Return of Sir Gladiator!

Thanks to all my friends out there, and let me say that FINALLY, your friend and mine, Sir Gladiator, is BACK, at Blogger!  And do we have a lot to talk about!  Way too much to cover in one post, so look forward to lots of commentary and content from your friend and mine in the days and weeks to come!  As you know, E3 is looming, lots of interesting and exciting news and rumors already going on, it looks like we're going to be hearing some major information about the latest games from CDPR (the folks who make The Witcher series), Bethesda, Bioware and EA, so much excitement!

In the world of sports, the MLB Season is in full swing, we're less than a month from the NBA Draft, the NFL Draft has come and gone and the Panthers look to be stronger than they have been in a pretty long time, a lot of excitement in the world of sports!

In the world of TV, I'd like to encourage everyone who hasn't already done so to check out the hit new show 'Cobra Kai' on YouTube, it's amazingly cool, it's got a lot of the original stars from the original Karate Kid movie (in particular, the main rivals Daniel and Johnny, who are the stars of the show) , and unlike most of the rest of the world of TV, they don't push a far-left agenda, quite the opposite, they make fun of the far-left throughout the entire season!  The show is just fantastic, it's easily the best TV show of 2018, and it's already been renewed for a Second Season!  So go to YouTube, find Cobra Kai, and enjoy the first season of what will be your new favorite show, maybe of all time!

There's so much more to cover, stay tuned to the Gladiator Blog for more exciting news and information from your friend and mine, Sir Gladiator!

Solution to end the NBA Lockout

I've read a lot of opinions lately on the NBA Lockout.  Whether you're pro-union, pro-owner, or anything else, one thing we can all agree on is we want to see the Lockout come to an end.  I believe that I have a solution that not only will benefit the NBA owners, and players, but most of all the fans across America.  Here is my solution.

The current crop of NBA players are extremely well paid, all sides agree that they should make less as a percentage of overall revenue, and they're only arguing over how much less.  I can't make one side or the other agree to compromise and reach a fair and logical deal, but I can help end this lockout.  Until both sides come to a reasonable agreement (probably at the 50/50 split level) why not give the fans what they want?  REAL Basketball, with players who play because they love the game.  There are currently a group of people who are playing at the Professional level, right here in the USA.  They aren't locked out, they aren't on strike, they aren't greedy so-and-sos, they love the game, they love the fans, and the fans love to watch them play.  I'm of course referring to the players in the WNBA.  Most fans don't know much about the WNBA, it doesn't get the bigtime ESPN and network exposure that the regular NBA gets, and understandably so, since the regular NBA teams are the ones that have been around forever, and they're the ones we all want to see.  However, just because people aren't watching them in great numbers doesn't change the fact that they're great players, and this is the NBA's chance to show them off to a national audience. 

Its no secret that the WNBA has always been a 'work in progress' so to speak, in that so few people watch them, compared to the regular NBA, that they end up losing money for the NBA.  Putting WNBA players on every NBA team during the lockout would go a LONG way toward changing that.  People dont watch them because they either don't know about them, or they feel that the WNBA games aren't played at a high enough level to be entertaining, both those things can be solved simply by putting these women in front of a national audience and letting the fans see the truth for themselves. 

Of course I'm not suggesting that the NBA essentially turn the regular NBA into the WNBA until the lockout is over, that would be insane, and there wouldn't even be enough women from the WNBA to actually fill all 30 teams even if somebody was crazy enough to want to do that.  My suggestion would be to put 3 or 4 WNBA players on each team's 12 man roster, and then fill the rest through an old-fashioned tryouts process.  Open up the tryouts to everybody, most likely it will be college players who get the spots, but who knows?  Let each team just hold open tryouts and sign whoever they like, just the way things used to be done in the good old days, back when people played sports for the love of the game.  Of course the people who get these spots wouldn't 'just' be playing for the love of the game, they would probably all be paid more money than they've ever seen in their lives, even if that were a 'mere' quarter or half a million dollars or so. 

