Video Breakdown – “Basketball” by Kurtis Blow

If you’re anything like me, then I’m sorry, and I’ll be praying that you can turn your life around.

If you are, chances are you might like the sport of basketball. There’s also a good chance you’re familiar with this classic song. If you are NOT a basketball fan, it’s okay, this song will still blow your mind and touch your spirit.

Kurtis Blow was a rap pioneer. He was the first rapper to ever be signed to a major label, and he released songs throughout the early 80’s that continually busted onto the Billboard top 50.

The only problem with his music? It was early 80’s rap.

Kurtis Blow is now an ordained minister, known for his work with The Hip Hop Church and for saying things like, “Don’t get it twisted, God has always existed.” He is also now officially my new hero.

In honor of this being the NBA’s All-Star Weekend, let’s do a video breakdown of the Kurtis Blow classic “Basketball”, shall we?

Continue reading “Video Breakdown – “Basketball” by Kurtis Blow”

Real Talk, Sportz, The GBROAT

A Post About A Christian Athlete

Today’s post is the first from my good friend Chandler. Chandler is a pastor-in-training who works with college students. Along with being a solid dude, he is also funny sometimes and also enjoys writing. Therefore, it just makes sense for him to start writing semi-regularly for The Greatest Blog Of All Time.

You can follow Chandler on Twitter, and you can read his semi-serious, rarely updated blog as well.

My goal for this year was to write more often, and to write more humorous stuff. I’m thankful for the GBOAT and the opportunity to have a place to do that. I wrote a post about the movie Space Jam for this blog that I really enjoyed writing and hopefully will be run soon. But this whole thing came up, and it just felt way more important to me, so this one is, as we like to say, “real talk.”

So, stop me if you’ve heard this one before – hot shot baseball prospect. Gets drafted, then loses everything – his career, his family, almost his life – because of drugs and alcohol. He meets Jesus, cleans his life up, and becomes an All-Star and wins an MVP award. He lives happily ever after, because that’s what Jesus does, right? He gets you out of a jam and fulfills your wildest fantasies and everything is ok after that…right?

Well, that’s what happened in this story.

Sort of.

Continue reading “A Post About A Christian Athlete”

Sportz, Useless Observation

Blake Can Jump

In case you don’t follow sports, this happened this week:

Pretty cool, I guess.

Blake Griffin is a big man who can jump really high. A lot of people understand how this concept works. However, it’s rare that this concept works so very, very well when executed.

As well as there being a guy in the way, Blake’s head was at the rim. Sure, Blake is 6’10. He’s no shorty. But the rim is still 10 feet in the air. That means that he had to get AT LEAST three feet in the air.

Think about that. That’s a full yard. A man much larger than us jumped a full yard in the air.

Now the debate has started over whether Blake’s dunk was the greatest in-game dunk of all time. It’s hard to say, really. There are some great dunks to choose from.

Let’s take a look at a few, shall we?

Continue reading “Blake Can Jump”

Real Talk, Sportz

Rooting For Dragons

Dear fellow cynics: congrats! We landed a huge blow this past weekend when some silly little football team lost a game. We finally won!

Don’t worry, this post isn’t about Tim Tebow. This post isn’t about his Christianity or the fact that he’s more open about it than 90% of us want him to be. It has nothing to do with whether or not he could be a professional quarterback. Who cares about that? He’s one dude, barely older than I am, and has plenty of time to figure all of it out for himself. Not my problem.

This post has everything to do with us, and the fact that all of us were just waiting for him to fail. It has everything to do with the fact that we have become so hardened and cynical that we can’t stand the idea that somebody could be THAT good of a person. Sure, he goes out of his way to use his celebrity status to help people, so surely he can’t be a good football player as well, right? He can’t have it ALL.

Nobody is that good. Nobody is that clean. Nobody is that heroic. And surely we can’t be wrong about this. We HAVE to be right, even at the cost of innocence.

Heroes? Heroes are dead.

Continue reading “Rooting For Dragons”

Guest Posts, Sportz

The State of the NFL – Guest Post by Knox McCoy

November is a special month. Along with some awesome, awesome posts about facial hair in celebration of No Shave November, The GBOAT is also featuring a collection of guest posts on Fridays.

Last week, Stanton Martin provided what appears to be an inarguable history of sports.

Today, we welcome Knox McCoy, A.K.A. somebody who actually knows something about sports but still wants to be funny about it.

A.K.A. stands for Ambitiously Killed an Aardvark, which is a truly special accomplishment.

So football, right?

So good. I love it. You love it. Basically, everyone loves it except Europeans because they play the “real” version or something. Yeah. Good job guys. Fainting because some guy built like Clay Aiken grazed you with his celery stick thin legs is so BOSS. You totally deserve to be the real football. NO REALLY. I’ll tell people like Ndamukong Suh and Ray Lewis that they are such Streisands for being obscenely fast and strong and colliding with other massive, athletic human beings 100 times a game. I mean it’s like, go have a tea party, or watch Gossip Girl or something Ray Lewis.

Which brings me to the point of this post, which is about the state of the NFL today.

Essentially, the most compelling part about football today is the collisions. It’s hard-wired into our DNA to love body shots and it’s why America’s Funniest Home Videos is STILL on: because EVERYONE loves a good testicle tackle. Continue reading “The State of the NFL – Guest Post by Knox McCoy”

Guest Posts, Sportz

Sports – A Brief History

Craven asked me to write a guest spot for his blog, and so I figured I’d do my best to explain the origin of sports through the lens of His Story. That’s Christian talk for history.

I’ve often been accused of knowing nothing about sports, and I resent that, because I know dozens of things about sports. Drew Brees, Brett Favre, Smokey Robinson, these are all athletes. Well, two athletes and a musician, but Smokey sounds like more of a baseball name than Jackie to me.

I think I’ve proven myself, and so I present to you: Sports – A Brief History. Thank you, thank you.

For as long as there have been men, there have been balls– and guys kicking them around. Sports. I’m talking about sports.

The sports of the primitives were such classics as hunting mastodons, building civilization, and impregnating women. If you weren’t good at these things, you didn’t get traded to a lesser team, you didn’t lose your contract; you didn’t end up marrying a Kardashian– you died. Life was a lot more in your face like that about things back then. Continue reading “Sports – A Brief History”