El Niche Cache
August 17, 2020
The Niche Cast Podcast
iTunes | Spotify | The Niche Cache | Youtube
Reading Menu
27fm Sounds of Aotearoa: Mid-August, 2020 (Music)
Monday Morning Dummy Half: No Josh Hodgson or Cameron Smith? No Worries (NRL)
The Welly Nix Title Quest: Still Living In The Weirdness (A-League)
Kiwi Steve in the NBA #11: Basketball Is Back (NBA)
More Breakers Free Agency: Haere Mai Lamar Patterson, Haere Ra Scotty Hopson (ANBL)
Scotty’s Word
Let’s start with another steady tournament for Lydia Ko, this time in Scotland at the Scottish Open where she’s finished tied-12th. A third round of 67 saw Ko creep up near the top of the leaderboard after her first two rounds of 70 and 72, then a final round of 74 wrapped it up. Since the LPGA’s restart, Ko has results of tied-28th, tied-2nd and tied-12th. All of which is solid and regular top-20 finishes are what we’re after with Ko.
We appear to have a date for Israel Adesanya vs Paulo Costa and that UFC card will definitely have some more City Kickboxing fighters - no location though. Some people have floated Aotearoa hosting this fight, but I reckon it will be too niggly to get foreign fighters into Aotearoa. Likely to be either UAE or Las Vegas…
Over in the NBA, Steven Adams’ Oklahoma City Thunder have a pretty epic first round match up with Houston Rockets. That’s the Russell Westbrook derby, James Harden’s going to be doing his thing and OKC led by veteran Chris Paul have been sneaking under the radar. What’s weird here is that Houston tend to play without a big man like Steven Adams, instead loading up with smaller blokes and plenty of shooting; how influential can Kiwi Steve be?
Also, kiwi boss-man Sean Marks’ Brooklyn Nets face Toronto Raptors in the first round. The Raptors are amazing, 5x more amazing than they were with Kawhi Leonard and will probably win that series. If not, it would be crazy considering they are without Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving as well as a bunch of notable players who couldn’t make the trip to the bubble.
Caribbean Premier League sparks up this week, Wednesday morning’s NZT. Below are the T20 stats for the kiwi lads involved as a prep guide for you kiwi cricket freaks frothing for some whack whack cricket…
Jamaica
Glenn Phillips
T20I: 15.55avg/100sr.
T20: 30.87avg/135.39sr.
CPL 2018: 2nd in runs - 41.54avg/146.94sr.
CPL 2019: 4th in runs - 37.40avg/144.96sr.
St Lucia
Scott Kuggeleijn
T20I: 41.75avg/9.06rpo.
T20: 32.30avg/8.67rpo.
Super Smash: 17th in wickets - 9w @ 40.66avg/9.38rpo.
St Kitts & Nevis
Nick Kelly
T20: 27.11avg/135.05sr.
Super Smash: 3rd in runs - 44.22avg/139.64sr.
Ish Sodhi
T20I: 24.09avg/8.05rpo.
T20: 24.30avg/7.83rpo.
CPL 2018: (2 games) - 4w @ 18avg/9rpo.
Super Smash 2019: 14th in wickets - 10w @ 29.40avg/7.57rpo.
Trinbago
Tim Seifert
T20I: 22.85avg/139.75sr.
T20: 25.26avg/137.29sr.
Super Smash: 6th in runs - 40.37avg/143.55sr.
Colin Munro
T20I: 31.34avg/156.44sr.
T20: 29.06avg/144.71sr.
CPL 2018: 1st in runs - 51.54avg/140.34sr.
CPL 2019: 13th in runs - 33avg/127.62sr
Guyana
Ross Taylor
T20I: 26.51avg/122.68.
T20: 31.48avg/132.67.
Barbados
Mitchell Santner
T20I: 21.07avg/7.36rpo.
T20: 23.24avg/7.12rpo.
Corey Anderson
T20I: 24.25avg/138.17sr.
T20: 26.63avg/139.97sr.
Super Smash: 33rd in runs - 21.50avg/120.56sr
Two things cut from the same cloth…
Boldy James teamed up with The Alchemist for one of the best albums of 2020 with ‘The Price Of Tea In China’ as part of The Alchemist’s stellar work over the past 12 months. Now, Boldy James appears to have signed with the major movers in hip hop Griselda Records and delivered ‘The Versace Tapes’ that serve as hip hop in fine art form. This is mandatory listening:
I’ve been listening to different stoicism books (Marcus Aurelius, etc) and I found it rather funky that Big Body Bes (Action Bronson’s friend) drops two hours of guidance that felt similar to the vibe of those stoic messages. This may not be packaged how you want your stoic vibes or even simple guidance, but it’s fantastic and plenty of nuggets to be had…
Wildcard’s Notebook
It’s a sneaky time for the Flying Kiwis folks at the moment. The overseas leagues that rushed to restart are mostly all finished now while those that cancelled things to wait for next time haven’t quite started. There has still been some quality served up around the place, like Erin Nayler finally being announced for English Women’s Super League club Reading FC for example...
