Sports Science : Jesse Williams

My longtime high school buddy Jesse Williams goes for the gold in tomorrow’s high jump finals at the London 2012 Olympics. Let’s go Jesse!!!!!

Lebron’s 65 Foot Bounce Pass to Durant

Literally jumped up off the couch when I was watching this yesterday.

Where You At Wednesday : Jesse Williams, WORLD CHAMPION

If you didn’t know who Jesse Williams was before, then you will now, as you should. I went to high school with Jesse Williams and consider him a friend of mine. We catch up whenever he’s back in town over dinner or at weddings of mutual friends, etc. Jesse has always been an excellent athlete. In high school he played soccer, football, and did track all pretty much at the same time. Later in high school he discovered his passion for the high jump.

JDub is a super hard worker who threw his all into the high jump and after one year at NCSU, transferred to USC for college to pursue his dream. Eventually, and after performing awesome at many competitions, he earned his spot on the US Olympic team and went to Beijing. Things didn’t go as he hoped there, but he still kept at it.

As of last week, Jesse Williams is the world champion and won the gold in the high jump at the World Championships. I believe he is the first American to win in something like over 20 years. I am friggin super stoked for Jesse because I know how hard this kid has worked for this, and how much he deserves it. Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy, and it is a testament to hard work paying off. I know he wants to bring home the gold at the next Olympics for the US, but for now, I hope he savors this victory for a long while.

Congratulations, Jesse!!!!!

Check out the video of him DOING WORK below!

(props to Will the Thrill on the excellent quality clip)

Original Jamaican Bobsled Footage

Surprisingly a lot like the movie crash, etc. I had never seen the actual footage. Thought peeps might find it interesting.

Where You At Wednesday : Olympian Edition

The Olympics are still awesome, don’t get me wrong. I still watch them when they come on. (Editor’s note: Shout out to my man Jesse Williams, who is on the US Track and Field team as one of our top high jumpers. Went to my high school and a buddy of mine. Represents the US to the fullest. Look him up and root him on). However, there is something about the Olympics that is more interesting when you are a kid. I think it’s because you have more time to watch them and get caught up in them. Regardless, there are a bunch of Olympians I remember as a kid that seem to have faded out of the public eye. Let’s check some of them out, shall we?

Kerri Strug

You know about the famous vault in the ’96 Olympics above, but what happened after? Well, she went on the Ice Capades with Disney on Ice for a while, then announced her retirement and enrolled in UCLA then later transferred to Stanford. After graduating, she worked as an elementary school teacher and then moved to DC in 2003. She’s worked in the Treasury and Justice departments and has run multiple marathons including the Boston and New York. She also appeared in a 2008 Zaxby’s commercial.

Bonnie Blair

Bonnie Blair was a US Speedskater (seen above in the corny McDonald’s commercial…..speaking of, “Where You At Wednesday” the round bacon strips? Remember those?!). She won 5 Olympic golds and 1 bronze in her career. She even won the 1992 ABC Wide World of Sports Athlete of the Year Award, along with several other prestegious things like the AP Female Athlete of the Year in 1994. She won the Speedskating World Cup points competition 11 times. In 2004 she was inducted to the US Olympics Hall of Fame, at the time, our most decorated winter Olympics athlete. Today, she is mostly discussed when talking about if Apollo Anton Ohno can break her record.

Brian Boitano

Brian Boitano, whose 1988 Gold Medal Performance in Calgary is captured above, was a male US figure skater. Though a 4 time US champion and 2 time world champion, the above is his only Olympic medal. Following the Olympics, he turned professional and did some serious domination in competitions. He even won an Emmy….yes, an EMMY, for “Carmen on Ice”. He wanted to go back to amateur status and compete in the Olympics again, and lobbied for this successfully. In ’93 the International Skating Union introduced the “Boitano rule” allowing reinstatement. He placed 6th in the 94 Olympics. He was inducted into the World Figure Skating HOF and the US FS HOF in 1996. Most recently, he was the subject of the South Park segment below:

He ended up writing the foreward to the South Park book in 2009, had a cameo in 2007′s “Blades of Glory”. Most recently he has had a short show on the Food Network called “What Would Brian Boitano Make?”

