Sports thoughts

Dear James, Daniel and Emily

So Kim & I have had a good time this week watching the Olympics. Particularly the Olympic gymnastics. Leading to a couple of late nights watching the Chinese gymnasts dominate. And this morning I got to watch a little of the US Men's basketball against Greece.

The Men's basketball is actually fascinating, because the US men's team is well past their days of being able to just overwhelm teams through sheer physical dominance. With this team we are seeing the fruition of an actual strategy, a plan to take advantage of the 2 things that NBA players still do better than anyone else: sheer speed and athleticism, and translating that into defense. In a lot of ways it is like watching the last 2 Lakers Championship series losses. Just great great defense totally disrupting the other teams offense. And incredible depth so no one can get tired for long as they can always bring in another all star level player.

The gymnastics has been really amazing. Yes there has been an element of jingoism as I cheer for the US teams, and decry the blatant Chinese age cheat. But despite that it really is astounding what the gymnasts are able to do and how they do it. We tried to interest James in watching, but he wasn't all that excited or impressed (oh to be young enough that you aren't impressed by physical feats, where you can see something and think, oh I will be able to do that some day).

And of course the sheer dominance of Michael Phelps is pretty amazing too. I haven't seen too much else yet, a little weight lifting on Sunday, but otherwise I haven't focused too much on it. But the Olympics overall has been a pleasant diversion for us.

So far my decision to take the year off from Fantasy Football still feels good. It feels nice to read about football without carrying about the fantasy implications.