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Chris Bosh is a funny man.

He’s a world-class videobomber. He takes ridiculous photos with mariachi bands. He moonlights as a vigilante meter maid. The guy knows how to get a laugh.

He’s also somewhat of an enigma. Just when we think we’ve got a finger on him, he slinks beyond our understanding and leaves us scratching our heads.

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Sunday afternoon, 84-year-old Jim Whittaker climbed to the top of the 10½-inch mound at Seattle’s Safeco Field to throw out the ceremonial first pitch in front of 20,000-some fans at the Mariners game. Anyone who has ever been in that position can tell you how daunting it is -- remember Carl Lewis? -- but Whittaker has placed his feet atop far higher peaks.

The highest peak, in fact.

Fifty years ago Wednesday, Whittaker became the first American to reach the 29,029-foot summit of Mount Everest when he and Sherpa Nawang Gombu climbed the final demanding steps up the mountain’s South Col in excruciating conditions.

"We had 50 mph winds, and it was 35 below zero," Whittaker said. “We were out of oxygen, and we were in the death zone. There is one thought that enters your mind when you place that first step on the summit, and that’s how to get down.

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Each goes by the name Mr. Irrelevant, but no two are alike.

So when Irrelevant Week is held annually in Newport Beach, Calif., to honor the last player taken in the NFL draft, many of the activities are tailored to fit the guest of honor.

While all participate in the Arrival Party and Lowsman Banquet -- where each receives the opposite-of-the-Heisman Lowsman Trophy (depicting a player in mid-fumble) -- players can decide what else they want to do.

One asked to go clubbing in Los Angeles with Paris Hilton. Another chose to spend time with his family and sleep extra hours in his soft hotel bed. Others, who’d never been to California, wanted to go Jet Skiing or sailing, play golf on a course overlooking the Pacific or meet their sports heroes.

In 2008, David Vobora, a linebacker from Idaho chosen by the Rams, wanted to see the Playboy Mansion and meet the women from “The Girls Next Door” reality TV series. After an evening that included dinner with Hugh Hefner, hanging with “The Girls,” getting a tour of the mansion and sharing Hef’s movie night, Vobora told one reporter it was “a slice of heaven.”

And that’s pretty much been the goal of Irrelevant Week since it began in 1976: to treat the last as if he were first.

Each April, when Mr. Irrelevant is drafted in New York, Irrelevant Week CEO Melanie Salata Fitch is right there to get his requests for Irrelevant Week (usually is held in June).

“I say, ‘Hey, congratulations’ and 'What do you like?' and 'What do you eat?' and 'What have you always dreamed about?' and I start designing events,” she says.

After 37 Irrelevant Weeks, she’s confident the players have had a great time. How could they not? Her mission is to treat each “like a king.”

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If you’ve never heard of Bonnie Thunders, born Nicole Williams, anyone up to speed on the game of roller derby might call her the LeBron James of the world’s fastest-growing sport. But once you’ve seen Thunders in action, you might decide LeBron James is really the Bonnie Thunders of the NBA.

Thunders, a jammer and member of New York City’s Gotham Girls Roller Derby, came to the sport in 2006 after spending four years at Syracuse University in competitive synchronized ice skating. Since then, her career has been nothing short of Jordanesque, and she is widely regarded as the most dominant player in the game.

“When I started, I was scrawny and I wasn’t a great player. The game was more about big hits back then,” she said. “But being in love with the sport and a control freak, I wanted to improve.”

Improve she did.

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As romantic and sexy and awesome as “being a baseball player” sounds, the reality is that some days -- it just sucks. And it can be worse for minor league players.

When the going gets bad, minor league guys turn to The Cup Check. Launched late last year by Nick McCoy, a catcher drafted by the Yankees in 2010 -- McCoy attempted to capture the brotherhood between minor leaguers. The site is a community where minor leaguers write and publish motivational material to show dreamers like themselves what the life’s really like and to help their brothers out.

McCoy said he went through a couple hundred names before settling on The Cup Check. “I wanted something true to minor leaguers,” he said, laughing. The site’s slogan is “Protect the goods,” which actually goes a little deeper than it sounds. McCoy says the romance of chasing the baseball dream can fade quickly, but the goods is the thought of why you love he game. McCoy has roughly a dozen contributors (he edits everything) and they all know and appreciate how hard that minor league life is, the things they give up for it, and the odds against them.

