On homophobes, hypocrites and head coaches

• The ugly truth is this country was founded my white Protestant males who wanted a safe, secure refuge in which white Protestant males could prosper. We don’t talk about the founders of this country; we call them our "founding fathers." We don’t use the word "predecessors" when talking about our early government leaders; we say "forefathers." The U.S. Constitution was signed on September 17, 1787. It took another 133 years for the 19^th amendment to that Constitution, the one that finally gave women the right to vote, to be ratified. 133 freakin’ years!!!! And African-Americans weren’t guaranteed the right to vote for another 44 years after that. The Tea Party is a movement of mostly older Protestant white males who were flabbergasted by the realization that a black man occupied the White House and that the country was slowly evolving into a minority-majority dominated one and who didn’t want to give up their total domination of running things their way. Today, you saw that white male Protestant ethos raise its ugly head when the Texas governor and lieutenant governor once again went on this bigoted homophobic rant about school restrooms. Here’s something I would tell our misguided state leaders: look at the statistics and compare the number of school children who have been sexually abused by educators — their own teachers — against the number abused by transgendered high school students (how many of them can there be, anyway?) and then try to tell me who is the greater threat.
• Speaking of those in charge of state government, did you notice how many of them got all in a huff when Austin voters decided they wanted their elected leaders — not corporations with obscene amounts of money to spend — to craft their local ordinances? Uber and Lyft, the companies that spent more than $8 million in a futile attempt to spread a bunch of lies to sway voters, decided if the good people of Austin were going to force their drivers to prove who they said they were, they would just leave town. And now Republican legislators are supporting Uber and Lyft. Just let that sink in for a moment. What they are saying is you don’t have to prove you are the person you claim to be to drive a ride hailing auto, but you do have to go to all kind of extra lengths to do so in order to vote. What hypocrisy!
• Speaking of hypocrisy, what about those politicians who say "I don’t agree with anything this person says but I’m going to support and vote for him anyway because he is a member of my political party"? Now I can see why so many Americans are frustrated with the entire political process and decide there are more valuable things they can do with their time than vote. Why vote for people who espouse such nonsense? I’m not advocating abstaining from the voting process — not by any stretch of the imagination; I’m just saying I’m beginning to see why people are so disgusted with politics and politicians in general.
• In 2006, my beloved Dallas Mavericks played the Miami Heat in the NBA finals. The Mavs were far and away the better team and they quickly jumped out to a two-game lead in those finals. The problem for the Mavs, however, was that the Heat had a far better coach, Pat Riley. The Mavs were saddled with Avery Johnson. That wasn’t a fair fight. Riley made some clever adjustments after game two, Johnson refused to respond and the Heat swept the next four games to win the series. I know this is going to sound like heresy, but the same thing just happened in the Oklahoma City-San Antonio Western Conference semifinal series. The Spurs were the better team but the vaunted San Antonio Spurs head coach Gregg Popovich got taken to the cleaners in this postseason by Billy Donovan, in his first year in the NBA coaching the Oklahoma City Thunder. The Spurs’ offense relies on ball movement and Donovan found a way to take the Spurs out of that game. And that’s why the Thunder took the series. Pure and simple. Donovan outcoached the great Coach Popp. Look at the numbers. The Spurs were third in the NBA in assists this past season averaging 24.5 per game. The only time the Spurs came close to that number in their series against the Thunder was when they registered 23 in the series opener which, incidentally, the Spurs won by more than 30 points. It’s obvious Donovan made some adjustments after that game to stymie the Spurs offense. I wish I knew what they were, but no coach is going to give away their strategies for defeating another team. But in the five games after Game 1, the Spurs only averaged 16.8 assists per game, roughly two-thirds of their season average. In fact, in Game 4, which Oklahoma City won 111-97, the Thunder’s Russell Westbrook had three more assists (15) than the entire Spurs team. And that was the difference.