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Edward Cullen vs. Pau Gasol: Who wins?

Since this piece got little to no love over at big sister ‘site BallinEurope.com, BuckBokai reruns it here – search engine voodoo be damned – for an audience perhaps more in touch with the eternal war between the supernatural undead and NBA basketball…

BuckBokai recently read the latest anti-Laker screed basketball column by ESPN.com’s Bill Simmons, an alternately funny and blood-boiling confession-style bit about conditioning one’s children to cheer for the “right” sports team, i.e. Daddy’s sports team.

Ultimately, however, The Sports Guy’s affectionate look at dominating your child’s formative years is perhaps best characterized as “disturbing.” And BuckBokai’s only saying this because he’s an ardent Lakers fan and the Boston Celtics can burn in hell of his profound belief in children’s self-determination.

After Simmons’ 5½-old daughter Zoë demonstrates an excellent liking for the color purple (good girl!), the ‘Guy decides to do what any unscrupulous and absolutely typical die-hard Boston Celtics fan would: Namely, he informs the wee lass that Kobe Bryant is an abusive father, that Phil Jackson’s love of dogs is matched only by Michael Vick’s, that Ron Artest wants to punch him in the face (this one might be true, actually), and that Pau Gasol is a vampire.

Unfortunately, writes Simmons, “that made her like [Gasol] more,” before going on to lament that “F***ing Edward [Cullen of “Twilight”] swayed an entire generation of girls under 15.”

This last bit made BuckBokai immediately realize two things:

1) The kid gloves are off and it’s time to get right to work on daughters Zsuzsa (five years old) and Szilvia (3½). My son may already be lost to the Dallas Mavericks, but goddamn it the girls won’t be programmed to go apoplectic at the sight of Celtic kelly green. “That Ray Allen is okay, I guess,” BuckBokai’ll say, “but that guy, that Kevin Garnett, he’s a bad alien.” (Zsuzsa’s totally into planets and stars these days) “And him? Rajon Rondo? He’s an angry man who eats people. Seriously, just look at him…”

and

2) I need a column idea for BuckBokai.

So, with all apologies to Simmons, Stephenie Meyer and just about everyone else, BuckBokai today sets out to answer that metaphysical question, “Pau Gasol vs. Edward Cullen in a Q-rating fight: Who’d win?”

The contest will take place over ten metrics measuring general awesomeness, pop cultural power and the all-important potential physic hold over impressionable young daughters.

Name. Whether you’re a badass supernatural force, a superstud professional athlete, or teen heartthrob packing a killing moniker is essential. Seriously, would there even be a “Russell vs. Wilt” debate if Mr. and Mrs. Russell had chosen something like “Julius” or “Shaquille” as their son’s name rather than “William Felton”? No.

Here, Edward Cullen is “blessed” with a name fit for a childhood movie star gone awry; even worse, the sucker would have won this category going away had he not changed to “Cullen” from the former New York Knick-referencing “Edward Anthony Masen.” Against the rounded cadence of “Pau Gasol” – not to mention the mysterious missing L; chicks dig mystery – Cullen has no chance. Edge: Gasol.

Team. Pau of course consorts with the two-time defending champion Lakers, who, until hitting a recent skid, was universally praised for its newfound depth. And for those brief stretches when Andrew Bynum is healthy, Gasol’s team may have the best first six in the NBA.

When not a romantic loner, Cullen mostly sticks with his family. All well and good, but that team’s not exactly going to win any supernatural titles against the likes of the werewolf pack, the Denali coven, the Egyptian coven, the Irish coven, the Volturi, and BiE’s personal favorite, the Amazonian coven. Edge: Gasol.

Recent Run. How recent are we talking? In the past week or so, the Lakers have shed the aura of invincibility among short attention-spanned observers – no respect for a two-time champ, eh? On the other hand, said back-to-back titles surely inspired off-season moves by at least the Boston Celtics, San Antonio Spurs and Dallas Mavericks, some of which may influence the NBA for a good five years to come.

