At a time where the NBA is becoming positionless, he’s as versatile as they come. Off the court, his fish out of water tales and vignettes about manchild playfulness are legend. Giannis has crossed the line from intrigue and potential to supernova. On the court, more scrutiny will come, but Giannis looks like he’s ready for the next level.

In life, he’s paid dues. Once a Nigerian immigrant who was selling goods in the streets of Greece, to “unicorn” curiosity, to full blown NBA superstar with a $100 million contract. Other guys get to the NBA, maybe they play in a big market like Los Angeles, maybe they have a shoe deal and Johnny Football levels of hype, perhaps a rap single about their little home-schooled brother’s shoe. The Greek Freak has to settle for owning Milwaukee for the time being, at least for this year when his place on this top 50 list is the issue at hand. As Jabari Parker and the rest of the Young Bucks grow with him, expect serious damage to the Eastern Conference hierarchy, sooner than you think. Giannis already took Toronto to six games, playing brilliantly but perhaps running out of gas.

The upcoming season is complicated by Giannis mourning the recent passing of his father, Charles. Currently taking an indefinite leave, when The Greek Freak returns, expect him to continue the ascension up NBA’s Mount Olympus (sorry). He’ll be a high pick in this year’s All-Star Game, and with the way free agents keep bailing for the West, he could lead Milwaukee on a deep run, perhaps all the way to the conference finals.

Previous Rankings:
2016: No. 26
2015: No. 49
2014: Not Ranked
2013: Not Ranked

The post SLAM Top 50: Giannis Antetokounmpo, No. 7 appeared first on SLAM.

Bad news: So what? He’s never been to the playoffs.

He’s the most dominant center in the NBA today with the numbers to back it up—27 and 11 per game. DeMarcus is a big body they can’t handle in today’s hands-off game of H-O-R-S-E. He’s more athletic than stunned defenders realize, but he has the Z-Bo junk game, too. Sounds good? Well, DeMarcus can stretch the floor, hitting more than two 3-pointers a game last season. Larry Bird never did that (the NBA game is different than it used to be). Dominant bigs are like franchise running backs in the NFL. As both leagues play funny games with the rules to crank up the offense for fantasy and to make real life basketball seem more like a video game, the dominance of the big matters less.

As the latest disaster of a season was unfolding in Sactown, Anthony Davis was going off for 52, breaking Wilt’s record in the All-Star Game. The final score won’t fit on your screen. And then it was forgotten as Cousins was traded to team with the aforementioned Unibrow for the potential for frontcourt domination unheard of. If New Orleans could provide some stability, then you could see a flourishing partnership like great twin towers of the past: Sampson and Olajuwon, Duncan and Robinson. Better than that? Well… it gets complicated.

Not only that, DeMarcus is both superstar and enforcer. If someone on the other team disrespects the star, he makes them pay with violence. This may not be a good thing, and it’s time to talk about the other side of Cousins. He never reached the playoffs because the Kings were a mess. Or, were the Kings a mess because of DeMarcus? Few can match his talent. The drama he brings hasn’t been helpful yet. Separate the player from the drama if you can, but you can’t. DeMarcus brings the best low post scoring, outside touch from a big, strength, mobility, rebounding. But he also brings enough baggage to stop a plane from taking off.

When you talk about Russ Westbrook, you dismiss the negatives because they are part of the package. A guy who is so dynamic because he’s fearless will also make reckless mistakes. Cousins has a lot to offer, but his negatives don’t help him, they just take him off the court and cost his team. If he could eliminate the drama, the immaturity, the needless technicals, he would be one of the key forces in the League. Can he?

There is a plethora of excuses for why DeMarcus has never made the playoffs. The West is tough, he’s had bad coaching, Sactown dysfunction. Subpar teammates. George Karl has been butting heads and burning bridges with rebellious superstars for decades: Shawn Kemp, Big Dog Robinson, Carmelo. DeMarcus broke him. NOW, the West is more loaded than ever. DeMarcus should have more stability than ever. This year it’s time to break through, or he could see this ranking drop next year.

Previous Rankings:
2016: No. 9
2015: No. 9
2014: No. 20
2013: No. 29

Rankings are based on expected contribution in 2017-18—to players’ team, the NBA and the game.

No. 50 – Dion Waiters
No. 49 – Ben Simmons 
No. 48 – Brook Lopez
No. 47 — Harrison Barnes
No. 46 — Jrue Holiday
No. 45 — Lonzo Ball
No. 44 — Myles Turner
No. 43 — Goran Dragic
No. 42 — Andre Drummond
No. 41 — Al Horford
No. 40 — LaMarcus Aldridge
No. 39 — Kevin Love
No. 38 — Paul Millsap
No. 37 — Hassan Whiteside
No. 36 — Andrew Wiggins
No. 35 — Marc Gasol
No. 34 – DeAndre Jordan
No. 33 — Bradley Beal
No. 32 — Kemba Walker
No. 31 — CJ McCollum
No. 30 — Devin Booker
No. 29 — Nikola Jokic
No. 28 — Joel Embiid
No. 27 — Mike Conley 
No. 26 — Kyle Lowry
No. 25 — Rudy Gobert
No. 24 — Gordon Hayward
No. 23 — Kristaps Porzingis
No. 22 — Carmelo Anthony
No. 21 — DeMar DeRozan
No. 20 — Blake Griffin
No. 19 — Draymond Green
No. 18 — Chris Paul
No. 17 — Klay Thompson
No. 16 — Jimmy Butler
No. 15 — Isaiah Thomas
No. 14 — Karl-Anthony Towns
No. 13 — Damian Lillard

The post SLAM Top 50: DeMarcus Cousins, No. 12 appeared first on SLAM.

It wasn’t that long ago you were living in Greece working as a street merchant. Your rise was swift and now you’re a 6-11 PG being coached by one of the great NBA wizards, scoring 30 in an All-Star Game. In The Alchemist, a boy named Santiago experiences such a journey. He goes from being a shepherd in Andalusia to a treasure hunter underneath the pyramids of Egypt. Santiago is on a quest to develop his personal legend, as are you. To complete this journey, he must look within and face what may seem like insurmountable odds. Giannis, wherever this season takes you, if you are able to carry Milwaukee deep into the playoffs, the best you can hope for is a chance to compete against the mighty king LeBron who has owned the Eastern Conference’s NBA Finals spot since 2011. Santiago faced a similar challenge. There is much for you to learn, and by reading Coelho’s novel, you may find the inspiration you need.

—

Sam Rubenstein is a SLAM contributing writer and a high school English teacher in Brooklyn. Follow him on Twitter @SamRubenstein.

Previously
Jeremy Lin x A Canticle for Leibowitz
Karl-Anthony Towns x The Wu-Tang Manual
Damian Lillard x Walden, or Life in the Woods

The post Vaguely Literary: Giannis Antetokounmpo x The Alchemist appeared first on SLAM.

Thoreau removed himself from society to commune with nature and simple living. What emerged was Walden, a masterpiece, broken into sections, encouraging the reader to abandon aspirational living, to truly learn who you are by detaching from what’s expected. A very popular read in Portland. But here’s the thing, Damian: The Blazers are not going to win a championship this year.

You are one of the top young guards in the League; you’re in a conference with Westbrook, Harden and Curry. Don’t worry about the All-Star snub. Thoreau explored how you can gain happiness by looking at the big picture, seeing competition for what it is. It’s a difficult read because of some archaic language, but think of the impact on your bars. As you move on through this season, putting up stats and highlights on a futile quest for maybe some playoff glory, you have time to sit back and read.

—

Sam Rubenstein is a SLAM contributing writer and a high school English teacher in Brooklyn. Follow him on Twitter @SamRubenstein.

Previously
Jeremy Lin x A Canticle for Leibowitz
Karl-Anthony Towns x The Wu-Tang Manual

The post Vaguely Literary: Damian Lillard x Walden appeared first on SLAM.

RZA laid out a plan for conquest that bore fruit in the mid-’90s. Read about it in this manual, broken down into 36 chambers. His career began as fake smiling cornball ladies’ man Prince Rakeem, forced to make terrible radio-friendly songs, which must be what it’s like to go from domination at Kentucky to lottery-bound chaos. Sure, times are tough now, as you go through your growing pains. You have big nights now and then, but you are not ready yet, a lesson learned somewhere in RZA’s philosophical and business musings.

The Wu-Tang Manual is all about having a greater plan for the future. Karl, you’ve already begun to cultivate a reputation as being “different” from other future stars. One day you’ll become a playoff staple, an MVP candidate, just like Prince Rakeem went on to become the RZArector Ruler Zig Zag Zig Allah, whose running mates GZA, Ol’ Dirty, Method Man, Rae and Ghost could’ve been first team all-rap from ’93 to ’96, maybe a precursor to the Towns-Wiggins-Rubio Wolves. KAT, as you adapt, it’s the perfect time to refine your strategy. Read this and soon you’ll be writing your own manifesto.

—

Sam Rubenstein is a SLAM contributing writer and a high school English teacher in Brooklyn. Follow him on Twitter @SamRubenstein.

Previously:
Jeremy Lin x A Canticle for Leibowitz

The post Vaguely Literary: Karl-Anthony Towns x The Wu-Tang Manual appeared first on SLAM.

Into this void comes Jeremy Lin, an intelligent man. When you unleashed Linsanity on an unsuspecting world, you realized a dream, setting the NBA on fire. Of course there were powers that tried to crush you, making a martyr out of your time as the star of the league, because that dream couldn’t be allowed to flourish. This is where Leibowitz and his future disciples find themselves. The world, in your case, the Brooklyn Nets, needs to be revived. As the heart of the rebuilding in Brooklyn, this is your task. The novel takes place over centuries, while the human race keeps making the same mistakes time and time again, like NBA GMs. Can you be the savior your world needs? The Nets are Jeremy Lin: a long shot, a moment in time of greatness, some good moments, but still looking for a home. You’re a busy man these days, but Canticle is essential reading to understand your unique place in the universe.

—

Sam Rubenstein is a SLAM contributing writer and a high school English teacher in Brooklyn. Follow him on Twitter @SamRubenstein.

Previously:
LeBron James x Beowulf
Jimmy Butler x The Hobbit
DeAndre Jordan x Animal Farm

The post Vaguely Literary: Jeremy Lin x A Canticle for Leibowitz appeared first on SLAM.

Listen DeAndre, you signed a huge deal—you are going to make over $150 million in your life. This is incredible. Still, you will never have the money or the power of your boss Steve Ballmer. Sure, he goes to games dancing like a lunatic, buying material happiness for his workers with locker room gifts, and he puts a big happy face on decades of Clipper-dom. That’s what the more fortunate animals on the farm get to do. Some animals are more equal than others.

Your Clippers successfully ousted Donald Sterling, a rare sports revolution where the public felt sympathy for young, gifted millionaires. In the novel, the farm animals rise up and get rid of the farmer. All’s well that ends well? Not exactly. On the court you’re still stuck behind Golden State, a reunited Durant and Westbrook, and the veterans down in San Antonio. It could take something as drastic as revolution to get the Clippers where they need to be. All the money in the world won’t make those ordered playoff fouls go away.

And then there’s your summer drama. When your whole public relations disaster with Mark Cuban unfolded, some people were like, “How dare this ungrateful spoiled brat make a promise and then not be man enough to look him in the eye!” You don’t owe Mark Cuban anything; you were a free agent, you took care of yourself. Look to your point guard, who you are supposedly feuding with. He’s the leader of the Player’s Union, not your enemy. “They” will try to divide and conquer you, keep you blind to the true power you have. That’s what they do on the farm. DeAndre, use your head, don’t just be a guy who runs and jumps and can’t hit free throws.

The season is taxing, but Animal Farm is a short read, something you could have done when waiting out that silly free-agent signing blockade. You said you killed time that day by playing video games and ordering food, which is fine, but if you make the time for Animal Farm, you might wake up to what’s happening all around you.

—

Sam Rubenstein is a SLAM contributing writer and a high school English teacher in Brooklyn. Follow him on Twitter @SamRubenstein.

Previously:
LeBron James x Beowulf
Jimmy Butler x The Hobbit
Mike Conley Jr x A Separate Peace
Stephen Curry x The Outsiders
Dwyane Wade x MacBeth
Andrew Wiggins x The Call of the Wild
Kobe Bryant x Dracula
Kristaps Porzingis x The Crucible

The post Vaguely Literary: DeAndre Jordan x Animal Farm appeared first on SLAM.

Over the summer, other media outlets made their moves. The Wall Street Journal interviewed some people and The New Yorker wrote a silly version of this column to try and make people laugh. We learned that Derek Fisher, channeling Phil, offered you a kid’s book called The Positive Dog and The New Yorker column offered The Vampire Lestat by Anne Rice with a joke about skinny Europeans. Kristaps, none of that is going to help you in your new world.

What will help you is The Crucible by Arthur Miller. The backstory is that Puritans left their homeland because of religious persecution and came to America. As soon as things start to go sideways, the witch hunt is on. Phil Jackson, your benefactor, likes to think of himself as a “purist.” Sounds like the puritans, the very same people who in this drama turn their peaceful world into full-blown hysteria. When the Garden was Eden? Your Knicks have a lot of work to do.

There’s a character in The Crucible who comes to town to clean up the mess, Reverend John Hale. He’s a spiritual healer, much like Phil. He soon discovers the environment to be so toxic, people turn on each other to save themselves. Welcome to the NBA, Kristaps! You will soon learn that when you play for the Knicks, every three-game winning streak turns into a fitting for championship rings, and every loss is doomsday and mockery. The problem you want to avoid is being the one they decide to blame. The people who will cover and dissect every move in your NBA career bear uncanny resemblance to our villain, Abigail Williams and her minions. Are you going to stand on your convictions like John Proctor? He is one of the great tragic heroes in all of literature.

The Crucible was written at a time when America was experiencing the Red Scare and McCarthyism. Arthur Miller wrote about a different era to make the connection, and hopefully as you read about America in the late 1600s, you don’t feel history repeating itself around you. Be careful, but also stay true to who you are as you navigate this difficult time.

—

Sam Rubenstein is a SLAM contributing writer and a high school English teacher in Brooklyn. Follow him on Twitter @SamRubenstein.

Previously:
LeBron James x Beowulf
Jimmy Butler x The Hobbit
Mike Conley Jr x A Separate Peace
Stephen Curry x The Outsiders
Dwyane Wade x MacBeth
Andrew Wiggins x The Call of the Wild
Kobe Bryant x Dracula

The post Vaguely Literary: Kristaps Porzingis x The Crucible appeared first on SLAM.

The title of the novel screams out what everyone wants from you. Great Expectations is the great coming of age story, written hundreds of years ago, often imitated to this day. It is the story of a boy named Pip and his rise. Over the course of his life, Pip encounters all types of people, from hardened criminals to refined ladies and gentlemen. In your young life, you’ve already done the same, growing up in Chicago while attending a charter school. Your life was not much different from millions of other kids, and then things started to change, didn’t they? As you grew physically, your basketball prominence rose, people started to treat you differently. Your good fortune with your well-documented growth spurt took your life to staggering heights that few can relate to.

Pip was a lucky boy, too, from a chance encounter to mysterious benefactors, and he soon has people watching over him to make sure he succeeds—but who are they, and why? The plot of the novel thrusts his life forward as he attempts to rise in social class and wealth. When the NBA season began, there was talk that you had already become the best player in the League. You have all the ability to make it real, though there are forces out there that will try and keep you from your destiny. Stephen Curry, James Harden, Russell Westbrook and Kevin Durant are all MVP types in the West who will battle you for much of your career. Pretty soon there will be talk about you leaving behind your NBA home of New Orleans for the big market that will claim you.

The lesson of Dickens’ novel is to be true to who you are, and that the “great expectations” you may have for yourself shouldn’t force you down that darker path of ambition. It’s a long book with 59 chapters, but it’s summertime. This is the last chance you’ll have before the grind of the season takes you away, and off you go on the classic journey that Dickens created for you.

Sam Rubenstein is a SLAM contributing writer and a high school English teacher in Brooklyn. Follow him on Twitter @SamRubenstein.

Previously:
LeBron James x Beowulf
Jimmy Butler x The Hobbit
Mike Conley Jr x A Separate Peace
Stephen Curry x The Outsiders
Dwyane Wade x MacBeth
Andrew Wiggins x The Call of the Wild
Kobe Bryant x Dracula

The post Vaguely Literary: Anthony Davis x Great Expectations appeared first on SLAM.

Fifty years after killing the monsters, he has been a great King, a revered veteran warrior like you. As you have learned this year, going back home presents its own set of challenges. You needed to get your roster in shape and teach your men how to win, while everyone circled your kingdom looking for a sign of weakness that King James is no longer the King. For Beowulf, the other tribes are watching, waiting for the king to fall so they can attack his people. Home is also under assault from a ferocious dragon. Beowulf knows he will die in this last great battle, but he must fight to secure his legacy in the only challenge worthy of a living legend.

Your greatest challenge is winning that extremely elusive ring for your hometown, which has been cursed as sadistically as any realm in a fictional epic. This is a battle that will take everything you’ve got, all of the experience you gained playing for championships, while your physical dominance begins to abandon you at your age. Your teammates will have to help you as Beowulf’s men had to come to his aid when he faced the dragon alone. It may come down to a well-placed dagger after the dragon has bitten you, as the poison drains your life. Metaphorically! Like someone else making a play when you are tired. Are you able to inspire Kyrie, Kevin, Iman and the rest of your men to sacrifice for you as you could once exert constant energy for 48 minutes?

Yeah, it’s dramatic. You’ll love it. We all saw you reading The Hunger Games, which does have obvious parallels to a Playoff run. But that’s kids stuff. This is the origin, the Bill Russell to Anthony Davis. With the way the Eastern Conference has played out, you have some relaxing time before the Playoffs, enough time to read an epic saga before you craft your own.

Sam Rubenstein is a SLAM contributing writer and a high school English teacher in Brooklyn. Follow him on Twitter @SamRubenstein.

Previously:
Jimmy Butler x The Hobbit
Mike Conley Jr x A Separate Peace
Stephen Curry x The Outsiders
Dwyane Wade x MacBeth
Andrew Wiggins x The Call of the Wild
Kobe Bryant x Dracula

The post Vaguely Literary: LeBron James x Beowulf appeared first on SLAM.

Much like Jimmy Butler, Bilbo Baggins was humble. He wanted to live his life in The Shire, not bothering anybody, and he definitely didn’t want the spotlight. He was dragged into a world of wizards and dragons, dwarves and elves, giant spiders, trolls, orcs and goblins, and became a hero.

He was the Middle Earth version of a role player. Bilbo was brought along on an insane quest as a specialist, a thief. You are a specialist, a defensive lockdown expert, and much like Bilbo your task seems difficult if not impossible—to steal from a dragon’s hoard or to shut down elite NBA scorers, so the Chicago Bulls can finally return to the promised land of the Finals. Bilbo has to bring the dwarves back to their promised land of Erebor, and that is no easy task.

Even as an All-Star, you have still cast yourself as a role player. The heroism and drama is for the likes Joakim Noah and Pau Gasol. You’ve gone so far as to make a point that you are not a star. And yet, you find yourself as a key figure in the oncoming NBA Playoff war.

A sleeping dragon awaits you in Cleveland. Goblins and orcs in DC. The mysterious forest of Atlanta. You were on the cover of SI as the unlikely star. A theme of The Hobbit is that great heroism comes from the unlikeliest places. D-Rose is a lot like Thorin Oakenshield, a king who did everything for his homeland but is cursed and doomed and needs others to help him see the right path. You have to talk sense into him, you have to succeed where he has failed, the deep waters of the NBA Playoffs. And even if you win it all, there is something you acquire on your journey, a certain ring, which will haunt you. It’s a great story. You should read it to get mentally ready, so you can make it there and back again.

Sam Rubenstein is a SLAM contributing writer and a high school English teacher in Brooklyn. Follow him on Twitter @SamRubenstein.

Previously:
Mike Conley Jr x A Separate Peace
Stephen Curry x The Outsiders
Dwyane Wade x MacBeth
Andrew Wiggins x The Call of the Wild
Kobe Bryant x Dracula

The post Vaguely Literary: Jimmy Butler x The Hobbit appeared first on SLAM.

Greg Oden could have been the one. You, Mike Conley, were always in his shadow, as he received most of the credit for the overwhelming dominance of Lawrence North High School and Ohio State, where you stayed together and nearly destroyed the Billy Donovan dynasty.

Draft day, everyone knows about Oden and Durant, and Al Horford, star of the shockingly great Hawks. There were notables like your new teammate Jeff Green, Joakim Noah and Nick Young. You are one of the forgotten men of that Draft, despite the fact that you’re a point guard bringing your team to the Playoffs, winning series year after year, knocking out No. 1 seeds, sending Chris Paul home for the summer. Once Kyle Lowry was sent away, you were able to blossom as the show runner, yet mention the Grizz and people talk Gasol and Z-Bo. With Lowry experiencing wild success up North, you fade even further from the spotlight. Maybe this motivates you?

In the novel A Separate Peace by John Knowles, two friends named Gene and Phineas come up through an elite prep school together. Gene tells the story; Finny is the charismatic star athlete getting all the attention, just like Greg in your high school and college days. Bad injuries happen to Finny, and those injuries derail his future, so you can see where this is going. The boys have a reunion where the past comes back to confront them.

A key element of the novel is that Gene may have caused the injury to Finny, whereas the Oden situation has nothing to do with you. Still, he was supposed to be a League-changing figure, and now here you are with a career that towers over his. Maybe you think about your days with Oden, maybe not. Gene is able to reflect on those times and find peace in his life, but first he has to look back. Memphis is built for another Playoff run as an entire team in the shadows. You have a few months before you have to steel yourself for the Playoff wars, which is the perfect time to sit back and read a novel that speaks directly to your past. Just don’t read it while sitting on a tree branch overlooking a pond. Read the book and you’ll know why.

Sam Rubenstein is a SLAM contributing writer and a high school English teacher in Brooklyn. Follow him on Twitter @SamRubenstein.

Previously:
Stephen Curry x Outsiders
Dwyane Wade x MacBeth
Andrew Wiggins x The Call of the Wild
Kobe Bryant x Dracula

The post Vaguely Literary: Mike Conley x A Separate Peace appeared first on SLAM.

In the book, Ponyboy belongs to the Greasers, the ones who don’t have all the money, and the war is against the Socs, the rich kids from the other side of town. Now, even though you grew up as the son of a legendary NBA sniper, and your team is bursting with talent, the Golden State Warriors have always been a rag tag bunch in the shadows. Your squad hasn’t been a serious threat to win it all since the late ’70s. It’s been fun to watch the Warriors over the years, but never with the implication that they were competing for the ring. That’s been the domain of the Lakers, Celtics, Spurs, Bulls, Pistons, Rockets and Heat, with a random team thrown in now and then. Maybe you felt this way in college, taking Davidson up against mighty Kansas. Face it: As amazing as your career has been thus far, unless you’re on one of those established power teams, you’re an outsider.

Ponyboy has to get out of town after some stuff goes down, which gives him time to think. The Outsiders has been popular with students for decades because of that “stuff,” which is violence, but also because the narrator is easy to relate to. People feel they can relate to you, Steph Curry, because they don’t see you as some untouchable genetic superman. You are the perfect first-person narrator for a journey through the treacherous lands of the NBA. The Western Conference is a dangerous place.

There’s a key moment when Ponyboy learns the lesson of a Robert Frost poem, that nothing gold remains that way forever, but we can still cherish the glorious days. Your team is one of the big stories of the first half, and soon enough there will be real pressure put on you to live up to a higher standard. Enjoy this time, but also make time for The Outsiders, which truly is a reflection of these days. Stay Golden State.

Sam Rubenstein is a SLAM contributor and a high school English teacher in Brooklyn. Follow him on Twitter @SamRubenstein.

Previously:
Dwyane Wade x MacBeth
Andrew Wiggins x The Call of the Wild
Kobe Bryant x Dracula

The post Vaguely Literary: Stephen Curry x The Outsiders appeared first on SLAM.

You were a noble champion, a 30-ppg scorer, a respected leader. Your career has turned out much better than King Duncan, who was left in the wake of MacBeth’s ambition. Much has been said about your decline, how your best days are behind you, but the pain has made you stronger. While others move around seeking glory, you’ve been loyal to one city your whole career, and for that you should rule.

You do still have one of the great characters in your life though. Pat Riley is much like Lady Macbeth, one of the great motivators, who worked the system for her benefit. She lights a fire under her husband, pushing him, increasing the pressure when it needs to be turned up, playing mind games, refusing to cave in. You’ve been privy to Riley the coach and team president’s finest inspirational moments, where you have seen all of these skills on display. Granted, Lady MacBeth goes insane, but worse things have been said about Riley.

If there is a character you might relate to, it’s Malcolm, the true heir. His day is coming, but he must make a bold move to restore order to Scotland, just like your Miami Heat could still rule the Eastern Conference. As the play progresses, it’s clear that somebody has to take MacBeth down. Christmas Day, 5 p.m., the NBA has set a stage as dramatic as any Shakespearean drama. You will have your showdown. To prepare, you have some reading to do.

Sam Rubenstein is a SLAM contributing writer and a high school English teacher in Brooklyn. Follow him on Twitter @SamRubenstein.

The post Vaguely Literary: Dwyane Wade x MacBeth appeared first on SLAM.

The story is told through the perspective of different characters writing each other letters. Count Dracula’s obsessive fan Renfield is like your legions of supporters and disciples. Characters such as Jonathan Harker, Dr. John Seward and Quincey Morris are the pesky little people who annoy Kobe Bryant with their irrelevance. Nobody remembers any of them; the only other character with any staying power is the great nemesis, Dr. Van Helsing. The count is based on a mash up of real conquerors like Vlad the Impaler and Countess Bathory, colored with mythology, much like your life.

Your recent Sports Illustrated profile referenced Twilight, a popular book series written by a woman who admits to never having read Dracula by Bram Stoker. To put it in your terms, it would be like training to be an NBA shooting guard, choosing not to watch Jordan highlights. You need to study the masters to build upon their greatness. Now, Dracula is commonly thought of as the most evil, sadistic character out. He’s pretty smooth though, and downright charming. Isn’t this the persona you have been crafting in your later years? He sleeps in coffins lined with earth from Transylvania, avoiding garlic, crosses and mirrors. You’ve been accused of equal weirdness, but you gotta do what you gotta do to be great.

The only way to kill Dracula is with a stake through the heart, and even then you better not miss. The same has been said about the indomitable will of Kobe Bryant. People have been writing you off: You’re too old, you’re injured and your team is no good. They have been trying to bury that stake in your heart. As you keep your aging body going this season, there will be hundreds of hours in the training room where you can make your way through this gothic horror classic.

One note: Do NOT see the new Dracula prequel movie under any circumstances.

Sam Rubenstein is a SLAM contributing writer and a high school English teacher in Brooklyn. Follow him on Twitter @SamRubenstein.

Previously: Andrew Wiggins x The Call of the Wild

The post Vaguely Literary: Kobe Bryant x Dracula appeared first on SLAM.

Then you were shipped off to Minnesota in the middle of the night where it’s cold, and playing for the Wolves could be brutal.

This is all portrayed in Jack London’s classic novel The Call of the Wild, which is set in your homeland of Canada. It’s a novel told from the perspective of a dog named Buck. Don’t be offended that I’m recommending you relate to a dog; we all wish we were as noble as Buck. This book is the Michael Jordan of Anthropomorphism (treating animals as people). It’s an honor.

A judge on a nice California estate, where he was treated like a king, raised Buck. He went on sporty hunts, slept on his warm belly in the sun and was fed the choicest meat by an adoring family. Then one day a worker with gambling debts sells him into the life of a sled dog in the Yukon and he is viciously beaten, learning the harsh realities of his new world.

All of that is coming for you, Wiggins. A franchise that has never won anything and struggles to make the Playoffs can be a cold, dark place, even for a gifted super athlete like you. Not to scare you, but your new team has escaped the first round once in 26 years. KG couldn’t win a thing, and then five minutes after he left, he became one of the League’s great winners.

