We couldn’t let the day pass without mentioning Mariners “slugger” Richie Sexson’s charming comments from yesterday. They’re not as bad as Stuart Scott’s “Don’t boo” admonitions, but, well, they’re close.
“The money has a lot to do with it,” said Sexson, who will make $14 million this year. “If I was making a million, people wouldn’t care.”
Blog Hotdog & Friends points out, “while the quote masterfully demonstrates how clueless Sexson is as to the value of money, let me state that I will boo up and until he is making around $50,000.00 a year ( roughly the median household income in Seattle). At $50,000.00 a year, Sexson becomes an average Joe and I will not hate on an average Joe for a subpar work performance.”
When we were in Seattle, someone told us about a beer special at a bar in which pints of lousy domestic beer costs whatever Sexson’s batting average was at the time. Needless to say, it was the bestselling, cheapest beer around.
Every two weeks, the gents at Free Darko will be taking a look at the deranged ecosystem that is the National Basketball Association in their own indelible fashion. Here’s this week’s entry, from Dr. Lawyer Indian Chief.
Enjoy.
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This past Saturday night, while most of the world slept softly, headed to John Barleycorn to get tanked or just weren’t accustomed to watching TNT on a regular basis, the NBA was doing its damn thing and AGAIN, saving sports right under your noses. Spygate, Kelvin Sampson and HGH were whisked away for a brief moment, while the NBA dunk contest brought style and ridiculosity back to the forefront of athletics, complete with capes, cupcakes, socks, and mini-hoops.
But aside form all the gimmickry and over-embellished disbelieving stink-faces in (see Rashad McCants’ reaction to every Gerald Green dunk), it was Dwight Howard’s performance that boldly captured the most valuable aspect of watching sports: the demonstration of things physically impossible to normal humans. Howard gleaned league-wide props for the now-legendary Superman dunk, as well as his leadoff dunk during which he maintained his entire body behind the backboard while his outstretched arm plunked the ball through the hoop.
However, Howard’s most underrated and unbelievable jam was his second to last: the three-step-self-alley-oop-wallyball smash. The dunk was absolutely unfeasible by normal human standards, but Howard’s meticulous coordination for a big man allowed him to complete a feat that we literally had never seen before.
And yes, the next day, the NBA’s finest hit you off ONE MORE TIME with an improbable display of athleticism and skill during the most fun-to-watch all-star game in all of professional athletics.
There they were again, the 19th Century Montmartre cognoscenti in sneakers, again saving sports and hurling contract holdouts, DUIs and racetrackside racial slurs into the Caspian Sea. At least four dunks in that one game alone–the Amare-over-Howard “Black Jesus vs. God’s Son” jam, two by LeBron (one of which of course being the pimp-slap posterization of Dirk Nowitzki in the final minute), and the Kidd-to-Bron-to-Howard trifecta–conveyed more aesthetic brilliance and potency than most of the NFC playoff games in their entirety. All-star weekend, complete with commissioner David Stern’s masterfully orchestrated illusion that the league somehow revitalized the entire city of New Orleans in a single weekend was a grand triumph for The Association. The weekend validated us NBA diehards, making it OK to call professional basketball the greatest sport in the world without feeling like some Quebecois defending hockey to a bunch of gay-bashing Alabama Crimson Tide fans.
The takeaway lesson is that plays–not only dunks, but Ray Allen three-pointers, Chris Paul dimes and even those pithy little Dwyane Wade and-1s–count more than anything. As great as the recent Super Bowl was, with all that the Patriots wagered and with all of the collective conventional wisdom of all sports pundits prognosticating against the unsung Giants, that game is 10,000 times diminished without the David Tyree helmet catch. Single plays, especially in the age of YouTube clip and the Sportscenter highlight, define sport more than anything.
And my 109,678th reason as to why the NBA reigns supreme is that its games simply contain more plays than any other league. Save your pitchcounts for someone who gives a damn. When the Warriors and Suns are putting up 240 points in a game consisting mostly of Steve Nash alley-oops, Monta Ellis climbing invisible ladders, and Stephen Jackson cherry-bombs from 35 feet out, that is excitement on the level of pure shots of norepinepherine to the face.
The Rookie-Sophomore faux-Rucker Classic on Friday night was a preview of what the glorious future holds. The dunk contest and festivities of Saturday night put the “single play” in a magnified display case. The all-star game itself, in all of its sloppy, turnover-laden, Doug Collins-infuriating glory reminded us that the game of professional basketball is an everlasting bottle of pills, all of those little multicolored feel-good delights.
