Morning Walk-thru - Did you take your LAX today?

LAX is coming!...I noticed this happening near the end of the college hoops season, but college lacrosse is infiltrating the airwaves. Used to be, if you were a lacrosse fan, you could count on seeing three games on television each year: the two NCAA semi-finals and the championship on Memorial Day morning.

Now it's part of the Bottom Line on ESPN. The women's selection show was covered somewhere. The mythical ESPNU has been LAX-central all spring. What gives? Is lacrosse truly growing as a major spectator sport or are we just being force fed?

As much as I enjoy watching lacrosse, I'm leaning towards the latter. A couple of years ago, when hockey was mercifully absent, the "new" sport on ESPN was college baseball. Now that air time is going to lacrosse, but the sport has some major hurdles to clear before it even gets to College World Series status. Reasons like these:

• I know that the NLL is doing pretty well right now. The league has expanded to meet the growing western demand with teams in Colorado and Arizona, but finding MLS games is easier. Without a major pro league that people can actually see, the popularity of the college game is severely restricted.
• There are still large swaths of the country where nobody plays the sport. You want kids to watch? Let them play the game.
• Finally, lacrosse still has the Abercrombie & Fitch stigma of being a rich, suburban white kids sport. Not quite sure what you do about that.

Of course, if the sport still looked like it did originally (see above photo) there's no way I'd miss it.

The Oakland Myth shattered...After last Friday's game I wasn't sure it could happen, but Golden State finally lost a home game in the playoffs last night. (Embarrassing their mothers in the process.) The Jazz now lead the series 3-1 heading back to Salt Lake.

Like clockwork, the Warriors playoff hopes are being extinguished. Almost always happens after a huge upset. It's hard to shock the world twice in two weeks, and I'm not sure there's anything Nelly, on or off the postgame wagon, could do about it.

Sure, the Warriors might say that they believed they could beat Dallas, but nobody else did. When they actually started doing just that, it became a story. Golden State's victory became every non-Mavs fan's victory and that's a lot of hope and interest to have to carry.

Utah doesn't have that because a) people would be more surprised, with T-Mac's playoff record, to see Houston here, and b) nobody realizes that Utah is only one game away from the Western Conference finals because they look like North Carolina now.

SportsCenter goes to the bench...If you happened to catch last night's SportsCenter, you probably noticed that they paired Stuart Scott with Kenny Mayne. Actually, I don't know how you couldn't have noticed. Hasn't been such a large chasm in talent (and humor) between two people since the early-90s Bulls would pair Michael Jordan with Rodney McCray in the backcourt.

Mayne's "runnin' moonshine, cockfighting in the infield" quip with his vintage NASCAR clip was probably the best SportsCenter witticism of the year thus far.

Morning Walk-thru - Jackie Robinson hated the Indians?

Again?...I really don't like to criticize specific sportswriters unless, of course, they're claiming that Kobe Bryant is better than MJ or they're writing the same "Boo! The Redskins, Indians and Braves are the very definition of evil" column I seem to read once a year.

This year, it's Keith Law of ESPN's Page 2 who is making the case. If that was it, I wouldn't even care. I'm so tired of this argument that I can't even argue with it anymore, but tying it to 60th anniversary of Jackie Robinson's MLB debut? That's wafer thin.

Here's an example:

You'll hear the arguments that these nicknames aren't actually mocking Native Americans but honoring them. This is obviously false; if using ethnic stereotypes and epithets were a way of honoring segments of our population, the NAACP would be campaigning for the Mets to change their name to the New York Negroes.

"Obviously false?" I'd say possibly false, but you'll have a hard time convincing me of the negative connotation of "the Braves." (Note: the root word of "Braves" is actually, brave.)

Every time this column comes out--yes, they're all the same--I have two thoughts: 1) the one group I rarely hear complaining about this is the actual group who is supposed to be offended. Somehow, I don't think the Sioux give a damn about what Jhonny Peralta wears on his head. And 2) why doesn't anyone ever mention Notre Dame?

You know what's offensive? "Nappy headed ho's", the most famous three words in quotation marks right now, and that's coming from one of the few guys under 30 who would admit to listening to Don Imus on occasion.

Papelbon's new best bud?...As reported on Deadspin, the Red Sox signed a new bullpen arm by the name of J.D. Durbin and, based on his Myspace page, which is entitled "Tits and Ass for Me" and features the pitcher standing between Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood, I'm thinking this guy will have some fun in the pen with Loozeanna Pap, good ole boy that he is.

Also, I'm confident that Mr. Durbin will insist that the J.D. stands for Jack Daniels just to differentiate himself from J.D. Drew. Seems like something he'd be in to.

It's debatable whether or not Durbin will stick around very long, but I'm fully in favor of this move. Boston needs guys like this.

**UPDATE** Durbin has already been designated for assignment. Theo doesn't think Boston needs guys like that, I guess.

Double thanks...to Double Extra Point for the recent link and for pointing me towards the newest Nebraska corner of the Internet, HuskerGuy's blog.

Welcome, friend.

Cubs lose--again...It's way too early for this. My days are already defined by the Cubs day-by-day death march. Win and it's a good day, lose and it's a bad day. We all know how well that works out.

Grindhouse gets crushed...The Rodriguez-Tarantino double-feature opened at just under $12 million dollars and finished fourth at the box office in its first weekend. Should we be surprised? Probably not. It's a risky (i.e. long) format dedicated to a subgenre of movies that weren't very good in the first place.

But I still think it points to Ty Burr's assertion, which I mentioned on Monday, that true grindhouse films don't exist any more. In fact, the alternative side of Hollywood is increasingly easier to find making it more difficult to pinpoint. Independent films have their own channels now and the movies that would've been drive-in specials 30 years ago now top the box office for at least a week. (See: the crappy new breed of horror flicks.)

Or, maybe everything is just so awful now that films that purposely set out to be awful simply seem average relative to everything else.

Either way, one of the Weinstein's announced that Death Proof and Project Terror would be released separately on DVD, so if you want the full double-feature effect, get to the the theatre. Based on these numbers, it won't be happening again any time soon.