On the other other hand, the Twilight machine is influencing all of American and British pop culture right now, affecting potentially dozens of franchises for god knows how long. Edge: Cullen.

Home country. Transylvania vs. Spain? Well, BuckBokai can’t recall the last time Transylvania even qualified for Eurobasket… Edge: Gasol.

Siblings. Cullen’s brothers and sisters (though, admittedly, many among them adopted) include the superstrong Rosalie and Emmett, the empathic Jasper and the future-telling Alice – and yeah, they’re all gorgeous and immortal, too.

Pau has Marc, whose stats are a bit down in 2010-11 to 11.7 points, 7.6 rebounds and 2.4 stocks (steals+blocks, courtesy Simmons’ “Book of Basketball”). Gasol the younger has also been praised by Phil Jackson for being more physical that Pau, but, hey, the truth is Marc is with the Memphis Grizzlies, a deader-end lot than James’ leaderless posse. Edge: Cullen.

Superpowers. Cullen: super-strength, -speed, -endurance, and -agility; mind-reading telepathy; immortality.

Gasol: great range; best European skill set since Dirk Nowitzki; awesome back-to-the-basket and post games; well above-average defender; superhuman ability to defer in alpha dog role to Kobe Bryant; teflon-like skin protects from Jacksonian barbs. Edge: Even.

Antagonist. So often is a hero defined by his polar opposite: think Batman and the Joker, Sherlock Holmes and Professor Moriarty, Captain Kirk and Khaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan. Both Cullen and Gasol have inherited their enemies: the former in factions who disagree with the Cullen Family’s “vegetarian” diet, while the latter arrived just in time for the resurrected Lakers-Celtics rivalry.

While the vegetarian/carnivore battle goes back to Genesis 4:2 (look it up), the Lakers vs. Celtics war began in the NBA’s first decade and has been a nearly continuous storyline since while creating two of America’s most universally loved sports franchises. Edge: Even.

Popularity. Gasol got up to a stunning no. 4 in jersey sales in Europe last season and his gear surely sells well in the huge L.A. market. But geez, *Twilight*?

Stephenie Meyer’s is the sort of franchise that would make any Simmons wannabe hack (and any writer this side of Stephen King and J.K. Rowling, really) Celtic green with envy: the books have sold over 100 million copies sold in 40 languages; comprised the entire top four in USA Today’s best-sellers list for 2008; won the 2008 British Book Award, the 2009 Kids’ Choice Award and an MTV Movie Awards best film nod.

They may love you in L.A., Pau, but until those free-throw time chants of “M-V-P!” are directed toward you rather than you-know-who, this one’s not even close. Edge: Cullen.

Physical Appearance. Have you seen Robert Pattinson? Good. Now check out the picture at left. BiE’s glad we’re all in agreement here. Edge (huge edge among the girlie set): Cullen.

And now we see just how Edward Cullen has become such a dominant force, even in the seemingly hermetically sports-sealed world of Simmons.

Poor Pau is going to have to get to work to win over the world from the eerie forces of superstudly vampires … or maybe the big Spaniard could just give in and become one himself under the motto of “If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.”

Now if you’ll excuse BuckBokai, there’s some brainwashing to be done…

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Ultimate championship: Dream Team vs. Redeem Team

As you may have heard, the 1992 version of Team USA was inducted into the Pro Basketball Hall of Fame last Friday.

Over at BuckBokai’s sister site BallinEurope.com, this writer enthused that “the only two teams … who *might* possibly give the Dream Team a series [were] Dream Team III, with much of Dream Team I plus Hakeem Olajuwon and Shaquille O’Neal, who probably should have been on the roster in lieu of the more politically-correctly chosen Christian Laettner in ‘92; and the Redeem Team of 2008, Generation Y’s own Dream Team.”

Which got BuckBokai to thinking later … Why not face ‘em off through the miracle of the virtual sports time-travel website What If Sports?

