April 2009 - Posts
As dream matchups go, Alexander Ovechkin against Sidney Crosby in the Stanley Cup playoffs is as good as it gets. It’s every bit the equal of Kobe-LeBron, Peyton Manning-Tom Brady, Batman-Joker.
The NHL has been praying for this collision of its two incandescent young stars to get people to tune into a terrific sport that too often is written off as a bunch of back-tundra goons beating each other up on ice skates. The league has expended considerable time and effort into making Crosby the face of the league, and Ovechkin has spent equal time and effort proving he, not Crosby, is the game’s true king.
So now they have a chance to skate their cases beginning Saturday on NBC in their conference semifinal showdown. And just to make things interesting, Pittsburgh also has Evgeni Malkin, who some people think is actually better than Crosby.
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It’s likely that there aren’t many people left who give a rat’s tail about Jayson Williams, the former Nets forward who got drunk and shot his chauffeur. And I wouldn’t, either. Except I used to know him as a terrific guy who never left an autograph unsigned or a kid without a couple kind words.
New York City cops had to Taser him early this morning. He was in his hotel room, reportedly drunk, surrounded by empty pill bottles, and maybe suicidal. He was restrained and taken to a psychiatric unit for evaluation.
“Jayson is doing fine. He said he was fine,” his manager, Akhtar Farzaie reportedly told The Daily News. “All of us are here to be by his side as friends.”
That’s the sort of thing managers are paid to say. The truth is Jayson isn’t doing fine at all.
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We get a lot of pitches from P.R. agencies trying to get free publicity for a product or company by connecting it to an athlete or athletic event. Usually, we pass. That’s what paid ads are for. But every so often, the P.R. campaign is so inspired, we feel obliged to give hard-working creative people the credit they deserve.
So here’s to Ask.com, which last week arranged for a Texas schoolboy to have the thrill of a lifetime: NASCAR star Bobby Labonte drove him to school in a decaled car that looked very much like Labonte’s Ford Fusion race car. Afterwards, Labonte joined the boy, John Gregoriou, in an assembly where he and Ask.com presented the school with $10,000 worth of computers.
After Labonte did his bit to make one boy’s golden memory, he did a round of phone interviews. When my turn came, I asked him where this promotion ranked among the many things his contract calls on him to do for his sponsor.
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