He started the site late last year after his uncle, Kevin Kuhn, kept urging him to create a blog about baseball. McCoy talked with a bunch of his teammates and friends, and the response, McCoy says, “was overwhelmingly positive.” So he set it up through WordPress, picked out a free template, paid just ten bucks to register the domain name and the stories came flooding in.

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Dolph Ziggler combines the technical skill of Mr. Perfect, the athletic electricity of Shawn Michaels and the hip gyrations of “Ravishing” Rick Rude all in one superstar. And with John Cena suffering an injured Achilles during the WWE’s European tour, this might be Ziggler’s chance to not only show off with his World Heavyweight championship, but win the WWE title and unify the belts (it’s not like they separate the brands anymore, anyway).

Think about it. If Cena is out for any prolonged period, and with CM Punk at home nursing his knee, this is WWE’s opportunity to turn Ziggler into the company’s biggest draw. If it was up to me, I’d strip Cena of the belt and send him home to heal, then announce a one-night, eight-man championship tournament, featuring Ziggler, Daniel Bryan, Dean Ambrose, Chris Jericho, Ryback, Brock Lesnar, Sheamus and Randy Orton. The tournament could lead to new feuds, not to mention matchups we’ve never seen, like Lesnar versus Sheamus and Ambrose versus Jericho. Make the finals between Ziggler and Bryan, with Ziggler ultimately winning (even if it’s through some nefarious outside interference, I’m good with that; he’s a heel, after all), and then let Ziggler feud with Bryan, Orton and maybe even Lesnar until Cena comes back.

The more wins Ziggler gets and the more he bounces around the ring doing ridiculous stunts for guys like Lesnar (and maybe even the rumored-to-return Dave Batista), the bigger the star you create, ultimately setting up showdowns with both Punk and Cena when they get healthy.

Not only do fans finally get to see some fresh feuds, but you’re building up a guy who you can trust the brand with when the current top draws such as Cena hang up the dog tags for good.

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If Tim Tebow’s NFL career is over, what’s next? Here are the six most likely landing spots.

CFL

Tim Tebow is an unconventional football player. The CFL is an unconventional football league. The field is wider, the goalposts are at the goal line, they have things called “rouges,” they spell “offense” as “offence.” Who cares about a weird throwing motion amongst all that insanity? Tebow would be the biggest name in the CFL since Raghib Ismail signed with the Toronto Argonauts in 1991. No doubt Tebow would also continue his charitable work in the foreign land of Canada and offer the same medical services he did in Indonesia. There’s no downside here.

Arena Football League

The AFL is already six weeks into its season, but it’s not too late for a team to sign Tebow. The only undefeated team remaining in the league is Tebow’s hometown Jacksonville Sharks. They are currently quarterbacked by Bernard Morris, the former Marshall quarterback. Did Morris ever win a Heisman or an NFL playoff game? I don’t recall that happening. If the Sharks want to guarantee a championship, they’ll sign Tebow today. He has some dome demons he likely wants to exorcise.

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The 2013 NFL draft is over. But how did your team do? Did its draft performance guarantee this year’s Super Bowl title and every other one as far as the eye can see?

The only way to find out is to read the only 100 percent accurate draft grades on the whole Internet.

Kansas City Chiefs

Draft Grade: F

Flawless Analysis: The Chiefs spent the months leading up to the draft trying to convince teams that they had serious interest in Luke Joeckel and Geno Smith. Turns out all of that was lies. LIES! This draft grade isn’t about the Chiefs as a football team. It’s more than that. It’s about not being able to trust the Chiefs as men.

You may have a new left tackle, Chiefs, but you have no honor.

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Well that was unexpected.

No, not the Los Angeles Lakers losing in the first round to the San Antonio Spurs; it was a 2-7 matchup, after all, and no NBA team has lost after being up 3-0 (as the San Antonio Spurs were).

But who, when the Lakers put together their new "Big Four" this offseason, thought things would end so gruesomely, with sweep-victim L.A. dropping its two home games by a combined 52 points?