... but there’s one fella in particular I wanna highlight because his bonkers year is a good example of the strange disruption that the pandemic can have in the careers of athletes. Professional football, like most sports, is a ruthless realm and sometimes you get the big deal overseas and it just never works out for reasons completely beyond your control. There will be some hard luck stories that come out of the coronavirus, there probably already have been a heap. Here’s hoping Andre De Jong isn’t one of them but shout out to him either way because he got quarter of an hour off the bench for AmaZulu in their first game back in the South African PSL this weekend. Cheeky lil spell, chucked on when his team wanted a goal. It ended up being a 0-0 draw but that’s all goods coz Polokwane City lost so it lifts AmaZulu out of the relegation playoff spot.
The reason that’s a big deal for Andre is that it was also his first game since last November. In earning his fourth international cap for the All Whites (in a 1-0 loss to Lithuania) he also kinda sorta broke his foot. Now, that’s not a long term injury or anything but footballers do need their feet so it took a rude few months to heal and then, just as he was about to make his return... this pesky pandemic springs up and everything gets canned. Literally the dude’s first game back was gonna be what ended up being the first game of AmaZulu’s that was postponed. So four months off trying to recover from a broken foot and then another five months off with lockdowns and all that and now, finally, the man’s back in action. The timing could not have been more coincidentally awful but that’s all in the past now and he’s back playing footy again and looking to build on what’s been an impressive rise from ol’ ADJ, a guy who has made steady progress with each subsequent year to get him to where he is now. He missed enough time to fit an entire pregnancy in but on the positive side he didn’t miss a single All Whites game during that marathon absence.
One day somebody’s gonna make an incredible podcast series about the way in which different sportsfolk had their careers affected in good and bad ways by the chaos of the year that was 2020. Bags not me though.
Yanni Wetzell’s not gonna play NBL for South East Melbourne after all. Fella had an out-clause for a decent offer from Europe and just before it expired he snapped it up and gapped it outta there. To Germany, if whispers are to be believed but he’s defs got something lined up if he’s used his out clause. Wetzell is a player who a lot of NZers perhaps don’t realise the extent of his talent. He’s been in the States at college with San Diego State the last few years and he didn’t get to play his senior NCAA tournament because of the pandemic. He didn’t play NBL Showdown either, training with the Breakers instead to stay busy, then he almost got a spotlight for SEM which would’ve had him on telly all the time on Aotearoa screens but now we won’t get that either.
But no dramas, Yanni Wetzell is heading for big things either way. Chances are there’s more cash involved in Europe plus he’s also at a good age to try and test himself there. The Aussie NBL will probably always be there for him since he’s a local player. Might as well see what’s what overseas and then if he’s lucky and things progress around the world (sceptical on that last front) he might get to do the NBA Summer League tour and then who knows. Wetzell is 6’10 and he can shoot. Dude’s got a great personality and was once a world youth ranked tennis player. Sky’s the limit.
However this does scratch one kiwi off the list of folks signed for NBL21 and it leaves South East Melbourne down a big man this far into free agency. My proposition is that the rule should be: one kiwi out, one kiwi in... and there’s a fella who shapes as a lovely replacement if they want him. Tom Vodanovich has experience at this level, he’s a current free agent, he’ll be comparatively cheap, he’s coming off an MVP campaign for the Manawatu Jets in the NZ NBL, and he’s suddenly an absolute gun shooter from range. Pair him with an import centre and tell ya what you can do a whole lot worse. But that’s just my humble opinion.
Watched this banger over the weekend...
Not sure I fully understand it, might have to watch it back, but I sure as hell haven’t been able to stop thinking about it since. The premise is genius: one character comes to the understanding that she’s gonna die the following day and when she tells her mate, her mate then catches the same fear like it’s contagious. The fear spreads from there.
It’s a bad-acid-trip of a film which is also undercover hilarious, with just enough flashbacks to hint at the origin of the fear without explaining it. Definitely don’t bother if you only like movies with clear resolutions because this one does not have one. Short of inventing immortality it’s not like you could find a cure for the fear anyway, you just take a more abstract view of what ‘tomorrow’ means... but it’s also inspiring to see how different characters react and in particular to see what coping mechanisms they find to help them cope. It’s always human connection. That’s what gets us through the darkest times. 2020’s made that pretty obvious to everyone. So yeah, give She Dies Tomorrow a watch if you like conceptually-deep trippy visionary emotionally-tense undercover hilarious horror films without clear resolutions. Amy Seimetz is officially on my list of directors whose next project I’m down for regardless of what it is.
There’s a band called Young Jesus that I new very little about this time a week ago but I’m digging the sound of this new album (Welcome to Conceptual Beach). Veeeeery reminiscent of Talk Talk’s Spirit of Eden. Like, really really really reminiscent...
And also digging Aussie punks Vintage Crop’s latest offerings...
Finally, don’t watch this bugger at work but this is the funniest thing I’ve seen in ages...
Everybody sip the slurpee.