Sunday Quickies: Gimel Martinez / Justify Edition

Today’s Quickies are dedicated to ASoB’s second favorite (right? RIGHT??!?) Martinez, Gimel, who celebrates a birthday this week.

Gimel’s best statistical season came during his sophomore year, ‘91-’92, when...well, no one cares how that season ended. His best statistical performance was a 26-10 double-double in a 107-83 victory over Alabama in February of 1992. Alabama was ranked 3 spots higher in the AP Poll at the time.

He will turn 47 on Thursday and apparently we live in the same city (Columbus, OH). Maybe a Martinez meet-up is in the offing? I’ll work on that.

Your sweaty Sunday Quickies are below. I’ve done my best for early June.

TWEET OF THE FORTNIGHT

AWWWWW YEAH.

KENTUCKY TRACK & FIELD AND THE BELMONT STAKES

I’m not going to pretend that I know the first thing about either sport, so I’m just providing surface-level links to acknowledge what occurred yesterday. Please illuminate me in the comments, track and horse racing fans.

*The ‘Cats finished up the NCAA Championships last evening. Here are the overall results.

Here is UK Athletics’ report.

Congrats to Coach Floréal’s crew!

*Justify won the Triple Crown yesterday, placing first in the Belmont Stakes.

NCAAB

*Andy Katz published a nice piece on C.M. Newton over at NCAA.com on Friday afternoon.

*UMBC has rewarded its coach, Ryan Odom, for notching the first 16-over-1 upset in NCAAT history, by doubling his salary.

Well-deserved.

*CBT’s Scott Phillips highlights several primary storylines regarding USA’s U18 basketball squad, as the FIBA Americas commence today.

Phillips has positive things to say about 2019 UK commit Tyrese Maxey and discusses several kids who figure to be freshman stars in NCAAB next year, including UNC’s Coby White and KU’s Quentin Grimes.

*The Washington Huskies return their top eight players from last season — including likely 2018 Martinez-Kris Dunn Award for Favorite Non-’Cat, Noah Dickerson — and figure to make a NCAAT run.

UW was 21-13 last season, but also owned wins over Kansas, Arizona, and Boise State.

While they figure to have their best roster in years, they’ll also benefit from a “down” Pac-12. It’s strange to say, but the two best teams in the west are from the WCC (Gonzaga) and MWC (Nevada).

*Here is an updated list of where 2018 grad transfers have committed.

The most prominent names that we haven’t already discussed around here are: 1) Makai Mason, who played for the Yale team that upset Baylor in the 2016 NCAAT and is now going to play a year for...Baylor (!); 2) Kassoum Yakwe (formerly of St. John’s), whose name has appeared in mock drafts off and on until this past year, will play a year for Dan Hurley at UConn; and 3) Justin Coleman, who was a decent guard at Alabama for 2 years before transferring to Samford in 2016, will finish his career at Arizona.

*Speaking of transfers, everyone knows that Bill Self has a trio of high powered undergrads eligible for the upcoming season. However, the Jayhawks aren’t the only team whose rotation will have at least one big-time transfer.

Bryan Mauro at Busting Brackets provides four of those teams in Fansided’s annoying slideshow format.

The most interesting general takeaway is that three of the four teams are from non-P5 conferences. Also, how is JaQuan Lyle is going to be the guy who everyone says, “how is this guy still playing college basketball?” about this coming season. I feel like he visited Big Blue Madness once, like eight years ago.

*New Xavier coach Travis Steele has achieved the near-impossible: keeping a recruiting class together after the previous coach (and, in this case, the best coach in school history) left for a better job.

Speaking of the Musketeers, watch out for Campbellsville native Quentin Goodin as a dark horse All-Big East candidate.

NBA

*ESPN’s inaugural offseason “way-too-early power rankings” have arrived!

Denver is ahead of Minnesota, Utah is the third-ranked team in the West, and Phoenix isn’t last. Those are among the most surprising developments to me.

*Matt Goul of Cleveland.com ranks this summer’s top 50 free agents.

LeBron’s decision will obviously dominate free agency headlines, and the secondary focus will be where DeMarcus Cousins lands.