Here's a statistical postmortem of the Lakers' season, which featured injuries all around (most notably the late one to Kobe Bryant), plus much other turmoil on and off the court:

2012-13 at a glance
• According to MGM Resorts International, the Miami Heat and Lakers entered the season favored to win the NBA title (8/5 odds).

• The Lakers went winless in the preseason, losing all eight of their games. They were the only winless team in the NBA this preseason. Perhaps that was a sign of things to come.

• In just the second game of the season, newly acquired Steve Nash suffered a small fracture in his lower left leg in a loss to the Portland Trail Blazers. He missed the next 24 games.

• Following a 1-4 start, the Lakers fired head coach Mike Brown. Brown went 42-29 as Lakers head coach in one-plus seasons.

• The Lakers then passed over Phil Jackson, who led the Lakers to five NBA championships, and hired Mike D’Antoni as head coach. Jackson spoke publicly about his disappointment in not getting the job.

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Best-selling and award-winning author and filmmaker Sherman Alexie is a passionate basketball fan, a Seattle resident and a former Sonics season-ticket holder. He spent many seasons working his way from seats atop the lower bowl in Key Arena down to the sixth row behind the bench. When Clay Bennett was trying to break the Sonics’ lease in Seattle to move to Oklahoma, the city called upon him to testify in court on behalf of Sonics fans.

So obviously, Alexie is rooting for the NBA to approve the sale of the Sacramento Kings to Chris Hansen, the hedge fund manager who plans to move the team to Seattle. Right?

Wrong.

“I hope the Kings stay in Sacramento,” Alexie says. “The Seattle Times carried a photo of the last game of the season in Sacramento, and it was a woman holding up a sign, ‘We’re Not Saying Goodbye!’ Those are the exact same signs we were holding up in Seattle before the Sonics moved.”

Seattle was justifiably hurt and outraged when Bennett moved the Sonics to Oklahoma City. So for Seattle to turn around and do the same thing to another city, Alexie says, is just plain wrong. “And I get increasingly frustrated with Seattle fans morally justifying it.”

As David Stern and the NBA continue to drag out the decision on the sale – today is Day 97 of the Kings Held Hostage -- I’m still torn on the issue. I’m definitely rooting for Seattle to get an NBA team, for both civic and personal reasons. The city loyally supported the Sonics for decades only to have them abruptly stolen from us with Stern helping with the getaway van.

On the other hand, I agree with Alexie. I very much want a team here but would feel guilty taking another city’s team. I know the pain of a team leaving a city. I’ve dealt with this virtually my entire life.

I was 8 years old and living in southwest Washington when the Pilots moved from Seattle to Milwaukee at the end of spring training in 1970. I recall listening to the news on the radio and being confused why our team was moving. I still think of that move almost every time I interview Bud Selig.

After the Pilots left, I became a fan of the San Francisco Giants because they were the next closest baseball team, albeit more than 700 miles away. I recall the angst I felt when the Giants nearly moved to Toronto in the 1970s. Considering that the Giants were so far away I could barely listen to their games on the radio, let alone go see them in person, it shouldn’t have mattered to me whether they moved or stayed.

And yet, it did matter. They weren’t just the Giants to me. They were the San Francisco Giants. People often say a team provides identity to a city, but the reverse is also true. A city is as much a part of a team as its players.

Fans understand this, though Stern either doesn’t or simply doesn’t care.

I also was living in the Twin Cities when the Minnesota North Stars moved to Dallas in 1993 as well as when the Minnesota Timberwolves almost moved to New Orleans shortly thereafter. And I was back in Seattle when Howard Schultz sold the Sonics to Bennett, who insisted that he planned to keep the team in our city, all the while plotting to move it to Oklahoma City.

Some people say this is why Seattle’s current situation with the Kings is different from the Oklahoma City deal. They say that unlike Bennett, Hansen is being open and honest about his intention to move the team from Sacramento. As if that justification really matters. I mean, if someone stole my wallet, I wouldn’t feel any better if the thief warned me ahead of time.

As Alexie says, “The moral gymnastics people are performing is sort of nauseating.”

Others point out that teams move all the time in the NBA, which is true. Half the teams in the league started out in another city. Three teams have moved in the past decade. And just look at the Kings. They played nine years in Rochester, 15 years in Cincinnati, 13 years in Kansas City and the past 28 in Sacramento. Seattle would simply be another stop along the way (and hopefully a final stop).