Of course the macroeconomic parallel to ’single plays as valued goods’ is the flurry of transactions (franchise-level “plays”) that the league has so blessed us with this season. As a result of the meteoric emergence of Michael Beasley/Derrick Rose/Brook Lopez as well as the landscape-altering Pau Gasol trade to the Lakers, each team–blindly following the zeitgeist–has given itself with two choices: Tank or Panic. And never has this decision presented itself so early in the season, well before this Thursday’s impending trade deadline.
The Western Conference has been set afire ever since Memphis commenced with their explicit and unembarrassed tank-move of trading Gasol. Sacramento is the most recent tanker, finally parting ways with Mike Bibby. Dallas and Phoenix, on the other hand, panicked in betting the farm on aging stars, Jason Kidd and Shaq. These moves, direct responses to the Lakers’ acquisition of Gasol, as if to say, “No Kobe Bryant-helmed team will win a title in this lifetime,” are most likely to the benefit of Phoenix and to the detriment of Dallas. And regardless of the outcome, madness is in the air. The Atlanta Hawks for chrissakes are a playoff contending team again (does Celtics/Hawks in round 1 remind anyone of Warriors/Mavs?). All-star weekend was the warning to casual fans, but we have known this from day one–the NBA is your savior, and the second half of this season will be the magnificent panacea to all that ails you.
Matt from Hardwood Paroxysm headed to New Orleans for the All-Star madness last weekend. Well, actually, he was there for the Celebrity Game and the D-League All-Star Games. Today: The D-League All-Star Game.
“Basketball is basketball.”
That’s what I kept telling myself on the long drive through the swamplands to New Orleans. I’d be covering the D-League All-Star events in the “Dream Factory” on Friday Night. This was to include a three-point contest, a dunk contest, and most noticeably, a HORSE contest. The word was that this was a test to see if the format was marketable for inclusion in the League’s All-Star events next year.
But D-League? I’d seen some of the play, but not enough to really get a feel for the whole league, and not in an All-Star competition. Would this somehow be worse than the actual All-Star events? Would the players have the same level of intensity, just less talent, resulting in a cringe-inducing affair that I would of course have to rip mercilessly? I was hoping for aptitude, not excellence. I was hoping for “king of cool” not “the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen.” I was hoping for anything better than, “that sucked.”
And honestly? It was pretty cool.
I could try and make it out to be some sort of jaw-dropping display of unseen talent, under the radar, like the White Stripes playing in your neighbor’s basement. Or I could try and make this into some sort of deep struggle, the players all vying for their shot at the big time in front of scouts and coaches. Or I could pull the “dreams” approach and spin it like it had something to do with the players wanting to prove something to themselves and others.
But that, of course, would be bullshit.
It’s not to say that there wasn’t talent. On the other hand, the entire weekend I was impressed with the flashes of brilliance I saw. Kasib Powell’s agility. Jeremy Richardson’s stroke. Elton Brown’s force, Lance Allred’s basketball IQ, and Brent Petway’s ability to forcefully throw the ball down through the hoop in what is referred to as a “dunk.” And the step above everyone else that Morris Almond has.
But for the most part, it was just a collection of D-League players hanging out and showing off, while trying not to get hurt.
I had a chance to interview a few of the players, and they all had the same thing to say when I asked them if they felt like this was a good opportunity to showcase their talents for scouts, coaches and fans.
“Not so much,” they all said. It was mostly jut a chance for them to have fun.
I spoke with Rod Benson (”Boom Tho!”) and he summed it up best. The All-Star game is more of a chance for the players to be recognized for their contribution and have some fun than to showcase their talents.
The HORSE Contest
The big draw of Friday night was the HORSE contest. Anything that brings out Abbott, Skeets and Tony Mejia is kind of a big deal in D-League terms. And considering it’s been hailed by bloggers as the missing piece of All-Star weekend in the League, it was the biggest D-League event of the weekend.
Your competitors:
Jeremy Richardson: Frequent NBA call-up and leader of D-League in 3-point percentage. Also, leads the league in number of times he’s been called up and said “Holy shit, Fabricio Oberto is actually considered a better baller than me. Kill me.”