Learn from Buck. Know whom your enemies and friends are. Fight for what is yours. In the novel, Buck moves from place to place, from owner to owner, navigating the alpha dog wars, which totally resemble an NBA roster. When Buck finally finds what you could call love, it is quickly taken from him and he ends up wandering the wilderness as a feared ghost dog of vengeance. Make them pay Andrew; make them pay for what they’ve done to you.

You have a few months when everybody will be obsessing over the Cleveland side of the deal and they won’t even notice what is or isn’t happening in Minny. That’s a great time to get some reading done.

The post Vaguely Literary: Andrew Wiggins x The Call of the Wild appeared first on SLAM.

The narrator of the story is a pilot who has crash landed in the desert. He has a very serious job, that pilot, but when he was a kid he was a creative artist whose drawing of a boa constrictor digesting an elephant was lost on most adults. The story jumps ahead to the desert, where the pilot meets a strange character, the Little Prince. Now, I’m not going to summarize the whole book here or tell you the full meaning because it’s up to each reader to decide. It’s a beautiful story about enlightenment, love, secrecy, death, you name it. Everyone who reads it remembers the story of the rose, the asteroid and the snake.

Basically, The Little Prince is the perfect book for someone who resents the fact that we are forced to grow up. All of these adults have a need to put people into categories, whether you are a businessman or a lamppost operator or a king. They say you have to be a slashing shooting guard or a rebounding forward, you have to know your role on your team and you can’t do what makes you happy, like celebrating threes before they go in. You can’t go toe to toe with LeBron James on Christmas Day because you haven’t paid those dues, you are not that level superstar. People will tear you down and crush your spirit. Don’t listen to them.

Swaggy P, you are not one who needs to be told the joys of acting somewhat childish. Still, armed with this literary classic, you have what you need to show them all that you get the world in ways they’ve forgotten about. Your backstory is well-documented, how you faced tragedy when you were a boy and bounced around different schools. With The Little Prince in your arsenal, you don’t have to revisit those stories, you can tell the media and fans “I read this classic piece of literature…” and Nick Young will have the last laugh.

Previously:
Kevin Durant x The Picture of Dorian Gray
Chris Paul x Of Mice and Men
Carmelo Anthony x Lord of the Flies
Rajon Rondo x The Catcher in the Rye
Dwight Howard x Ender’s Game

The post Vaguely Literary: Nick Young x The Little Prince appeared first on SLAM.

Carmelo Anthony, top 4! If Kobe’s magic blood renewal is a scam, Durant needed Westbrook more than we thought, and the playoff minutes finally chip away at LeBron, then that would mean… no let’s not go there… yet.

This is a big turn around for someone who was beginning to turn a vast segment of the basketball public off. A little over a year ago there was a belief that the Knicks were a better team with Melo away from the team, injured. He was supposed to give up his kingdom to Linsanity, which now feels like some weird fantasy that couldn’t have happened. Instead he took control of the Knicks organization and raised the stakes.

Last season Melo took his game to a new level, leading the League in scoring, carrying the Knicks to the forgotten land for them—the second round of the Playoffs. He was unstoppable for weeks at a time, throwing up 40-point games in his sleep. Melo was the heart of a 13-game winning streak and even had some Knicks fans believing their team could be a threat to Miami. He was getting heavy MVP buzz early in the year as he led a Knicks team that jacked threes at a record clip, took care of the ball, and played solid defense.

He also missed time with all kinds of mysterious injury treatments and got caught up in some silly controversies, whether it was the Honey Nut Cheerios thing or the usual accusations of ball hogging. The most amazing thing about Carmelo is that the smile is still there. Through all of the business and the controversies, the hand-wringing and the judgment, he still goes through life with a smile on his face. That probably annoys some people who want to use that as evidence he doesn’t care. Not true.

Melo’s latest foray into the news is that he is going to do the financially savvy thing and opt out of his contract to test the market. Will we look at him differently when he’s the highest paid player in the League? Probably. People will use his cap-killing salary to bring him down, but let’s enjoy what Melo is at the moment—an electric performer (most nights) who can carry a team singlehandedly and injured on a playoff run.

By the time the Playoffs rolled around last year, Melo was the one-man Broadway show he’s always wanted to be. The bad JR Smith made an appearance, his Hall of Fame PG went 10 playoff games without scoring a single point to close out his career (!!!), Tyson Chandler and Amar’e were “ineffective,” Felton and Shump had some moments, but Melo was carrying a decaying squad on his back. If he could have finished that dunk over Roy Hibbert, it might have carried the Knicks to the conference finals (leap of faith, but I’m building a case here). There really aren’t that many guys you can stick on a team and feel like their presence puts you in the second round. Melo wasn’t always that guy, but he may be now. Playing for that free-agent contract this year, you’d think he’ll be insanely motivated. Next year all bets are off. And such is the up-and-down nature of Carmelo.

He’d dropped all the way down to No. 10 last year. I’ve been writing the Melo Top 50 piece for three years now, because I teach at a NYC high school and my students LOVE the man. Once again, I defer to one of my students for the final words on the write-up.

Chris Prudhomme for Mr. Rubenstein:

Carmelo Kiyan Anthony, The Knight in shining armor to Knick Fans Worldwide. Last year he arguably had his best season. He led the NBA in points and led his team to the number 2 seed in the East. Not to mention, he actually played some DEFENSE.

I’ve heard it all as a Melo supporter, from “He just watches his assignments score” to “He can’t guard a soda machine.” But this past season he actually played some D. Yeah you can say he mainly guarded power forwards last year, but the man played D. And on the other end of the court Melo performed on a level beyond comprehension. He may have shot the ball a little too much last season, but that extra shooting crowned him as the scoring champion of the 2012-13 NBA season. He can beat the defender in EVERY way. He is just a Swiss Army Knife filled with offensive weapons.

A prime example of The Offensive Craftsmanship of Carmelo Anthony is when he tied his career high against a star-less Miami Heat. Yeah you can say, “LeBron wasn’t there,” but when the Heat play the Knicks Shane Battier has to guard Melo, which he did. And he got completely decimated. Michael Jordan once said, “I’ve always believed that if you put in the work, the results will come.” And Melo is working to a Championship, and he’s getting closer and closer and when he works a little harder he can be an NBA Champion and Number #1 on the SLAM Magazine Top 50 Countdown.

[poll id=”621″]

Rankings are based on expected contribution in ’13-14—to players’ team, the League and the game.

The post Top 50: Carmelo Anthony, no. 4 appeared first on SLAM.

Kevin Garnett has played over 50,000 NBA minutes including the Playoffs, and he’s been a screaming lunatic for every one of them. There are other players on the Brooklyn Nets who are “better” than KG at this point in his NBA lifetime. The guy is heading into his 19th (!!!!) season, and he’s just three years younger than the coach. His stats have been fading away over the past few years, and most people would have understood if he called it a career. His Hall of Fame ticket is already stamped and there’s not much left for him to prove. There’s about $25 million coming his way over the next two years, which is plenty of motivation, but it seemed like last season people were nudging him toward the next phase of life.

If only he were the type of guy who could go away quietly. The last time KG changed teams, he took a mess that was lost in the NBA wasteland to an insta-ring. He showed up in Boston and brought a passion for playing defense and excitement about the team concept. The one who failed seven years in a row in the first round became a distant memory as KG’s completely over-the-top intensity manifested itself in that Championship and a lifetime of memorable playoff memories.

The Brooklyn Nets are desperate for all of those things, but mostly the passion. They swung and missed on LeBron, Dwight, Carmelo, you name it. Their first season in their new location had a few moments, but nothing to match the hype that comes with all things Brooklyn. I live in Brooklyn and there was Gerald Wallace propaganda on display near my home. Yes, the Nets were desperate to generate some type of on court buzz to match everything else they put into their branding. Kevin Garnett has “it” and that makes the Nets exciting, even dangerous. But this isn’t about them, this is about him and his place on the list.

At this point in his career, Kevin Garnett is the fourth or fifth best offensive player among Nets starters. It won’t be his job to put up points. With Brook Lopez taking deep jumpers and staying far away from the glass, it will be up to KG to rebound, intimidate inside, and keep the team blood flowing. Last year, Deron Williams had a game where he hit 9 threes in the first half. The response from the general public was that finally something exciting happened at the Barclay’s Center.

If KG provided nothing else, at least he brings some good pageantry. Headbutting before the game, screaming at rookies, making inappropriate comments on the court about breakfast cereals. He brings a lot to your team, and he becomes the vocal/spiritual/emotional leader of a team that desperately needed one. That’s enough to get you a spot on the Top 50.

KG makes it feel like there’s a big game in the building that night, even if he’s no longer the player he used to be. His presence turns Nets-Knicks into a legitimate blood rival feud. He even has some people wondering if Brooklyn can disrupt LeBron’s march towards his seven-peat. Realistically, KG will spend part of this season on the shelf, stalking the sidelines in a tasteful sweater, screaming at his teammates. He might miss chunks of the season, and he won’t play huge minutes. And that’s OK. He’s still an impact player from the locker room and on the bench. He’ll be interviewed on the bench during games, and those interviews will be funny and charming. When he does play, the Nets will play well.

Fine, a lot of this is intangibles talking, and in today’s world everything has to be justified with data. The truth is that he’s not as good as he used to be, and he never will be again (unless there’s a raging PED epidemic in the NBA, and hey you never know). He’ll likely average less than 14 ppg. His rebounds and blocks won’t jump out at you, except there will be nights where he turns back the clock and you remember. His fans will direct you to his per 36 minute stats and anything else they can use to build a case.

So while Kevin Garnett might not be as “good” as say, LaMarcus Aldridge, he’s still got qualities that make him Top 50. If he feels disrespected, slighted, overlooked, then everything changes.

[poll id=”587″]

Rankings are based on expected contribution in ’13-14—to players’ team, the League and the game.

The post Top 50: Kevin Garnett, no. 38 appeared first on SLAM.

Carmelo Anthony is coming off one of the most bizarre up and down seasons for an athlete. I don’t want to rehash everything in drawn out detail so here’s a quick recap of the timeline: savior, selfish shooter, out of shape, loser, injured lazy millionaire, expendable (during LINSANITY), selfish superstar (for likely ruining LINSANITY once he returns), changed man, great teammate, selfish primadonna (for ending LINSANITY), coach killer, winner, complete player, unselfish superstar, elite player, not on the level of LeBron, Playoff savior, but still a selfish loser, critique of foolish NBA GMs who can’t stop themselves from throwing money away, Olympian, unstoppable bully of the Olympics, frontrunner, dignified Olympic winner, K.O.N.Y.

I think that covers his past year. So, where are we with Carmelo Anthony right now?

He’s still what he’s always been from day 1. Carmelo Anthony is:

One of the best pure scorers in the NBA. Too big, strong, and aggressive for small forwards. Too quick and sneaky and skilled for power forwards.

A ball stopper.

A streaky shooter who takes too many threes for someone with so much technique and so many moves inside.

Not a rebounder.

An unmotivated defender, but not that bad if properly motivated.

A likeable person, someone who plays with a smile, and is more mature than he used to be when he was always shooting himself in the foot.

Not a flopper or actor, which is nice.

But can be a complainer and doesn’t get back when complaining.

The only superstar athlete who hydrates with chocolate milk like it’s gatorade.

Occasionally a leader. Usually the guy who does his job by getting his numbers.

Not LeBron, Kobe, Durant, or most of the other names that will be appearing on this list soon enough.

And that’s OK.

—

I am a teacher at a public school in Brooklyn and after we had a visit from esteemed guest speakers @langwhitaker and @jakeappleman on Wednesday, I left it to some of my students to sing Melo’s praises for extra credit.

Quadel Yates wrote, “Carmelo Anthony is a great player. He achieved a lot in the past year, taking the Knicks to a new level of hype. Ever since he joined the Knicks, their fan base has grown larger. He is a great shooter, setting a new record for the most three pointers in one game during the Olympics. Carmelo deserves his spot on the Top 50 players of the year” no matter what spot it is because Mr. Rubenstein would never accidentally show us the rankings before they were made available to the public.

Alejandro Duran stated, “Carmelo Anthony should be considered for the top 10 because of his amazing career so far. I am a Knicks fan because of Melo and he truly is the player who sets the tone and heats up the whole team.”

Noted young NBA historian Chris Prudhomme conducted research and concluded, “Carmelo Anthony is the definition of clutch. He has hit 14 game-winners in his career. In the past 10 years he has led the NBA in game-winning shot percentage. He is arguably the most offensively skilled player in the NBA. He is unstoppable when he catches the vibe of the game. Although he doesn’t have a ring YET it will come soon and if it does not, some of the NBA’s greats retired without rings, like Charles Barkley, Dominique Wilkins, and John Stockton.”

I also want to take this opportunity to remind my students that what I just did was called a CITING A DIRECT QUOTATION. DO THAT!

As for Melo, he is a true superstar, and now he gets to play with some of the oldest and most likely to get injured people in the NBA. This year cannot possibly top last year’s rollercoaster of drama for him.

Or… can… it…

[poll id=”476″]

Notes
• Rankings are based solely on projected ’12-13 performance.
• Contributors to this list include: Jake Appleman, Maurice Bobb, Rodger Bohn, Brendan Bowers, Franklyn Calle, David Cassilo, Bryan Crawford, Adam Figman, Eldon Khorshidi, Eddie Maisonet III, Ryne Nelson, Ben Osborne, Allen Powell II, Sam Rubenstein, Jonathan Santiago, Abe Schwadron, Leo Sepkowitz, Dave Spahn, Ben Taylor, Tzvi Twersky, Peter Walsh, Tracy Weissenberg, Yaron Weitzman, DeMarco Williams and Dave Zirin.
• Want more of the SLAMonline Top 50? Check out the archive.

The post Top 50: Carmelo Anthony, no. 10 appeared first on SLAM.

by Sam Rubenstein

Previously:
Samuel L. Jackson is Derek Fisher
Paul Rudd is Shane Battier
Ryan Reynolds is Tony Parker
Justin Timberlake is Rajon Rondo
Tyler, the Creator is Michael Beasley
Swizz Beatz is Joakim Noah

The post Which NBA Player Are You? appeared first on SLAM.

by Sam Rubenstein

Previously:
Paul Rudd is Shane Battier
Ryan Reynolds is Tony Parker
Justin Timberlake is Rajon Rondo
Tyler, the Creator is Michael Beasley
Swizz Beatz is Joakim Noah
Prodigy is Monta Ellis

The post Which NBA Player Are You? appeared first on SLAM.

by Sam Rubenstein

Previously:
Ryan Reynolds is Tony Parker
Neil Patrick Harris is Ray Allen
Justin Timberlake is Rajon Rondo
Tyler, the Creator is Michael Beasley
Swizz Beatz is Joakim Noah
Donald Trump is Paul Pierce
Prodigy is Monta Ellis

The post Which NBA Player Are You? appeared first on SLAM.

by Sam Rubenstein

Previously:
Tyler, the Creator is Michael Beasley
Swizz Beatz is Joakim Noah
Donald Trump is Paul Pierce
Prodigy is Monta Ellis

The post Which NBA Player Are You? appeared first on SLAM.

by Sam Rubenstein

The post Which NBA Player Are You? appeared first on SLAM.

Carmelo Anthony is not only a top-10 NBA player and arguably the best pure scorer in the NBA today, but he is the best thing to happen to the Knicks in years. Amar’e is the pioneer of the return of Knicks’ pride movement, pulling the team back into relevancy again, but it was Melo who made them a team that people actually would turn on their TVs to watch again.

Back when I was in ninth grade at a public high school in NYC, the city was crazy about the Knicks. I remember the day after the infamous Charles Smith game, kids in my school wearing Bulls hats were viciously beaten. My Global Studies teacher, Mr. Harris, was so upset about the game, he went around the room and demanded we all give a reason why the Knicks lost. People really, REALLY cared about the Knicks back when I was in ninth grade, and on through the Van Gundy era. People stopped caring as the ’00s were a lost decade.

I mention all of this because I now teach Ninth Grade English Language Arts at a public school in Canarsie, Brooklyn. Like the No. 1 movie at the box office recently, The Lion King (!!!!), it’s the Circle of Life. (And yes, The Lion King being No. 1 at the box office in 2011 is an example of the Circle of Life in itself.) I’ve been working with adolescents and teens in Manhattan, the Bronx and Brooklyn over the past four years, and when I have talked to them about basketball, maybe 1 percent of them would admit that they were Knicks fans. I did notice that a lot of kids from NYC were Carmelo fans, even when he was with Denver.

Why?

Is it because, like Michael Jordan, he is technically from Brooklyn, even if it was just for the early years of his childhood? Is it because of the laid back, easy style of his game that masks flawless technique? Is it as simple as that he has a good personality?

All I know is that in my experience, today’s NYC High School kids have become NY Knicks fans because of Carmelo, and for that I thank him. Now the students I teach get to experience the same joy and pain I once felt back in the day. I chose to share this assignment with two of my ninth graders from last year, currently in the 10th grade.

For the official SLAMonline piece on Carmelo, we came up with the idea of recording some audio at lunch time one day. Think of it as SLAM Radio—all about Melo.

Enough pregame, this is Nasir, Ramshar and Ernie Johnsonstein on Carmelo Anthony.

I think we covered everything that matters. I promised them I would run their top-50 list:

They said Carmelo is better than the Golden Boy MVP! That will not go over well with the public. But as far as our mini radio show (podcast?) went, excellent work fellas.

Notes
• Rankings are based solely on projected ’11-12 performance.
• Contributors to this list include: Maurice Bobb, Shannon Booher, David Cassilo, Bryan Crawford, Sandy Dover, Adam Figman, Jon Jaques, Eldon Khorshidi, Ryne Nelson, Doobie Okon, Ben Osborne, Quinn Peterson, Dave Schnur, Abe Schwadron, Dan Shapiro, Irv Soonachan, Todd Spehr, Tzvi Twersky, Yaron Weitzman, DeMarco Williams and Ben York.
• Want more of the SLAMonline Top 50? Check out the archive.

The post Top 50: Carmelo Anthony, no. 9 appeared first on SLAM.

by Sam Rubenstein

The post Which NBA Player Are You? appeared first on SLAM.

This is a real assignment I gave a few sections of my students today. For one group it was classwork, for another it was homework. ARE YOU SMARTER THAN A 9th GRADER? Prove it.

Name: _____________________________

9^th Grade ELA – Mr. Rubenstein

LeBron James returns to Cleveland – Setting and Opinionated “Facts” activity

CHARACTERS

Erik Spoelstra – The current coach of the Miami Heat

Mike Brown – The former coach of the Cleveland Cavaliers. He was fired after LeBron and the Cavs lost to Boston in the playoffs last year.

Pat Riley – The President of the Miami Heat. He is a legendary former coach who has won 5 championships. As team president, he signed LeBron James and Chris Bosh and re-signed Dwyane Wade this past summer.

VOCABULARY

Narcisissism – fascination with oneself; excessive self-love; vanity.

Belittled – to regard or portray as less impressive or important than appearances indicate. To minimize, decry, deprecate, deride, scorn, dismiss.

Meticulous – taking or showing extreme care about minute details; precise; thorough.

Scapegoat – a person or group made to bear the blame for others or to suffer in their place.

In the past we have discussed fact vs. opinion. You will read the column King James wants Spoelstra to bow to him, which was written by the columnist Adrian Wojnarowski, who is paid to have STRONG opinions.

Make a list of 5 of his opinions that are presented as facts:

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

What is Wojnarowski’s opinion of LeBron? Is it fair? Why or why not? Explain.

The post SLAM homework due by Thursday 8 PM appeared first on SLAM.

Well, this should be “different.” You know me as the former online editor of this website, and one of the two creators of the SLAMonline Top 50 Players list, which became an annual thing. The origins of this legendary tome are ancient mysteries, whose true nature shall never be revealed, for it would drive men to madness.

Or, Lang and I went to lunch at Outback to watch a Mets-Braves game and he jotted these names down on paper whilst we gorged.

Flash to the present, and much has changed. As many of you know, I became a teacher, and right now I am the 9th grade English Language Arts teacher at a school on the Canarsie High campus in Brooklyn. When it was time to write the Top 50, I asked if I could have Amar’e, and if my 9th graders could write it. As Khalid once said, “Sam luuuuuuv da kiiiiids.”

(He also once said “Donovan McNabb is the QB of my football team.” Sorry, I had to go there.)

Today, in three of my 9th grade ELA classes, I explained what the Top 50 is, showed my students an eclectic mish mash of Amar’e videos, ranging from basketball highlights to him discussing his newly discovered spirituality, and I gave them time to write 10 sentences each about Amar’e.

Another one of my responsibilities is to teach my students how to communicate in a dignified and respectful manner. Even with complete internet strangers! I am only using their first names to protect their identities, but we will be reading this on our classroom Smartboard on Friday.

OK, enough of me talking. This feels like class. Here are some choice selections.

Amar’e Stoudemire by Mr. Rubenstein’s 9th graders

When Amar’e plays, he is violent and strong. – Britniy

Amar’e Stoudemire’s love for history is something I can relate to greatly. – William

Amar’e is a very spiritual person, with the Star of David on his hand. – Lascelles

Amar’e is confident in his abilities. – Steeve

Amar’e is very tenacious. – Stephane

He cares that children should get a good education, to have a good future. – Kevon

He loves to dunk on people. – Miguel

He is one who likes to celebrate after dunking. – Tristen Dr

Amar’e was thought to be a troublesome kid because of his constant school changes. – Tristen Dr

Amar’e Stoudemire is a very strong, aggressive, and committed basketball player. – Whitney

Amar’e is a Jewish beast – Shaquan (Note to Shaquan: there is a double-meaning at play here. We will discuss in class).

Amar’e loves to play ball. – Tiara

Amar’e started playing basketball when he was 14. – Alex

Amar’e played with Steve Nash for six years. – Kurone

Amar’e has dark skin. – Sean

He is all about school but he still jokes and plays around – Kevin

Amar’e Stoudemire loves to dunk and he is a MONSTER when it comes to basketball. – Rahim

Amar’e Stoudemire is a very energetic, spiritual, and caring person, apart from his life as a basketball player. – Nikki

He went to six different high schools. – Jose

He is way more mature than he was before. – Anthony

Amar’e’s favorite move is the pick and roll, then tries to dunk on someone. – Tristen Du

Amar’e doesn’t back down from anyone. – Terrence

Amar’e has a son. – Kazinur

Although he had his downs, he got back up and started out new, by changing his jersey from number 32 to number 1, showing a new beginning. – Rosemarie

He is looked upon as a leader by his team. – Louis

When he’s not playing ball, he’s working with “Each One, Teach One.” – Kendley

Amar’e is tall, buff, and educated. – Seriah

Amar’e was suspended because he was trying to see if Nash was ok. – Seriah

I think Amar’e will have a good year in New York and take them to the playoffs. – Ramshar

On a basketball court, he is rough and abusive. – Moise

Amar’e is focused on basketball and being the best player he can be. – Lemeek

Amar’e went to Israel to study about another part of him that he wanted to learn about. – Ataya

Where is my man Rondo? – Nasir

Amar’e likes it when the teacher makes school fun. – Nick

Amar’e played in Phoenix, and moved on to New York. – Jean

The reason why he does things for charity and to help schools is because he doesn’t want what happened to him in school to happen to others. – Wilton

Notes
• Rankings are based solely on projected ’10-11 performance.
• Contributors to this list include: Jeremy Bauman, Maurice Bobb, Erildas Budraitis, Sean Ceglinsky, Ben Collins, Bryan Crawford, Sandy Dover, Adam Figman, Manny Maduakolam, Eddie Maisonet, Ryne Nelson, Doobie Okon, Ben Osborne, Charles Peach, Branden Peters, Quinn Peterson, David Schnur, Todd Spehr, Kyle Stack, Adam Sweeney, Dennis Tarwood, Tracy Weissenberg, Lang Whitaker, Eric Woodyard, and Nima Zarrabi.
• Want more of the SLAMonline Top 50? Check out the archive.

The post Top 50: Amar’e Stoudemire, 16 appeared first on SLAM.

Why, hello there. Summer breaaaaaak!!! Excuse me… Now that those 3 mogul tycoons are together in Miami, I think it’s a good time to talk about some of the other greatest trios of all-time. As you shall see, they usually end up leaning too far to the individual genius carrying two lesser pieces along, or the two great ones and a third wheel. Some are rap groups, some are iconic fictional characters, and some are breakfast cereal franchises. Without further ado…

RUN DMC. The truly iconic Hip Hop trinity! Definitely a frontrunner for best trio status. Oh, are you angry the Treacherous Three didn’t make it? You are old.

The Beastie Boys. They were brash and disrespectful and I remember we were all obsessed with Licensed to Ill when I was at day camp when I was maybe 10 years old. “I did it with a wiffle ball bat” heh heh heh. Then they grew up, good for them. I still love MCA and Ad-Rock, I’ll leave it at that.

The L.O.X. Jada and Styles P are two of the better rappers out there. Sheek Louch I find amusing at times, and there was a time when people expected the L.O.X. to take over the rap universe. Instead they whined and whined about how Puff Daddy as he was known in those days, was being mean to them and being all corporate and smart about business. I think what we have learned is that you shouldn’t whine, you should hold clandestine meetings in dark rooms, under the secret black hand of the Pat Rilumminati.

BBD. “Michael Bivins here and I’m runnin the show.” And with that, all of this need to be the man, began. If I was Ricky Bell, I woulda smacked the price tag off his starter hat.

A Tribe Called Quest. They were great, and both Q-Tip and Phife Dawg considered themselves to be the greatest individual front man ever. Quiz: Who was the third member? Answer: Ali Shaheed Muhammad. I will assign him Bosh status, which is not mean-spirited in any way. Hang on, we’ll get there.

De La Soul. Legendary, and I have nothing bad to say about them. Too, what’s the word… eclectic, for greatest of all-time status.

DIP SET! Back in the glory days of Cam-Jimmy-Juelz, they began as one talented industry entrenched rapper named Cam’Ron, and his business saavy hustling friend Jimmy, along with some younger guy who could rap a little and starch his bandanas a lot. Now, Tupac once said, and I’m paraphrasing here “I get high and drunk in the studio when I make my music, cause that’s how people are when they listen to it.” Similarly, the Diplomats figured out that the people listening to their music were either really stupid and ignorant or just in the mood to feel like they were really stupid and ignorant, the latter including myself. So, they co-enabled one another and rode that wave to greatness. Well, not greatness, but they were entertaining for a while. Nowadays, as a NYC public school teacher, I have received my comeuppance for listening to that kind of music when I’m teaching a class, and some kid yells out “Gucci!” and someone else has to respond “Brrrrrrrr!”

Brand Nubian. Grand Puba is one of my favorite rappers of all-time. Sadat “Derrick” X has one of the greatest voices of all-time. I hate Lord Jamar so much.

The Fat Boys. YES! But, they were just too unselfish, too team-oriented if you will.

The Geto Boys are my vote for the greatest rap group of three ever. Three great parts combining to make an even greater whole. Scarface is the Rakim of the South, if Rakim were a manic depressive serial killer. Willie D is the pioneer of “This guy is okay at rapping but he scares me so I like the way he raps” phenomenon. Bushwick Bill is a national treasure. Together, “We Can’t Be Stopped!” is greater than anything the new Miami collective can hope to accomplish.

(This was all really old school. Forgive me. I’ve spent the past year teaching, where kids say things like “Was Tupac that bald n-word with the nose ring? Yeah he was cute.” Gucci BRRRR!)

Cream. Eric Clapton, Ginger Baker, Jack Bruce. As a guitarist myself, I’m more from the Dimebag Darrell school, but Clapton became too much of a dominant figure, and those other two are admired for their incredible skill, but never had a Layla or were recognized in public.

The Police. Sting, Andy Summers, Stuart Copeland. Similar to Cream, but Sting turned into a one-name icon like Madonna. The fact that he was going by just one name back then should have been a big warning sign to the other two.

The Jimi Hendrix Experience. As discussed in White Men Can’t Jump, Jimi had an all-white rhythm section, and those white boys could play. Let’s not make them into a balanced triad though.

Nirvana. Dave Grohl back then wasn’t Mr. Foo Fighters, Queens of the Stone Age, Them Crooked Vultures. Even so, an amazing tandem of talent, though Kurt pretty much ran the show. The bass player was far too goofy to take seriously. Kind of like Chris Bosh.

