Whatever your opinion of ESPN’s Bill Simmons, his NBA columns are must-reads, if for no other reason than he knows and loves the game in a very pure way.
It’s the kind of love we hope to achieve with a human female one day, but never will because we’re morally ignorant in the ways of the relationship.
Regardless, the Simmons piece of the day urges you to root for Dallas to win this series, based on the idea that a Heat (read: Wade) victory means the revolution is over. The “new NBA” of team play, as he refers to it, will die before it fully lived.
In between Jordan and Wade, we had to watch all the wannabes pretending to be as good as them. And they weren’t. Not even close.
Here’s what happens if Miami wins the title: New Jersey will say to themselves, “Hey, maybe this could happen to us with Vince Carter”; Washington will say the same about Arenas; Boston with Pierce; G-State with Richardson; the Lakers with Kobe; New Team X with Iverson. And so on and so on.
Basically, the team with LeBron or Wade will win the next 10-12 titles, and it will come down to which guy made more 20-footers with two guys on him and which guy got the most cheap calls from the most spineless referees. That’s not basketball, it’s a star system.
Despite the italicized portion of the excerpt being pretty goddamn okay with us, we realize it’s probably not the best thing for the league. Of course, the NBA was reborn when everyone knew it was either Magic or Bird every year - that worked out, didn’t it?
Anyway, we don’t agree, which is basically what we just said, but will repeat here a different way, ala BJ Armstrong. The NBA won’t go that way again, and the reason is the next breed of NBA star appears to be legit.
LeBron and Wade are a little different animal than Stackhouse and Walker, two of the late 90s “next great ones”, who coincidentally are now role players in these Finals.
Kobe - legit. Duncan - legit. KG - legit. Melo - legit. Gilbert - legit. Bosh - legit. Dirk - legit. Brand - legit. Greg Oden looks like he’ll be legit. (Please don’t be angered if we’ve excluded your favorite player. If we did, it’s only because he’s not legit.)
Plus, the league is now set up up to allow the false idols of the past to assume their roles as MLE role players on semi-loaded teams. Much as we loathe his game, how nice would Starbury look scoring 13 per for the Cavaliers at $5.5M a season?
What all this means is the NBA’ll be fine when the Heat take it in tonight’s Game 6. You can’t really “copy” Wade/Shaq, and every GM around knows that thing was built for this year, and this year alone, even though they’ll all be back next season. It’s a little blip in the new NBA - not the end of it.
And that’s fine, friends. Everything is fine, as long as you stop with the “why are you hitting Cuban so hard” emails. We’re not - those are love taps. How could you read this site and not know we love that dude? (And yes, we totally want Dallas to win tonight.)
Difficult to add much more to everything else that’s out there: It’s Game 6, the Heat are a game away from winning the NBA Title, Mark Cuban is $250,000 lighter and downright dog-nutty, Dwyane Wade getting his legend on and the referrees looking over their shoulders, making sure no one’s got a shiv.
We, like you, kind of can’t wait. And just to get you appropriately thrilled, here, via True Hoop, is video of Shaquille O’Neal’s first game. He was somewhat more agile, back in the day.
We’ll probably stay up to post after the game, so feel to come back and chat along while it’s going. Please let there not be a bad call that goes against the Mavericks to decide it. Cuban might spontaneously combust.
Difficult to add much more to everything else that’s out there: It’s Game 6, the Heat are a game away from winning the NBA Title, Mark Cuban is $250,000 lighter and downright dog-nutty, Dwyane Wade getting his legend on and the referrees looking over their shoulders, making sure no one’s got a shiv.
We, like you, kind of can’t wait. And just to get you appropriately thrilled, here, via True Hoop, is video of Shaquille O’Neal’s first game. He was somewhat more agile, back in the day.
We’ll probably stay up to post after the game, so feel to come back and chat along while it’s going. Please let there not be a bad call that goes against the Mavericks to decide it. Cuban might spontaneously combust.