So imagine that each team had 8 or 9 of the top players they could find, along with 3 or 4 WNBA players to provide that veteran NBA Leadership for the team.  It would be a very unique, and highly entertaining system indeed.  Fans would gain a great deal of appreciation for WNBA players, which would help make the WNBA itself much more popular, and thus more profitable, and it would be a great way for other super-talented but perhaps little known players to make an NBA team and show the world their true abilities.  It would be a league filled with 'feel good' stories, whether its WNBA players finally getting the opportunity to shine on the big stage, or other folks who have never played professional ball, and maybe would've never had the chance but for this opportunity, trying out, making the team, and showing that they truly do belong on the Professional level.  Who knows, maybe from this crop of players could come the next MJ, Kobe, or Dirk.

Of course the best part of all this for the NBA itself, as a league, is that they would make far more money next year than they've ever made before.  Sure, attendence would be down, as the bigtime Superstars would still be sitting at home counting their money, or their drugs, or whatever.  But the salaries would be back to real world, sane levels, so that would mean that for those of us who do go to the games, we could get tickets at a greatly discounted price and still get to see a high quality basketball game, while the owners rake in unprecedented profits, because anyone with basic math skills can figure out that if you're paying 1/10th or less what you used to in salaries, you can cut ticket prices in half and still make a FORTUNE.  The owners would win, the players would win (the players who were actually playing that is, not the greedy ones who weren't playing), and most of all the fans would win.  The NBA would be back to the way it should be, where the players earn their spots, and they play for the love of the game.  The fans would get a chance not only to see great players playing high level basketball, they'd get to witness history in the making, women playing in the NBA for the first time ever.  And of course, with all these new and unique details would come one more benefit for the fans, parity.  Just like in the NFL, any team could win in a given year.  How would one team have an inherent advantage?  It wouldn't be about the money, it would be all about choosing the best group of players for your team from the huge number of players who attend the tryouts.

With this backdrop of awesomeness, there would be every incentive for the players to end the lockout, and get back to regular NBA action.  And until they did, we the fans would actually be enjoying a superior product anyway, at much lower prices.  The game of basketball itself would be the biggest winner of all, as whether you're an owner, a player, or a fan, everyone will ultimately win if the NBA acts on this Solution.  I hope to see it happen later this year.              

Dallas One Win Away

After their dramatic victory in Game 5 of the NBA Finals, the Dallas Mavericks are just one win away from completing their run for a Championship!  Dirk Nowitsky may be one of the greatest players of all time, and it's somebody that most fans didn't know much, if anything, about before this year's playoffs, what a feel good story!  He's had a LOT of help along the way in the Finals also, Jason Kidd, Jason Terry, and perhaps most of all, particularly in the last two games, Tyson Chandler.  Tyson Chandler is a player that wasn't good enough for the Charlotte Bobcats to keep around...that's the Carlotte Bobcats, a team that didn't even make the playoffs.  And for the first part of this series you could certainly see why they cut him, he didn't do much.  But these last two games, he's really done what he should've been able to do all along, use his size to great advantage.  Ironicly, if he'd been playing up to his potential all year he probably would've never left Charlotte, so him finding his game this late actually served him, and the Mavericks, very well.  If Dallas wins the Championship, of course Dirk will get the biggest share of the credit, and deservedly so, but Tyson Chandler may be the second most important player on this team, and when you're on a team with folks like Kidd and Terry, that's really saying something.  Game 6 in Miami is going to be HUGE, I'm thinking it could be the highest rated game in NBA history.  Certainly it's a game I'm looking forward to! 

Dramatic Game 4

What a Dramatic finish to Game 4 in the NBA Western Conference Finals!  With about 4 1/2 minutes to go, Oklahoma City was totally dominating.  They had stretched out a single digit lead into a 15 point lead, they were just owning Dallas.  But then, Dirk decided that he didn't like that, and he wasn't going to stand for it anymore!  Despite some seemingly REALLY bad refereeing, Dirk repeatedly seeming to get fouled but getting no call, the Mavs managed to tie the game in regulation, and then WIN it in Overtime!  This shocking turn of events likely means that the series will end in 5 games, and that Dallas will move on to face either Miami or Chicago, in the Championship Finals!  What an epic night of awesomeness!  NBA action, it's fantastic!