Lance Allred: The All-American hero. Told me before the contest that he was still rehabbing a bone bruise (and he showed it to me!) so he was going in cold. A colleague of mine responded, “Yeah. Bone bruise” and mimed masturbation (and he showed me!). Also, a center and therefore a huge underdog.
Morris Almond: Arguably the best player in the D-League. Arguably the biggest mouth in the D-League. My favorite line from his blog? “It’s the D-League… I’m supposed to wreck it.” Almond scored 53 points in a game earlier this season, and followed it up by taking home the most D-League groupies ever (1).
Kasib Powell: 20 pts, 6 rebounds per game. Voted Best D-League Website by Ukranian Thunder Whores.
The games were only slated to last five minutes, to make sure they didn’t drag on in case they bombed. Good call. If this was a disaster, you want it over with as soon as possible. They used the 24-second clock, which was also pretty smart, since there’s nothing funnier than seeing unimpressed professional minor-league basketball players trying to vomit up a shot because they’re out of time. Because that’s awesome.
You apparently couldn’t dunk, but layups were allowed. Probably so the dunk contest would have a point. Unfortunately, the first round abandoned this possibility.
Allred apparently thought it was crappy that no one thought he had a snowball’s chance in hell. Because he pretty much wrecked Richardson in the first round. They started out not really knowing what to do, just shooting bank jumpers. The crowd started looking at one another, like “What? Is this it?” Allred did manage to hit an eyes-closed free throw that sealed the deal to advance.
Almond and Powell had no such plans to keep it straight up with jumpers. Off the floor shots, 360 three-pointers, and behind the backboard shots were all a part of their contest. Here was the interesting part. While Allred and Richardson hit more shots, the junkfest was way more entertaining.
The finals was a clash of styles, with Allred’s standard bankshot jump shooting versus Amond’s flair. While everyone was pulling for the trash-talking Almond, you have to appreciate the way Allred went for the jugular. I asked him afterwards why he was so focused in such ridiculous contest.
“I was nervous, because believe it or not, I have NEVER won any sort of trophy in my entire life! And I finally had a chance to win one, because, I can’t retire without some cool trophy to put on my shelf right? I really did want to win, and I was nervous, and I also went in for the kill. But so was Jeremy Richardson. Neither of us were doing any trick shots, and I followed his tone, and when we were done, I kept the same approach and went for the jugular, while Morris, who has an NBA contract, was just having a good time.”
So when Allred matched Amond’s on one knee layup and knocked him out with a long range bank shot, it was actually the little guy winning, with fundamentals and determination. A much better story than it seemed. Even Allred admitted that he wanted to do a lot more trick shots, but with the injury and how nervous he was, he didn’t think of it.
That’s pretty much the perfect D-League story, don’t you think?
My favorite quotes from the event? Both from the official write-up:
Almond: “Yes, it’s embarrassing that I lost to a center, but all white guys are good at H.O.R.S.E. for some reason”
Allred: “Oh, and never leave the white guy open.”
The D-League Dunk Contest: Air Georgia Gets Sick
I really wasn’t expecting much out of this. One of the primary knocks on D-Leaguers is their lack of size. So I was not expecting this to be the best contest of the night. But then, I always underestimate how entertaining it is to see guys jump really, really high and then scream.
I’d heard rumors about this kid, nicknamed “Air Georgia,” Brent Pettway. I saw it in person on Friday when he came away with the win.
There were some problems with the dunk contest. First off, they brought kids out of the audience and sat them with the players. The players then gave the kids the option of one of the dunks. This is bad because it limits what the players can do, and it makes them reveal what they’re going to do. Second, the M.C. was about the most annoying human being in the city of New Orleans. That’s counting everyone in the celebrity game, all of the performers, Vince Carter and Chris Tucker. He was irritating the players and the crowd.
The good news is that these guys could seriously throw down. Rookie Eric Smith threw down a nasty 360 that I’d take over any of Gay’s dunks the following night. Pettway offered up two options. The “A-La-Carter” and the “Dominique Special.” The “A-La-Carter” was a takeoff on the arm-through-the-hoop hanging dunk Carter pulled in 2000.
His opponent in the finals was 6′2′’ Mike Taylor. Taylor got there with a baseline lob dunk to the other side that was damn impressive.
But in the Finals, Petway killed him. After a massive lob East-Bay Funk dunk, he then place the ball on the ground under the goal, stood, leaned down, then jumped up and dunked it, standing. It wasn’t impressive when you watched it. Then you thought about it. And realized how much leg power that took. The man’s a freak of nature.