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K.C. at the Line

BuckBokai’d been wanting to write this nigh-epic poem for years and during the 2010 NBA/Euroleague playoff season, finally got it up to do so. This didn’t play so well at BuckBokai big-sibling site BallinEurope.com back then, so perhaps this lonely piece of prosody will find a more welcome home here – sorry for the lack of science-fiction, but hey, it’s literary.

(And please be sure to check out “Casey at the Bat,” still a good read. If you prefer your poetry combined with an escape from a straitjacket, plus scroll to the bottom of this entry.)

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Insights from parallel universe: Iverson goes to Olympiacos

Sometimes seemingly minor incidents in the grander scheme of sports history are exactly the opposite, for who can truly know the axis upon which events revolve?

Going into the 2009-10 NBA season, a handful of European news outlets tersely reported a rumor that those freewheeling, free-spending Angelopoulos Brothers running the Olympiacos basketball club had offered one Allen Iverson a huge chunk of change to come play in Greece with the Reds.

Yours truly’s speculation then was that ultimately substituting A.I. for Linas Kleiza – for as things turned out in the market last year, Kleiza was the highest-end free-agent the Brothers could coerce to jump the pond to play hoops – would have gotten the Reds off to the exact same start, namely near the top of the EΣAKE and Euroleague tables. (After all, i argued then, there’s nothing even A.I. could’ve done about the H1N1 that struck several members of the club numb for weeks.)

Now that this unfortunate season for both Iverson and Olympiacos are in the books, we have more details to expand the parallel universe of 2009-10 basketball.

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“It was real”: The Space Jam trailer recut

From the Shameless Cross-Promotion Department comes an excellent YouTube clip BuckBokai stumbled across for his other website, BallinEurope.com.

To quote myself (o how gauche), “one of the greatest phenomena on YouTube is the recut movie preview. BuckBokai believes that this recut Space Jam trailer is the best in the genre since the immortal Shining.” You gotta love the way Charles Barkley is given the lion’s share of trailer time, too.

(Incidentally, YouTube user Royalplinko proclaims the ‘Jam to be “the greatest film of the 90s”: a sentiment which with BuckBokai is hardly prepared to disagree.)

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More Shatner vs. Timberwolves GM? Kaaaahn do!

Another day, another Kirk vs. Kahn clip. This one features a slightly bemused Chris Webber listening to everyone’s everyone outside of Minnesota’s favorite NBA general manager David Kahn explain during a summer league game that Darko Milicic is as good a passer as Vlade Divac was.

(Dude, David, you might have done some homework there and realized that Webber actually *played* with Divac and so realized you were trying to blow a lot of interstellar gas up the gluteus maximi of the television audience that night.)

In any case, this one’s brought to you by request from Bill Simmons, YouTube user Didn’tDrawIron and BuckBokai, your home for Kaaaahn clips.

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Captain Kirk’s thoughts on Ricky Rubio

You gotta love David Kahn, GM of the Minnesota Timberwolves.

Why? Well, primarily because you’re not a T-wolves fan, but also because he represents a single brilliant degree of separation between the awesome (or “almost surreal” as the man himself put it) Ricky Rubio and Star Trek.

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The brilliant, albeit brief, science-fiction career of Sir Charles Barkley

Charles Barkley is a two-time NBA MVP (well, they *did* rook him out of it that one year), a Hall of Famer, an Emmy winner, a future governor of Alabama and/or general manager of the Atlanta Hawks, and the greatest interview subject of all-time – but Buck Bokai loves his acting the best of all.

A brief look at the short-yet-inspiring science-fiction career of the coolest man in existence, Charles Barkley.

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Who’s on First: The Doctor’s great moments in sport

Thanks to the performance contributed on the football pitch by the increasingly awesome Matt Smith in this season’s Doctor Who episode “The Lodger,” BuckBokai was inspired enough to delve the ol’ matrix memory banks for other great sporting moments from this frankly mostly cerebral Time Lord.

Some sports in which the Doctor has taken part through his 11 lives and 900-some odd years include the following.

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