mattlawyue
Currently in Tanzania, Africa doing media relations for the School of St Jude in Arusha.
Spent some time in public relations in NYC, and have written for SLAM Magazine, ESPN NewYork, the Boston Herald and BusinessWeek.
The College of New Jersey, '10.
Dinner at Momofuku Ssam Bar last night with the girl @emmulate. It was Lincredible.
LINSanity!!!
Landry Fields and Jeremy Lin’s new handshake: skimming through book, taking off glasses, then placing inside pocket protector.
Note: Landry Fields graduated from Stanford, Lin from Harvard. Way to set the bar super high for all Asian parents, Jeremy.
Love it. The Ivy League handshake.
The ivy league handshake
Almost a month ago I read a story in the New Yorker about the playwright Katori Hall, and her upcoming play The Mountaintop. This is the official description of the play:
Taking place on April 3, 1968, THE MOUNTAINTOP is a gripping reimagining of events the night before the assassination of civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. After delivering one of his most memorable speeches, an exhausted Dr. King (Samuel L. Jackson) retires to his room at the Lorraine Motel while a storm rages outside. When a mysterious stranger (Angela Bassett) arrives with some surprising news, King is forced to confront his destiny and his legacy to his people.
I saw it this past Sunday, ironically, on the dedication to the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial in Washington, D.C.
I will not pretend to be a theatre boy or a Broadway kid - I vaguely remember the Lion King on Broadway from my youth, thinking, this sucked so much compared to the movie. How come Mufasa hasn’t fallen to his bloody death, and why can’t I watch Simba stare fear in the eye? It really is a fucked up movie that I will watch on repeat with my niece whenever she wants to.
But the Mountaintop was fantastic. I wouldn’t know how to judge a good play from a bad one to write a credible review. I’ll just say by the end of 90 minutes, I was standing on my feet applauding Jackson and Bassett for God knows what reasons. They were believable? The way they enunciated their lines? Their chemistry? Who knows. I enjoyed myself, and I’ll leave it at that.
And it was certainly worth taking a couple hours out of my Sunday to walk along Broadway on a breezy fall afternoon, jacket and aviators relaxing on my body, a playbill in my hand, inhaling a beautiful New York City afternoon.
But you best believe if there was a Knicks preseason game I would have been home fucking glued to the TV, picking apart why I’m still against the Amar’e and Melo duo.
Maybe there’s more to New York in the winter than basketball after all…
Box Score of First NBA Game
Brooklyn Daily Eagle November 2, 1946.
One of my biggest problems with basketball statistics is the lack of availability of box scores. Databases with season statistics for every player are easy to come by, but databases with individual game box scores cannot be obtained without paying a large sum of money to companies like The Elias Sports Bureau. The Sporting News used to have all of their archives back to 1986 online for free. But when the company that owned the archives was bought out by Google a couple years back, they were no longer available. So for fun, I decided to go on a hunt for a box score of the first ever NBA game, technically the Basketball Association of America at the time, using only freely available online newspaper archives.
After strenuous searching, I was able to find a box score with bare bones statistics through the long defunct Brooklyn Daily Eagle. The game between the New York Knickerbockers and Toronto Huskies played in the Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto ended with the Knicks winning 68-66.
The most interesting part about the short article is that the word basketball is never used. The article refers to the game as the “Pro Cage Debut”. Back then the words ‘cage’ and ‘cager’ were synonymous with basketball and its players. Around the turn of the 20th century, a YMCA team from New Jersey called the Trentons played their games on the first court surrounded by a cage on the sides and above the court. This made for a rougher more hockey-like game with checks and hard fouls. It was so popular that even though cage courts were gone by the 1920’s, the name stayed in the lexicon for a few more decades.
On the box score, G stands for goals made, F for free throws made, and the P for points.
Landry Fields’ Stoudemire is golden (via oakleyandallen)
Precursor: A few days ago, my old friend Matt Lawyue – contributor for SLAM Magazine, and all-around good sir – levied a proposition. Whoever’s team lost the Knicks-Blazers matchup last Tuesday would have to write an ode to the winner. Via electronic handshake, the wager was set. And, as you…
“Precursor: A few days ago, my old friend Matt Lawyue – contributor for SLAM Magazine, and all-around good sir – levied a proposition. Whoever’s team lost the Knicks-Blazers matchup last Tuesday would have to write an ode to the winner. Via electronic handshake, the wager was set. And, as you should be able to tell by this post’s mere existence, the game did not end so well for me. As such, an ode to the New York Knickerbockers:…”
Knicks vs Heat at MSG last week.
Slice of pizza at the booth overlooking 30th street before the Knicks vs. Heat game. Strangers sharing the red pepper flakes and garlic powder. Christmas lights everywhere. Greatest city on earth.
