williams in terms of scoring. This team showed me a heart that wasn’t present when they were led by their former Coach Woodson and former player Bibby (I hate to harp on it, but he looks so bad on the court that I wonder what incriminating evidence he must have on NBA execs in order to keep getting jobs). New coach Larry Drew and point guard Jeff Teague have the team competing and organized. If the team can stay focused (Smith has already displayed his displeasure with his role) this always talented team could be a hindrance to anyone’s championship aspirations—especially for the Bulls who that match up fantastically with.
Knicks: Let me first say that I love that Madison Square Garden is once again housing a competitive professional basketball team. That said, fans have to relax with their criticism of a team that has started relatively slowly (2-3). New faces (Tyson Chandler and Iman Shumpert) plus an almost non-existent preseason and training camp equal growing pains. Their problem, like Miami last year, is that they need time to gel and figure it out. Unlike Miami, they will not have much time to do it (in addition to a reduced amount of games, there will be less practices). As long as they are in the playoffs (breathe Knick fans, they will be) they will be a problem that someone will have to solve. Still, having Carmelo initiate the offense as Coach Mike D’Antoni intimated seems like a recipe for stagnation, and an unhappy Amar’e. If they can get a cohesive offensive mindset and have EVERYONE commit to playing defense (not just Chandler) come playoff time they are capable of winning the title. See Knick fans, all you guys need for your team to do is play offense and defense well to win.
Author: Brenden Whitted. Follow Brenden on Twitter: @WBHUalum