American Idol

Taylor Hicks, the silver haired winner of American Idol's fifth season, is set to sing the national anthem this Thursday for game four of the NBA Finals between the San Antonio Spurs and Cleveland Cavaliers.  The game will be held in Cleveland at the unfortunately named Quicken Loans Arena in what will likely be the final game of the NBA Finals.  The Spurs have beaten down Lebron James' Cavaliers in the first two games and it's hard to imagine the totally over matched Cavs winning a game, even at home. 

The wonderful site known as “YouTube” has exactly zero (0) videos of Taylor Hicks singing the national anthem, so it's hard to know what to expect come Thursday.  Will he whip out his harmonica?  One would hope so.  Will he be accompanied by any instrument?  It always seems best when a known singer is accompanied by a single set of drums or an acoustic guitar.  The real question, however, for Idol and Taylor fans is this: will ABC air Taylor's rendition of the anthem?

ABC's pre-game coverage is nothing special, and you'd think they'd have the time to give Idol fans what they wanted.  The answer will probably come tonight, when Ben Harper (a bigger name than Taylor) sings the national anthem in Cleveland for game 3.  If ABC shows Mr. Harper singing the anthem (which should be cool), then you can probably count on ABC to air Taylor's performance.

Hicks seems to be everywhere lately.  Just yesterday, I was flipping channels and saw that he was on Martha Stewart Living with the ex-convict herself.  He seemed to be hanging some sort of wreath-y foliage above one of Martha's doors.  Exciting stuff.  He wasn't having an easy time of it, and Martha was getting impatient (you could tell because her horns were starting to show).

Game 4 of the NBA Finals can be seen on ABC, Thursday at 9PM ET/6PM PT. 

-Oscar Dahl, BuddyTV Senior Writer