Green Day. Um, no. Although I could see this Miami season being turned into a Broadway musical.

RUSH. Before I Love You Man came out, I took my brother to a Rush concert and we were ‘a slappin da bass ‘a slappin da bass. Neil Peart, Geddy Lee, Alex Lifeson. I wiiillll chooooose free willllll!!! God I’m white.

Aikman-Emmitt-Irvin. I am a Cowboys hater, and my hatred for this group is tri-fold. Tri-fold! Emmitt was unselfish and giving enough to demand the ball in blowout wins to compile his stats. Irvin was offended that all this talk of LeBron’s narcissism and he wasn’t mentioned as more narcissistic. Aikman could have had better numbers but he chose to be a real leader and balanced and all that. I hate the Cowboys. I also hate Alvin Harper, Nate Newton, Erik Williams, JJ, all of them.

Joe Montana-Jerry Rice-John Taylor. Either John Taylor is the most underrated second (third) banana ever, or he was just so happy to be where he was. He just seemed so content to be the other guy, really the third guy. He caught the winning TD pass on the last drive of the Super Bowl and nobody remembers him except me. I guess Roger Craig could have been in this spot too. Rice was MVP of that game (11 catches for 215 yards and a TD. Whoa). John Taylor was the Chris Bosh of the crew. I like making fun of Chris Bosh now. I couldn’t have cared less about him a week ago. His mission to become famous has succeeded. Well done, Chris!

Snap, Crackle, and Pop. Have you ever poured the milk, then put your ear close to a bowl of Rice Krispies to hear the Snap, Crackle, and Pop sounds? If so, then you are a loser.

Count Chocula, Franken Berry, and Boo-Berry. I know what you’re thinking, some stupid joke is coming about how Bosh is Boo Berry. Not so. There was actually a fourth character in this sugary cereal dynasty. Fruity Yummy Mummy. I owe like 4 cavities to that sugary mummy. As cereals, I only had Boo Berry once in my life, and there is a reason for that. Once again, we have an unbalanced big 2 not 3.

Tyrannosaurus Rex-Triceratops-Brontosaurus. These are the big 3 of the dinosaur kingdom. Don’t talk to me about no Stegosaurus! Wade is the Triceratops with his head down ramming into things. LeBron is the T-Rex, the most ferocious and powerful yet don’t those short arms mask certain “insecurities?” Bosh is a Brontosaurus. Soft. Of course, it only took one random asteroid to end the dinosaurs, or so they’d have you believe…

Maddux-Glavine-Smoltz. That was for Lang. Two amazing regular season pitchers and one incredible postseason pitcher who was also great in the regular season. Still, they usually got smacked around when it counted. Except for, oddly enough the one time they faced a serious power trio…

Albert Belle-Manny Ramirez-Jim Thome. Belle was in his prime as not only the most feared hitter in the game, but as a real jerk. An essential combination for a sluggah. Manny and Thome were young, still learning the strike zone. Belle’s abandonment of Cleveland for Chicago money to team up with the at-the-time other greatest hitter in the game, Frank Thomas, was LeBron-esque. Manny and Thome were still in Cleveland for a little bit, before everyone went their separate ways. Imagine though, if Belle could have kept his sanity (a reach, I know). Oh well. When he returned to Cleveland as a White Sox player, the fans rained boos upon him, and he responded with aggressive middle fingers.

Luke-Han-Leia. Luke Skywalker reminds me A LOT of LeBron James. He was stuck in his hometown and he wanted to leave so badly. When he did, they burned things. For LeBron, it was jerseys that people spent money on. For Luke, it was his Uncle and Aunt’s home and their bodies. From then on, Luke was “about my biiiiiiiiz-ness” as LeBron would say. He became cold and detached by the third movie in the real trilogy, wearing black, changing lightsaber colors like LeBron changes jersey numbers. Wade is Han Solo, swashbuckling, thinks he’s really handsome, and his Millenium Falcon takes a beating like Wade’s body. Chris Bosh is Princess Leia.

Harry-Ron-Hermione. I think the best way to describe THE DECISION is that LeBron could have been Harry Potter, but he chose to be Ron Weasley.

General Zod, Non, and Ursa. These are the arch-villains from Superman 2. This is another pretty good way to look at the three former free agents. General Zod was a megalomaniacal genius, nearly invincible, and walked on water like Jesus. He burned some poor innocent small town on planet hooston to the ground like LeBron did Cleveland, and escaped from a horrible cramped phantom zone where he was cruelly condemned to suffer for all eternity, like LeBron in Cleveleand. He shows up at the White House and corrects the President that it’s not “God”, it’s Zod. Non is a big dumb brute, the second banana that does a lot of the dirty work. So the problem is that both LeBron and Wade should want to be Zod. Nobody wants to be Non, you just one day find out that you are. Going to the well once again with this, but Bosh is Ursa. And you know at their secret meetings during the media rumor frenzy, the conversation went like this:

BOSH: Did you see that? I have powers beyond reason here!

WADE: We all do, my dear.

Perfect.

The Chipmunks. This was more of a Shaq-Kobe-Rick Fox situation. It was always Alvin this Alvin that, and you could tell it bothered Simon. And what was with that pause in the theme song “Alvin, Simon… … … Theodore.” Not a big 3.

The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly. The Spaghetti Western classic. Clint as the good was Clint, and you can’t go wrong with Clint. Before Brett Favre was being Brett Favre doing Brett Favre things, Clint was Clint. The original gunslinger. The ugly was hilarious. Please watch the movie. The bad was bad a$$. If you enjoyed the first scene of Inglorious Basterds, watch the first scene of this movie and you’ll see where he got the idea from. Overall, Good and Bad were great, but Ugly wasn’t on their level.

Red, White, and Blue. USA! USA! USA! Now, blue has its own thing as a square. Red has some stripes. But White gets to be the stripes AND stars? That almost seems like white is given more power, a subliminal advantage. The Pat Riluminati is at work again…

Aaaaand I’m done. Still got it baby!

The post The Greatest Of All Trios appeared first on SLAM.

By Sam Rubenstein

Admit it, you woke up this morning and went to slamonline expecting to see a Sam Rubenstein post about a high school girls’ championship basketball game. You always get what you want, don’t you?

Long time no Rubenstein, I know. When you last heard from me, I was at a Knicks-Nets game (ugh) with Tzvi and Russ, and my day job was that of a substitute teacher. A small amount of time has passed, which has felt like a thousand infinities, as I am now like a real NYC public high school teacher and stuff. I once wrote a column comparing teaching to coaching an NBA team, and felt that I was at the Rick Adelman level, where the players/students like me and things go well enough, then we have horrific flameouts where I stand there with my hands on my head and my mouth open looking like an 18 wheeler just ran over my cute little puppy.

I’m trying to reach that Phil Jackson level of speaking metaphysical nonsense, recommending randomly insane books or movies, riding on the coattails of a great player/student, and being able to point to my 10 rings and cool X hat.

Um… I’m not quite there yet.

For today, I’m just a basketball fan at a championship game. It’s the Murray Bergtraum Lady Blazers vs. the John F. Kennedy Lady Knights.

Oh, and I teach at a school on the Kennedy campus (Bronx School of Law and Finance), and specifically there are two girls on the Kennedy team that are my students. Guard Candus Brown, and manager Collett Powell. So I might be a little biased here.

Candus is in my film study class, where I showed the students More Than a Game, the documentary about LeBron’s high school team and the circumstances around them. She followed up by asking me for recommendations on some good Michael Jordan movies, so I hit her with the 1-2 combo of Come Fly With Me and Jordan to the Max. Obviously I am the greatest teacher she will ever have.

Collett is in my filmmaking class, and she is a gifted singer. I accidentally got her in trouble the other day when she couldn’t leave my class to go to practice. But we were having major breakthroughs in our world of filmmaking! Mr. Rubenstein is the king of executive producers. More on that project when the time comes. From the nypost liveblog of the game: 10:55 a.m. — Sitting next to esteemed Kennedy manager Collett Powell, who should be singing the National Anthem in a few minutes, but will not be. Knights coach O’Neil Glenn told me she brought the house down when they went up to Amsterdam, N.Y., over the holidays.

Walking into the building yesterday, I did not know that my school was up against a national powerhouse, in the quintessential David vs. Goliath showdown. As it turns out, the Lady Blazers are like UCONN in the city. They were going for their 12^th straight PSAL city title. My school was an underdog to put it extremely kindly.

Later on in the evening, the Nets would come here to play the Knicks. You could say I’m at the best basketball game of the day at MSG. Okay, that’s not fair to the H.S. Boys championship game that followed the girls. (And now that the Knicks game has ended, it’s not fair to the Nets either.)

Floor level seats, baseline. The game opens with a travel by Shaquaya Daniels of Kennedy. All she did was the Dwyane Wade dribble where you gain about 15 feet of floor space with each carry/palming. I guess they call that here.

The game has four 8-minute quarters, and after a sluggish start, Daniels gets to the rack, Deaisia Acklin hits an open baseline jumper and we are up 4-0.

Cori Coleman of Bergtram floats in a Tony Parker teardrop, and Kennedy responds with some inspired play on the big stage by Sarah Vann, a mohawked machine of a player, who cleans up a miss from #10, and backs it up by taking a charge on the other end.

Bergtram goes to their pick-n-pop game, and we’re tied at 6 with 3:17 to go in the first quarter. Janelle Linton goes to work, unstoppable at her height in the post, but not the most unstoppable player on her team. We’ll get to that.

Celeb sighting: Pee Wee Kirkland is here.

Sarah Vann with a beautiful pump fake to get her girl off her feet, then drives for the lay-up. They don’t play music during the game, so you can hear the squeaks of the sneaks, the coaches yelling, the parents screaming at their daughters. Final score after 1, 13-10.

The Number 23

Jordan

LeBron

Doris Ortega

Honorable mention #23 Jack Shephard, last seen losing his mind and shattering mirrors at the lighthouse, starting to recognize his destiny is with Jacob.

Back to Doris Ortega: she gets the ball and goes into triple threat position, and it’s over. Heading into this game, Bergtraum’s record over her four years there is 99-2. My first introduction to Ortega was when she grabbed a rebound, turned the other way and nearly pulled off a Derrick Rose-esque body twisting layup in traffic. She doesn’t, so the next time down she just knocks down a jumper the easy way.

A woman behind me complains that the Kennedy Shaquaya Daniels is too busy showing off her handle, driving around all crazy, and not running the offense. I don’t feel bad about writing this down because she was screaming it at her right at her, and she seemed to be Shaquaya’s mom.

One of the most impressive Kennedy Lady Knights is Danissa Smith, playing with a leg brace on what I was told was an injured knee. She spots up for 3, and she’s a cold blooded sniper like me in Modern Warfare 2. After a Bergtraum miss, she puts up another one that rims out, and there was a traveling call somehow involved. If that thing went down, it would have been 23-22 Kennedy heading into halftime and all hell would have broken loose.

The first half ends with a mini war under the boards, which Kennedy survives, and are down 22-20 heading into halftime. Do we have a live dog?

They don’t think it’s a damn show, they think it’s a damn fight!

They believe! This is just like the USA hockey team after the Zack Parise miracle on ice!

And that was as good as it got.

3rd quarter, Ortega corner three, Ortega fed inside for the layup.

Daniels over-dribbles, loses it inside, but Danissa Smith digs it out, dribbles back to the line and sticks a deep two. Heart!

HOWEVA… Shukurah Washington on Bergtraum. If you can call a young lady a beast in a complimentary way, I am doing it. Nine boards in the first half, now dominating the glass by herself, getting easy put-backs. She would finish with 10 and 19. BEAST! Someone near me makes the Moses Malone comparison.

A Kennedy highlight comes when Chelsea Custodio does the layup on one end, take a charge on the other thing. Love it!

But much like a supermarket that doesn’t sell Tostito’s or Paul Newman brand salsa, it’s too much Ortega.

(Yes I know, that was horrible. They have real salsa availability issues in my neighborhood. What’s the deal with those weird desert pepper salsas? Why is Amy’s so expensive? Who is Glen Muir?)

Ortega inside, Ortega outside, it’s 44-27. The last championship game I went to was Celtics-Lakers, and that game was a victory lap coronation. So is this.

The fourth quarter is a formality, and if they were NBA professionals I would call it garbage time, but none of these young ladies are garbage. My student Candus Brown gets a few minutes, I go down to talk to Collett, but she doesn’t hear my desperate screams, just like in class!).

Final score 58-37.

Ortega scores 19 as she takes home MVP honors, and Washington has 10 and 19. Dynasty! Both are seniors and go out on top as they should.

The post An Invincible Dynasty Continues at MSG appeared first on SLAM.

On All-Star Saturday night 2004, two funny looking white boyz were the stars. In the three point shooting contest, it was Abercrombie Korver looking like Ashton Kutcher with bangs that went down past his face. It was weird that he could still have such a great shooting eye with that much hair in his face.

At the diametric opposite of the spectrum of hair positioning, there was The Birdman. This was a year before his awkward “performance” where he seemed a little… off.

Chris Andersen used to be his name, and later on he would go through some other stuff, including the classic hippie look of matted down dirty long hair underneath a headband, the kind of look that inspires urban legends of how before each game he would make a little cut in his forehead and dip the headband in LSD. Bill Walton or Jimi Hendrix used to do that all the time. I forget which one.

The look that Birdman pulled off that night was truly an amazing feat, because as we all know he would later get suspended for doing drugs. However, on that magical night when he entered the public consciousness, I saw him with that hair and wondered am I the one on acid right now?

It was the kind of haircut that made you want to say “Look Chris, I know you’re an NBA star making money and all that, but you still want the groupies, right?” Whereas Michael Jordan popularized the baldie, which carried the sentiment “I am a man and I am about my business, I do not have time for something as superficial as hair styling,” Chris Andersen saw no such dilemma.

His daily ‘do adjustment was the kind of desperate call for attention associated with many of our favorite bad haircut badass bad boys of the past, from Rodman to Mason to Sprewell to Ron Ron.

Rodman was a 90s guy who switched up colors like a rebellious punk rock girl in High School. Anthony Mason was a 90s guy/scary insane murderer who had important phrases stenciled into the side of his head, which may have been Zodiac killer clues. Sprewell had the man with pigtails trend where grown professional athletes tried to look like 8-year-old girls, which was weird and disturbingly caught on for a while. Josh Childress had the black Q-tip going on for a bit before he had to flee the country, possibly getting his neat ‘fro stuck in the airport metal detector. Assorted players blew out ‘fros over the years. Rip Hamilton used to get creative with hairstyles that mimicked tire treads for a little advertising synergy. Ben Wallace mixed it up, and his performance as a player was actually tied to his hairstyle choice for the evening. Steph got a tattoo on the side of his head, which I thought might be hair for a minute.

But I gotta give it to the Birdman and his sickening amount of hair gel. There has never been a greater inadvertent perfect pairing of song and subject than the No. 1 Stunna and Clipse smash and Chris Andersen. What happened to that boy?

As for the night of Kutcher and Birdman, the winners of their respective contests were Voshon Lenard and Fred Jones. A couple of guys with shaved heads, who will never have a legacy like the Birdman. YAWWWWWWWN.

***

For more Decade Awards, check out the archive.

The post Decade’s Craziest: Hair appeared first on SLAM.

Christmas Eve day. The perfect time for a Rubenstein to speak. I spent 14 weeks recently as a student teacher at a NYC public school in Hell’s Kitchen, while also going to grad school at night right near Khalid’s favorite Whole Foods. It was a busy time. Very busy. Oh God…

But the new SLAMonline look was unleashed and I love it! Very organized, and organization is essential to life. This is one of the many lessons I have learned over the past few months. Planning and structure is everything. If you fail to plan… death.

And that leads me into the whole purpose of this post. As you may know, my forte is comparing dis to dat. I still write my “Which NBA Player Are You” column for the mag where I get to compare an NBA player to a celeb, and I love me a good analogy. I have many for what it is like to be a teacher of 7th and 8th grade lunatics. It’s kind of like being the designated driver in a room full of sloppy drunks, but it is also like…

Being an NBA coach.

“Somehow the teaching game remind me of the basketball coaching game.” – Nas

In all of life as a sports fan, I never related to coaches. Even as I got older, I always saw things from the (imaginary) player’s side. I never thought about why guys don’t fit into systems. Of course… now I am a teacher, and teaching is coaching. My glory days are over, and I’m all about the younger generation. I just try to give them some guidance, keep them in line, work on their writing, help them explore their options, put down the scissors, spit out the gum, tone down the profanity, stop shoving/humping in the hallways, etc. Basically I make the vintage exasperated Rick Adelman face all day long. It’ fun times!

But Sam, get to the point. How is teaching like being an NBA coach already? Glad you asked.

Ball fundamentals are like grammar and basic literacy skills. You hope the players know them. This is the NBA son, I’m not here to teach you how to dribble, how to box out, how to take your warm-ups off and get on the floor without tripping over yourself. I was mistaken about that, fundamentals must be reinforced. Often.

A lesson plan is a game plan with like strategy and stuff. You have to tell kids/players to go here, then here, then do this, then that, NO! You can’t set that on fire! Now go here. It’s just like drawing little arrows on a dry erase board for a grown man. Without a plan, they have freedom. And don’t be fooled by the Constitution or your idealism. Too much freedom can be… very bad.

Very bad.

The fire and brimstone speech. Same principle. I have not done the Pat Riley chalkboard smashing, but I did a version of that with a desk and an aggressive walk. Some people need to be yelled at and threatened to be motivated. I’m telling you, I have three wrinkles on my face I did not have before, all from yelling at this one 12 year-old kid. He gave me a good-bye hug on my last day. Jealous?

Star treatment for a star player. Okay I’ll admit it. I let some kids get away with more than others. The ones that have a special ability, more creativity or intelligence, receive a little more slack. One kid, whenever he gets caught doing something he shouldn’t be doing, makes the Tim Duncan bulging eyeballs face. He has never done one thing wrong in his life, in his mind. But his talent, in this case being writing/thinking/scholasticizing, is so great that I will overlook most of what he does. Did I have to physically step in and take the chair out of his hands when he was using it to assault a bigger kid? I don’t know, it was a blur. Who knows what happened that day? He is Iverson and I’m some overwhelmed generic interim coach. If I lose him, then all is lost.

Like I said, it’s all about structure but it’s also about flexibility and listening to people. You wouldn’t have a big, slow NBA team running the D’Antoni offense. You have to have a plan of attack that meets the needs of your “talent”, but you can’t totally give up your philosophy. Getting there. The biggest thing is that you can’t be too friendly and you can’t be too domineering. And so, let’s take a look at all of the departed coaches from this season, and why they failed as teachers.

Cheeks – too friendly, too nice, too classy. You may think you are their friend. You are not.
Theus – Too happy, not scary enough. Reminds me of the art teacher. Kids rolling on the floor, throwing stuff, screaming, text messaging in class. No control.
Randy Wittman – A lot of teachers do poorly when they don’t have the proper resources, and then the prinicipal who should have been fired 10 years ago steps in. Well done McHale.
P.J. Carlesimo – This is the too rigid, too angry type. I know this man as a teacher, a much older guy who would suspend kids for the slightest bad behavior. He was removed from his class and they brought a younger, more idealistic replacement. I did not much care for the “P.J.” that I knew.
Eddie Jordan – Another resources problem, his lack of resources being healthy bodies. But he did have something to work with, and just maybe needed a different philosophy.
Sam Mitchell – In all professions, you will encounter people that are completely insane. There was a female Spanish teacher at this school who talked about her sex life at lunch in great detail, and she was just all around crazy. I miss her. I really hope she keeps her job and has a long career ahead of her. But much like Sam Mitchell, she’s nuts.

Now Vince wrote a column about how there could be a racial component to all this. In my experience, I am a white Jew and none of the 44 students I taught matched either one of those traits. I guess it’s like how minority coaches are underrepresented in the NBA. The kids liked me a lot more than their real teacher, my new mentor, who is a very smart, very strong black woman. (Just like Lang, my previous mentor) But that’s because I never called their parents or really did the hardcore discipline like she did. This school I was at is the way people wish the sports world would be. Everyone in upper management like the principal and staff, with one or two exceptions, is a minority, and most of the younger teachers, the bottom of the hierarchy, are white. Backwards!

There were some racially interesting moments, such as when we watched the slave ship revolt scene from Roots and the kids became excited when the white people were being murdered. My favorite racial moment was when a 13 year-old Dominican girl told me that if she became a stripper, she would try to find a rich white man to take care of her. She has the same name as Ben’s daughter. That was good for one chuckle a day.

Okay… good to “see” everyone again. The site looks great! Vacation is a wonderful time. I haven’t been paying as close attention to the NBA as I would have in the past, but I see that the Celtics are doing well. I liked it better when the Bulls were the best team ever cause I was younger and I don’t like having my childhood memories messed with. Big Celtics-Lakers Christmas Day game tomorrow. I will be…

Watching.

The post The Teacher appeared first on SLAM.

Boom Dizzle!

B-Diddy!

When you have an awesome and unusual given name like Baron, and people still feel the need to give you other nicknames, you know you’re doing something right.

What is there not to love about Baron Davis? If you’re not a fan of Baron’s, maybe there’s something wrong with you. But I will answer my own question, what is there not to love? He has been injury prone in the distant past, he shoots too many threes, and he’s not the greatest defensive player. That’s it, those are his flaws.

Oh yeah, and he abandoned the team he made relevant again to take money from that smooth running businesslike classy organization, the LA Clippers. Seriously, when the Dow Jones index was bottoming out Donald Sterling was not impressed. He’s seen that show before. Have you ever noticed that there are some teams that can have a good year or two, and then just go back to being the hot mess they always are? Look at the Bengals. Just look at them. A few years ago they had the most promising young QB in the league, a dominating offense, talent everywhere. Bengal things happened, and now look at them. The LA Clippers are the Cincinnati Bengals’ twin NBA brother. This piece however, is not about them, it’s about Baron Davis.

I just want to say that I am concerned for Baron. He has had a great career, but he needs more dominant years to get into the hall of fame conversation. I am afraid that since he signed with the Clippers, there is a career threatening injury waiting for him just around the corner. The Clippers decided they would spend money for a change and they went out and got Baron Davis and Marcus Camby? I think they’re also insured by AIG and they invest through Lehman Brothers. But, why so negative? Let’s reflect on his past.

Baron had a scholarship to play ball at a private school in Santa Monica, which is how he befriended the legendary Alba. “Baron, what did you do last Saturday?”

“Nothing. Just went to the beach and hung out with my friend Jessica Alba.”
It’s a good life. He’s a movie producer, a member of the Screen Actor’s Guild, and he had a cool beard for a while. His blog is funny and personal, smart and entertaining without veering into the Michael Jackson realm where Gilbert Arenas operates.

He also does stuff like this.

And Steve Nash is apparently his step brother.

He was the Baron of Westwood in college, a phenom. Bill Simmons once described him as playing basketball exactly like how Teen Wolf plays basketball. The headband, the flash, the selfishness at times, the shotgunning beers with his fangs at the local pizza joint, the extremely high dribble. Baron was a monster in college (a wolf? A teen wolf?) so of course he landed the wrong way in an NCAA tourney game and tore his ACL. No biggie, he was still a lottery pick.

Quick aside: Teen Wolf might be the most racist movie ever made. It begins with every stereotype of the white basketball player (Michael J Fox as a teenager in the heartland, yup), who transforms into having every stereotype of the black basketball player. He becomes selfish, all about the show, supremely talented, stealing the ball from his teammates, having sex with the white girl prom queen, losing his temper in a bowling alley, and even… I swear to God… breakdancing! There is one black actor in the movie, and he is on camera for about 12 seconds. He is the one who breakdances with the wolf.

Oh and in the final scene when Michael J Fox is making out with his girlfriend (Boof!), there is a guy in the upper left hand corner of the shot with his fly wide open! He zips it up.

Yeah, where was I…

Baron’s early NBA career was with the Charlotte Hornets and then the New Orleans Hornets. You know how people get obsessed over such and such NBA player not being able to get out of the first round? Baron carried his team to the second round twice. I don’t know why he wasn’t everyone’s favorite player. Maybe it’s because Eastern Conference playoff basketball was… nauseating to watch. Other people may have obsessed over how he is not a pure point guard, and he was lumped in with the me-first point guard movement. Sure, he was not jogging the ball up court asking the sideline for a call so he could send PJ Brown somewhere to set a pick so David Wesley could get free for an 18 footer. No, Baron was too busy crossing dudes up and dunking on the big man.

Has a pure point guard ever done… THIS?

To be fair… he can sometimes become the master of dribbling for 23 seconds and then heaving a three ball with no chance. Nobody’s perfect. There were injury problems, relationship with Byron Scott problems, and his days in New Orleans were numbered.

As you may recall, in one of the great both sides winning trades of all time, the Hornets traded Baron Davis to Golden State to clear cap room and a PG spot for what became Chris Paul. He was back home in California, where the Warriors had been a joke for years, going all the way back to when Latrell Sprewell was treating his coach like the New York Mets in September. (Time has passed, my sense of humor is returning. No more on that topic.)

Baron Davis is defined by the series where the Warriors, as the #8 seed, upset the Dallas McCain/Palin’s. In one of those Nellie being Nellie moments, Don Nelson told him not to dominate, but to “be dominant.” So Baron said, okay I’ll do that. It’s that easy. The rest is literally history. He was the leader by example and the team followed.

If you watched that series, you remember it was ELECTRIC. They were renamed the Gully State Warriors and played a chaotic, frenetic, dare I say dangerous style of emotional basketball that was the most fun the NBA had been in years. It completely overshadowed everything else that happened in the playoffs, with the possible exception of LeBron’s game 5. Or maybe something that happened in the second round.

What was that again? Oh, that’s right… this.

Yeah man. Yeah! Now that’s an ending. There’s nothing more to say. So he didn’t make the playoffs last year, running out of gas at the end of the regular season and then he opted out putting a tragic ending to the magical era he spawned in Oakland. Still a great player, likeable guy, one of the best guards in the league.

Want more of the SLAMonline Top 50? Check out the archive.

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by Sam Rubenstein

Hang on, the Vince Carter bashing is towards the end. Feel free to skip over the rest, just like Vince will most likely choose to skip most of the season once he’s “injured.”

Coming off a season where the Nets, a playoff staple in recent times, were unable to make those playoffs in the pathetic Eastern Conference, it was time for a new direction. Jason Kidd became a headache. A migraine headache, allegedly. The triple doubles and up-tempo must-watch excitement is dead, long live the triple doubles and up-tempo must-watch excitement, but they still have to sell tickets somehow.

As the Nets season imploded and they wisely began the rebuilding process, the media and fans really just didn’t have time to care. What, with the team across the Hudson getting all the tabloid and rubber-necking attention. This was a good thing for Lawrence Frank & Co. because it was not pretty. Within the division, Boston is obviously superior, with the latest banner set to hang. Toronto, even in a disappointing step backwards season for a young team on the rise, was still better than  Jersey. Philly was one of the bigger surprises in the League, and they played with a lot of spirit, heart, fire, blah blah blah. The Knicks will be much-improved just because, you know. And that leaves the Nets.

Over the summer, I was handed a New Jersey Nets business card with the slogan “It’s About Free Tickets & Knowing Your Nets”, with the following kicker:

“
•Rookies
•Veterans
•Rising Stars
•International Stars
•And More!
“

Now that’s generic! Do they even have players? I see a photo of Devin Harris and…the less goofy Lopez brother from Stanford? It’s so generic, it’s almost as if the team owner was someone with a reputation for turning neighborhood businesses into shopping malls.

The purpose of this marketing slogan is to get people to come to Nets games in the middle of Siberia, where SLAM’s Art Director Stephen Goggi lives. Moving to Brooklyn, specifically to an area where there is a 24/7 clusterfu-k of traffic, the world’s most dilapidated Target, the dirtiest Coldstone, and a Circuit City where it takes 12 employees 15 minutes to ring up an extension cord, would be an improvement. It’s not happening yet, though. Predicted number of Jay-Z visits to Nets home games this season: how many times do they play Cleveland, the Lakers, Miami, Memphis, Portland, and Chicago combined? Maybe he’ll be there for one one of the Boston games, the guy is a front-runner. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a big fan of his music, the words, the lyrics, the beats he chooses. We used “Umbrella” for a poetry unit at this young author’s writing group I volunteer for. The 12 year old girls sang the Rihanna parts and they made me rap the Jay parts. Not to brag, but it was an electric performance.