The D-League All-Star Contests weren’t as good as the League’s, but they did show that the D-League has a ton of talent, and that they’re worth watching. It also showed that HORSE can work as an event, and that white people are really good at it.
So a guy in Brazil, not content with the normal tattoo options in his area, has had octopus suction cups grafted onto his arms. Cool! My guess is that Belichick has already made this required surgery for all of his receivers; and Derek Jeter is looking into it as well. Whereas Ichiro Suzuki just looks at it and sees lunch, I suppose.
None of this foolishness for me, unless it comes with the free ink-squirting option.
For the third consecutive season, we are proud to introduce the Deadspin Baseball Season Previews. Yes, baseball is awfully close now; it’s spring training, after all.
Every weekday until the start of the season, a different writer will preview his/her team. We asked a gaggle of writers, from the Web, from print, from books, to tell us, in as many or as little words as they need, Where Their Team Stands. This is not meant to be factual, or dispassionate, or even logical: We just asked them to riff on why they love their team so much, or what their team means to them, or whatever.
Today: The New York Mets. Your author is Jason Fry.
Jason Fry co-writes the Mets blog Faith and Fear in Flushing and The Daily Fix, The Wall Street Journal Online’s daily sportswriting roundup. His words are after the jump. His words are after the jump.
What I didn’t know — and praise Jesus for that bit of mercy — was that the Mets’ 2007 season should have been sponsored by Ipecac. They started playing poorly in June, but for a while dwelling on that seemed awfully pessimistic — they were still comfortably in first place, after all, and they’d turn on the jets once the playoffs began, right? But things didn’t improve, and by the end of the summer a lot of Met fans were confronting an inconvenient truth: We didn’t like this team much. They played a lot of stupid, listless baseball, and seemed way too pleased with themselves on those increasingly rare nights when they didn’t. In late September, when key veterans admitted they got bored and careless out there, the surprise wasn’t what they’d said, only that they’d been dumb enough to say it.
But by then the Mets weren’t bored — they were terrified. With Phillies in the rearview mirror even closer than they appeared, the Mets were spitting the bit against the Nationals and the Marlins. And on the final day of the season, with the Mets and Phils tied atop the division, Tom Glavine turned in this performance: walk, fielder’s choice, single, single, double, single, walk, single, HBP. Glavine, in a classic bit of tin-eared athlete dimwittery, said he was disappointed but not devastated by his third of an inning, because “devastated” was a word for more important things than a game. (He’s now back in Atlanta, where I guess I don’t actually hope he gets hit by a bus.) The Phillies won and the ‘07 Mets were done — they’d blown a seven-game lead with 17 to play, a 500-to-1 shot that let the ‘64 Phillies off the historical hook, and they’d deserved every crappy thing that had happened to them.
To add insult to injury, the Mets then followed that with an offseason apparently designed to torture us. They gave an insane four-year deal to Luis Castillo, a slap-hitting second baseman with diminishing range and bad knees, and traded Lastings Milledge, a talented 22-year-old (though plagued by bouts of childishness and poor wardrobe choices, for a catcher who can’t hit and a platoon outfielder. Sure, the Mets said the right things about an offer for Johan Santana, but we knew they weren’t trading Jose Reyes and the farm-system cupboard was bare. So there wasn’t much left to do but argue whether Santana would go to the Yankees or the Red Sox, brood over the Worst Collapse in Baseball History, and brace ourselves for happy talk from Omar Minaya about how Livan Hernandez or Kyle Lohse or Bartolo Colon was a Veteran Who Really Knows How to Pitch.
And then, somehow, everything changed. The Red Sox didn’t want to give up what the Twins wanted for Santana, the Yankees didn’t want to give up what the Twins wanted for Santana, and the Yankees weren’t going to change their minds if the Red Sox stayed out of it and the Red Sox weren’t going to change their minds if the Yankees stayed out of it, but Johan had had enough of the whole thing and all of a sudden, incredibly, Johan Santana was a New York Met through 2013. And Omar hadn’t even given up all that much: four prospects, none of them an unqualified blue-chipper.