Major News Update

As many of you probably know, yesterday Texas Congressman Ron Paul officially announced his candidacy for President of the United States.  This comes just two days after Newt Gengrich announced his own candidacy, and tonight, just minutes ago on his Fox News TV show, Former Governor Mike Huckabee announced he would NOT run.  As a Christian myself, I like Mike and it's a bit sad that he isn't running, even though I wasn't actually a supporter of his, he certainly would have been better than a lot the ones who are either running or are expected to run.     

The announcements are coming fast and furious now, the action is really heating up!  I'm definitely looking forward to the campaign, hopefully we can get a major focus on personal liberty issues like the right to play Poker.  We know that Ron Paul supports our right to play Poker when and where we choose, in 2008 he was the only major candidate in either party to do so.  Will we see some progress this year?  I certainly hope so,but  even if Ron is once again the only one, if we can at least get some major media attention on the issue and our rights, that will be helpful. 

Of course that's not the only major news out there.  Tomorrow the Eastern Conference Finals begins, the Bulls vs the Heat!  And of course, Game 7 in the Memphis vs OKC series!  Definitely looking forward to a big Sports day tomorrow!  And don't forget, I've still got my bigtime Preview for 'The Witcher 2' coming up, I've been playing the original Witcher a lot lately in preparation for the sequel's impending arrival on Tuesday, so I'll have a lot to say about that very soon!  In the meantime, have fun everybody!

Big Sports Night Tonight!

Tonight we Sports fans have a really good thing going.  Not only do we get Game 5 of the Miami Heat vs Boston Celtics series, a game that will feature either the Heat closing out the series, or Boston winning and then having the opportunity to tie the series at home, giving them a very real chance to advance, but in addition to that we get another classic Baseball game between two arch-rivals, the Chicago Cubs and the St Louis Cardinals! 

First, to the NBA.  The Heat-Celtics series has been closer than the 3-1 series score appears, Boston could very easily be up 3-1 themselves, such has been the nature of the games, they've been close, Boston generally leads at least somewhat late in the game before ultimately losing the games they lose, and it's not out of the question that they could get hot and win three straight.  Of course the Heat, featuring all that incredible talent, could very easily win tonight's game at home and close out the series.  They've been so impressive, as you might expect of a team containing Dwayne Wade and Labron James.  Tonight's game could be really special, and I can't wait to see how it ends up!

On to the MLB, where the Cubs-Cardinals rivalry takes center stage.  This is actually the second game of the series, the Cubbies working hard to lose last night's game, and did so in reasonably impressive fashion.  Multiple fielding blunders helped them give up a bunch of runs, enough to overcome the impressive offensive performance they had against Cardinals Ace Chris Carpenter.  13 Hits and 4 runs against Carpenter, but Mr Kerry Wood and that legendary Cubs Defense stepped up their 'lets give it away anyway' game, and got the job done.  Despite having a good bit of talent, the Cubbies are pretty bad this year, as usual, and despite the fact that the Cardinals have a lot of weaknesses themselves, notably the fact that their stars seem to be getting real old real fast, it's quite reasonable to except a Cardinal win tonight, and sweep of the series, even though the Cubbies are at home.  As a Cubs fan myself, it's sad and frustrating to watch all that talent go to waste year after year, I honestly don't know how they manage to do it.  Is it the coaching?  Is it the sheer momentum of being perpetual losers that fosters a losing mentality year after year?  Whatever it is, it sure would be nice if something could change it, but right now I don't know what that would be.

I want to close out this post with a teaser for my upcoming Preview of the amazing RPG Game due out next week, The Witcher 2.  It's got the potential to be this year's Game of the Year, it looks simply amazing, everything I've not only seen but read suggests it could truly be epic.  Here's just a small taste of what we have to look forward to next week when the game comes out.  We play as the man in the front of that picture, Geralt, the same man who was also the star of the original The Witcher game, which was so popular when it came out some time back.  I've also included a Preview Clip from Youtube as well, which features some actual gameplay from early in the game.  Look forward to my Preview of The Witcher 2, I'll be posting that soon!  In the meantime, feel free to comment as always, and have fun everybody!