Low Hanging Fruit
Aotearoa’s wahine, Steven Adams doing things, Brad Riddell & more
Podcast
The Niche Cast - Kiwi UAE Party
Reading Menu
Football Ferns vs Canada: Game Tahi, Don't Overthink It (Football)
Two Kiwis In WBBL07 and Two Centuries (Rachel Priest/Sophie Devine) (Cricket)
2021/21 Plunket Shield: Who Are Bayley Wiggins and Troy Johnson? (Cricket)
Will This Be The Season That The Breakers Actually Live Up To The Hype? (Basketball)
The 2020 Aotearoa Warriors SG Ball Team Was Really Good (Rugby League)
More Treasures From Another Lockdown Of Movie Watching (Loungin’)
Scotty’s Word
Aotearoa’s wahine…
This morning I wrote about Sophie Devine and Rachel Priest hitting centuries in WBBL, while Lydia Ko and Courtney Duncan were also shining this weekend. I haven’t been tapped into Duncan’s dominance of Women’s Motocross World Championships as we just follow our kiwi sports vibe and don’t try breakdown everything. Duncan is worth learning about though as she sealed her third consecutive championship and she has only finished top-five since starting back in 2016. Not bad for a 25-year-old.
Lydia Ko hasn’t been quite as dominant as Duncan, but she has definitely found a groove in 2021. Ko previously popped up at a Korean LPGA event where she finished 5th and this event was predominantly made up of local Korean players, plus kiwi-Korean Ko and Aussie-Korean Minjee Lee. Ko had taken a break from the regular LPGA schedule, then popped up in Korea and that makes sense given the LPGA Tour swung back to Korea for the Ladies Championship.
Ko finished tied-3rd and including her Olympics and KLPGA results, her recent results look like this: T6, T3 (Olympics), T2, T29, T25, T5 (KLPGA), T3.
Ko is now 3rd in the Race to CME Globe rankings and top-five for Putts Per GIR, Putting Average, Sand Saves, Scoring Average, Rounds under Par and Birdies. That tells the regular Ko yarn of her excellence in the short game as her Average Driving Distance is ranked 63rd and Ko is 144th for Driving Accuracy. The gritty kiwi Ko has two tournaments left on the LPGA Tour, both are in Florida next month and I’ll whip up a fresh Lydia Ko Mixtape before then.
Brad Riddell content…
This week is all about Dan Hooker vs Islam Makhachev, but here’s Brad Riddell chatting through his rematch with kickboxing legend John Wayne Parr. Riddell talks about how this was his first fight with CKB and some things he implemented.
Wildcard’s Notebook
Hoops & Stuff…
Here, have a look at this wee yarn that I stumbled upon on Sunday night:
This is from an Aussie basketball column in the Daily Telegraph, The Logue Down by Matt Logue (always with the pun titles, lol). The DT trying to channel some of that NRL media operation with the gossipy scoop style efforts.
You’ve always gotta take these things with a grain of salt (or a whole handful) given what we’ve seen from NRL players kicking back at these things – the worst being the scoops of that old favourite scribe: Staff Writers. Strange name, hey? Whenever you’ve got unnamed sources or stories that sound more like rumours you have to wonder where the information is coming from. Because while NRL players may despise blokes like Buzz Rothfield… their agents have all got his number on speed dial. I’m just prefacing all this by pointing out my natural distrust for these things. No shade on Loguey or anything, I’m talking here about the wider scope of this type of reporting.
Anyway this segment caught the eye for obvious reasons. Tai Webster supposedly having signed in Israel? One of the initial leading nations on the planet for the vaccination push*? And he’s apparently agreed to get the shot after all despite his hesitancy costing him his Breakers contract a couple months back?
*(Apparently they’ve dipped on that front – Israel opened up too early back in March with only 52% of the total population fully vaxxed (Israel has a young population which didn’t help) and only an additional 10% have been added to that number in the seven months since and combined with the delta outbreak that’s led to a rough few months of cases – they’re also likely to need booster shots now too thanks to the time elapsed – but enough from the world news pages now).