Sorry about that… focus Sam, focus! Basketbawl!

When the Nets were the most exciting team in the League, with Jason Kidd throwing no look oops to Kenyon, Kittles, and RJ, nobody went to games. When they brought in Vince Carter, once a “price of admission” performer, nobody went to games. So the Nets now have this slogan of basketball players you may want to watch.

Let’s try to figure who is who.

Rookies

Brook Lopez. He should be a better “basketball player” than his goofball brother, but who would you rather have to watch on a day to day basis?

Douglas-Roberts, Chris. The quintessential “This guy is a winner winner winner, who cares if he can’t do this or that? He’s a great athlete, plays hard, so what if he can’t shoot?” I like him. He’s got cool tats.

Ryan Anderson. No opinion.

Veterans

Darrell Armstrong. Yup, he’s a veteran alright. Where do I send my money to watch him play?

Trenton Hassell, Keyon Dooling, Jarvis Hayes, Eduardo Najera, Bobby Simmons, Stromile Swift, Maurice Ager.

Everyone on that list was once a positive contributor on a team that did not suck at the time. They all have their strengths and they are brand names you recognize. Still… I thought Jersey was famous for industrial power plants making that smell. I thought Staten Island was famous for the trash heaps, the junkyards, the discard pile.

Um, I wish them all well though. You guys are all great and special in your own ways. Have a great season!

Rising Stars

Devin Harris. A talent for sure. He’s fast, he was great as a change of pace off the bench for Dallas. Is he a second coach on the floor, which is the only point guard an inexperienced head coach Lawrence Frank ever knew? Not yet. He’s really fast though. And small. Tiny. Miniscule. 185 pounds.

Sean Williams. The token high energy rebounder, dunker, shot-blocker the Nets always seem to find. Hopefully he gets lots of PT. Are you reading this Lawrence?

Josh Boone. Is Josh Boone a rising “star”? No. But he’s too young to be a veteran. A poor man’s Sean Williams.

International Stars

That would be Yi Jianlin. As if Milwaukee weren’t remote and isolated enough…I would like to apologize to Yi on behalf of America. It’s not all like that. He’ll get better in year two, he will learn the game. Who’s better though, him or Nenad Krstic? Negligible.

And More!

Amazingly (yeah yeah, half man, half amazingly), I think this refers to Vince Carter. It’s either that or “Veterans.” What is Vince? A superstar? Just a scorer who does his job, gives the paying customer a couple of smiles and groans, and moves on with his life? His best days are behind him, and this is the best player on the team.

Yes, we have come to the Vince Carter portion of this preview. For years the NBA has been marketed as a league of chosen ones and saviors. All you needed was your team to get lucky with a Jordan, Bird, Magic, Hakeem, Ewing, Shaq, Duncan, LeBron, and you at least had a shot to win it all every year. These transcendent talents are so far above the average player, they can carry an entire city on their backs on tantalizing runs of glory. Of gloooooory!

Then again, some of them are just more like, “Eh, I did my job, did some charity work, entertained some people, signed some autographs, shot some commercials, can I go home now?”

Did you all hear that I am on my way to becoming a high school teacher? Let’s take a look at Vince Carter through the various subjects.

SCIENCE

The law of conservation of matter states: the mass of a closed system will remain constant, regardless of the processes acting inside the system. An equivalent statement is that matter cannot be created/destroyed, although it may be rearranged. This implies that for any chemical process in a closed system, the mass of the reactants must equal the mass of the products.

And yet… the “Greatest dunker of all time” is afraid to dunk. I don’t get it. I won’t be teaching science.

MATH

27.5 – 15.9 = The difference in Vince Carter’s scoring average with the Nets and Raptors in the ’04-’05 season
6.8 – 3.6 = The difference in Vince Carter’s free throws attempted average with the Nets and Raptors in the ’04-’05 season
21.7 – 15.1 = The difference in Vince Carter’s field goals attempted average with the Nets and Raptors in the ’04-’05 season

HISTORY

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1077/is_6_55/ai_61619024

And you thought the Kobe-Jordan stuff was way out of line.

AP PSYCHOLOGY

How depressed are you after reading that last story about Vince from 2000? Oh what could have been.

ECONOMICS

http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/news/story?id=2922561

And Bruce Ratner has a reputation for being a good businessman?

ENGLISH – POETRY UNIT

The tape: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzAim5Yikj8

THAT Vince Carter would have the Izod center (? Am I correct?) buzzing every night. It’s not him anymore. Today’s Vince is still one of the better players in the League, gets his points, carries the team for a few weeks at a time, goes into shooting slumps, does what he needs to do to get paid, and that’s about it. Remember, the reason we were given and accepted for his self-imposed numbers drop-off in Toronto, was that he did not want to have to bear the burden of being “the man.” When he came to a team with a real leader in Jason Kidd, Vince was reborn. This year…RJ is gone too. Don’t get too worked up about this, but this is not subtle cap clearing for a run at LeBron when his contract is up. What do the Nets even want to do this year? Do they want to win games? No! Of course not. Miami has Wade-Beasley. The Nets can trump that with LeBron-whomever soon enough.

It’s like one of those movies where a poor village being raided and abused by bandits must save all of it’s coins to pay a gunslinger to come and save them. The Nets have all of their eggs in one basket. Ha, basket. Still got it! So, they will tempt to lure him with the three-headed monster of money, Brooklyn, and his friend Jay-Z as a figurehead management person. Quick aside: the age difference between Shawn Carter and LeBron is about the same as it is between me and some of the students I will be teaching. Jay, you dirty old man! LeBron, do not accept candy from the nice man.

And so, the young Nets should play hard for Lawrence Frank, learn the game a little, but struggle to close out wins in the fourth quarter, and finish in the 20-30 wins area, setting them up for a primetime seat at the lottery. And of course…the harvest of the free agent crops in the coming summer. Try not to be too obvious, Nets.

The post New Jersey Nets Season Preview appeared first on SLAM.

It’s meeeeee snitches!

Long time no internet-see. What’s up? What you been up to? Oh yeah? Sounds good. Hey is that Kobe Bryant in the main site feature spot? No way! (Okay now it’s the Top 50 countdown. Late on the trigger. See, I’m washed up.)

Lots of basketball developments while I was away doing my grad school thing, studying for an exam that required much pencil sharpening, beaching it, other assorted summertime activities. There was the Redeem Team, the exodus to Europe, the Artest trade. Clearly I do not need to talk about any of this because Ryne has been doing such a kick ass job. So I get to write about utterly non-basketball topics. I didn’t see much of the Redeem Team. Lang was practicially courtside he wrote so much about it!

I was inspired by Michael Phelps to stage a mini swimming Olympics at the beach with some family and friends. I had the gold wrapped up, I was ready to start my Usain Bolt swagger stretch, but then a Jellyfish got me, and I paused just enough to let a 22 year old girl beat me. I trained 18 hours a day for four years for that! My life is over.

Of course everyone is excited about Obama’s speech last night. It was incredible. And I almost got to see it from the luxury box at a Brooklyn Cyclones game. I was a guest of a friend of a client of Bruce Ratner’s. The same guy who  is moving the Nets and the evil incarnate of gentrification in Brooklyn. I’ll tell you what though, the man has a nice luxury box full of hot dogs and free booze. Go Nets! But the baseball game ended early so we didn’t’ have the opportunity to watch the speech from the luxury box, and I had to settle for a non VIP T.V. Amazing night for America, and I am very happy for our African-American brothers and sisters. But… there was one guy in the suite, who was accused of throwing a bottle cap down below at some paying customers (suckers). His skin was dark, the stadium security went right for him and gave a harsh warning. I know who the guilty part was though, it was a 2 year old white girl. She was out of control.

I will now share an amusing anecdote about SLAM reappearing in a social setting since I stopped coming in to the office. I do some volunteer work with the kids, and we were painting a “say no to violence and drugs” mural in Harlem. We had to go around the room saying who we are and what we do. I mentioned that I recently gave up working at SLAM to teach “kids like you” to the group. One excitable youth whose name was Prince threw me in the interrogation chamber with the blazing white light in my eyes. “Do you know Chris Paul? Can you get me free shoes? Can you get me free tickets? Will you tell Chris Paul to come to my games next year?” etc. Then this 14 year old asked a co-volunteer of mine if she would go see Dark Knight with him. She’s 25 and looks like a young Cameron Diaz. Prince is my hero. Other than that, it’s been a lot of getting yelled at by girls when they find out I used to get free sneakers and gave it up.

One thing that reminded me of you all was I was reading this fiction book and there was a chapter titled “The Watcher.” It turns out that “The Watcher” is a sweet little newborn baby, who was the product of a little bit of shall we say evil manipulation to steal the seed from the heir to throne. There were sex changing demons and horrible rituals involved. Anyways, “The Watcher” is enjoying it’s first breast feed, and then suddenly transforms into a murderous were-spider (a werewolf but a spider version of a werewolf, with telepathic powers too) and eats his mother alive, draining her body of all it’s blood. That reminded me, I should write a post for slamonline.

It’s getting to be NFL season, and the past two years a part of Slamonline was my emotional, manic-depressive relationship with the New York Football Giants. Last NFL season for us Giants fan was a once in a lifetime experience that will never be replicated. Sucks for the rest of you, but it’s awesome for us! You have no idea what it felt like. It was nice to be able to vent my frustrations and share my joy here. When I turned something in for the magazine, Ben asked if I would write an NFL preview. The season starts in 6 days. Six days!

So here’s the preview. We’re defending champions. Masters of the universe. Kind of like God, the guy that all these NBA player like Michael Redd are so infatuated with. We sit on our throne and wait for people to lick our toes and do funny little dances for us while we are fed grapes by a maiden. I’m bad about clipping my toenails, so it’s gonna be rough for some of you.

I think I understand why the NFL would schedule a 2008-09 season, it’s a big money maker, gives people stuff to watch and talk about, but eh… we all know the Giants are the all time unconquerable champions from here until the kingdom of eternity. They beat the undefeated best team ever. Nothing will ever top that. So, I guess I wouldn’t mind if the Eagles or Falcons won their championship this year. Obviously it’s hollow and anti-climactic in comparison. Good luck Lang and Khalid, may you have joy in your lives, you’ve earned it.

The Mets, I don’t even wan to talk about. They make me dizzy.

Let’s see… what else to say? Let me tell you, developing lesson plans…. Very different from these free flowing slamonline posts.  I have run into alternate versions of my SLAM family in the academic world. In the same way that I could write a column about how Shaq is like Arnold or Nate Robinson is like Bushwick Bill, I see the same things with people from school vs. people from SLAM. For example, I met SLAM Creative Director Melissa Brennan’s long lost Italian sister. This is an inside joke that means nothing to you, but trust me it was weird. There was a Khalid figure in my class, who gave a lecture on how the Western world has commercialized Halloween and turned vampires from scary to effeminate. There is a Lang figure who I sat next to at orientation, who took out his iphone during some boring speech and showed me on google maps exactly where we were sitting.

But I digress… this has been a post about nothing. Just checking in to say hello. Going away to the Hamptons (Yes… still BALLLLLLLLING even if that word hasn’t been used in two years) for Labor Day Weekend and when I come back, school starts full time and I’m in the classroom doing student teaching for real. Be afraid youth of New York City, be very afraid…

The post I like to WATCH appeared first on SLAM.

Hello there! Today is my LAST DAY as the online editor for SLAM Magazine. It is a big day indeed. We have lots planned. Let’s see… there’s my bon voyage feast. Um, I’ll be getting some kick of the day posts ready, forwarding some emails to Ryne… not much else going on really. Lang and I are supposed to play Madden this afternoon as my send off, since we barely spoke to each other when I first started until we started playing Madden. Yesterday he joked about how we should do shots at work. Well, since you can’t be there with us, this is for all you readers out there from me to you.

The shot glass is courtesy of Managing Editor Susan Price. It’s got a picture on it of Kobe’s mug shot. She bought it at the airport on her way home from New Orleans a few years ago. What can I say, I’m a class act.

Anyways, here’s your emotional moment of goodbye. At some point I realized Slamonline is not so much about basketball, as it’s about the people who care about basketball, an extended family of sorts. Awwwwwwwww.

4 years and change ago I was psyched as a Knicks fan to have landed a gig where I could potentially experience all of those magical MSG playoff moments in person. Three people came to the Madison Square Garden area in a basketball related capacity in a short period of time together. Isiah Thomas, Stephon Marbury, and myself. I win! But thanks for ruining my NBA team fandom, ya jerks.

And now it is time for the “liner notes” shoutouts. Thank you to the following people for making the past 4 years so much fun. In no particular order, but definitely beginning with Lang the big southern brother I never had, Ben the serious guy in a world of goofballs, Khalid who showed me that a black Muslim and white Jew can be into rap music and Seinfeld equally, Susan the most patient person in the history of the universe, Melissa a tireless worker whom I know every little single possible detail about just from overhearing, Monique who put up with a messy person that murmurs and curses to himself, Steve-o the future president/illustrator for the New Jersey board of commerce, Konate who steals all of my fashion ideas, Mutoni the hardest working man in the “NBA player name has been blank” business, Holly the queen of exclamation points!, Lisa “Banners” Case, Mr. Anderson, the Brightman, Russ who showed me it’s okay to let your beard and personal opinions get out of hand, Ryan who taught me that if you use heavy enough sarcasm you can directly insult people to their face and they won’t know if they should be offended or not, all the contributors: Emry, Vince, Jake, my mom’s favorite writer Omar, Stephen Litel, Jeff Fox, Goody, the enigmatic Ben Collins, Jon Weiner, Aggrey “distant #2” Sam, Alan Paul, Etan Thomas, Matt Caputo, Sammy Newman-Beck, longtime pen pal and one time conversationalist Myles Brown, Nathaniel Friedman sans nickname, Cub Buenning, Clement Chu, Jonny Mann, Bobak!, all of the O.G.s if you will, Spiro, Pitt, Dennis, anyone that brings in $$$, Jenny Drama, everyone in the baseball fantasy league and softball team especially the girls from those scary gun and knife magazines who apparently carry knives with them at all times (Claudia), everyone on the business side of the office, the receptionists, everyone at the deli downstairs and all food servers in the area, all the commenters, and anyone else I forgot.

Well, I guess this is goodbye until I randomly pop up in the future. Bye!

The post Can I live on my last day? appeared first on SLAM.

Here is a post I’ve been dreading writing, but it is time.

Remember back in High School when you had a weird English teacher and you may have thought to yourself, wow that old guy sure was creepy? Well, I aspire to be that old creepy man! That’s right everyone, I am leaving the glamorous world of free trips to Vegas and New Orleans and the NBA Finals for the opportunity to teach the truth to the youth. I am sacrificing “fame”and “fortune” for the ability to… wait why am I doing this to myself!?!

I got into grad school recently with a big assist from the letters of recommendation from Ben and Lang. You would think that someone like myself who has written so much in the first-person the past few years, would just be able to knock out a personal statement in 20 minutes. But it was truly the most difficult thing I’ve had to do in a long time, digging deep down, figuring out who I really am, all of that fun stuff.

Teaching is a career path that has always been in the back of my mind, but I didn’t think I was mature enough or “ready”, but now I feel that I am, that is once I go through a year in grad school, which is not going to be easy. I had a lot of fun here at SLAM over the past four years, but now it is time to find something to do for the next 35 years or so, and then a little bit longer when I can’t afford to retire!

The site and the internet world has changed so much, beginning for us here with one meeting a few years ago where I said something to the effect of “Hey, maybe we should have like, commenters and stuff.” Things took off from there thanks to a lot of hard work from a lot of different people. If you go as far back as the old black and grey and orange slamonline.com, you have seen the difference, and you know how much the world has changed around it.

It used to be Lang could write one long piece covering everything going on in the NBA, and whatever reality shows or tiger vs. shark updates, use Dreamweaver to churn out simplistic code, and have it up between 2:30 and 3:30. The “Links” part of The Links was all the news you needed for the day, and many of those stories would seem new to you, even that late in the day. Nowadays, you can get the gist of everything going on in the b-ball world in :07 seconds or less with one look at whatever feed reader or live bookmarks you turn to. Sure, we offer our own perspectives on it, which makes it different, but you pretty much know what’s going on in the world because we live in the information age where you can find out anything you want to know in very little time.

At times I have felt like if there wasn’t something new up on the site by 9 A.M., we’d be way behind. It’s a different universe! But enough about me. I know, people were all entertained by the Will Leitch public roasting. I laughed, I cringed, I was thankful it wasn’t happening to me! I went to the Brooklyn Cyclones game on Saturday with my cousin, her friend, and a friend of mine. I “overshared” something, and it led to me getting made fun of 3 on 1 for hours. Not looking to repeat that experience. I, like others who have left SLAM, will still have my blog. I will still contribute to the magazine, most notably with my “Which NBA Player Are You” column – which in my preparation for grad school, discovered that drawing connections between two seemingly disconnected worlds is actually called “transfer” and it is a higher-level brain function that is the best possible outcome of student learning. Who knew?!?

And so, thank you to everyone I’ve worked with over the past four years, I could run down a list of all of your names, but this would become the longest piece of literature I have ever written. Thank you commenters and emailers for joining the fun, and let’s see if I know the ledge.

—

Time to announce who will be stepping in as the new online editor, effective in a few weeks.

It is Ryne Nelson. Standing ovation…

Congratulate him.

Curtain call.

I asked Ryne to give us a little introduction with some factoids. Here he goes:

Ryne is the second best thing to come out of Naperville Central High School, other than Candice Parker. He is the author of the popular NBA video blog Odenized, which was recently awarded the Internet Reader and Blogger’s Choice Award 2008 – Best Use of Video. During the season, BallHype’s ranking placed Odenized among the Top 20 sports blogs.

Ryne makes monthly MVP and ROY selections as part of the NBA blogger award voting panelist.

On May 12, 2008 (Note from Sam: Which was my 30th birthday! Destiny), Ryne was the first to upload the viral video LeBron to Mom: “Sit yo *$*% down,” which reached 2 million views and 1,400 comments in less than 20 hours. His YouTube profile has been the #1 viewed on all of YouTube on a couple occasions.

He’s also submitted 33 front-page stories to Digg in the past three months, and is one of Twitter’s top users.

Ryne’s been a subscriber to the magazine since he was 13. Not only does he understand the trends in blogging, he’s also a kickass writer. He says SLAM inspired his high school autobiography, which won the 2003 NCTE National Achievement in Writing award.

Previously, Ryne was the Daily Illini’s NBA columnist and men’s soccer beat writer, founder and commissioner Illinois Fantasy Basketball, associate producer at Naperville Community Access Television, and a contributor to Chicago Sports Weekly.

Ryne famously challenged Illinois coach Bruce Weber’s ability to recruit top athletes, to the point Weber had to verbally scold his players for speaking to Ryne. He will start July 15ish.

Ryne chose not to give a list of his favorites, but of his moderates. His moderate food is popcorn. His moderate actor is Hayden Christensen. His moderate actress is Reese Witherspoon. His moderate music artist is Ludacris. His moderate sports idol is Bonzi Wells. His moderate animal is the penguin. His moderate sport is lacrosse. Ryne’s moderate color is black. And lastly, but certainly not least, Ryne’s moderate writing utensil is sidewalk chalk.

A strong introduction. Best of luck Ryne! Welcome him!

The post Goodbye Cruel Watcher appeared first on SLAM.

Hello! It is time for the 2008 NBA draft. I will be your slamonline live blogger tonight. I am still at the office for the moment, but we’re about to head over to MSG. I’ll find a more current front page photo when the time comes, but for now it’s Joakim Noah’s draft night look from last year. One of my favorite Bethlehem Shoals lines ever came as a reaction to that outfit: “Noah. . YOU LOOK LIKE EVERY SINGLE BATMAN VILLAIN ROLLED UP INTO ONE.” So, play along in the comment section, and I will try to give it more of a “being there” feel than just like someone watching TV and throwing out opinions.

So, it’s 5:40. Long day of rumors, trades, denials, speculation, rain, heading over soon…

Oh and here’s Chad Ford’s Mock Draft version… 7.1?!?! “Writing is re-writing” indeed.

The Clippers and Sonics are allegedly swapping picks, and Henry Abbott has some analysis of what that means. OJ Mayo has something to do with it. Is he buying the Sonics with all of his money? (Kidding) SOURCE HAT TIP: TRUEHOOP.

And we’re here. It’s 6:30, there’s a lot of media people milling around, OJ Mayo is wearing glasses (nerd), Bob Huggins is here as are about 50 other Beasley supporters outside yelling in the streets. No crowd here at all. Half an hour to go, time for some quick food.

Back from dinner. Me and Khalid learned about cleansing rituals in South America, um… we may have been given some misinformation. We’re about 20 feet to the left hand side of the players and families area. Hi!

Kevin Durant just showed up, he got a good seat. Kevin Love comes into the room and there is the sound of young females squealing.

Gallinari sighting! New York loves him. This year they have a Stephen A. lounge off to one side of the set. He’s your shrink, he cares. I wish we were closer, but we’re on the Stu Scott side of the room. Now an OJ Mayo chant from the crowd. Make up your mind!

Hmmm… now there are boos for Gallinari. I am confused. Khalid points out the future Lang is here. Some kid in a Dominique jersey. They showed him on the screen, he high-fived his friend.

David Stern emerges. Speeeeeech. I can’t hear him from all the jeering, the catcalls, the boos, and so forth. I’m sure you will see the Asian guy in the mustard suit with the preposterous shades at some point. Early warning.

There is a camera man sitting 3 inches from SPOILER ALERT! Derrick Rose’s face.

Bulls take their time to the last second, thanks guys. And Stern comes out, pick #1 is indeed Rose. He also was sitting closer to the stage than anyone else. OKay, now the draft starts.

Ben showed up just in time for the Rose pick. Cut it even closer than the Bulls.

aaaaaand after all the drama, the “too goofy” stuff, it’s Beasley at #2 to Miami. No joy buzzer handshake for Stern. His lounge chair sitdown with Stephen A. should be more lively.

The cameras circle in on OJ Mayo a few seconds before the announcement. So, to form through the first three picks… hmmmm… I don’t know if I believe that. OJ MAYO is now a PROFESSIONAL!

Pat Riley on the big screen talking about the Beasley pick. Wrong place for that. Booooooooooooo! Lang just got here.

No Seattle-Clippers trade after all. Russel Westbrook is the pick. Come on trades…

Was just handed a notes sheet. The last player drafted out of Kansas State was back in 1990! (Steve Henson) And Rose is the shortest overall #1 since Iverson. Memphis has the pick, Knicks crowd warming up.

There is a huge and rowdy and trendily dressed Kevin Love cheering section here. They’re excited their boy is going down to Memphis, where the frontcourt includes the likes of Kwame and Darko.

Knicks time. The crowd wants Bayless, and now an “Alex-ander” chant for Joe. Donnie and D’Antoni make their first move.

uh oh… it’s Gallinari. Those were boos before. And now. Interesting. That was a hard-earned sixth pick.

At least Lang is enjoying this. Well the pressure is on. Oh yeah, Gallinari’s dad played with the coach. That should go over well with his teammates.

The Clippers select Eric Gordon. He was the third of three SLAM college covers along with Beasley and Rose earlier this season.

Knicks pick text message fall-out. From Lang: “Forcing Gallinari to do that interview with Stephen A. is like stripping him naked and dropping him off in Times Square.” And from Omar: “Keep it 100 with me. The Knicks f*cked up, right?”

And Donnie Walsh has picked up where Isiah left off… getting booed at MSG!

The Bucks go for Joe Alexander. His nickname is apparently “Vanilla Sky.” But will the Asian community in Milwaukee embrace him?

A record 5 freshmen taken in the first 7 picks… only because they were forced to go to school for a year (as forced as they could be), this record needs an *!

D.J. Augustin to the Bobcats. The MJ/Larry Brown experience begins for him.

Brook Lopez stops slipping, and joins the RJ-free Nets. Well, a Nets weakness has been their big men lately, so at least they’re trying.

Bayless goes to the Pacers. So, T.J. Ford had a nice little era there.

The Sacramento Kings take Jason Thompson from Rider. MAAC player of the year! The crowd is non-comittal.

Brandon Rush joins the young Blazers. The Brandon R’s play together. But wait hold on… a trade is coming, or so I hear…

Anthony Randolph to the Warriors. Khalid is obsessed with how skinny he is.

Lang says he hears the rumored trade (qualifiers!) is Bayless to Portland for Jarrett Jack and Rush.

The Suns take the other Lopez, Robin. But people in the immediate area are hard at work on trade confirmation. Lang points out that the Lopez pick is a pick from the Suns trade with the Hawks.

That hat is fighting for its dear life on Robin Lopez’s head.

Best quote from Gallinari presser: “I have seen some cassettes in Italy, and I remember the time when Ewing was playing here and New York was doing so well. In the last two or three years, they didn’t do so well.” He also said NYC is like Milan.

Marrese Speights to Philly. Khalid’s talking about something else.

They show the Where Championship Happens ad on the screen with a bunch of Celtics fans celebrating, the crowd goes into a “Boston Sucks!” chant.

And the Raptors now have a front line of Bosh, Jermaine O’Neal, and Roy Hibbert.

The sad faces of Darrell Arthur begin. We happen to be sitting closer to the Arthur family than any other potential draftee.

JaVelle McGee to the Wizards, not here. Rich Bucher reports the trade as Diogu and Bayless for Jack and Brandon Rush.

Cleveland takes JJ Hickson with the 19th pick, Ben yells out loud “Come on!” and the Darrell Arthur watch continues.

The Bobcats use their second pick of the night on Alexis Ajinca. I can hear Fraschilla talking but I can’t see him. Pascal, the guy who listens to early 90’s chick flick music, and is a French basketball expert, refuses to give huge endorsement. He loved Petro!

David Stern has come down from the ivory tower and walks among us in the media section.

The Nets pick Ryan Anderson from Cal. Arthur: On the rocks?

Courtney Lee from Western Kentucky, welcome to the Orlando Magic. The energy is down here.

Utah takes Kosta Koufos, more size. When I look over at the Arthur family, I always see his grandma. She’s got her game face on.

Seattle takes Serge Ibaka from the Congo. I had a cab driver from there the other night. He told me the most interesting thing about the perks of his job. Oh wait I’m boring you. Somebody take Bruce Arthur!

Houston takes Nicolas Batum from France. 19, in the crowd behind us (just me actually, everyone else left!) and he’s up there. Are you tired of hearing Darrell Arthur is still sitting with his family?

The Spurs picked :30 early. My new favorite team. I met the third Lopez brother in the bathroom area. Not in the bathroom, you have dirty minds. He claims to be the brains in the family.

Oh, and the pick was George Hill.

YES! DARRELL ARTHUR HAS BEEN SET FREE! To New Orleans, and the crowd gave him a nice cheer. The room is seriously clearing out now.

And it’s possible he could be joining the young talent explosion in Portland in a cash considerations trade. The cameras have encricled the Arthur family and Doris Burke talks to a teary Sandra, Darrell’s mom. The crowd is not interested, and yells out “Jeff Van Gundy!” over and over.

Donte’ Greene from Syracuse to Memphis. CDR is available for the Pistons or Celtics.

D.J. White from Indiana goes to the Pistons, another big body, and we’re almost out of here. One last pick, the champs.

And the Celtics go with J.R. Giddens from New Mexico. Ding ding. Ring the bell the round is over.

And that’s it for me. Enjoy round 2. Who got better? What was surprising? Keep discussing.

The post 2008 NBA Draft Live Blog appeared first on SLAM.

Ah… draft season. And you thought the NBA was going into hibernation. Before dealing with this year’s draft, let’s take an amusing look down memory lane.

2007…
Here is Khalid’s draft recap, with some hilarious in-hindsight reading.

We’re (the 76ers) surely the worst team in our division. At least on paper we are on track for next year’s lottery. My initial anger was caused in part in seeing how other teams were getting better with trades and how the Sixers always seem to get it wrong when it comes to that sorta stuff.