But there are other less prominent pieces available that could put fringe teams over the top and make elite teams much better. For me, those include Will Barton (#20), Kentavious Caldwell-Pope (#26), Clint Capela (#8), and J.J. Redick (#14). It’s also absurd that Kyle Anderson is ranked 47th, especially when Austin Rivers is at 41.

Nerlens Noel is ranked generously at #28. A pair of other ‘Cats are mentioned. Of interest to Tyler Ulis fans is PG Elf Payton, at #25, as Phoenix would be in the driver’s seat to retain him.

*Speaking of both Payton and Ulis, the Suns may be trying to acquire a second top-10 pick to draft Trae Young. Obviously, this would affect both Payton and Ulis.

*Kris Dunn is an elite perimeter defender, according to anyone who watched him last year (or ever) and a glorious new advanced defensive metric from Stephen Shea.

Dunn’s defense didn’t skip a beat last season and his shooting percentages increased considerably (43/32/73), yet with all the actual holes they have, the Bulls FO is apparently all about Trae Young and Collin Sexton. Don’t be a dope, Gar Forman.

*HoopsHype’s Bryan Kalbrosky runs down the most obvious candidates to replace Bryan Colangelo as the Philadelphia 76ers’ GM.

Kiki VenDeWeghe is also a candidate, according to Kevin O’Connor.

Give me Mike Zarren (Hinkie 2.0), Gersson Rosas, Brett Brown, Brian Wright, or Brandon Williams (who isn’t mentioned).

No, I don’t think Hinkie is coming back. I already took my weepy tear bath about it.

Some 76er fans want Griffin because they think he’ll increase the odds of landing LeBron this summer, but apparently The King didn’t even know Griffin was running the show when he returned to Cleveland in 2014. And more importantly, from my perspective, Griffin was involved (though not the one to ultimately pull the trigger) in drafting Anthony Bennett first in 2013 and his Draft success as GM has been mixed.

This is a killer job, y’all...the team just won 52 games, a playoff series, has Joel Embiid and Ben Simmons, max cap space, a pair of first rounders this year (one in the lottery), and three seconds.

*Dallas should resign Nerlens Noel, if only because he’s cheap, according to Ben Zajdel.

I don’t see it happening, but Nerls will certainly come cheap this summer.

*Here is an interesting in-depth look at the 11 (11!) G League alums on NBA Finals rosters.

There are some genuine contributors in the bunch, including Jordan Bell and Quinn Cook.

And a Patrick McCaw sighting! I STILL LOVE HIM.

*Jerry Stackhouse took another step toward a head coaching job yesterday, agreeing to join J.B. Bickerstaff’s Memphis staff.

Stackhouse will be running a team within he next five years.

NCAAF

*I’m classifying this as NCAAF because news in the sport is sparse, but am I the only one who missed this story about a decade-plus battle between Western Kentucky University and an Italian media company, over plagiarism regarding its glorious mascot, in the Italian court system? Crazy.

*More legal stuff: a number of former and current Minnesota Gophers are suing the school for discrimination in federal court.

The sequence of events that led to the suit are fascinating.

ETC. (WELL, MOSTLY MOVIE STUFF)

*“The Directors Series” Presents Free Immersive Studies of Stanley Kubrick, the Coen Brothers, David Fincher, Paul Thomas Anderson & Christopher Nolan.

I’m wading my way through these and they’re incredible. If you’re even a casual fan of the aforementioned auteurs (I am an obsessive one, especially of Kubrick and PTA), these are well worth your time.

*Check out the trailer for the new “Halloween” movie. DO IT.

The film ignores all the sequels, stars Jamie Lee Curtis, was executive produced by original director, etc. John Carpenter, written by serious filmmaker and critical darling David Gordon Green (“Undertow” and “George Washington”) and Danny McBride (Kenny Powers!) and should transcend what we’ve come to expect from modern slasher horror.

*Kevin Lincoln asks, “what if ‘Star Wars’ never happened?” and guides us on an extensive and amusing journey down a cause-and-effect rabbit hole of classic mainstream American cinema from the 1970s until present day.

*R.I.P. Danny Kirwan, who died yesterday. Kirwan was a prominent member of Fleetwood Mac during the “Then Play On” - “Bare Trees” era. I’m a huge Kirwan fan, and one of my most prized vinyl possessions remains this Fleetwood Mac ‘69-’72 collection.

Have a great week.