Congrats to NoceOne and Andres Nocioni for winning 41% of the vote for Best Obsession, taking a comfortable lead over RickoT and Marreese Speights and never letting go. Noce, your Dong should be in the mail unless somebody feels like photoshopping a Dong Trophy and e-mailing it to me. PG-13 max though guys, my inbox has been flooded with dongs.
Now we'll move on to the voting for Best Meme, a category that I anticipate will be hotly contested. We've got our fair share of memes 'round these parts and all of them make an appearance in the game threads of every game. Let's see which one is the majority's favorite.
1. Bucket=Stop=Bucket
The date was January 15th. The Sixers had just barely escaped an injury-ravaged Bucks team for a 1-point win after another big collapse. Most people, namely dweebowitz and I (this was pre-LWHAI), were unhappy with how Louis Williams handled the late-game situation despite his 25-point game. Well, RickoT just wasn't having it. Here's the quote: "You can win either by scoring more than the other team, or by stopping them from scoring as much as you do. A bucket is equal to a stop, which is equal to a bucket." And the world stopped turning for a few seconds there. Packimop was the one who shortened it to the eye-friendly bucket=stop=bucket in a reply comment, but RickoT has the respect of basketball minds and mathematicians alike for this earth-shattering formula that has been proven time and time again by countless proofs and theorems.
Hit the jump for the rest of the nominees.
2. BUST!
When Evan Turner was drafted with the second overall pick, most people expected great things right away from the reigning Most Outstanding Player in the NCAA. But a modest Summer League and an unspectacular preseason had the whisperers whispering. A slow start to the season brought the levels up to moderate. Then two DNP-CD's later and the sound was unmistakable. BUST! Prior evidence and history be damned, if Turner isn't producing at an MVP level right now then he is a bust. Call Darko Milicic, call Kwame Brown, call Michael Olowokandi -- hell -- call Ryan Leaf. Because some people have seen enough. And those people are ready to proclaim BUST! Those people are also having trouble talking and chewing gum at the same time, but that's a whole different bag of hair.
3. #MissionBJ
Last year, there was #missionWTF. And it worked. This year, the two youths most coveted by NBA draftniks were Harrison Barnes and Perry Jones III. While neither player has set the world on fire just yet, this season was supposed to be dedicated to their pursuit. Every time a loss was in the books, it was one for #missionBJ. I wrote an article about it! But then the wins started piling up and now it seems like these erstwhile missions have fallen by the wayside. Then Jordan wrote an article about it! We shall never forget, however, the 3-13 start that could have put us so close to another top 5 pick and a chance at a superstar. Oh, also BJ stands for something dirty ;)
4. Shots!
Spawn of the Official Liberty Ballers Drinking Game, shots were to be taken any time Darius Songaila entered the game. More shots were required when Dongaila shot the basketball. The rare occasion when said it would go in called for many more shots. Now that Dong is getting "regular playing time", we've turned into a bit of a drinking community here. According to the LB Drinking Game Rules, of which I've forgotten most, shots are also to be taken when somebody says BUST!, during any of Zumoff's classic phrases, for every picture in the google image search of Liberty Ballers that includes Booker T or Robert Pattinson, for each time you have to re-watch the ridiculous Devin Harris game winner, for each bullet point that Jordan, Tanner, Derek or I include in the recap, and for every Liberty Ballers t-shirt you don't own. That's quite a bit.
5. Iso
While isolation plays have been a staple of Sixers basketball since the days of Allen Iverson and Clarence Weatherspoon (less 'Spoon, but he doesn't get enough love here anyway), only recently has The Boss AKA Lou Williams AKA Most Valuable Player AKA Defcon 3 made it his own. When time is running down in the quarter, don't expect any sort of play to get drawn up. Unless your idea of a play is for four grown men to stand as close to the sidelines as possible while a certain Boss dribbles out the clock and tries to break his man down. The last two minutes of the game are typically known as Iso Time for Lou, when the playbook is thrown out the window and we play a game of how many off-balanced jump shots can he get to drop in. When you see minimal time on the clock, you know what's coming. Iso all day, Iso all night. This is the life of a...the life of a...BOSS....BOSS.....BOSS....
Tough vote! Need some time to think. Next voting in a few days will be for the category of Best Zumoffism. To see a list of all the categories and nominees, go here.