And so, instead of six weeks of reporters asking the same questions about the Worst Collapse in Baseball History and players taking things for granted and Jose Reyes sulking and Milledge’s exile and whether Willie Randolph needs to be a disciplinarian and how Jimmy Rollins backed up his words and 7 up with 17 to go, it’ll be six weeks of reporters asking about Johan Santana and what it’ll be like going to the National League and if he’s excited about Citi Field and if he can hit .275 and whether he’s a leader in the clubhouse and what it’s like being on the same staff with Pedro and what he can teach Oliver Perez and John Maine and Mike Pelfrey. Which will be as inane as the other questions that would have been asked, except this new drip-drip-drip of journalistic water torture will merely bore the Mets silly instead of sending them out into a new season with 800 pounds of rotting gorilla on their backs. So here’s to boredom! Our trust in Omar is restored, the Worst Collapse in Baseball History was ages ago, and with Johan on the hill the Mets will lay waste to the National League and even win a game or two against whatever better team represents the AL in October. Woooo!
Except there’s still that whole thing that happened in September 2007 — and the fact that June, July and August kind of sucked too. (The Mets were 54-56 after Memorial Day.) You can interrupt a doleful February by spending a boatload of cash to take your imploding family to the Bahamas, but that in itself isn’t going to make the kids forget you and mom screaming and throwing glassware at each other — or stop them wondering what will happen when everybody gets home and has to get back to what wasn’t working so well before. And that’s the danger.
There’s not much point to scouting the Mets: They’ve got a scary lineup, a solid rotation and a pretty good bullpen — and with the happy exception of Santana replacing Glavine, they’re not all that different than the 2007 team. But that will only mean more pressure in April. If Johan is Johan, Wright and Reyes and Beltran hit, and the rest of the Mets act like they actually give a rat’s ass, all will be forgiven. And if not, the final year at Shea will get awfully ugly pretty early.
After the Jason Kidd trade finally went down — Mark Cuban says “this deal will have impact!” — the one question everyone had was … Keith Van Horn’s still playing? No, he isn’t, which you probably know by now; he just never filed the papers. And now he’s even richer than he was before.
The Mavs and Nets needed Van Horn, whose new contract will pay him $75,439 per day over the final 57 days of the regular season, or $148,275 for each of the Nets’ final 29 games. Before the NBA would approve the deal, league officials had to be convinced by agent David Falk and his client that Van Horn would report to New Jersey and make an honest attempt at a comeback.
See, now, that’s a nice gig. We also have not filed our retirement papers and encourage any NBA team looking for salary cap relief to call us. We will make an “honest attempt” to make the team.
This completely screws up the ESPN Trade Machine, by the way. Being able to just sign random retired players for whatever amount you want is pretty difficult to simulate.
Can you imagine a less inspiring sight as a Major League Baseball player than looking up, while stretching out a muscle that’s going to inevitably snap by the end of the season, and seeing this schmuck peering down at you over the dash of a Segway? We do hope that someone tested Bowden’s breath before getting on that thing.
The NBA Closer is written by Matt McHale, who’s spent a night here and there praying to The Porcelain God. When he’s not sailing the seas with Captain Morgan, he can be found getting intoxicated by the NBA at Basketbawful. Enjoy!
• What? Don’t try to act like none of you have ever gotten drunk and shat yourselves before! Did the Rockets have a special plan to stop LeBron James? Said Shane Battier: “Well, we hoped he had a real good time in New Orleans.” As a matter of fact, King James did have a good time in the Big Easy, winning his second All-Star Game MVP award. But despite a triple-double of 26 points, 13 rebounds and 11 assists - his 5th of the season and the 15th of his career - James went 0-for-7 in the first half and committed a game-high 5 turnovers as the Rockets blasted the Cavaliers with a 93-85 win. Yao Ming had 16 points and 14 rebounds, but his 3-for-17 shooting suggests that the Merciless One was still about two sheets to the wind.
• I’m gonna go explore! (Falls on his ass) Hello, Mr. Floor. Thank you for catching me. The Pistons saw their 10-game winning streak go swirling down the crapper last night as the Magic routed them 103-85 at the Palace of Auburn Hills. Detroit’s All-Star trio of Chauncy Billups, Rasheed Wallace and Richard Hamilton combined to shoot 12-for-32 from the field and 1-for-6 from three-point range. “You hate having a break when you are on a winning streak, because it messes with your momentum,” Billups said as he gulped down a few Ibuprofen. “That’s not an excuse, because we feel like we should have come in here and played better than that. Now where’s the restroom? I’m gonna heave.” Fellow All-Star and Slam Dunk Champ Dwight Howard also had a case of the weeble-wobbles, scoring only 8 points on 2-for-9 shooting and committing a game-high 5 turnovers. But Superman also stuffed a team-high 4 shots to help force the Pistons into some tipsy shooting (38 percent for the game).