From Lang:  “Ray is a great player and he’ll fit in perfectly in Boston, but is this a team that can win a title? No.”

Um, that was before the KG trade though. I like taking things out of context.

And this too:

ATLANTA HAWKS — I’m pretty disappointed by the way the Hawks ended up handling this Draft. First of all, it became obvious that there is a divide between the remaining owners and the front office. The owners wanted to take a chance and draft Yi Jianlian, while Billy Knight wanted to play it safe and take Al Horford, who plays power forward just like Josh Smith and the guy BK drafted in the first round last season, Shelden Williams. 

Ben wrote about Greg Oden. Just pretend that’s new this time around.

Here’s my contribution. I was VERY EXCITED about Zach Randolph coming to NYC. Not for basketball reasons though. A friend of mine kept texting me for a month how he wanted to “burn one down” with Z-Bo. Then the “honeymoon period” wore off. Here’s a weird self-quote:

Can Z-Bo stay out of trouble in a city with this much temptation? Of course not! This is going to be fun.

Oddly enough, he did stay out of trouble minus one or two, you know, alleged shootings outside a strip club. Good job Z-Bo!
Russ was angry as always. Let’s go back to the Boston out of context excerpt well once again:

Talk of Seattle trading Ray Allen to Boston for the No. 5, Delonte West and Wally Szczdnhdjfsfrnvbk. I HATE that trade for Boston (and I like Ray Allen). Does it make them a contender in the East? Not really. 

I have literally no memory of this rumor mentioned.

The Amare-KG-Hawks deal is turning out to be one of wild speculation. Or is it? Was it?

But apparently it was a “real” rumor. Again, no memory of it.

Believe it or not, Ryan was obsessing over the Kobe drama, dragging Neon Deion into his hatepit.

Some of us, including the enigmatic Ben Collins, went to an NBA Live event featuring Gilbert Arenas and Kevin Durant. I picked up some crucial beard grooming inspiration that night. Changed the shape of my face forever, sort of, kind of. Ben Collins brought a girl there!
And this seems to be the genesis of KG leaving Minnesota, if you want to see where the happy story began.

So here we are one year later. All the mock drafters are mock drafting, the rumors will start a-flying, the Rose/Beasley argument will ramp up even though everyone knows Chicago is taking Rose. And we go from there.

The post Draft Week Begins appeared first on SLAM.

Yesterday, Lang, Pascal Giberne, and I took a day trip up to the NBA Finals in Boston. We decided on renting a car at home, driving up for the game and then coming back after it was over. Was it worth 10 hours of driving in one day for roughly 18 minutes of competitive basketball? Well, the trip was fun, we got some mission critical work done, and the good news is that the NBA season is over. Regarding the game, I am writing the game story for the Championship issue of SLAM, and my notes include such insights as “It’s party time already” with about 5 minutes to go in the second quarter. I started downloading the new firefox during the game.

There is nothing more to say about the game itself. The Celtics were awesome, the Lakers sucked. The end. I sat through the postgame press conferences, which were a lot of fun. First came a stunned Phil Jackson. He peaked early. Someone asked him “Were you surprised by the final score?” Phil replied “Let me see what it was…” he looked down at a print out, then said “yes.” Exit Phil, enter Doc… to a standing ovation.

There was a weird mix in the room. The usual beat writers, mixed in with national media stars, but also people that had day passes who were as best I can tell, extended Celtics family. There were ovations for all things Boston. Doc Rivers accepted the accolades, deservedly so. Someone brought out a bottle of Moet and left it on the table for him halfway through the thing. Good for Doc. Once again he got choked up about the recent passing of his father, but maintained composure, no tears.

Paul Pierce entered the room, informed us that he wanted to get this over with because he had some serious partying to do. Well said, sir. Sorry to take up your time. He was in a good mood, and there were more ovations. Up next was Ray Allen and Rondo. That one began on a much more somber tone, with Ray talking about his child’s recent diagnoses of diabetes, and Rondo talked about being happy just to contribute, knowing that he could play as great as he did in the finale. This was the serious basketball and life exchange. We wish the best to the Allen family as they deal with their child’s illness. Yes, very serious and somber… and then KG entered the room…

Ho… lee… sh-t

My closest interaction with KG before last night was at the All-Star Game in Vegas two years ago, at the Steve Nash GQ party. I was amazed watching him down shot after shot, and appear to be unfazed by the alcohol. Last night he entered the room drunk with joy. There was a long clip of his whole “performance” on youtube yesterday but it has been taken down. Here is one exchange with a familiar face. Scoop Jackson sighting! Kevin Garnett is a lot of fun. Even if he brought yet another championship to the city that wins everything all the time, except for the Super Bowl when the almighty Giants triumphed in the greatest victory of all-time.

So, that was it for the Celtics… or so we thought. Waiting around for Kobe, and in comes Scalabrine uninvited. He wanted to fire back at the haters in the media that dared to doubt his Celtics. Another fun press conference, but the media really had nothing to ask him. Scalabrine is funny, good-natured and all, but we were waiting a long time for Kobe.

And yes, Kobe spoke in depressed two or three word answers. That is until the final question, when super journalist Samuel P. Rubenstein, using his “serious voice” got him to open up with damn near a full paragraph’s worth of quasi-coherent thought. God, all of you beat writers and national media superstars are amateurs. Thus concludes the basketball portion of this post. Let’s talk ROAD TRIP!

When I was booking the rental car, the economy option meant no radio. Eff that, we would have been punching each other in the face two hours into the ride. Instead, we had XM Radio and some really surprisingly great stations. Many genres, from classic early 90’s rap to music from the 1940’s. Yes the 1940s! We needed that radio badly because…

The Highway commission posted an outright lie of a road sign, claiming a McDonalds existed somewhere in nowheresville, Connecticut. We ended up taking a tour of the countryside. We saw cows, we saw trees, we saw tractors, we saw a roadside “restaurant” called STEAK. The delerium set in.

Instead of having lots of time to kill, we got to the arena right before the locker rooms opened up, and the media ratio:player availability was infinity. It was dinner time, nothing to “write home about.” Then came the basketball game, the presser, the celebrations, we got out of there by I believe 2 AM. Lang drove us home and kept yelling at me that I wasn’t allowed to go to sleep. The message did not sink in, and I spent much of the trip real groggy. I take back everything I said. It was sleep talk. By 4 AM, I just wanted to sleep so badly, more than anything in the universe. I wanted to go to sleep like KG wanted to win a championship. But I guess that’s not allowed when the driver has to be wide awake and needs people to make sure he doesn’t drive off the road or something. I’m not one of these insomniac stay up all night people. I needs my rest.

Pascal stunned us when some random pop song from the early 90’s was on the radio, and I was desperately trying to figure out what movie it was from, and he called “She’s All That.” Wow! A miracle that makes the game 4 comeback irrelevant by comparison.

We got home safely, I returned the rental car, napped until 2 PM, the NBA season is over, and they all lived happily ever after.

The post Finals Press Conference and Road Trip Wrap-up appeared first on SLAM.

The new contests are posted. Sureshot and What’s My Name. Just thought I’d remind you all. The third head of the monster that is the NBA Finals coverage is I. Heading up to Boston with Lang tomorrow in a rental car. ROAD TRIP!
That being said… so many people from the Boston area have moved to NYC. I feel like I’ve been surrounded by Boston fans this whole time. There is a phenomena of the young female Red Sox fan, who also becomes a Celtics fan when that team is good… they are EVERYWHERE! But yeah, participate in the contests please.

The post New Contests! appeared first on SLAM.

If you happen to be in the vicinity of the NBA Finals, you might want to check out what NBA Nation has planned, specifically the NBA Jam Van. The details:

NBA Nation has activities for the fans.

WHO: A.C. Green – Los Angeles Lakers Legend (Thursday, June 12, 5:00-6:00 pm PT)

WHAT: Jam Van is an 18-wheel, 67-foot showtruck that transforms into 8,000 square feet of basketball playground. In addition to slam dunking on 7- to 10-foot rims and competing in shooting contests and drills on two courts, fans of all ages can participate in off-the-court activities for prizes, experience new video technology and enjoy Wrigley’s chewing gum samples. .

Jam Van activities include:
• Spearmint Shuffle – A twist on the average dance contest.
• Doublemint Dare – A basketball shooting contest against the clock.
• Juicy Fruit JAM-boree – Kid-friendly basketball basics.
• Big Red Relay – On-court relay race.
• Winter Fresh Knockout – A hoops contest to eliminate opponents.
• Measure Up Activities – Fans can compare their sizes to those of NBA and WNBA players.
• NBA Jam Van Video Arcade – Fans can challenge friends to the latest NBA video games.
• Wrigley’s Trivia Challenge – Fans can face off against each other to answer trivia using the latest touch-screen technology.

WHEN: Tuesday, June 10 – 12:00pm – 6:00pm
Wednesday, June 11 – 4:00pm – 7:30pm
Thursday, June 12 – 12:00pm – 6:00pm
Friday, June 13 – 4:00pm – 7:30pm
Saturday, June 14 – CLOSED
Sunday, June 15 – 12:00pm – 6:00pm

WHERE: Figueroa & 11th Street Lot
(Across from the Staples Center)

Now I really want some gum!

The post The NBA Jam Van is at The Finals appeared first on SLAM.

The NBA scored a big hit this postseason with their “There Can Be Only One” campaign. Lang came up with some of his own, and the NBA is encouraging people to do the same with themselves. Here’s mine to the left. It’s me and KG. Look at how much more intensity I have than him! Even Time Magazine “borrowed” the concept.

The NBA lucked out that they can now use the Kobe/KG one, which works on so many levels. The dual narrative, one guy seen as a ruthless competitor that rubs people the wrong way, the other a nice guy who people want only good things to happen for, if only he could just win a ring (or playoff series). The two first truly positive examples of high school to the pros since Moses and Kemp. And most importantly, their goatees match-up well.

However, after some more groundbreaking scientific research (a 5 minute conversation with Khalid), I discovered the origin of this campaign, where they “sampled” the idea from.

Don’t make angry. You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry.

Indiana Jones, the Hulk, Celtics/Lakers in the Finals, people wearing stupid looking white rimmed sunglasses. What year is it?

Oh, and “There Can Be Only One” is from Highlander.

The post The origin of the NBA’s There Can Be Only One campaign appeared first on SLAM.

The Lakers outplayed the Spurs, who looked tired at home. Somehow the game came down to one final shot. You saw what happened. The non-decision was Joey Crawford’s, who famously clashed with Pop in the previous round, and once ejected Tim Duncan for looking at him (seriously). Do we have another controversy/conspiracy?

The post Was it a foul? Or can we move on? appeared first on SLAM.

I was conducting some groundbreaking research the other day. Don’t want to get too deep into this cause it could mess up the MacArthur Grant proposal, but here goes. Never mind the Chauncey injury, or any other “strategy” or “player talent” things floating through your mind.

Here goes…

In the ancient times there was a Fort Wayne Pistons, who got to The Finals a few times. There was also a silly Batman movie where we learned the secret to world peace is turning all of the world leaders at the UN into piles of different colored sands, then mixing the sand up an re-sorting it so that everybody speaks a different language. All of this is irrelevant.

The next time Detroit got to the Finals was 1988, when they lost. On their run to the ’89 championship, the original Tim Burton BATMAN was released. “Wait ’till they get a load of me.” “I’m Batman.” “Have you ever danced with the devil in the pale moonlight?” Other classic lines. Pistons win the title.

In between that time and 2005, the Pistons either won championships or didn’t get to The Finals at all, there was no middle ground. There was also a stream of terrible Batman movies. Let’s kick some ICE!

As defending champs, while the Pistons were in The Finals, Batman Begins hit theaters, the second great Batman film of the modern Batman era. The Pistons lose in The Finals to the Spurs.

Since then, no Batman movies have been made, and there have been no Finals trips for the Pistons… until now.

Batman: The Dark Knight, featuring the eerie performance of the late Heath Ledger who said he based his version of The Joker on Sid Vicious, comes out this summer. That means the Pistons will go back to The Finals. Now that I really think about it, Pistons vs. Lakers would mean a showdown of Ledger’s Joker vs. Jack Nicholson’s Joker. Whoa, this is deep.

So it is written, so it shall be done.

The post The Pistons are going to The Finals. Because of Batman. appeared first on SLAM.

Well, well, well. Here we are. Since there have been so many huge upsets in sports in recent years, people have come to expect surprise match-ups in the later rounds. Not this time. You knew the East was going to come down to Boston-Detroit, and had a pretty good idea that the West would be San Antonio-L.A. It wasn’t always obvious as events unfolded, but if you detach yourself and try to see the big picture, you knew this was coming.

Detroit should have the edge over Boston because the Pistons are the rested team, and the Celtics have proven nothing in these playoffs. Seriously, the Celtics have made this as hard on themselves as they possibly can. Back against the wall, them against the world, desperation time, avoiding embarrassment, all of that stuff. Hey, that’s the Pistons move!

The Celtics haven’t even faced an actual basketball team in the playoffs yet, and it’s taken them the max amount of games. Atlanta is a collection of young athletes and Joe Johnson. Mike Bibby didn’t even do that much and a team that barely got into the playoffs went to a game seven with Boston. The Cavs are even worse than the Hawks talent-wise, except LeBron is so dominant, he makes them a threat to beat anyone. A threat, not a serious contender that should be respected. The “Big Three” should have squashed the Cavs.

Ah yes, the “Big Three.” It’s one thing for a guy to get old or worn down from a long season. Ray Allen, one of the best jump shooters ever, can’t hit wiiiiiiiiiiide open threes right now. Not even at home. And this is a guy who prepares and hones his craft like a serial killer. Paul Pierce is coming off a game 7 for the archives, but he’s been hit or miss so far. KG, someone who got MVP consideration because he changed the culture of a tanking team to a winner, screamed at bench warmers all year, stared at people with a lot of intensity, has been shall we say, underwhelming, particularly in big spots. I know the whole “Dominant player HAS to have the ball in crunch time” thing is overblown, but what’s the deal with all of the 20 footers, the 9-step turnaround fadeaways, the passing without making an inferior defender make a decision? The “Big Three” has some work to do.

And on the subject of Big Threes, is KG-Pierce-Ray that much better than Sheed-Chauncey-Rip? Is it better at all? KG is a better player than Rasheed, he’s more consistent with his effort on both ends, but when Sheed is motivated it’s close. Right now, Rip Hamilton might be better than Ray Allen, even Ray with his confidence restored. Chauncey vs. Pierce, I can see either way. Chauncey IS that down the stretch guy, and he orchestrates more for the Pistons than Paul does for the Celtics. When you get past those three on either side, there’s Rondo, who goes from superstar to bust on a quarter by quarter basis. The Pistons have Tayshaun Prince, who has done it on this stage a few times. From there, I’d say the Pistons have a superior roster, and even the at times shakiness of Flip Saunders won’t matter up against Doc Rivers.

Question: What happens if Detroit wins one of the first two games in Boston?

Answer: All hell breaks loose. The Celtics have to win a road game at some point… or do they? Boston, enjoy that Jon Lester no-hitter.

Out West, it’s very simple… you have your old school heroes vs. villains showdown. I love it!

Many basketball fans have a weirdly personal attachment to Kobe Bryant. LOVE! HATE! LOVE! HATE! LOVE! HATE! The trend for the majority has been people loved his game, hated that he was winning so much at such a young age, hated his personality, loved to hate when he got arrested, hated the selfishness, loved the dominance and amazing performances, hated the business aspect manipulations, then slowly started to forgive him as time passed, and now it’s mostly love for team-first Kobe, other than the haters who have their own personal agendas I’m sure. It’s weird, he’s a famous basketball player, the son of a famous basketball player who has known he would be a global superstar since he was like 12 years old. It would be more surprising if he were a “normal” person.
But anyways, who is Kobe facing in this attempt to get back to The Finals? Why, it’s public enemy #1! The San Antonio Spurs, a team so despised for many reasons that are one. They win. Modern professional sports has been all about individual millionaires causing stupid drama, getting into cat fights, jail cells, excessive purchases, ramped up controversies, etc. People cry about how the world is going to superficial hell, and the Spurs are the opposite of all of that.

Yet they are the hated, because they do whatever it takes to win. I know, I hate them too. Last night, Ime Udoka was giving up his body, grabbing crucial offensive rebounds, doing everything it takes to win game sevens on the road. Ime Udoka! He’s like their 9th best player! Also, there’s the constant whining by Manu, the huge eyeball face of disbelief by Duncan, Bruce Bowen’s “stuff”, Robert Horry’s borderline “stuff”, and oh the flopping. The Spurs are annoying, but a great team. A worthy defending champion.

And now the Lakers must get past them, as the “good guys.” Interesting role for them, since they are the Hollywood team, since they only got to this position by the amazing trade for Pau Gasol, which sent Pop into one of his wine bottle smashing rages. It was the best, most unfair acquisition of an NBA player since the David Robinson injury brought the Spurs Tim Duncan! There is a lot of history between these teams. The Laker threepeat ended with a blowout on their home court at the hands of Duncan, when Kobe cried on the bench. The next year was Derek Fisher and 0.4. Phil Jackson is looking for another chance to go for his 10th ring. There are storylines. What to expect from this series? I’m not ready to think about it yet, and this has been long enough already.

Congrats to the Spurs for setting up what should be a great Final Four. Even though I watched the game with 20 people, and we all wanted them to lose. I am looking forward to the Conference Finals.

The post NBA Final Four Set. So much to love, so much to hate. appeared first on SLAM.

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Okay, we get it. Teams are not winning on the road in the playoffs this year. Last night’s Spurs victory in San Antonio pushed the home team in the second round record to 20-1. Chris Paul is even quoted as saying “Thank God we get to go back to New Orleans for Game 7.” You have to figure that at some point a road team will win again, but for now… 20-1!

Regarding the Spurs-Hornets series, if the Hornets win, you could say that the series was decided when New Orleans claimed home court. But what was the difference that gave them home court? Well, the two teams had the same record in the regular season. It came down to the tiebreaker, record vs. their conference. New Orleans had a better record vs. their conference by ONE win.

They split the season series 2-2, which means that this second round playoff series may have been decided by when the Hornets beat the Clippers in their penultimate game of the regular season. Or it was when the Spurs were blown out by the Lakers or Suns towards the end of the season.

I suppose you could say that the Spurs are the champs, they know how to win on the road, play in huge games, anything can happen in a game 7, the Hornets whole team is injured, blah blah blah. 20-1. The Celtics and Lakers will try to break that trend tonight. Should make for a night of entertaining viewing, especially because it’s raining out which could cancel my softball doubleheader AND Santana throwing at the Yanks in the Bronx.

Okay, road teams… do something. Aggrey/Toney/Greytone will be in attendance at a Game 7. That’s a good thing.

The post The Road to Nowhere appeared first on SLAM.

Thank you Pistons for winning a road game, you are the only team I respect. And this was sans Chauncey!

The assorted individual series coverage is coming, but a quick look at where we stand: Everything is 2-2 except the Pistons-Magic, the Cavs have a chance to make it 2-2 tonight (2nite), and Kobe’s wife wore a tutu.

Everyone was so excited about the greatest regular season evurrr. What’s the point of the regular season? To set up who’s got home court in the playoffs. It looks like home court is everything this year. Thus, the regular season may have decided the championship which is bizarre. But you know, some home team will blow it. So nevermind.

There’s an old saying “A series doesn’t begin until a home team loses.” I’m not sure who said it, but he or she is right. Somebody will slip up. Choke. Collapse. Melt down. Another big playoff cliche is that “Superstars will always get their numbers, but the role players get a lift from the crowd at home.” Why is that? There needs to be an investigation. Oh speaking of investigation…

The weekend happened to produce two major stories, the D’Antoni hiring and the OJ Mayo thing, so I banged out a few other newseses for you. The Mayo thing, you really had to see the ESPN Outside the Lines to truly appreciate how much time and effort went in to “catching” him. They had live action of a game with OJ at the free throw line, then a hard pan to the crowd with Rodney Guillory sitting there watching. The piece was confrontation after confrontation, no comment after no comment. It made me feel uncomfortable. But in every story, there are heroes and villains. Louis Johnson, a former part of OJ’s inner circle, was the main informant (yes, informant! It’s that serious!) who told ESPN that his reason for speaking up was that he just cares so much about OJ. So emotional.
There’s plenty of guilt to go around, and USC continues to amaze. One of their most famous alumni is thought of as a wife murderer. He (allegedly!) admitted it recently but only when he was drunk and high. Lovely. George Lucas went to USC, did some great writing and directing, but his neck fat disgusts me. Reggie Bush was “caught” by Yahoo! in a similar scandal to OJ’s, and he’s been underachieving in the NFL, but has parlayed his fame into life with Kimmy. She seems to be a terrible human being from afar, and my most vapid friend met her once and called her the most vapid person he has ever met, but she also has her positive traits Hello!

As far as basketball goes, USC is not a major basketball program. Their geographic rival is one of the gold standards. USC is never going to be better than UCLA, so they might as well get some notoriety. It’s not like USC has this grand pristine tradition. If they got put on probation for a few years, would it really affect anything? I’d go there to study film right now if I could. Okay, I’m bored of that whole issue now.

Mike D’Antoni.

Wow, James Dolan. You truly are the king! Mike D’Antoni is a great coach. He has had a lot of success, albeit no Finals appearances and he tried to go against the oldest rule in the book “defense wins championships.” That’s a lot like Dolan, who does everything 100% wrong, I’m not trying to be a jerk here, it’s just a fact. I find James Dolan’s brain to be a fascinating and scary place. Let’s examine the thought process.

1. Knicks are beloved and successful when they have strong defensive team.
2. Bring in players who don’t play any defense.
3. Wait for fans to get angry about lack of defense.
4. Bring in coach who was succesful by not caring about defense.

Amazing. But look, the Knicks will have a high lottery pick. If David Stern does his thing, it will be the #1 overall pick, and then they go get Beasley, and D’Antoni has himself a new Amare. The Knicks will be much improved this season, just because how they could not be? D’Antoni is a great coach, but it definitely does not fit with the whole “We are rebuilding, we will have patience” bill of goods they’ve been selling. Hey, maybe it’s because the Knicks salary cap is so messed up that they can’t sign any overpriced free agents, so Dolan needed to buy a high priced coach.

Welcome to NY Coach D’Antoni. I went to a Mets game the other night and a beer was EIGHT DOLLARS! Don’t spend your mega-deal in one place.

Oh wait, Donnie Walsh is calling the shots. Yeah, he had a great run. A few press conferences and interviews, kept Isiah around, didn’t do any work, the end.

The post Roads? We can’t win on roads. appeared first on SLAM.

New contests are up.

What’s My Name and Sure Shot. Both involving Portland front court players that went really high in the draft.

Still waiting for Jake’s Celtics-Cavs Game 2 Notes. Jake, short for Jacob, and we’re trying to find those notes like they tried to find Jacob’s cabin last night on LOST.

One amusing (to me) thought on the Celtics… remember the Mike Bibby “They’re just fair-weather fans” quote about the Boston “faithful”? Well, maybe the Celtics players are fair-weather players. Think about it. Paul Pierce has been there forever, but who else that plays a major role on the team has been there for a while? Perk? Most of their impact players just got there, and they only play well with the home crowd giving them a boost. Front-runners! Fair weather!
But it seems to be working out well for them… so far…

The post There are new contests to win! appeared first on SLAM.

Nobody has stepped up to claim the Pistons-Magic series. That is, no SLAMonline columnist has. The Pistons are doing a good job of claiming the series already. Sure, it’s early, but Detroit seems to be “into it”, trying to win even though their collective backs are nowhere near the wall. Chauncey and the Pistons benefited from some fancy hometown Auburn Hills clockwork, as they were given an extra 4 seconds or so at the end of the third quarter, which wound up with the Pistons getting three points they didn’t deserve.

That being said…

Orlando scored 36 points in the 3rd quarter, hitting 7 threes, overcoming a 14 point deficit. Detroit held on at the end, and now they can relax and blow two road games for old time’s sake before waking up at the last minute to survive the series and move on. I think people are expecting Boston-Cleveland to be a long hard-fought series. Maybe the Celtics came so close to going down in Patriot flames, that they now remember how to play on the road. Then again, it’s possible that LeBron goes off by himself vs. a great (?) Celtics team a la – please don’t be angry about this – Michael Jordan in ’86. Oh wait, the Bulls lost that game. The point being, the winner of Cavs-Celtics should be the worn down and tired team needing rest heading into the Conference Finals.

The Pistons are already out to their 2-0 lead. If they wrap this thing up early, they will get to rest for a while and be the fresher team against Boston or Cleveland. I know these Pistons well. They would rather go through extra difficulty than rest up and be the favorite.

Another funny thing about last night’s game and the extra time given to Billups… the Orlando Magic have one of the NBA marketing golden boys in Dwight Howard. The league would love to have him on the playoff stage for a long time, new blood as opposed to the same old Pistons that everyone outside of Michigan are bored of. Who do I sound like when I say the NBA has a preference in which team wins a series? Why, Rasheed Wallace of course! Sheed said nothing about the Chauncey play, no “The refs took care of business” or “That’s David Stern’s orders to the home team clock operator” or anything like that. Guess it’s different when you’re on the other end of it. Oh, Dwight had 22 and 18 in the loss. 22 and 18 is a man’s stat line. And yet, Orlando is still SOFT!

Okay, Aggrey should have a Spurs-Hornets game notes coming. Trust me, I find Chris Paul vs. the established defending champs much more interesting than this series.

The post Pistons. Business. appeared first on SLAM.

Lang got his hands on a copy of GTA IV yesterday, and I didn’t say anything to him but I knew there was no way no chance that he was going to be able to write playoff diary recaps with such a powerful item in his possession. He’s been doing a great job giving you all a late night forum throughout the playoffs, and has in turn been rewarded by the basketball Gods with what is happening in the Atlanta series.

Now, one thing that’s crucial to remember about the NBA playoffs is that a long season gets defined in a short time, and teams are graded as failures or successes, or are determined to be on their way or lost in the woods without a map, up the creek without a paddle, and so on.

Last night there were two series ending games. Allow me now to go through all 16 teams and tell you how they should feel about their seasons so far. The Spurs-Suns series story should be coming via Appleman. Others will have their respective series. For now, truth of consequences, not really in any particular order:

1) Denver. Embarrassed themselves. They built up negative karma all season long, and it came home to roost in the playoffs. Sometimes a lack of discipline, others a lack of defense, and most bizarre of all, a lack of shot-making which was all they were good for this season (that and getting turnovers). Carmelo has never been out of the first round. AI’s quest for the elusive ring has been stalled. George Karl has amazingly found a THIRD team loaded with talent that he can’t take all the way. But the good news is the Nuggets have a young talent to build around, his name is JR Smith. Everything about him screams 2007-08 Denver Nuggets. Um, good luck with that.

2) Lakers. Still have work to do, those heightened expectations are tough aren’t they? When the season began, there was TURMOIL! Kobe had to be traded, or the team blown up to rebuild, or some other drastic trade, or they just had to find a way to somehow make it to that elusive second round. Well… they made a trade alright. Giving up less than nothing to get more than something. Lake Show is the best handling their business squad so far. We have to wait for the adversity to come, and oh, it will.

3) Raptors. Eliminated, have regressed from last season, their coach’s job may or may not be on the line, but the big thing is that if you wanted to label them as soft, it doesn’t get much worse than letting one player rack up three 20-20s on you in five games. Definitely the losers of the least-watched, least-discussed series so far.

4) Orlando Magic. Congrats to Stan Van Gundy. Not only did he just take a team to the second round five minutes after he showed up, but the old man who did him dirty had to retire with his reptilian tail between his legs once again, on pretty much the same day. And then Larry Brown jumps back into the picture, trying to block his light even further. Leave Stan alone! The guy “chose” hanging out with his family over coaching, while Larry’s been sitting on a park bench in a coma, screaming at innocent 12 year olds to share the ball! I am very happy for Stan. And Dwight, the 20-20s. Rest up for round 2. Definitely a successful season for the Magic no matter what happens from here.