Look, here’s where I stand on the matter: everybody who’s eligible should be getting the damn vax for the sake of their community. There are vulnerable people all around us who are hugely susceptible to a covid outbreak and misplaced definitions of ‘freedom’ shouldn’t have to come at the expense of their right to survival. You know that quote about judging a society based on how it protects its most vulnerable? Yeah, that. We give up certain liberties in order to have the protection of a society, that’s how society works. That’s the whole point of it and we should want to do so.
Whether or not our ideas of morality are inherent or whether they’ve grown out of social norms (I tend towards the former - hippie dippy time but I believe we’re all reflections of the same life force so harm against another is harm against one’s self), our communities are where those morals are reinforced. If we were cavemen with no friends or families then we could do whatever we want… but it’d be the same for everyone else too so it’d be a kill-or-be-killed existence. No fun, in other words.
It’s way safer to group together so that’s what humans do. We protect each other for protection in return. Whether or not to get the vaccine, that’s a personal choice. I completely agree with that idea. But I also believe there’s only one logical choice. Should I drink this rat poison? It’s my personal choice... but no I should not drink the rat poison. Should I get the vaccine? It’s my personal choice… but yes I should and I already did. Twice.
That’s how I see the matter anyway but I accept that not everybody will agree. Perception is reality and those engulfed in a misinformation feedback loop are going to see things differently. Yelling in their faces that they’re wrong only tends to reinforce that position – in my experience it takes listening and empathy to ease people back from those rabbit holes.
So whether Tai Webster is gonna go get the vax and play in Israel doesn’t bother me too much. It’s that last line that got me scratching my head, where it’s suggested that TW’s departure from the Breakers may have had more to do with how his brother’s exit happened. Can’t say I’ve heard that apparent ‘talk’. I do think that Corey Webster was hard done by in the way that the Breakers shopped him around and released him a year into a three-year contract and wouldn’t be shocked whatsoever if there was some frustration with that.
But also judging by Corey’s twitterings lately that only saved them having to cut him later for the same reason as his brother because there’s no way he’s vaxxed carrying on like that. (Corey actually replied to a TNC tweet with that screenshot, saying “Y’all know nothing” which in fairness is completely true because it was just a screenshot from another website presented without comment). Hence there’s no reason to think that the vaccine wasn’t the impetus for Tai leaving at the time. And people are allowed to change their minds on these things - that’s literally what we want them to do in this case. Fair play to him if he has. I just saw that segment and it seemed weird so I included it here, is all.
Christ, what a bonkers situation.
Kiwi Steve in the NBA…
Swing low sweet chariot, aye? Low hanging fruit. Here are the box scores for Steven Adams’ first three games for the Memphis Grizzlies:
vs CLEVELAND CAVALIERS (W 132-121):
32 MIN | 8 PTS (4/7 FG) | 14 REB (6 OFF) | 3 AST | 1 STL | 1 BLK | 2 TO
at LOS ANGELES CLIPPERS (W 120-114):
27 MIN | 17 PTS (6/9 FG, 5/5 FT) | 9 REB (5 OFF) | 5 AST | 2 STL | 1 TO
at LOS ANGELES LAKERS (L 121-118):
34 MIN | 14 PTS (7/11 FG) | 16 REB (8 OFF) | 6 AST | 5 TO | 5 PF
It must be nice to be somewhere where he’s wanted and valued, right? Steve-o is averaging 13 points and 13 rebounds through the first week of the season, having dished out 14 assists which is surely one of the top three game stretches he’s had for assists in his career.
The 17 points he scored against the Clippers are more than he ever managed in a game for the Pelicans. He hasn’t missed a free throw yet. He’s shot better than 50% from the field each night. He didn’t even commit a foul in his first two games (he had 5 vs the Lakers though a couple were intentional). Already there’s a mint connection going with Ja Morant and uncoincidentally the Grizz have won two out of three and pushed the Lakers right to the buzzer in the third. They look like a real deal team.
And don’t think that Adams’ contributions aren’t being noticed…