Dan O’Brien

We all remember the 1992 Dan vs. Dave fiasco, where Dan neglected to qualify. However, he did win the Gold in the 1996 Decathalon, and won gold at 4 World Championships, so he’s no clown.  Recently he was inducted into both the Oregon Sports Hall of Fame, and was a part of the inaugural class of the 2007 Idaho Sports Hall of Fame Class. Just this year, he broke the world record for fastest game of hopscotch by over 2 seconds (no joke). He also owns Gold Medal Acceleration Gym in Scottsdale, volunteers part-time coaching ASU track, and commentates on TV for Track and Field events.

***Remember, you can always submit suggestions for Where You At Wednesday, Clown or Regular Dude, or just funny ish in general to themixtapemonster@themixtapemonster.com, or tweet it at a player @themonsterblog ***

Payton to Carter

The Glove’s D made it happen. Vince shows love to get GP the assist. This was in the 2000 Olympics in Sydney.

The Redeem Team – Eats Wendy’s Just Like You!

Funny vid taken by Chris Bosh of him, Lebron, Deron Williams, Dwight Howard and CP3 all grubbing Wendy’s inside of a gas station.

Was anyone else super impressed by Bosh in the Olympics? I think he might have logged more minutes than Howard in most of the games, and he did a damn good job. I always forget he was a Yellow Jacket for a year….

Love USA basketball, but……

…..something started to erk me about the team the other day while I was watching. No, it wasn’t Coach Ratface on the bench, though that does annoy me. It was in fact, the makeup of the team. It wasn’t that we didn’t bring another tried-and-true “big” with us on the team, or that we only had one big “zone-buster” 3-point-shooter. It was the fact that we don’t have a single white guy on the team. I know what you are thinking…”Isn’t Jason Kidd white?”: The answer…No. He’s half African-American, and Half Irish-American. So maybe we have 1/2 a white dude on the team….

Come on people, this is America. I understand that you have to bring the best players in the league, and I’m not going to argue with that. I’m also not going to argue that any player on the team that is there representing us doesn’t belong (even Boozer is an All-Star). But for a country who has whites as a big majority, there should be at least one white dude.

The white race kept it real on the original Dream Team. We had Larry Bird, John Stockton, Chris Mullin, and some benchwarmer who I am purposefully forgetting who obviously didn’t belong on the squad. Stockton stayed on in 1996 for the Atlanta games, and then poof, the white boys disappeared. Very disheartening.

As I thought about this for a while and how surprising it was to me, I then started wondering, “Well….what white boy SHOULD be on the team?”…..Every white dude I came up with was foreign and either already playing for another country (like Dirk) or wasn’t an American (even Steve Nash is Canadian).

I visited nba.com and took a look at the Top 50 leaders in the NBA last year in points, rebounds and assists. The lists are littered with white dudes here and there, but the VAST majority of them are foreign or European players.

Here are the white Americans on those lists, and the place in which they were in the Top 50 (I cheated on the points one and went a little further, because I wanted at least 2 in each category).

POINTS:

42. Mike Dunleavy

61. Mike Miller

REBOUNDS:

19. Brad Miller

20. Nick Collison

26. David Lee

29. Jeff Foster

48. Troy Murphy

ASSISTS:

19. Kirk Hinrich

32. Steve Blake

40. Jason Williams

 

Admittedly, this is not a very impressive list.

So, Mixtape Monster Blog Readers, my question to you is: IF YOU WERE GOING TO ADD A MEMBER TO THE REDEEM TEAM, AND THAT MEMBER HAD TO BE A WHITE GUY…..WHO WOULD YOU GO WITH??

The Monster’s Vote: Kirk Hinrich. He’s played some international ball for us, and is a good solid PG, who isn’t going to give you a lot of points or flare, but isn’t going to turn the ball over much either. My second choice would be Mike Miller, who also played some international ball a couple of years ago for us (along with Hinrich) because he is a decent scorer. But my overwhelming vote has got to go to Kirk Hinrich.

Congratulations Kirk, you’re the Great White Hope.

Your thoughts? Your vote?

Oh yeah, and GO USA! Even without white boys, you still the shiznit.

Sick Olympics Basketball Commercial

Sick commercial for The Redeem Team, donated by Stonewall Jackson.

People are quick to forget….

……..what a BEAST Michael Johnson was. This shit wasn’t even CLOSE when he broke the record!

 

Shouts to my man Jesse Williams, in the Olympic Trials for High Jumping right now.