“That’s just another justification,” Alexie says. “‘Hey, it’s been six or seven groups of broken-hearted fans, so why not add on another?’”

In addition to calling Seattle’s push for the Kings a form of bullying -- “Seattle is picking on Sacramento -- it’s like the U.S. invading Grenada” -- Alexie has another more basic opposition to the team moving here. “On a purely basketball level -- they’re terrible. They’re not even terrible in a fun way.”

There is an easy solution to all this, of course. If both cities have potential owners willing to spend around $500 million on a team, and both cities have taxpayers willing to subsidize new, roughly $500 million arenas, the obvious move is to leave Kings in Sacramento and grant an expansion team to Seattle.

That’s the way I want this to work out. It would be a win-win for everyone. Sacramento fans get to keep their team. Seattle fans get a team again free of guilt and with a clean slate. And the owners receive enough money in expansion fees to offset sharing the national revenue pie with another team.

“I’m rooting for the Kings to stay and Seattle to get an expansion team," Alexie says, adding that solution makes perfect sense to him. “But who knows what goes on inside David Stern’s head?"

Indeed. Knowing the way owners usually operate, rather than pursue an option that would bring joy to fans in two cities, they would rather screw over one group and use them as a warning and leverage in future scenarios.

I’m not sure whether Sacramento or Seattle will wind up with the Kings but I do know this: Unless there is expansion, one city is going to feel cheated -- and justifiably so. Which means some other NBA city better keep their hands on their wallets.

After months of buildup, the first round of the NFL draft is complete and it’s time to render verdicts. Here are the winners and losers:

(Note: As always, there are only winners and losers. There is no in-between. This is a pass/fail kind of deal. Also, all grades are final and eternally binding. Do not try to argue. You are dealing with a draft expert here, OK?

WINNERS

Giant humans

Giant humans usually do well at the NFL draft, but the first round was especially good for the enormous this year. Three of the first four picks were offensive tackles. The first seven picks were offensive or defensive linemen, and 18 total were taken in the round.

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The Vikings look like the Vikings again -- mostly -- and the Dolphins don't look quite as much like the Dolphins as they used to.

That's the takeaway from Thursday's two NFL uniform unveilings. The Minnesota and Miami uniforms both had been leaked earlier this week, but now we have a much better look at the teams' new uni sets.

Let's start with the Vikings (all images courtesy of Nike).



Almost any change would have been an improvement here, given the awful uniforms the team had been saddled with in recent seasons. For the most part, the Vikings are going back to a no-nonsense NFL look but with a few odd details, as follows:

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According to NPD data, Mattel’s line of miniature WWE wrestlers is the No. 1 action figure property in the U.S., beating out heavy hitters such as G.I. Joe, Star Wars and Marvel.

That’s a lot of plastic biceps.

And debuting in August will be a figure collectors have been clamoring for: The new Cody Rhodes, complete with an inked-on mustache (and packaged in a special two-pack with Sin Cara).

“I did a head scan for Mattel, but I didn’t have the mustache back then,” said Rhodes, describing the process for becoming immortalized in toy stores worldwide. “They’ll probably just draw the mustache on. You don’t need advanced technology for something so silly, but you never know -- Mattel does some pretty advanced stuff. It’s pretty amazing how much the figures really look like us.”

According to Mattel’s WWE product designer, Derek Handy, the act of taking a wrestler such as Rhodes from pugilist to plastic can take anywhere from six months to a year.

“We work really closely with WWE, and based on what we see on the show, we talk to WWE about which characters we want to see in the next wave of figures,” Handy said. “We’ll get WWE’s approval, then we’ll work on initial sculpts of each figure, and that can take a little going back and forth as guys will shave their heads or shave their beards or get a different hair style. But we do the best we can to keep things up to date. We try to be as current as we possibly can to what you’re seeing on the show.”

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Hello, prospective NFL Draft pick. It's your big day! Your dream is about to come true!

In fact, you’re so confident of your draft status that you’re in New York and plan to attend the draft to be there when your name is called. According to your agent, you’re going to be one of the first few players drafted. Your wait in the green room will surely last no more than a few minutes.