5) Phoenix Suns. Eliminated last night. Bhhhhhhhkkkkkkkkkkkkk!!!! That was supposed to be the sound of an explosion. An exploding sun if you will. Re: throwing caution to the wind, unloading youth for Shaq and his money… “You tried and you failed. The lesson? Never try. – H. Simpson.” The NBA is a results-oriented business. Yes it was a tough task drawing the Spurs in round one, but in the end a round one loss is a round one loss. Where do they go from here? That will be one of the big questions of the off-season. Regarding Steve Nash’s legacy, here’s a hindsight is 20-20 observation: People say he didn’t become the dominant offensive PG capable of winning MVPs until he got to Phoenix. Maybe the Mavs just didn’t know what the hell they were doing and holding him back from those big numbers? Then again, Tony Parker could not have emasculated him any more. So many French jokes to make, but I am above that.

6) Dallas Mavericks. I want to thank Mark Cuban for teaching me an important life lesson this season. I never really got the phrase “Money can’t buy you class.” I think that if I had a lot of money I’d just be like “Eff you, I’m gonna be myself, do what I want, here’s $5 if you swear you’ll never speak to me again.” So you could say I aspire to have Cuban’s type of power… until this season. What a whiner. It’s over man. J Howard hit that L. Cuban talked down to everybody all season long, even coming up with a new way of treating at the game media. Too bad there is no more “at the game” for his team. How did they respond to last year’s collapse? Not well.

7) San Antonio Spurs. My thing with the Spurs is this… in a world of chaos you need a rock. It’s them. The Spurs are in the second round, where they belong. They expect this.

8) Utah Jazz. They didn’t close out the series last night, and in fact were suffocated by the Rockets defense. Whenever Russ wakes up I’m sure he’ll have much more to say about it. The Utah story still needs work.

9) Houston Rockets. Ah the other side of the Utah story. It’s all Tracy’s fault just like he said. No but seriously, it’s nice to see Tracy and the Rockets not just laying down at 0-2, and now they’ve made it a series. Game 6 in Utah where the Jazz never lose, except they did against these Rockets in what should have been the soul crusher for Houston. If the Rockets can somehow find a way to win this one game… obviously with Tracy’s history (yup him again) they have to get out of round 1 to consider the season a success. But forcing a game 7 back at home would be really impressive.

10) New Orleans. Has there ever been a franchise that’s been a complete afterthought, draft one player and then all of a sudden they are a powerhouse. Chris Paul is (insert over the top praise). The Hornets season has been a smashing success. No matter what happens from here on out. The worst thing that can happen to them is they learn hard lessons. And that’s not even a bad thing.

11) Washington Wizards. It’s very weird seeing one of the softer playoff teams doing all of the macho posturing and enforcing. Their one legitimately tough player is Caron Butler, and he has nothing to do with all of this nonsense. Last night they had one of those split screen commercials with Antawn Jamison and Ben Wallace. Did they shoot one with every single NBA player this year? The Wizards are an annoyance to me this playoff run. The entertainment stuff off the court makes me feel cheap and dirty for having to pay attention to it because it’s part of my job. Please, just fold it up and go home.

12) Cleveland Cavaliers. LeBron has always wanted to transcend mere athletics and be a force in the entertainment world as well. Be careful what you wish for. Now Jay-Z is involved, Soulja Boy, people walking out of clubs when the wrong song comes on, and LeBron even had to try and put an end to the madness by saying he just plays basketball and this is all nonsense. Too late! The Vogue cover controversy was more interesting than all of this “stuff.” I feel bad for the innocent victim: Soulja Boy. What did he ever do? Sure there is some adolescent mysogyny in one of his songs. Have you honestly heard his second single or anything else he’s done? It’s like “Parents Just Don’t Understand” but without sentence structure. It’s not good music, but then again it’s not for me or my generation, or probably even your generation. It’s for little kids on a sugar rush. It sounds like ice cream truck music. And this is the key figure in a playoff series? Oh, Cleveland just has to move on and then we’ll see. As a team though, LeBron is a great player.

13) Philadelphia 76ers. The first SHOCK THE WORLD team of this playoff run. Khalid didn’t get too excited, like this wasn’t the biggest thing to happen to his team since the finals run. I believe it to be an act o contrarianism. Now that the Pistons have restored order and people have jumped on the Atlanta bandwagon, Khalid is jealous and wants people to recognize that Philly was the first David to scare a Goliath. He will never admit this publicly, but I know. The 76ers will lose the series but they’ve gained so much. They play hard, they have encouraging young athletes, and they’ve made the Pistons look old and vulnerable. Until the second half on Sunday and last night’s brutalization. Great season for Philly though! They were supposed to be a lottery team, a tanker.

14) Atlanta Hawks. In the same breath as the 76ers, but even more surprising because the Celtics are supposed to be the fired up and ready to dominate team, the hungry team. Atlanta didn’t do much in games one and two, but making the playoffs gave them their best season of the 2000s. This series and the home court intensity of their fans may have changed they way people think of the Hawks for a while. Game 4 with Joe Johnson and Josh Smith doing EVERYTHING, was really fun to watch. People were calling for a 3 game sweep, canceling the series, jokes. How can you NOT love what the Hawks are doing?

15) Detroit Pistons. How many times can a team do this? They don’t get into it until their backs are up against the wall. Then, they get burnt out from having their backs against the fall for too long and over the off-season we say they should have taken care of business earlier and they wouldn’t have been in such a desperate situation. Okay, the Pistons have to get to the Conference Finals at the very least for it to be a good season for them. Sure, they’ve blended in some promising young talent this year, but there is just something fundamentally strange about them. Why do they insist on making things harder for themselves?

16) Boston Celtics. Ahhhhhh… the green sky is falling. They are the better team, they have homecourt where the Hawks can’t beat them, blah blah blah. This has been a disaster for the C’s. In some circles, KG got bonus MVP point because he was “inspiring teammates” by screaming at them from the bench, by acting like a lunatic which gave them the fire they needed to run roughshod over the Eastern conference. I love KG’s game and his enthusiasm. Here is the thing… Why doesn’t anyone else do that? It wears you out. If you treat “Every game like game 7 of the Finals”, then how do you raise your intensity when a bigger game than the previous one comes along? They showed a shot on TV to show KG’s leadership in the huddle, and he looked dazed and amazed (not confused and abused, Walt Clyde is with me). Even more troubling for the C’s is this… the Pistons have real winners that can get into trouble and fall back on the memory of overcoming these types of odds. The Celtics, you already know about KG’s first round playoff trouble. What about Paul Pierce? Sure, he was a beast during their run to almost beating the Nets that one year. He carried the Celtics over a Pacers team coached by ISIAH, and he’s had more good than bad in the playoffs, but he’s hardly a proven “We’re winning this series” guy. Ray Allen? One deep run when the Bucks had a lot of talent, and they still lost to the Sixers of Iverson and scrappy defenders. He was on the Seattle team that beat Sacramento in a series dominated by… JEROME JAMES. Don’t get me started on what UCONN’s losses used to do to my NCAA bracket when Ray went there. Some wounds don’t heal. The guys on the Celtics you can trust know how to win series are Sam Cassell and James Posey. That is an interesting dynamic for a team that should be the runaway favorite.

BIG GAME TONIGHT IN BOSTON. The Celtics really need to get to The Finals to justify the good feelings of their season. Maybe this is the adversity they need to overcome to give them real battle-tested confidence.

Anyways, that’s my take on all 16. What can I say, I got up early today. Feel free to insult the Suns or do whatever below.

The post Playoff Consequence Understandings appeared first on SLAM.

It has been brought to my attention that in this weekend’s daily racing form, there will be a letter from Phoenix Suns center and NBA legend Shaquille O’Neal that um… well read for yourself:

That’s right. You’ve seen the commercial. It could go one step further.

Obvious joke to get out of the way: Well, he’ll have lots of free time to do whatever he wants come next Saturday anyways. There I said it. But seriously, this could be the biggest thing to happen to horse racing since Seabiscuit. Possibly bigger! Come on national thoroughbread racing association, don’t be a bunch of haters…

The post Shaq wants to ride in the Kentucky Derby appeared first on SLAM.

With apologies to the three games yet to be played tonight, which are all in the 1-0 stage, these have been amazing playoffs so far, full of intrigue! Yes, intrigue! The 2-0 hole that five teams face means that do or die games are coming for them. Let’s take a look…

San Antonio-Phoenix. Game one was a classic that people are already putting on an all-time pedestal. It was a good game. The bitter rivalry between the teams and the way their series was altered by controversy last year, it was nice to see them start with a classic. The clutch shot-making down the stretch was otherworldy. Tim Duncan hitting a three? Steve Nash catching the ball and drifting 4 or 5 steps before flinging a three of his own? Finley? Shaq’s putback? Amare’s and-1? Manu? There was a Pacers-Magic playoff game once where four guys hit “the big shot” in the span of 30 seconds. I believe it went Brian Shaw, Reggie Miller, Penny, Rik Smits. Game one of Spurs-Suns was better. Game two just meant that the Suns are now heading home, extremely desperate. One thing to look out for… Shaquille O’Neal is a great champion… and a horrible loser. How many times has his team been swept out of the playoffs? I can think of at least four off the top of my head.

Cleveland-Washington. Heading in, the Wizards were being annoying with their false bravado chatter. Deshawn Stevenson reminds me of this guy I know from St. Louis who told me he didn’t care if the Rams lost the Super Bowl, they still had the best team. You could not argue logically with him. I hate him. Anyways, there is the controversial ejection of Haywood, the talk about LeBron getting the superstar treatment, and lots of hatred between the teams which is what you want in a playoff series. I’m sure the Wizards fans will be tough on LeBron down in D.C., but he’s been playing his best ball in hostile environments this season, so get ready for another 50-10 game.

Utah-Houston. Not the prettiest series, and it may have been decided by a flop, but the outpouring of sympathy for T-Mac has been nice. In a world where you are judged by wins and losses, performance and salary, it is just different to see fans responding with emotional support. But hey, the series isn’t over, they are heading back to Utah where the Jazz have lost 4 games this season um, yeah my condolences Tracy.

New Orleans-Dallas. Chris Paul! Orlando-Toronto. Dwight Howard! There’s really nothing more to add here. It’s just awesome to see young players reaching the playoff stage and making it their personal space. It’s year two for Dwight but he’s had back to back 20-20 games which is beyond preposterous. Chris Paul, you’ve seen the numbers, the humiliation of the artist formerly known as Jason Kidd. I don’t need to add to the gushing praise. What can you say? He’s playing point guard better than humanly possible.

A few months ago for my “Which NBA Player Are You” for the magazine, I was ready to go with Chris Paul=Obama. The main premise being, that they are both fresh faces expected to win on the big stage despite very little experience. The thing was, we didn’t know how far Chris Paul’s team would be at that point, whereas Obama was nearly a shoe-in, but Ben decided we should hold off on that. As you know from last night, somehow Chris has surpassed Obama in terms of domination and media darlingness, since Obama is still in a dogfight.

I went with Nate Robinson=Bushwick Bill for that “Which NBA Player Are You.” It was a proud moment for me.

The other three series tonight…you have to expect the Pistons to make it 1-1, but the other two could easily go to 2-0. So, I expect there to be SEVEN do-or-die game threes. That is sick.

The post Best all 2-0 Playoff round ever! appeared first on SLAM.

I am not covering the Philly-Detroit series. It is my job to oversee every series and make sure they are all spoken for. This series will be spoken for by the three-headed monster of Khalid/Emry/Michael Tillery.

But it’s getting late on Friday, it’s 75 degrees outside, and there is no preview waiting for me to post. So here I go…

Chauncey, Sheed, Rip, Tayshaun, you know. The worst you can say about them is sometimes they don’t play their best until their backs are against the wall, and they’ve even relaxed so much with 2-0 series leads that they couldn’t get it up again. That’s what she said.

Antonio McDyess has replaced the former heart of the team/city Big Ben in the starting lineup, and though they don’t flash the same suffocating D from the peak of Big Ben’s best days, they can still lock down and defend when they want to, but they can also play fast tempo and run and gun you to death.

Jason Maxiell eats babies!

The last time the Pistons didn’t get past the first round was when they were being coached by George Irvine. Jerry Stackhouse scored nearly 30 ppg for them. The number of players from that team currently on the Pistons roster: 0

(Unless Mateen Cleaves is still on the team. He might be. You never know.)

Through Rick Carlisle, Larry Brown, and Flip Saunders, the Pistons have never gone out in the first round. They are going to win this series.

No matter what happens to the Sixers, they’ve had a great season. People for the most part looked at their roster and said that Iguodala is talented but not really a guy you build around. Dalembert is too pricey for what he brings to the table. The young guys, Thad and Louis Williams were a wait and see with low expectations. Andre Miller was just a place holder. Kyle Korver was traded for Gordon Giricek, who ended up with Phoenix. Mo Cheeks was seen as a good guy who may be overmatched as a coach.

Billy King’s reign of terror came to an end, in stepped Ed Stefanski, and all of a sudden The Sixers started winning. They became the second half version of the Blazers, the stunning feel-good story of the season.

Now they are in the playoffs, and have a chance to catch the Pistons napping for a game or two. Sure, it would have been nice to have more lottery balls in a loaded draft, but the experience of being the playoffs will make this young Sixers team stronger in the future. KG and Ray Allen will start to fall off at some point, the Raptors should be good but they are hardly a lock to run away with the divison, the Nets have some youth but mostly dead weight as far a long term future goes. And that is it for the Atlantic, yup, I have mentioned every single team. This year’s run to the playoffs has started the Sixers down the path to division dominance down the road.

But they’re getting swept in round 1. Just like the Phillies!

The post Sixers-Pistons first round preview appeared first on SLAM.

It is time. The playoffs are upon is.

First will come Vincent’s Western Conference preview.

Then will come eight individual series previews throughout the day.

I won’t say who has written what, cause I like to keep you on your toes. Think of it as a LOST type of cliffhanger.

Prepare yourself.

The post Let’s get ready to PREVIEW! appeared first on SLAM.

We never got around to showing you our behind the scenes video of the Michael Beasley cover shoot. Fredo Tovar put together another video banger, and the fun twist this time is that Mike answered some questions at the shoot and even borrowed the camera for a little bit to record his thoughts. (kids today! All they do is take photos of themselves!) Since he declared that he’s turning pro yesterday, this is as good a time as any to show you the video. Enjoy.

Thanks again to Fredo. His myspace page is here and you can contact him at this email.

The post Michael Beasley cover shoot video appeared first on SLAM.

The regular season’s almost over and pretty soon we’ll be previewing all of the match-ups and various Slamonline writers will be responsible for their own series. It would be really nice if things were clear and we had some idea of what teams are playing each other, but that’s not how it works this season.

I’ll stick to the West, which has been more like a tight baseball pennant race than an NBA exhibition season. Phoenix was fading, Houston was rising, the Lakers took over, the Hornets took over, Denver got hot, Golden State got cold, San Antonio was San Antonio, Dallas collapsed, Dallas got hot, Utah became the hottest team… where are we?

As of RIGHT NOW these are the seedings with teams left to play:

1. LA Lakers vs. SAC
2. New Orleans vs. LAC, at DAL
3. San Antonio at SAC, vs. UTA
4. Utah vs. HOU, at SAN
5. Houston at UTA, vs. LAC
6. Phoenix vs. GS, vs. POR
7. Dallas vs. NO
8. Denver vs. MEM
9. Golden State at PHX, vs. SEA

I put the games between teams that are involved in head-to-head games in bold. Assume that playoff bound teams will beat those that are going home for the summer. I know, it’s a dangerous assumption, but if any of these teams lose to Memphis or Seattle at this point, they deserve what they get. Which is a slight re-seeding.

Here’s what this all means…

Tonight it’s Golden State at Phoenix. If the Warriors can find a way to win, they stay alive in the picture. A loss, and they’re out cause Denver has the tie breaker over them.

The Lakers should handle their business against the Kings, and lock up the #1 seed. If they don’t do that, then we get a huge mess that will never make sense. Here I go trying to break this down a simply as possible. It is going to get confusing no matter what. Take a deep breath. Read slowly. Do not attempt to operate heavy machinery.

1) New Orleans at Dallas – First we have to assume that the Hornets beat the Clippers. If New Orleans doesn’t go 2-0, then they leave the door open for the Spurs to catch them. If the Lakers do lose to the Kings, the Hornets can sneak back into the #1 spot to face – now this is where it gets interesting – the Hornets winning means Dallas losing. If Dallas loses, then it’s possible Denver or Golden State could catch them and flip the 7/8 seed depending on the tie-breakers involved.

Now, here’s where it really get fun… New Orleans will be playing to win, to go for the #1 seed, but they also have to watch out for the Spurs, who are right beneath them and could catch up. Even if the Lakers clinch, the Hornets still have to worry about their own slippage, losing potential home court in later rounds, or favorable match-ups. To summarize, the Hornets could be playing the Mavs to guarantee that they the Hornets, will be playing the Mavs in the playoffs. Dallas can not raise their position, they can only fall down to #8 with a loss. BUT… a Dallas win over New Orleans would go a long way to locking up the series as #2 NO vs. #7 Dallas.

Basically, it’s going to be New Orleans vs. Dallas in round one. This game could determine if that is a 1/8 series or a 2/7 series. You could see the Mavs as the #8 seed, getting no respect, facing an MVP candidate, and facing the top seed as an underdog. THE SHOE IS ON THE OTHER FOOT!

Of course if the Lakers beat the Kings and the Suns beat the Warriors, the Dallas-NO regular season game would be an exhibition of all bench players.

2) The Utah Jazz games – Again, have to assume that Sacramento will lay down and the Spurs handle them. San Antonio still has a chance to catch New Orleans at the #2 spot, but they could also drop all the way down to 5 or 6. They are in a flat-footed tie with Houston, but have the tie-breaker advantage. Assuming (again) that Houston can beat the Clippers, the San Antonio-Houston race comes down to Utah vs. each of them.

Utah goes to San Antonio and Houston comes to Utah.

Advantage: San Antonio.

Utah is 17-23 on the road, and 36-4 at home. For those of you who have come this far reading this post and are throwing your hands up saying “I don’t care, just line ’em up, play who ya play!”, the most significant point is that home court for Utah changes EVERYTHING. If they have home court in a series, they could be the favorite against just about anyone. As the road team, who knows.

Here is the key to the whole thing in simplest possible form: If Utah can beat BOTH San Antonio and Houston, they could rise up to the #3 seed, which is significant because if the #2 seed were to fall in round 1, then Utah becomes it and has that home court all the way to the conference finals.

This breakdown of the Western Conference playoffs is funny and accurate for many reasons. One of my favorites is the phrase “Abandon all hope ye who enter here” outside of Energy Solutions Arena. That is what is written on the gates of hell in Dante’s Inferno. Well played!

So there you have it. UTTER CHAOS! I’m 25% more confused now than I was before I started writing this thing.

Tonight:

Houston at Utah

San Antonio at Sacramento

Golden State at Phoenix

Believe it or not, we might actually know something for sure tomorrow morning.

The post NBA Western Conference Playoff Picture Update: Confusing! appeared first on SLAM.

The issue is on sale EVERYWHERE

The post Dwight Howard Cover Shoot Video appeared first on SLAM.

The new contests are up. Sure Shot and What’s My Name.

And now to announce the winner of our slamonline NCAA bracket tourney… The Hollywood Horror! Congratulations. If you would like to share with the slamonline world how you picked your slamonline bracket, email me.

The post New Contests! And our NCAA bracket winner appeared first on SLAM.

Last night there was a double overtime game full of playoff implications for one side, final score 151-147. Normally that would be the token crazy game of the season, an aberration for which a season will be remembered. This year, it’s almost expected. Even as teams solidify their playoff seeding, the West is still completely out of control. Congrats to the Sonics though, for one of the most loaded spoiler games ever.

Vince wrote a column a while ago about how the Nuggets play slop ball, and while I saw his point, it really didn’t bother me that much. Some teams are sloppy, it’s good to have variety. Then I saw the end of their 168 point game against Seattle. Guys were pulling up for threes, JR Smith was dunking on people, against a team that recently shipped out pretty much every single one of its veterans to clear cap space and is about to pack up its things and skip town.

Keep in mind the Nuggets coach once coached the Sonics, when they were supposed to be a budding dynasty, and they played a similar front-running, high-flying style but with great defensive players on board. Oh, and they blew it to of all teams, the Nuggets in the first round, the first #1 losing to a #8. George Karl has changed sides, and it’s just incredible that he couldn’t see this coming having all of that first hand experience. When the Nuggets humiliated the Sonics, when they made a mockery of another professional team, they set themselves up for the take down. At the time I thought maybe next year or down the road, cause how could the Sonics with Kevin Durant, Jeff Green, and a bunch of castaways ever beat Iverson, Melo, Camby, etc. when one team has everything to play for and the other has nothing. Why would Seattle even bother to play hard at this time of year? Well, when you slap them in the face and laugh at them like in the 168 point game, that’s a pretty good way to get the other team fired up.

Denver played eight men last night. Allen Iverson played 55 minutes. Camby and Melo played 48 each and Kenyon Martin played 46. Even if the Nuggets survive to make the playoffs, last night will cost them and they have nobody to blame but themselves.

Another completely insane development, that needs to be shackled down at Arkham asylum it’s so crazy, is the return of Dirk Nowitzki with the HEART OF A CHAMPION! What sick, twisted, parallel universe are we living in right now? The Mavs have gone from staving off an epic collapse that couldn’t beat a .500 team to save it’s life, with their obnoxious team owner looking a total jerk with no class and billions of meaningless dollars, to becoming a legitimate threat again.

I hope Golden State makes it, but they’re really not doing themselves any favors right now. This Thursday should be the big one: Denver at Golden State, and it’s at 8 P.M Eastern. Anything less than triple OT 170-169 on a buzzer beater by Baron would be a let-down. Actually scratch that, cause it’s too predictable. Something completely f*cking nuts is going to happen on Thursday.

On top of all the race for 7th and 8th talk, the Hornets could be the top seed in the West. Chris Paul has carried the team with a point guard season really unmatched in recent memory, and I mean Steve Nash won back to back MVPs with some amazing individual seasons for a point guard, and Paul has outdone those seasons this year (defense too!). But, the Hornets have almost no significant playoff experience other than Peja, who really isn’t a crunch time killer on that stage. They will have to deal with the Spurs or Kobe at some point, if it gets that far, and in the NBA, experience is supposedly the thing that matters come playoff time, which is why old teams keep winning the championship.

Congrats to Memphis and Kansas by the way. I left watching the Kansas game at halftime to go bowling, assuming the blowout. Got tight there, but as soon as I got to the bowling alley, Kansas pulled away. My bad.

The post Newsflash: The West is INSANE appeared first on SLAM.

Why, hello there. It’s Friday afternoon. Tomorrow at 6 P.M. the Final Four begins, the battle of one seeds. You need someone to cheer for, so here’s how our standings break down.

Our leader is the subwayconnection, who has Kansas over UCLA.

In second we have DerrickRose=championship who went the exact opposite, with Memphis over UCLA.
Tar Heels! has UNC over UCLA.
The highest ranking UCLA to win the whole thing pick is BlindasthenewGovofNY, who may or may not be Ben Collins of blogmaverick fame. He’s got UNC in the other game.
And The Hollywood Horror is a dark horse to sneak in for the win if Kansas beats Memphis in the final.
Everyone else, thanks for playing. Those of you who kept things simple and took the popular teams as established by the all-powerful selection committee have done well.

I think that covers all the possibilities. This will probably come down to the last game, just like real life, the way it should be. Good luck! Have a great weekend.

The post Checking in on the SLAMonline NCAA bracket for the Final Four appeared first on SLAM.

Last night I crashed out on the couch while watching the Dallas-Golden State game on ESPN. Sometime before 3 A.M. I woke up and sportscenter was on. Apparently Gilbert Arenas played an NBA game last night, and Chad Johnson spoke in a REALLY bizarre speaker phone interview with Brian Kenny. My first conclusion was that I must have been drugged without my knowledge, or I’m going through LOST withdrawal, the TV is not actually on and I must be dreaming.

Apparently not.

In the not so distant past, Arenas and Chad were on my short list of favorite athletes. They were exciting offensive players on up and coming teams, and more importantly were total eccentrics who kept playing the “I’m just regular normal old me, maybe it’s the world that’s crazy?” card. And they would back up the trash talk, youtube video, interview, or blog post with performance on the field. They were clown princes of their respective leagues, but were performing big enough that you could go so far as to ask why other athletes can’t be free and easy like them.

Believe it or not, there was a time when people wished LeBron could be more like Gil. Less calculating, more “human”, just say what he feels like Gilbert. I felt that way a little bit, but also recognized that Gilbert Arenas is a great scorer and quirky personality, but not really a vital piece of NBA history, whereas LeBron is the chosen one, evolution + God, and so on. When Gil went on that rant about how he does more for a team than Kobe, Wade, or LeBron, well that was annoying. Swagger and self-confidence is great, but don’t insult our intelligence.

Chad Johnson was a dancing fool! I say this with a straight face – touchdown dances are why I started playing sports as a kid. Playing in the schoolyard, I was always focused on my next TD dance. Scoring the TD could be a problem, but the creativity of the dance was not. So basically, to me Chad Johnson was one of the most important athletes of the 21st century, particularly in the No Fun League. He also happened to be one of the better receivers in the game. Now, as his public displays of… personality (?) get weirder and weirder, it’s like I’m being forced to grow into one of those angry old man sports fans.

JUST SHUT UP AND PLAY THE GAME!

I’m pissed at both Chad and Gilbert for doing this to me. It’s YOUR fault not mine. This concludes my rant on this topic. If only there were an NBA player who could blog like THIS.

The post Gilbert Arenas and Chad Johnson: Together again appeared first on SLAM.

Get your one puns ready. Tons of ones, Top ones, Onederful, final ones, etc. So we have the first ever Final Four of all top seeds. I actually think that in the long run, that will be good for the game. There have been too many amazing David beating Goliath games in recent memory. We fall for it every time, but just off the top of my head, here is a list of some underdogs winning an improbable championship or run for the ages or playoff series vs. an unbeatable opponent:

Giants beat undefeated best team ever Pats. (Cue goofy smile)

Houston Rockets come from nowhere to win 22 in a row.

Colorado Rockies come from nowhere to win do or die play-in game, then sweep NL playoffs.

Cleveland Cavaliers down 0-2, beat superior Pistons four straight, highlighted by one of the great individual playoff games of all-time.

Golden State Warriors as a sloppy #8 seed knock out the #1 seed Dallas Mavericks, which is never supposed to happen.

GEORGE MASON

Florida is a huge underdog to Ohio State in football, blows them out in BCS championship game.

Florida wins the NCAA basketball tourney out of nowhere, Joakim Noah comes from out of nowhere to play like Bill Russell.

The St. Louis Cardinals collapse at the end of the regular season, hold on, somehow make it to the World Series and win it all.

The Detroit Tigers beat the heavily favored Yankees as Kenny Rogers mysteriously turns into Koufax. The mystery of the brown shmutz on his hand goes unsolved.
Vince Young leads Texas by himself over the USC unbeatable dynasty.

The Red Sox come from three games behind to beat the Yankees, kind of a big deal.

The Pistons beat the Lakers team of four hall of famers and hall of fame head coach.

The scrappy Pats with rookie QB beat the greatest show on turf in the Super Bowl.

You see what I mean? David or Cinderella, the underdog, whatever you want to call it… has had a nice run. But if they keep winning, it  becomes less of a big deal when they do. So, it’s a good thing in the long run for the favorites to re-establish themselves. You gotta have villains if you want to have heroes. Congrats to Memphis, UCLA, UNC, and Kansas.

Of course the story of the tourney that everyone will remember 2008 by is STEPHEN CURRY and Davidson. They were more than just a one-man show, but that one-man show was… I have never stood up screaming pumping fist as much for a team, player, or game that had absolutely no impact on me. Curry wasn’t just nailing every open shot, he was weaving through traffic and throwing up wild scoop layups that kept going in. The combination of Gus Johnson’s calls and Curry’s performance was the real March Madness. Granted, the Kansas game wasn’t just the Curry show, it had the hot shooting of someone Gus kept calling “THE WHITE LOBSTER!!! AHHHHHHHH!” Seriously, this Davidson run was tailor made for Gus. Every time Curry lined up a shot, you could almost feel Gus leaning through your TV, just aching to go way over the top. Can you blame him? Usually when he’s talking about Steph Curry, it’s two Knicks that have… let’s just leave it at underachieved this season.
Now you get the Billy Packer/Jim Nantz/same old one seeds. But hey, go get that championship.