• I will mess you up you tall bastard! The Knicks didn’t have any All-Stars, but that didn’t stop them from acting like a bunch of drunken idiots. Near the end of the fourth quarter, Zach Randolph threw a cup of water at teammate Nate Robinson, and Nate the Great retaliated by throwing a towel at Z-Bo. I guess that kind of dysfunction works for them, because the Knicks used an 8-1 run at the end of regulation to force an extra session, during which they set a franchise record for points in overtime (23) to beat the Wizards 113-100. Antawn Jamison ended up with 20 points and 13 rebounds, but found out once again that one is the lonliest number. (At least Agent Zero has been cleared to practice.)
• Even though I’m drunk, I still…you know, I kinda forgot where I was going with that. Tim Duncan may act like a joyless basketball-playing robot, and, well, he probably is. But he also came back from N’awlins to shoot 2-for-12 against the Bobcats, so you can draw your own conclusions. (It’s always the quiet ones.) Fortunately for TD, Manu Ginobili helped pick up the slack by scoring 18 points, and Ime Udoka added 12 points and 10 rebounds in San Antonio’s 85-65 win over Charlotte. Gerald Wallace may have gotten snubbed, but he still acted like he was suffering a post-All-Star hangover by scoring 4 points on 0-for-9 shooting. New player watch: Damon Stoudamire had 8 points (3-for-6), 3 rebounds, and 4 assists for the Spurs.
• I can’t decide whether to go to the bathroom or get another beer first, maybe I’ll try both. Carlos Boozer obviously knew to enough to get some sleep and drink lots of liquids over All-Star Weekend, because he recovered well enough to score 16 points and grab 12 rebounds … although he did have a game-high 6 turnovers. Deron Williams must have been a little jealous of Chris Paul’s near-MVP performance, because he racked up 29 points and 13 assists as the Jazz downed the Warriors 119-109. All-Star snubbee Baron Davis had 17 points and 4 assists for Golden State. New player watch: Chris “The Ultimate Warrior” Webber had 9 points (4-for-6), 1 rebound, 3 assists, and several tubes of Bengay.
• I’m not as think as you drunk I am. The Boston/Denver game featured four guys who played in the All-Star Game, and they must all be quick healers, because there wasn’t much of a dropoff (except maybe on defense). Paul Pierce went for 24 points, 6 rebounds, and 7 assists, and Ray Allen added 20 points. Meanwhile, Allen Iverson scored 28 to go along with 7 rebounds and 9 assists, and Carmelo Anthony dropped in 29 as the Nuggets beat the Celtics 124-118. The one All-Star who didn’t play, Kevin Garnett, returned to the Boston lineup with a case of the shakes, scoring 4 points on 2-for-7 shooting and committng 4 turnovers. Might be time for a little hair of the dog, KG.
• I have the hugest penis in the world! Wait I’m lying…it’s wicked small! Brandon Roy must have felt pretty, ahem, well-endowed after his first All-Star Game - he scored 18 points on 8-for-10 shooting - but he came back shooting a little cockeyed (5-for-18) and the Trail Blazers puked up a 105-94 loss to the new-look Kings. Ron Artest led Sacramento with 24 points, and Kevin Martin chipped in with 21.
• Man, I’m fucked up like a left-handed baseball bat. It might be heavily injured, but Kobe Bryant’s pinkie must have laid off the sauce, since Mamba shot 8-for-16 on his way to scoring 23 points in the Lakers’ 122-93 drubbing of the Hawks. Joe Johnson led the dirty birds with 18 points, but the trade … the trade must have … screwed up their continuity. Yeah, that’s it. New player(s) watch: Pau Gasol had 23 points and 6 boards for the Lakers, and Mike Bibby scored 5 points (1-for-5) in his Atlanta debut.
We couldn’t let the day pass without mentioning Mariners “slugger” Richie Sexson’s charming comments from yesterday. They’re not as bad as Stuart Scott’s “Don’t boo” admonitions, but, well, they’re close. 
Every two weeks, the gents at 
For the third consecutive season, we are proud to introduce the 
After the 
The NBA Closer is written by Matt McHale, who’s spent a night here and there praying to The Porcelain God. When he’s not sailing the seas with Captain Morgan, he can be found getting intoxicated by the NBA at 