Or you could be stuck there all night and get humiliated on national television. Tough to say.

In case the latter occurs, you must be prepared. Make sure you have these eight things to weather your embarrassing draft slide in style.

1. Cell phone

This is the most important. Your cell phone will give you something to look at as the minutes of waiting stretch into hours of waiting. You can pretend you are sending and receiving texts. You can play games. You can even read about all of the (many) players picked ahead of you. Just don’t use your phone to go on Twitter. Everyone will be making fun of you on there.

2. Cell phone charger

The first round of the draft is three-and-a-half hours long. Can your phone handle three-and-a-half hours of fake texting and Temple Run 2? Mine can’t. Also, make sure your green room table is close to an outlet. Your night has been humiliating enough already without having to change tables to recharge your cell phone that hasn’t rung with any calls from NFL teams.

3. Water

When not pretending to be engrossed by your cell phone, taking little sips from a water bottle helps pass the time. Be sure to have extra bottles of water at the ready for when you sip through your first one. And stick with water, even though you may be tempted to reach for a bottle of gin as the night progresses.

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Injured Lakers star Kobe Bryant became aware almost immediately Monday that his tweets from his Newport Beach sofa during the Lakers' Game 1 playoff loss to the San Antonio Spurs had become an issue. But was the tempest really his fault?

Perhaps there wouldn’t have been such a stir if tightly-wound Lakers coach Mike D'Antoni hadn’t responded with a biting postgame assessment that left a such a sulfurous smell in the room, his remarks occasionally begged for subtitles: "It's great to have that commentary," D'Antoni said of Bryant (#gotohell). "He's a fan right now, he's a fan. You guys put a little more importance on that kind of fan." (#Duh).

"Just bored I guess," Bryant typed to his 2.3 million followers.

By Wednesday, fans were tweeting back at Bryant all day long and imploring him not to go silent, as he'd promised. And indeed, all was quiet at @kobebryant once Game 2 began in San Antonio.

But what if everyone was just looking in the wrong place during the Lakers' eventual 102-91 loss?

@(Not)KobeBryant Tipoff time!!! Is it me, or does D’Antoni already look like he ate some bad guacamole? Lol

@(Not)KobeBryant @PhilJackson11 Welcome to Twitter, man. But Dude. Emoticons? Really? RT@PhilJackson11 23 Apr That wasn’t a pushoff :-)

@(Not)KobeBryant Big props to my boy Metta for naming himself a bigger distraction than me or J-Buss #DwightGetsDayOff

@(Not)KobeBryant Knock-knock: What did I get Duncan for his 37th birthday today? Pau’s defense! Get it?!

@(Not)KobeBryant Glad to see Mike Brown back in the league. But what are the headlines in Cleveland: “Let’s try this again”?

@(Not)KobeBryant Is anybody gonna stop Ginobili from getting in the lane? Anybody? Or do I gotta go there and hit him with a crutch?

@(Not)KobeBryantNash isn’t moving well now that he’s hurt. But his hair looks nice, don’t you think?

@(Not)KobeBryant Is it me, or does D’Antoni look like Pop put hot rub on his dryboard & gave him a disappearing ink marker? #outcoached

@(Not)KobeBryant Are the commercials always this prostate-centric during games? #justsayin’

@(Not)KobeBryant When did Tony Siragusa start endorsing adult diapers? Ew.

@(Not)KobeBryant Post! Post! Post! Gotta milk Pau in the post and also … um … Oh darn. What’s his name again? … Dwight!

@(Not)KobeBryant What does the ‘D’ in D12 stand for? Dense??? How can u pick up 4th foul with 8 minutes left in 3Q? #sevenfootsmall

@(Not)KobeBryant Is anybody gonna stop Parker from getting in lane? Anybody? Or do I gotta go there & hit him with my other crutch?

@(Not)KobeBryant This is crap. Nobody keeping Bonner off boards, let alone making him pay for red mamba jokes #getyourownlife

@(Not)KobeBryant Remember when I wrote in Game 1 “This game has ‘steal one’ written all over it for us”? #nottonight

@(Not)KobeBryant See u Game 3 Friday at Staples. Is it me, or does D’Antoni look like he misses his mamba some after all? #mambaout