Curry should have taken the last shot, but Kansas was all over him, and I guess he did the right thing finding the open man. Still, you wanted to see the guy who made the whole tournament be the one to take that shot.

Thank you Davidson for bringing us all along for the ride.

The post STEPHEN CURRY! (But it’s good to have the #1 seeds as villains again) appeared first on SLAM.

Ignoring the slamonline bracket, where I am curiously in 7th place although two of my Final Four teams are already eliminated… there is another pool I’m in where things could not have gone better for me last night. Sure, it would have been nice if both UNC and UCLA bit it, so everything would have been thrown to chaos. UCLA nearly obliged.

The big games were the other two though. First it was Xavier blowing a huge lead to West Virginia. I had picked Xavier to get to the Elite 8 because, get this, I have a memory of them always unexpectedly beating Cincinnati and their coach Bob Huggins. When Joe Alexander hit a quick turnaround in the post to tie the game in regulation AND draw the foul, I was angry. I may have screamed out some curse words at an innocent college kid – the same kid who was everybody’s best friend after beating Duke just yesterday (figuratively). I guess it was a smart move to curse him out though, cause he missed the free throw. Huge! Xavier’s final possession as broadcasted by me, not Bill Raftery: “Ok, push it up! What are you doing! What! Come on! Go! Shoot it! Ahhhhh! That’s your shot?!? You’re dead to me!” I think I need a clipboard.

Xavier predictably fell behind with all the momentum going the other way in OT, but then everyone on West Virgina, including Alexander fouled out. The musketeers came back – there was an amazing play when there were two seconds left on the shot clock with Xavier inbounding from the sideline after a ball was swatted out of bounds. B.J. Raymond was wide open on the opposite side of the floor, the pass came, he nailed the shot. There was joy in Rubensteinville.

I celebrated with a veggie burger, don’t judge me.

The second game featured the most important team in the tourney for me – Louisville. I’m not sure what my thought process was, but I took them to go all the way to the title game where they lose to Memphis. (I know, I know… free throws. This could all be MOOT as they say.) Before long, there was an 18-1 run by Louisville, a thing of beauty. Rick Pitino, you genius! Bruce Pearl you lovable party animal! I remember thinking to myself “I know it’s a game of runs, weathering the storms, waiting for your shots to start falling, but Tennessee is already scared taking turnaround fadeaways and hoping they go in. I got this!” Bruce Pearl took a timeout, and right on cue the Vols started hitting shots, Louisville got complacent, and before long it was a close game.

Crunch time was rough… I may have blacked out… the good news is that Louisville was victorious! Now they get to face UNC, a team that has won all three of their games by 20 points or more and has probably the most dominant player in the NCAA on their side, not to mention the bluest of the blue chippers, and they’re playing the game pretty much in Dean Smith’s living room.

Saturday 9 P.M. – I NEED THIS.

I NEED THIS!

I’m sure I am jinxing myself by taking so much pride in how good my bracket looks while everyone else in the world likes to be all self-depreciative with the “Woe is me” stuff. I want to remember the feeling of having a bracket that is not shredded with utmost viciousness.

p.s. don’t blow it tonight Memphis.

The post March Madness: The greatest thing ever when you’re winning! appeared first on SLAM.

I was doing some behind the scenes thing when I came across the fact that this morning’s version of The Post Up was #100 for Holly. Congratulations Holly! I would have put it as a comment buried down at the bottom there, but who has the focus/time to keep up!
Great job all season long.

At the same time, Mutoni’s Slam Wire items are clocking in at post #401 right now. Great job to Mutoni as well! This is a celebration b–tches!

The post The Post Up AND The SLAM Wire hit big milestones on the same day appeared first on SLAM.

A lot of what we do here is telling the life stories of basketball players, attaching importance to every little move they make and every big game they play. But there are times when you selfishly have to ask yourself, what does this guy mean to ME and my life?

Chris Webber is set to announce that he can’t come back from his latest injury setback, and so his career as an NBA player is over. When I think about it, Webber is the first player that I can remember breaking in as a rookie, having a great (Hall of Fame?) career full of twists and turns, and now retiring. Along the way he had his ups and downs. But this isn’t totally about Chris, this is also about memories of Chris.

Fab 5 days – there was an older girl in my school who used to wear her Webber Michigan jersey all the time. No big deal. A few years later when she graduated high school, her senior page in the yearbook had a photo of her bedroom. The word “shrine” does a disservice to how much Chris Webber paraphernalia she had. I’m amazed she never stalked and kidnapped him.

Rookie year with Golden State – NBA Live 95. The Warriors had Hardaway, Sprewell, Mullin, and Webber (and Billy Owens. He wasn’t allowed to touch the ball). Unstoppable. In real life they had injuries, but I prefer to remember the virtual best team ever. I can’t even tell you how many times we did impression of the barbershop commercial where he dunks on Barkley and invents the Sir Charles quote “I don’t believe in role models, but you mine.” He also had a guest skit on the Naughty By Nature album “Poverty’s Paradise.” The skit was called “Chris Webber Skit.” He uses the n-word on the phone when talking to, I guess Treach.

Oh yeah, Webber dunked on Barkley. It was supposed to be one of those changing of the guard, passing of the torch moments. Eh… didn’t happen quite that way.

There were a few lost years with the Bullets, some injuries, and in one of the dumber P.C. things ever they became the Wizards. What’s more dangerous, a little piece of lead and grammatical checkpoint you use to make lists? Or a dark hooded sorceror in flowing robes who can throw lightning bolts at you? I fear the wizard more than the bullet.

Annnnnnyways… I remember the playoff series against Chicago, where Washington played hard but got swept. I also remember C-Webb had this whole thing about how he was going to smile and love his life no matter whether he was winning or losing games. Very Bobby Bonilla of him.

Traded to the Kings, to the proverbial “NBA Siberia”, a.k.a. Sacramento. At this point in my life, all I knew about the Sacramento Kings was they had Wayman Tisdale once and this guy Mitch Richmond was putting up huge numbers but I’d only seen him play a few times, usually just in the All-Star game.

And then came White Chocolate, the artist who would someday be known as Eboy, and there had never been a more fun team to watch. They played the heavily favored and always hated Utah Jazz. That was a fun series to watch with friends. I remember that Chris Webber had a bad back, and that meant with the series on the line in game 5, Vlade Divac took the big shot. They did not win, but the future was bright.

The next year, Sacramento was supposed to the first round sacrificial lamb to hungry Shaq and the Lakers. Once again, they pushed a favored and hated team to the limit, but couldn’t get it done. This may have closed the book on the short-lived Chris Webber  as KG-type of sympathetic figure days.

The Kings became a great regular season team, who would get huge numbers from their MVP candidate Webber, then they’d get to the playoffs, run past some cupcake team, and then fall short against the Lakers. The Robert Horry pick up and fling it game-winner was symbolic of everything. Chris Webber was doomed to never be a champion. Oh well. Maybe if he wanted the ball with the game on the line… DIRK, this could be you!

I remember watching the epic game 7 to get to the Finals with some friends at a dirty, prehistorically disgusting apartment where we’d have to actually have a can of roach spray on the table at all times. When it went to OT, we looked around at each other and we were like “We are a part of history just watching this.” Most people in that room were on their way to becoming rap magazine big shots, so that kind of talk was normal.

The next year, I remember it was Sacramento-Dallas in the second round, back when every other team in the NBA was lucky to top 85 points in a game, they had a playoff game where it was like 75-72 at HALFTIME. Webber was out there too long in a blowout, and his knee… blew out. That was the end of Chris Webber explosive power forward, and he was forced to re-invent his game.

The next season, with Webber on the shelf rehabbing from the at-the-time mysterious microfracture surgery, Peja Stojakovic was – I kid you not – a for real MVP candidate! C-Webb was working his way back slowly, and I remember some thing about him boldly claiming “It’s my team! I’m the leader!” which was like, bro, that’s not the real you Chris.

I was done with Webber at this point. Had enough! People tend to hate a guy that piles up numbers in softer games and then doesn’t have the stomach for the big moment when we expect them to define themselves. Choking is a sign of weakness I suppose. We prefer our heroes to be able to run into a burning building and sacrifice, or to be completely driven with an insane need to prove they are better than YOU and everyone else. That’s just not the kind of guy Chris wanted to be. I guess. I don’t really know him like that. Daniel Plainview time: “There is a competition in me… I want no other man to succeed, etc.” You’d have more fun kicking back with C-Webb.

I was on the T-Wolves bandwagon hardcore that summer. They had Sprewell, I liked KG, and the Knicks were living La Vida Layden. So, I was pro-Wolves, anti-Kings when they met up in the second round. The series came down to a seventh game, where the MVP, KG, had some preposterous 25-20 line or something like that. The Kings had a chance to tie it with a three… the shot came from Webber, and it went in and out at the buzzer. The guy is CURSED! I felt pity, as much pity as you can for someone making a hundred mill and dating a pre-knowing too much about her Tyra.

When he was traded to Philly the next year, there was all the usual “Now Iverson gets to play along with a superstar!” talk. Yeah, his numbers were good in the East, but the thing I remember most about that trade was it happened the same day Randy Moss was traded from Minnesota to Oakland. The Sixers had invested a few bucks in two guys, and well, yeah… so Webber was blessed with a humungous buyout and had a renaissance with Detroit, giving them enough of a push to dominate the East in the regular season. The past few years blend together because I actually remember them clearly and that’s not as fun.

Going back to Golden State and Don Nelson, everything was set up to come full-circle for him, but this is Chris Webber we’re talking about, so you don’t get a happy ending.

Thank for the memories though Chris. Now I feel even older than you must feel as a retiree.

The post Memories of Chris Webber appeared first on SLAM.

The first two rounds are in the rearview mirror. It’s time to check in and see how we’re doing. In another pool – our office pool of 31 people, Khalid Salaam currently resides in 31st place. I feel like I should mention that cause he’s the same guy talking about how the Phillies are going to the World Series. I like what he’s doing!

Then again I have Louisville in the championship game in that bracket. Sure they looked good in the first two rounds, but I really have no idea why I made that pick.

And so to the bracket standings some of you care about.

The Ghost of Victor Page is tied for first, but didn’t feel the need to pick a national champion, so good luck with that.

The other first place team is Squash All Beef, with Kansas as the national champion, which is the same thing as leaving it blank.
Most of the teams near the top have UCLA winning it all… but it’s early. CameronCrazy has all four Final Four teams still alive, and oddly enough only had Duke winning through last round.

D-Ro has all four #1 seeds in the Final Four. That won’t happen. The same goes for the team with my favorite name BlindasthenewGovofNY.

At a quick glance, it looks like Georgetown was the team that screwed over the most people. I am halfway down the list in 37th place but one of my championship game teams – Pittsburgh, is… no longer with us. And I had Clemson in the Final Four. So, I’ll be watching from the sidelines, good luck to everyone else.

The post Checking in on the SLAMonline NCAA bracket appeared first on SLAM.

I took a vacation last week, re-acquainting myself with a good friend “The sun.” He’s a good dude. Especially down in Florida.

Everyone did their usual amazing job on the site while I was gone, and Lang stepped up to put everything where it needs to be. I’m back, and I’m on Mutoni’s news/rumor duty today while he travels home from his Easter getaway. So, if you’ve got an exciting news/rumor thing you can email it to me.

Lang pointed out that I was down in Tampa watching the YANKEES, not my Mets. It’s true. In a world where time and money don’t matter I would have gone to both a Mets game in Port St. Lucie and a Yankees game in Tampa. That world does not exist for me. The friend of mine I went down there with is a Bronx-born Yankee fan, who is very proud of the Bronx part. Everything worked out for the best when a bartender’s stripper girlfriend told him he looked like he was from Mississippi. Ah… you had to be there.

The game we attended was a 2-1 pitchers duel, decided entirely by minor league prospects, a few Major League has-beens, and one 15 pitch at bat from future Tampa Bay Rays superstar Evan Longoria – whom I traded away in my fantasy league, which led to beloved SLAM elder Tony Gervino, who is in my league, coming up to my desk once a week to shower me with insults.

Here, let me give you one scouting perspective of a player you never heard of. His name is Cody Ransom, he play for the Yanks. With the bases loaded in the bottom of the eighth, score still 0-0, he struck out looking. Are you effing kidding me! This is your chance to make an impression, to get to the bigs, and you don’t even swing the bat? Disgusting. He must have been the kid in little league who begged the coach to let someone else bat for him to make the last out. Oh, we were drinking heavily at the game by the way. On our walk from the game to the after party, me and my friend got into a heated war of words where I played the “I’d take Scottie Brosius over A-Rod anyday!” card. Now that’s March Madness!

Yes… there was something else happening in Tampa, pretty close to our hotel. March Madness, you familiar? Everytime we ate a meal or had to wait around, there was always some high intensity college basketball on TV. If our limo (courtesy shuttle van) driver wasn’t such a piece of worthless human garbage who couldn’t find the garage door from his own driveway, we would have watched more from the assorted venues around town and not the hotel lobby. The much-celebrated four underdog win day happened right near us, but I saw it like most of you – in bursts on TVs.

The only difference between my viewing and yours was that every once in a while some players would be walking around the streets. One huge guy had his full Clemson warm-ups on. This was the day after they got knocked out in round one, which was a minor bracket buster (major for me. Clemson you are dead to me forever!) which may have been upsetting to people at the mall who had something riding on the tournament. If anyone threw a sandwich at that guy or something, you did your thing.

Just kidding – I know some of you out there are unable to decipher sarcasm. I forgive you for your flaws.

The viewing highlight was being at a restaurant/bar when Duke bowed out early. Drunk and rowdy people at 5 P.M. screaming obscenities at Coach K… now that’s the real dignified splendor of college athletics!

Exciting first two rounds though. Stephen Curry stole the show from all of those freshmen we put on covers. Kevin Love did hit some big shots for UCLA, avoiding a dishonorable ending for the Bruins in the easiest region. Memphis survived their glaring achilles heel, the free throw line, so Rose gets another game where they will lose and I will shred my work bracket in disgust. A lot of people here were hoping Pitt would stay hot and be the NYC representative since that’s where 90% of their players come from. Yeah, that didn’t work out so well. I think ESPN’s Bobby Knight picked them to win the whole thing. Welcome to the wonderful world of media.

Okay, I’m back at work.

The post March Madness live from Tampa… oops appeared first on SLAM.

Hello there. Been extremely busy with this site and the ever so vague “other stuff” this week, because I am on vacation next week. Just in time for March Madness to begin! Who’s stuck at their office on Thursday following along online? Not me!

So, here’s a bonus reminder to jump in the pool, even though you can’t pick anything yet.

Here is the official SLAMonline tourney group. And the instructions of how to join. It’s free! You have no excuse to not do this.
The brackets should be ready sometime Sunday night, after the selection show.
Good luck everyone! The race for 2nd place is on.

The post Enter SLAMonline March Madness appeared first on SLAM.

Let’s do this now so we can avoid the overflow problem we had last year. I set up a group for March Madness.

The league is here. If you need to know the league # when you sign up, it should be: 51188

The password is: postup

Okay, please start joining to make sure it’s working and we can deal with any problems. Obviously you can’t make picks, as the field won’t be set until Sunday night. But I’d like to get this set-up now.

Good luck! If there are any problems, the comment area here is a good place for grievances.

The post Sign Up for March Madness EARLY! appeared first on SLAM.

Last night was the series finale of The Wire, and if you didn’t watch it, I don’t want you reading this. Do not proceed unless you have watched the finale, because all spoilers are out of the bag.

You may have been asking yourself, “Now that we know how they wind up, how do characters impacted in the series finale relate to today’s NBA?” Good question! You are a genius for asking. Let’s get down to it…

Officer James “Jimmy” McNulty – We all thought his final come-uppance would be life in jail, or suicide, or he would sacrifice his life and the lives of everyone around him in his quest to take down the kingpin Marlo. We got none of that, Jimmy probably retires into life as a caring husband, never has his great victory, never recaptures the glory of his youth, though his potential for individual, renegade greatness will always be there.

Let’s call him Kobe, pre-Gasol trade.

Colonel Cedric Daniels – He preached for years about doing everything by the book, and then he was molded into the puppet master system just like everyone else. But, Daniels refused to compromise his morality, and so he had to step away from being the commish, and settle for life as a (much higher paid?) lawyer.

Kevin Garnett. Set in doing things his way, never running out on a bad situation, until the end when he had to get out of Minnesota and try something new. He seems much happier, so does Daniels a.k.a. Skeletor face.

Detective Shakima – Hard-working, dedicated, but in the end she’ll be remembered as a snitch. And by that I mean, she was honest in a world that doesn’t reward honesty. To be fair, by shedding light on the serial killer/illegal wiretap, she allowed the side of the law and government to come up with contingency plans, and it’s possible that if they had been blindsided and taken apart in a public trial, the ending could have been much worse for them.

Shawn Marion, always the whiner. If he could just keep his mouth shut and be happy, things would have been smooth, but probably nothing would change. Now Miami has a chance to rebuild with some serious talent and Phoenix thinks it has more of a direct shot at winning it all, because Marion spoke up.

Detective William “Bunk” Moreland – The Bunk! Still clearing murders doing the same thing he’s been doing since episode one of season one.

Ray Allen. Not much has changed for him since he came into the league, despite the mulitiple teams. He just keeps scoring points, and I saw him smoking a huge cigar at the Jordan party in New Orleans. Bunk has enjoyed a cigar or two in his day.

Detective Lester Freamon – The brains behind the wiretap itself, an old man who was uncontrollable in his youth, hence he was dumped to the small arts and crafts detail, then given a second chance to play a relevant role in policing the city, and because he was a little too relevant, he had to be put out to pasture. His ending is away from the world of The Wire, still loved by many.

Latrell Sprewell. A controversial career ended prematurely because of one stupid quote. Uh, and a bunch of “incidents.”

Sergeant Ellis Carver – Didn’t really have much of a role in the finale, but we found out he got promoted again. A onetime knucklehead, who got his professional life together and made something of himself.

Nate Robinson. For all the negativity surrounding the Knicks, the overlooked rose that grew from the bowels of the septic tank is the development of young Nate. He’s reigned in the child-like goofiness, but kept some of that spirit and is very much an NBA professional with a chance to have a nice career.

Officer Thomas “Herc” Hauk – Ends the show as one of the big “winners.” He now will rise in Levy’s organization, in a totally unethical way. Disgraced by a crime in his past, yet Herc always lands on his feet, never accepting blame, going behind people’s backs and behind the scenes to put himself into a better position.

Jason Kidd!

Detective Leander Sydnor – The young up-and-coming detective who always seemed to be on a stakeout, or cracking a code, or undercover. Fittingly, his last scene mirrors an early McNulty conversation with the judge about how real police don’t exist anymore.

Dwyane Wade. If I’m calling McNulty Kobe, then Wade is like Sydnor. Is he destined to follow Kobe’s example of winning it all with Shaq, and then having to suffer through not winning it all without Shaq for years? We’ll see…

Assistant State’s Attorney Rhonda Pearlman – Her career was about to end, but she cut a deal, and was able to move on to become a judge. She saved herself through some nifty compromise.

Jerry Stackhouse, once a big-time scorer and superstar, he is the rare NBA player to decide he’s cool with coming off the bench. He made adjustments to his game, and his career has been going on nicely, thanks for asking.

Deputy Commissioner for Operations William A. Rawls – The ultimate in survival of the ruthless. You think drug dealers and murderers will do whatever it takes to stay alive? Rawls goes from running a sloppy police unit for political favor, to a cushy job with the governor, because he’s willing to be himself, which is to say do whatever he has to do to keep his job.

Kevin McHale. Still doing it.

Sergeant Jay Landsman – A man (a huge fat man!) who lives by the credo “Don’t rock the boat!”, has a humorous streak, and is known to yell. He ends up doing the same thing he’s always done. But underneath his exterior of just wanting to do his job, you could tell that Landsman found humor in the ongoing pain in his a$$ that was Jimmy McNulty, hence the light-hearted yet heartfelt “eulogy.”

He’s George Karl. Just keeps things the way they are, talks big, but also seems to have a lighter side to him.

Deputy Commissioner for Admin. Stanislaus Valchek – The old man gets his dream of becoming commish. Valchek is pretty much every old coach who should be retired, who gets another chance, just because they coached before.

Larry Brown.

Officer Beatrice “Beadie” Russell – She gave McNulty an ultimatum, and I guess he came around eventually, when he had no other choice. She gets the happy ending of hopefully finding a good man to raise a family with, but she’s also setting herself up to be treated like a doormat, cheated on, etc.

The city of Cleveland. Do whatever you have to do to keep LeBron in town. Play up the loyalty thing and the “You were born in the state!” thing, Cleveland. The man’s eye is going to wander regardless.

Bubbles – After years as a junkie and one of the heartbreaking figures in television history, Bubbles cleans up and turns his life around. His sister finally invites him up to dinner from his room in the basement. David Simon loves his imagery, so it was like somebody sentenced to hell finally making it to heaven.

Pau Gasol. A bit of a push-over for much of his NBA life, and doomed never to win a single playoff game. Until, boom, now he’s on one of the best teams in the league. Oddly, the long-time homeless junkie has nicer hair than the high maintenance Spanish whatever the word is for metrosexual these days.

Marlo Stanfield – The good news for Marlo is that he walks away with his money and freedom, all he has to do is fade into the sunset as a retired rich man. But of course, once you’ve worn the crown, you don’t want someone else telling you it’s time to hang it up. It takes Marlo going up into the ivory tower to motivate him to go back down to the street, just like Omar wanted him to do.

This could be any number of NBA champions who don’t know when to quit, but going by today’s players. It’s Shaq. Hey, the big guy still has it at times like we saw against the Spurs, but ultimately failure and disgrace, or a tragic ending (for him) seem inevitable.

Chris Partlow – Ends up getting life in jail, taking the rap for all the murders in exchange for Marlo taking care of his family. He was once the most feared killer in the city, who had people believing he was turning them into zombies or something like that, but he ends up doing life with no parole.

Stephon Marbury. He is being used as a scapegoat, but he also deserves blame. And the $20 million or so a year… not bad work if you can get it.

Maurice “Maury” Levy – The most immoral character on the show. Naturally he is the greatest success, gaining incredible notoriety for the deal he cut for Marlo, which will take his law firm to new heights.

Nobody in the NBA is as unfeeling and greedy as Levy, and that’s saying something. But, if I had to pick, I’m going with Carlos Boozer. When he abandoned young LeBron and the sweet handshake of a blind man for the money, it was about the money. And look at him now, Boozer is thriving in the best possible scenario for himself. Well played.

Melvin “Cheese” Wagstaff – He was talking a lot of trash, reveling in how the game is played, how smart he is, and so forth. He gets a bullet in the brain.

It kind of reminded me of Gilbert Arenas’s speech about how he does more for his team than Kobe, Wade, or LeBron. And much like the actor who plays Cheese, Method Man was once a fan favorite who people grew tired of when he started attempting to tackle serious subjects. The death is of course extreme, and Gilbert will be back, but goofy light-hearted Gilbert might be dead already.

Slim Charles – We never knew much about him, other than he had a cool voice, he was tall, and pretty loyal. Slim ends up still doing the drug thing, and respected by his peers.

Michael Redd. Some call him a superstar, some say he’s just going to keep doing what he does forever. Likeable.

Kenard – Kids today. Yeah, Kenard is a little man who you know will be running the streets in no time, with no fear whatsoever.

This would be Chris Paul, and sure the streets are the NBA in this case.

Roland “Wee-Bey” Brice – Wee-Bey! Hey, how’s the lifetime sentence coming? He chose it for himself by taking the rap for all the murders when they offered it to him.

Joe Johnson. He wanted Atlanta, and Atlanta is what he got. Seems like a good guy though.

City Editor Augustus “Gus” Haynes – So ethical, so right. He tried to make a positive impact on the world, and that just doesn’t fly in The Wire’s Baltimore. Gus did the right thing, and for his efforts he gets demoted and the world he care so passionately about becomes significantly worse, despite his best efforts.

Elton Brand. He went to the Clippers and has done nothing wrong in his time there. He’s even made them better than they’ve ever been for much of his time there. But sometimes there’s just nothing you can do. The Clippers will always be the Clippers.

Scott Templeton – Everyone’s favorite Pulitzer-winning fictional non-fiction writer. Only out for himself, truly a loathsome character. But, he understood how to take advantage of a situation, to play the game, and the mass majority of (fictional) Baltimore Sun readers will never know the difference.

Not to beat a dead horse here, but he’s Vince Carter.

Alma Gutierrez – She wanted to be a real reporter, had the same passion as Gus, and really tried her hardest to do her job the right way. So, she got shipped out to the burbs. Man, David Simon did not treat the newsroom people well.

She is Drew Gooden, sure she doesn’t have the same quirks, but Drew was a viable enough second option to get to The Finals, and he maximized what he could be in the NBA, before being shipped out to a team that’s going nowhere.

Mayor Thomas “Tommy” Carcetti – His single-minded goal was to become the Governor by any means necessary. He wanted to do well for the people along the way, but really he’s just about winning votes.

Drawing a blank here. Help out if you can. Who is a big talker, successful, but also just talking for the sake of talking? I can’t think of a fit at the moment.

Norman Wilson – The cynical voice of truth. He is Tommy’s right hand man, and in the finale he was able to laugh during the most serious circumstance and was irreverent until the end. Also, he was never afraid to speak loudly about race issues, no matter who was listening.

Rasheed Wallace. Entertaining, and more important than you realize. Both have kind of an old school vibe about themselves too.

State Senator R. Clayton “Clay” Davis – Old Clay wasn’t in the finale, but I just want to take this moment to point out that last week Khalid and I discovered that the actor that plays him is named Isiah Whitlock, Jr. And the character of Clay Davis seems to be a perfect blend of Isiah Thomas and Jason Whitlock.

Council President Nerese Campbell – The woman who becomes mayor when Carcetti ascends to the state house, and her ideal way of business is more of the same. Juke the stats, pass the buck, stay corrupt, Baltimore!

It would just be GM bashing. Take your pick, any bad GM whose team will always be bad.

The Greek – A quick appearance, just to let you know that somebody is the kingpin of everything, the supplier. The guy who is getting money off of everything.

David Stern

Michael Lee – The big question regarding Michael this season was whether he was destined to become the next Marlo, or the next Chris. The final answer, driven home in as blatantly obvious fashion as they could do it, was that he has become their worst enemy – Omar. Instead of piggybacking or running with the best organization, Michael will have to do it all on his own, or with whatever ragtag group he can assemble.

He is Tracy McGrady. Despite the apparent talent, and what should be pre-ordained greatness, there is always tragedy around the corner. But he overcomes, as evidenced by the 18-game winning streak. Still, a tall task (pun!) with no Yao and his ragtag group in a battle against playoff heavyweights coming this summer.

Duquan “Dukie” Weems – Another heartbreaker, Dukie had the potential to do well in school with some help, but he fell through the cracks of bureaucracy and ends up as the new Bubbles, a junkie in the making.

Some people, you hope and you think because they seem to be a good person, that you want them to succeed, that they can turn it around. But, it’s just not in the cards for them. Eddy Curry. It’s just not happening.

Roland “Prez” Pryzbylewski – from goofball screw-up cop, to what seems to be a teacher with commanding authority and someone that has found his calling. Sure, the Dukie thing was rough from Prez, but it looked like he knew what he was doing as a teacher.

Allen Iverson. He had to overcome a lot to establish his career, and even as it went along productively, it was never accepted. But, he has become that mentor now, and while his leadership is not perfect and his team is still kind of a mess, he’s doing the best he can.

Thank you David Simon for five amazing seasons. You went out on top. I’m still trying to sort through the finality of it all.

Image courtesy of HBO

The post The Wire Finale and the NBA appeared first on SLAM.