Young was asked how difficult the suspension was for him. Young does not even answer. He just shakes his head and rolls his hand as if to indicate to move on to the next question. He’s asked if he learned anything from the suspension. Young responds by saying “That’s the same question” and again rolls his hand to indicate to move on to the next question. …
Later on, Young was asked about his relationship with the manager and coaches, and Young responds that he “keeps his distance” from the coaches. He also indicates that he has not spoken to the manager or coaches since the incident because he doesn’t need to “socialize on past events.” At the end of the interview, [the interviewer] thanks Delmon for sitting down with him, and, best we can tell, Young does not respond at all, except to take off his mic and walk away. [The interviewer] then can be seen looking towards his producers with a shrug of his shoulders and a very telling look on his face, that seems to display a bit of anger or annoyance. According to reports, Young’s attitude was much the same when he met with reporters on the field. He snapped at several reporters for asking questions they shouldn’t ask and even for brushing his leg with a microphone chord.
Anyway, Drew has been cleared of all involvement in the incident, though Manning still faces charges. It appears clear that Drew had nothing to do with the beating and just happened to be standing nearby. Which is good. Bet he wasn’t on one of those fruity computing machines either.
Anyway, Drew has been cleared of all involvement in the incident, though Manning still faces charges. It appears clear that Drew had nothing to do with the beating and just happened to be standing nearby. Which is good. Bet he wasn’t on one of those fruity computing machines either.
It’d be easy to say this is just the bitter ramblings of a man left behind by Shaq’s abrupt exodus to Los Angeles in the summer of 199something, but by reading the column eight times, something else is revealed altogether.
Therefore, read the column the required eight times, watch the video here, and then join us below.
Please excuse the rap portions - that’s not what we’re getting at. Also, please excuse the poor video quality. Additionally, we make no excuses for our often poor spelling and worse sentence structure.
In fact, just a quick aside on that topic. We’d go so far as to say we misuse commas up to three, maybe four times per day. We’re completely aware we’re doing it, and the fact is we’d correct it if we knew how. That’s kinda the point of why someone does something wrong - they don’t know how to do it right.
Can you even use hyphens in sentences like we just did? We have no idea, yet we do it all the time. And you keep reading, so what’s that say about you, other than you’re probably one of those people who’ll have sex with those Angelina Jolie robots in summer 2011. (You can’t start a sentence with “and”, can you?)
The point is, we went to see Shaq his first year in the NBA with our dad, and poppa couldn’t stand him. We argued he had put up like 25/12 and looked cool doing it, but his stance was “Yeah, but he’s not even trying. Imagine if he did.”
Or imagine if Orlando Shaq had remained in that type of shape throughout his career. Thoughts? About us, please - not Shaq.
Gotta love Steeler Nation. Not only did they drag out portable grills during a curbside vigil/cookout for Ben Roethlisberger’s seven-hour surgery at a Pittsburgh hospital, but now it seems that some of them are threatening the woman who was driving the car involved in the accident. The woman has received so many calls, she said, that she has filed a police report. We can’t imagine what the rationale is here. “Hit Ben again, and you sleep with the fishes. Signed, anonymous.” We just hope to God that Steelers Baby wasn’t involved. Meanwhile, both Ben and the woman were cited for a variety of infractions; Ben for driving without a proper motorcycle license, and the woman for “failing to yield right of way to a Super Bowl Winning Quarterback.”
Our favorite take on the helmet/no helmet controversy, however, remains this, from Planet Haystack:
Big Ben got the Steelers the Super Bowl title which most of America hoped for — and if he chooses to go sans helmet when riding a motor-scooter, why am I ’sposed to care about someone who doesn’t care about himself? Big Ben doesn’t come to my house and rip the Pall Mall outta my mouth as I’m lightin’ up and urge me on with, “Dude, I could really use your support for the next 10 seasons. Why would you want to cut it short with cigs?” Touche, Benny Roth!
Whatever your opinion of ESPN’s Bill Simmons, his NBA columns are must-reads, if for no other reason than he knows and loves the game in a very pure way. 
Difficult to add much more to 
For those who might have missed it, Delmon Young, the Tampa Bay Devil Rays phenom who 
While perusing the daily musings of the nation’s NBA writers this morning, two things struck us.
Gotta love Steeler Nation. Not only did they drag out portable grills during a curbside vigil/cookout for Ben Roethlisberger’s seven-hour surgery at a Pittsburgh hospital, but now it seems that some of them 