One of my rules for the Player of the D.A.Y. was that meaningless games get treated with less weight than the big ones with major impact. So last night, KG was the star of Celtics-Pistons, which was arguably the biggest game of the regular season in the East. And then there was LeBron with 50-10-8 against the most insignificant team in the NBA. J-Rich had an overshadowed 42 and 7 in a win over Golden State, and I actually caught the depressing (for Phoenix) end of the Phoenix-Denver game as I was waiting for the LeBron highlights to start.

You know what though, 50-10-8 trumps jockeying for playoff position. We’ll remember that years from now, not what happened with the Eastern Conference outlook.

HOWEVER… If you are to believe that the top 4 seeds in the East will advance, and you should… this means the #1 seed could have to deal with LBJ, while the #2 gets Orlando. LeBron is scarier than anyone in the East as a possible bracket destroyer, even scarier than Dwight Howard and Stan Van Gundy. Detroit may have won by losing, cause they can handle Dwight with their big bodies, but as they proved last year, LeBron can handle them in a big spot.

And so… the choice is clearly LeBron James.

The post Player of the D.A.Y. appeared first on SLAM.

Last night’s LeBron eruption at MSG sealed the deal for me. His line was amazing, the performance one of the best you will ever see. 50 points and 10 assists. The last two players to accomplish that feat were Michael Jordan and… wait for it…

No seriously wait for it…

STEPHON MARBURY!!!

In 2001, when he was a Net, against the Lakers. LeBron, MJ, Steph. Three of a kind.

But I digress. If you saw the highlights, it was LeBron raining open threes, breaking down guys that are already broken down. It was kind of like cruel and unusual punishment for the Knicks. Fun for the fans to watch, but they could have just watched him in warm-ups and it would have been the same thing. To put it bluntly, the Knicks are so bad that they demean the value of one of the great NBA performances. When Jordan dropped his double-nickel for instance, it was against a good team, so it meant more.

The grand stage of MSG has been tainted, and I’m here to tell you why. This is an IM conversation I had with an anonymous friend who does not watch even one second of basketball, dated December 18, 2007.

AIM IM with Anon.
12/18/07, 12:32 PM

Anon: Carl from ATHF is my new source on all sports developments. You have been replaced
Sam: that’s fine
Anon: You two actually agree on most things, so it’s even better

Sam: I hope he’s calling Eli a (derogatory term)
Anon: He’s raging against the Mitchell report

Sam: the giants replaced that for me
Anon: Maybe they’ll take out the pats perfect season. Or at least blow out Brady’s knee.

Sam: that would be sweeeeet
Sam: they actually ruined the Broncos 12-0 season back in ’99 I believe
Anon: That’s a plan: ruin the pat’s playoff chances

Sam: only if they injured Brady
Sam: Giants too soft to do that though

(NOTE: WHAT A DIFFERENCE THE GREATEST CHAMPIONSHIP EVER MAKES!)

Anon: They need to hire Isiah as their coach

Sam: I have a budding crackpot conspiracy theory about Isiah
Anon: Do tell
Sam: I think I know why he won’t be fired, and why he’s so bad at his job
Anon: He’s addicted to crackpot?

Sam: no. It’s a lot like the movie Sleepers, and Isiah is Brad Pitt
Anon: … Is that the one where they were all abused in prison?
Sam: yes. But this is about the aftermath
Sam: Brad becomes a prosecutor, and he tries the molester Kevin Bacon
Sam: or that is to say he tries his old friends who kill Kevin Bacon
Anon: I thought they murdered him and Pitt helped stymie the prosecutuon
Sam: yes
Sam: He throws away his career in order to shed light on the subject
Anon: K
Anon: So Isiah is somehow exposing something?
Sam: ok, here goes…
Sam: When Michael Jordan was a rookie, playing in the All-Star Game, Isiah was the captain of the Eastern Conference team
Sam: he organized a freeze-out so nobody passed the ball to Jordan

Sam: Then, after the Pistons beat the Bulls three times in a row in the playoffs every year by beating up on Jordan, they finally lost
Sam: Detroit refused to shake hands with Chicago, stormed off the court in a show of poor sportsmanship, led by captain Isiah.
Anon: I think I follow. Isiah is a d–k.
Sam: Yes. Soon after that, Jordan became the biggest star in the world, and the legendary “Dream Team” was assembled.
Sam: Jordan, Magic, Bird, Ewing, Pippen, Barkley, etc.
Anon: That was the olympics thing, right?
Sam: Yes. 92 Olympics. Isiah obviously belonged on that team. He was one of the best PGs ever, a 2 time champion as a pro, won the college championship.
Sam: The reason Isiah was not on that team, was Jordan took a hard line
Sam: Told the NBA he wouldn’t be on the team if Isiah was on it.
Sam: And Jordan was bigger than the game, so they had no choice.
Anon: Okay… Sounds like a lot of nonsense back room politicking, but I follow
Sam: And other NBA icons fell in line.
Sam: Isiah was coaching the Pacers in the 2000s
Sam: the first thing Larry Bird did when he took the job there as GM, was to fire Isiah
Anon: Okay.
Sam: The NBA establishment outside of Detroit HATES Isiah.
Sam: He’s never said anything about it, but I suspect Isiah hates the establishment.
Anon: Okay
Anon: So his lackluster coaching style is a big f–k you to New York, and through them, NBA brass?

Sam: okay… so the Knicks owner James Dolan…
Sam: is the most defiant person alive
Sam: he’s a recovering addict, son of the cablevision dynasty, a real (similar term used to decribe pre-champion Eli Manning)
Anon: This is quite a tale you are spinning. Continue.
Sam: so… I see the two of them as kindred spirits who would like to bring the NBA down
Sam: James Dolan makes money no matter what
Sam: He’s been a billionaire since he was born
Sam: Isiah is angry
Anon: That must be nice. The billionaire part
Sam: Yes. And so, how do you take down the NBA?
Sam: Well… they say the league always does well when the Knicks do well
Sam: Because not only is it a major market…
Anon: Who says?
Anon: The man?
Sam: It’s a saying that people take as fact. But I’ll explan
Sam: the stage of MSG is the biggest one in the game, cause of the combo of the history and the media
Sam: When the Lakers are in town, it’s a show to see how Kobe will perform on the grand stage.
Anon: Okay…

Anon: Perhaps you’d be happier submitting this in thesis form
Sam: it’s almost over.
Sam: So, the way Isiah has it, MSG is no longer that showcase
Sam: instead of celebrating the greatness of Kobe, LeBron, Garnett, etc.
Anon: It celebrates the suckiness of the nba, writ large
Sam: no, it celebrates how sad the Knicks are,
Sam: like oooooh Kobe scored 50, so what. Look who he did it against.
Sam: And it takes away the only remaining stage like that in the sport
Anon: So he’s manchurian candidating it
Anon: Like Bush
Sam: cause Boston has a new arena and so do the Lakers and so do the Bulls
Sam: Yes, it’s kind of like that
Anon: Won’t the mantle of power move to some other city?
Sam: Never. NY bias baby. This is the stage.
Anon: But newer stadiums? Larger stadiums?
Sam: Nope. No history.
Sam: The Patriots field is great, they are a dynasty.
Sam: But it will never be Lambeau or Texas stadium
Anon: I see
Sam: with MSG it’s even more critical because of all the non-basketball history
Sam: every entertainer who’s anyone has performed there
Sam: It’s a shrine
Anon: I think I understand. Stepping out to possibly buy another Rockband controller

So there you have it! As good a theory as any!

The post The Isiah C.O.N.S.P.I.R.A.C.Y. appeared first on SLAM.

Ah… life. Not to get into too many details here, but a tree attacked me on the street yesterday and I have a cut on the side of my head, and it all happened while I was waiting for the AAA guy to give my car it’s second jump in less than a week, right as one of my oldest friends that I never get to see anymore was walking to a tutoring job on that block. He’s a playwright by the way.

So, once again, Player of the D.A.Y. catch-up.

Games played last Thursday: Big showdown of Western Conference powers, the Mavs and the Spurs. Wait, are the Mavs a front-runner? Or are they on the way down and out? Really tough to tell this year. Anyways, Tim Duncan had 31 and 15. Manu is actually the Spurs leading scorer this season, but Duncan is still who he is. Check out the new issue to see what political heavyweight I compare him to. Hint: Not someone running in the current election. And no it’s not Mike Bloomberg.

Games played last Friday: Happy Leap Year! Portland put an end to the Lakers winning streak with balanced contributions from Brandon Roy, Lamarcus Aldridge, and Jarret Jack, but I give it to Chris Paul for getting skills challenge revenge against Deron Williams and the Jazz.

Games played Saturday: Congrats to my friend Kevin, whose wedding I attended that night. I had as much fun as Andre Iguodala did exposing the “Still figuring it out” Suns, pouring in 32. Dwight Howard put up a 20-20 against the Knicks, which led to Eddy Curry’s awesome passive aggressive Isiah bashing “Dwight has a great coach” comment. Well played, Eddy.

Games played Sunday: Uh, this would be Kobe. Amazingly, I think I sprained a ligament in my pinky while this game was going on, not in tribute to Kobe’s finger or anything, but a funny coincidence. It’s on my left hand, my “Shift key” finger. I’m trying go righty with the shift key, but it feels weird. By the way, Holly once told me that she wished she could cut off her pinky and give it to Kobe to use while his is injured. That is… more commitment than I ever have had to any athlete on any of my teams.

Games played Monday: Deron Williams had 20 assists in a win over old Jason Kidd. But, Dirk exacted TEXAS JUSTICE on Kirilenko. Funny tie-in here, that friend Kevin I mentioned earlier once got robbed by a particularly shady boss and he had to take him to court. The case was so preposterous, they wanted to film it for one of those daytime court shows called “Texas Justice.” It didn’t happen, and he never got paid. But the payoff was this paragraph. Sucks for him, congrats on the wedding though!

Games played last night: Holly documented Kobe bailing out the Lakers, but Pau had a big game too. And it was only the Kings they were playing. Golden State rang up 135 points on the Hawks. This is funny, but right now they are in pretty similar places, standings-wise. The Warriors are clinging to the 8th seed by 2 games, while the Hawks are one game out. The Warriors now have 13 more wins than Atlanta. Eastern Conference, you suck. Chris Bosh didn’t play in the most playoff-y game of the night, the Raptors-Magic. I’ll give the award to Amare in a win over Portland, because he seems to be the only Phoenix player not going backwards. Grant Hill and Shaq on the same front-line. Wow, that would be an automatic W in Live ’95, which was 12 years ago.

Tonight LeBron comes to MSG to take on the Knicks behind their new head coach. Jake and Russ will be there. Good luck getting out of there early tonight Coach Supranowitz!

The post Player of the D.A.Y. appeared first on SLAM.

You’ve got to love the Sunday afternoon statement game! Sure, the coaches and players will say they don’t exist, but they are liars. “Every game is equally important.” Sure. So, it was Dallas at the Lakers yesterday. Obviously Kobe stole the show and probably wrapped up his first MVP along the way. LeBron and Chris Paul did nothing wrong themselves to cause this to happen, but it’s over.

Holly will be singing Kobe’s praises shortly, but there are a few things I’d like to add.

I can’t believe Avery and the Mavs thought Jason Kidd guarding Kobe is a serious late game strategy. I get the whole cliche “Let your best players fight it out at the end” thing. It’s like how the Trojan War was hundred of thousands people killing each other and then Hector and Achilles decided it was time for them to go one on one. But for real, back on the Lakers run to their first championship of the threepeat, they beat Phoenix in the second round, 4 games to 1. One of those games I remember coming down to Kobe hitting the game winner over a much younger (this was 8 years ago) Jason Kidd. What’s changed since then other than Kidd having surgery and getting slower, while Kobe keeps getting better? And then there was Brandon Bass letting Kobe take his manhood from him to get the key offensive rebound right after Jeff Van Gundy told you it would happen. Bottom line… Avery Johnson can be had. Great regular season coach, and he led the Mavs to a 2-0 lead in the Finals, but there’s just something that’s not right.

Dirk heated up at the right time, sent the game to OT with a clutch three ball, and put the team on his back and took over like he’s supposed to. You can’t blame Dirk for the loss. It was Jason Kidd who missed the free throw after Pau Gasol gave him that gift. Dirk hit big shot after big shot, and turned Lamar Odom into his personal hand puppet. ALL THAT BEING SAID… his final airball on a wide open three was a very Dirk thing to do. Sure, Gasol was running out at him so it made sense to add some arc to the shot, but this is Dirk Nowitzki, a three-point shooting machine with very distinct mechanics. It was not wise to improvise a new shooting style there. Oh, he also got ripped by Kobe on a key possession that set up key free throws for the Lakers.

When it’s all said and done, the Lakers have to be considered a favorite to win it all, along with San Antonio. Houston keeps winning without Yao, but I think we’re all waiting for the other shoe to drop, for the wheels to fall off, etc. Phoenix is so re-energized by the Shaq trade that they lost at home to Philly. The tell-tale quote from that game was from Mike D’Antoni.

“This has nothing to do with Shaq,” D’Antoni said. “This has nothing to do with Shaq,” he said. “This has something to do with urgency and playing with heart.”

Uh… Shaq doesn’t do regular season urgency. The next four games for Phoenix are At Portland, at Denver, Utah, and San Antonio. You could say the Suns position at this moment is precarious!

Regarding the Lakers, looking back at the Gasol trade now, it reminds me of when the Rockets got Clyde Drexler. They had a million injuries that season, and as soon as they picked up someone who could play with the guy who was clearly the best player in the league, it was over. They made it dramatic with the “Clutch City” stuff, and they were so devastated by injuries and the championship hangover that they went into the playoffs as a 6th seed, whereas the Lakers are sharing the top spot with San Antonio already.

In the East, if LeBron believes he can win, then the Cavs are a serious threat. It’s Boston, Detroit, or Cleveland. That’s it. I don’t even want to acknowledge what’s going on in the race for the 7th and 8th seed over there.

Okay… it’s Monday and it’s March. We might have a Western Conference regular season that doesn’t become invisible during March Madness…

The post Statement game, statements made appeared first on SLAM.

Oh my God the Player of the D.A.Y.! I should be an honorary Indiana Pacer I’ve been so delinquent with this. Of course, if my original purpose was to have an objective eye on the NBA race, well… it looks like it’s Kobe out front, Chris Paul making a bid, and LeBron always in the picture. KG has lost some momentum. Been pretty busy with other work-related and “life” stuff the past few weeks, but here goes. I have to backtrack all the way to the Thursday night before the All-Star break. Don’t worry dear reader, I do this more for ME than for YOU. As opposed to everything else, where I am just a humble public servant.

Games played on Valentines Eve: The big game was Dallas vs. Phoenix with no Kidd or Shaq involved. Old school, Nash vs. Dirk, and it was the two-time MVP over the reigning MVP with 24 points and 13 assists in the win.

All-Star Break… fun with consequences…

Games played Tuesday the 19th: Deron Williams winning the battle with Baron Davis and leading Utah over Golden State. Honorable mention to Allen Iverson, getting to the free throw line 20 times in a win over Boston.
Wednesday the 20th: Chris Bosh picked the wrong night to go for 40 against Dwight the newly minted golden boy and the Orlando Magic. Kobe led the Lakers in a thriller – yes, just like that weird Naomi Campbell commercial with the lizards – 41 points in a 130-124 race to the finish line against the Lakers blood rivals, the Suns.

Thursday the 21st: Manu Ginobili had one of his 40+ point explosions, which are becoming more of a trend than a freak outing. So it was against Minnesota.  That’s still better than T-Mac beating up on Miami.

Friday the 22nd: Oooooh Jamal Crawford lit up the MSG stage with 43 points on a Friday night. That’s weird, cause the Knicks don’t exist. They are like Jacob’s cabin on LOST, they’re only there if you want to see them. Right now, I do not. There was the Phoenix-Boston Finals preview, which really looks nothing like a Finals preview anymore. There were some big performances in big games like Yao’s 28 and 14 against the Hornets, LeBron doing everything against Washington, but I’m going to go with Ben Gordon leading the Bulls with 37 as they rang up 135 points of the Nuggets, which fanned the flames of firegeorgekarl.com.

Saturday the 23rd: Michael Redd had the monster game against the Nuggets, who might have taken the crown from Memphis of “Team that distorts other team’s best player’s stats the most.” On the heels of the Ben Gordon game, Redd loses out. Instead I’ll go with Manu Ginobili again, 30 and 12 in a win over New Orleans. I don’t think I’m a big Ginobili fan, but maybe I am?

Sunday the 24th: The day of the Detroit statement game to Phoenix and everyone else. That was the big game of the day, and it was a throwback to two years ago, when the Pistons would be up by 30 and the starters resting by the third quarter. I know every PG seems to put up monster numbers with Steve Nash guarding them, but Chauncey Billups had 14 and 11 in 20 minutes, and it was an easy 14 and 11. This could have been a 30-20 game if he played his usual minutes.

Monday: DeShawn Stevenson, 33 points and a three at the buzzer to beat a better team, New Orleans. Pretty obvious.

Tuesday: The new look Cavs with Ben Wallace in the mix could not stop Mo Williams from scoring 37. In related news, this was the night I discovered my car battery was near death. Mo Williams wins the award, I left the dome light on and only have myself to blame.

Wednesday: Sorry to overlook Mike Bibby turning his new team into a winner with 24 and 12 against his old team, but it seems as if I have a New Orleans bias. The Hornets got yet another virtuoso game from Chris Paul with 25 and 15, Aggrey was there.

Okay… we’re good. Stop worrying, the AAA guy gave me the juice.

The post Player of the D.A.Y. appeared first on SLAM.

Holy out of Left Field Batman! The Houston Chronicle is reporting that Yao is done for the season. He had missed only one game this season, and it was the one before the current 12 game winning streak. Adjust your “good team out West to be left out of the playoffs” commentary accordingly.

The post Yao Ming out for the season appeared first on SLAM.

Beginning with a disclaimer, not the strongest move in the world but it has to be said: Waaaaaaaaay too early to judge Shaq on the Suns.

That being said, I believe in the statement game. On Sunday, Phoenix had the free TV national spotlight in a home game against the Pistons, who might be the best team in the NBA right now. Shaq has had a few games to get comfortable already, not enough of a body of work to judge in great depth, but we’ve seen him look rusty and slow trying to run with Lakers, and then grab 14 boards in a slower game against the Celtics. Detroit presented an opportunity to see a little bit of each.

As luck would have it, I tuned into the game right around the key sequence, so I saw the meaningful Shaq development in context. The Suns came out flat for their statement game at home, which is a problem or learning experience for the playoffs depending on how optimistic you are. Still, the Suns made their run, and it was keyed mostly by Amare. He sparked the team with a dunk on Jason Maxiell, hit a few jumpers, and the tide had turned.

Suddenly Amare cooled off, wasn’t getting bail out calls, and the Pistons began to re-expand the gap. You could feel the game getting away from the Suns right there. It’s one of those NBA standards you see all the time, a team expends energy to climb out of a big hole, but they don’t get all the way out, and the other team then responds with a surge and soon the game is out of reach.

The Pistons began to score at will, the Suns couldn’t hit a shot, and that’s when Shaq decided to send a message, by way of bludgeoning little Amir Johnson.

Was that Shaq’s way of saying “No layups against my team?” Was it a message to the rest of the NBA that Phoenix has a real bully, a Hall of Famer that will abuse the vulnerable? A message to his new teammates about what they need to become if they want to be champions? I have a lot of respect for Shaq’s intelligence as an NBA player, not just the strategy and game situations, but the social and psychological part of the game. At this point in his career, I don’t see him as being someone that would get swept up in the emotion or frustration of the game. That was a calculated flagrant, in the same way a coach might pick up a tech to fire up his team.

Unfortunately, it fired up the wrong team, and the Pistons broke the game wide open.

Where does this leave us with Shaq’s new role? In his domination days, the only real opposite threat on the low block he’s ever played with was the one year with an old but effective Karl Malone and Udonis Haslem at times. But Shaq has never been the goon to enforce the law of the game for anyone but himself. He made a speech once about how you have to “feed the guard dog”, insinuating that his presence as an intimidator kept other teams’ goons away from giving hard fouls to Kobe. But really, Shaq was more about putting fear into the guys that had to battle him in the post, or the double-teamer that would have to leave his man open.

That hard foul on Amir Johnson was symbolic of the new Shaq. He says it’s not all about him in Phoenix, and even though this put the focus squarely on him in the “Was it a flagrant 2?” discussion, I felt that it was a national TV warning to the Suns future opponents, that they will make the game ugly and they will get their hands bloody if they have to. Developing…

They might want to not lose by 30 on national TV in the process though.

The post Shaqsposed appeared first on SLAM.

It was a weekend of wildness, a lot of quality production for the website, and one of the great All-Star Weekends in NBA history. After all of the stormy clouds of playoff teams unable to crack 70 points, players behaving badly, the malice at the palace, ref and league controversies from the Wade free throws to the new ball debacle to the dress code to the Amare suspension to Tim Donaghy, and just an overwhelming sense of negativity aimed at the NBA for years… it really does feel like this weekend was a big statement that the future is bright.

But there’s plenty of time for the future in… the future. For now, I’d like to guide you through the All-Star Weekend that was.

—

Ben Osborne, Lang Whitaker, Khalid Salaam, and I, were scheduled to go from NYC to Cincinnati, then a quick turnaround right down to New Orleans. I was supposed to interview someone at the celebrity game around 5 P.M., and we even expected to be at All-Star media day, which is one of the most convenient times for SLAM writers to get tons of quotes.

There was ground traffic at LaGuardia, there was an hour of sitting on a plane on a runway to nowhere. There was blood. The first thing I wrote “from” All-Star Weekend was to let the world know that much like Chad Johnson, we were stuck in Cincinnatti.

Fortunately, Senior Writer Aggrey Sam recently moved to New Orleans, and he was able to attend the EA Sports party to watch Tony Parker win the NBA Live tournament.

Ben was on a different flight plan, so he left the rest of us behind and headed down to Atlanta on his way to New Orleans. He settled in and wrote the first from New Orleans post of the NYC contingent. This happened as the Rookie-Sophomore game was being played. Lang, Khalid, and I, were nowhere near a rookie-sophomore game. Delta gave us $7 food vouchers to make up for our inconvenience.

Quote of the Ohio segment of the trip: “WHAT KIND OF MAN EATS A SEVEN DOLLAR MEAL!” – K. Salaam

I had a burrito. Big mistake, because the airport laid our backup plans A, B, and C to waste. We had 10 minutes to get to the shuttle, and then the next gate for a flight to… Atlanta, just like Ben. We ran full speed. The burrito was jumping around inside me like the Rim Rockers off their trampolines. I thought I was so clever wearing flip flops to save 5 minutes of security time. The moral of the story: dress like Bill Belichick, go down in flames like him.

On our way up an escalator, Khalid threw a woman out of the way, felt bad about it and patted her on the back. Lang said it was like the Seinfeld episode where George runs over old ladies to get out of an apartment on fire. Two of us overran the gate, and thankfully Lang yelled out. Of course the flight was delayed anyways, so we could have walked. Strutted, even.

In Atlanta, the woman at the gate told me a dirty, horrible lie. Right to my face. I asked “Are you sure our luggage is on the plane?” She said “Yes.”

We arrived at our next destination, Baton Rouge, where we had to rent a car to get to New Orleans after finding out that our luggage was not with us. Aggrey Sam covered the D-League Skills Competition. The Celebrity Game had already been played and the Rookie-Sophomore game was in progress. Russ watched from back home in NYC and took notes.

I’m sorry I had to take you through all of that travel writing. I know none of you feel sorry for us. Think of it as an allegory for the NBA. It was struggling for a while, people wanted to whine all day long about how much they hate it, but there is a light at the end of the tunnel. The great weekend the NBA had, with players giving so much of their time to charitable work and behaving like concerned citizens, and then going out and putting on a great, energetic show for the fans, was like our weekend. Rough start, then once we got there it was all good behy-bey. (That’s how they talk in New Orleans. Expect to read more about that later.)

We got to our hotel…. The Jordan Party was calling. We were there. Oh, we were there.
Saturday, I wrote a quick morning update to let everyone know we were alive, and Lang wrote his thorough Friday night recap, detailing who we ran into at the Jordan Party, the ESPN party, and the ESPN late-night breakfast. Basically we ran into EVERYONE. Even Shaq, who was supposed to be the missing and missed person of the weekend.

Ben and Lang got up early and headed over to an adidas/Peace Players event, where Ben talked to Antawn Jamison. From there they met up with Khalid at the players practice – a huge chaotic free-for-all. Lang was able to fight through the crowds and put this video together.

Meanwhile, across town… I spoke with Deron Williams about the Skills Challenge he would win that evening. I sat there and talked to him as he trained to win over his arch-rival in a building where the crowd was probably 98% pulling for Chris Paul. Basically it was like hanging out with Rocky before he beat Drago in Russia.

Ben played ball at an open run for media members, while Khalid, Lang, and I headed over to the LRG showroom, which was partially sponsored by SLAM. Khalid is writing about that whole afternoon as well as some other stuff, but his computer found the glitch in the matrix. It may have been possessed with a spirit from a local attraction, the above-ground tombs. Seriously, Khalid’s computer was on some Poltergeist ish. I’m getting scared just writing about it.

We had lunch at a really good restaurant (see Khalid’s report when it’s filed), which was a drastic change from Vegas last year, when I don’t think I used a fork the whole trip. Big difference between New Orleans and Vegas, N.O. has a “soul.”

Up next was All-Star Saturday night. I was on live-blogging duty. On our way to the arena, we accidentally took the fan entrance, because we are friggin’ morons. When we got to the front of the line, security was laughing at us. Or as they say in New Orleans, “You got a band beih-bey? For your bag beih-bey? You got a band for you bag beih-bey?” Ahhhhhhhhhh… you had to be there. I met Aggrey Sam for the first time. Still have not met Mutoni, Holly, Myles, or Emry. Who says the internet is de-personalizing the world?

Russ watched the Saturday Night action on TV and took notes.

On the way out of the arena, I gave a pound to the hard-training Deron Williams, making sure to interrupt his conversation with DJ Clue, whom I do not respect. You could feel the city buzzing with energy from the performance, especially Dwight’s. The Saturday night parties began.
The next morning, I wrote about taking it easy in the Big Easy (heh heh heh), and told my story from Saturday morning of returning the car, accidentally marching to feed the hungry, and walking through Tent City. Lang and Khalid’s Saturday night was much more eventful. Playboy… Lebron… WES… Jay-Z. Another monster party recap from Lang.

I don’t know how he unwinds from a night of partying, but we were sharing a hotel room, and I woke up in the middle of the night and Lang was asleep with Free Willy on the TV. N’awlins Beih-bey!

Sunday we started the day off at a brunch hosted by an NBA super-agent, did a little schmoozing, politicking, and so on. Met up with DJ Toney Blare, Aggrey, and XXL Lifestyle Editor Branden Peters and some friends of his. We ate at a cafe called Napolean House. I had the jumbalaya. It was effing delicious! My biggest regret of the weekend is that I did not purchase a bottle of cognac shaped like Napolean’s head, which was for sale.

DJ Toney Blare took Aggrey, Khalid, and Ben on a tour of the areas of New Orleans hit hardest by Hurricane Katrina. The 9th ward for instance. Lang and I headed over to the Converse suite to claim free swag. I closed out Sunday afternoon with a pre-game nap.

Lang was on live blog duty for the All-Star Game. Many of you played along at home. Really great game. All-Star games are never perfect, but this had everything you could ask for. I would even go so far as to say that the absence of Kobe, KG, Shaq, and even Gilbert was a welcome change because it gave some newer faces a stage. LeBron stole the show, especially with that dunk at the end (savage!), but old good guy veteran Ray Allen got to show off his stroke, Amare did horrible things to Dwight Howard, Dwyane Wade could barely get off the ground and yet he may have sealed the win by blocking a 7 footer’s jump shot… Really entertaining game.

Russ covered the game from home, focusing more on the TV presentation.

Sunday night after the game, we hit the media hospitality suite in our hotel, then Bourbon St. with some TV personalities, national writers, and of course, Aggrey Sam. One thing I learned, just because a guy writes a column condemning NBA players for their crude behavior, does not mean that writer is above posing with strippers. Do your thing, unnamed beat writer.

Oh by the way, I drank blue crack. That was the name of the drink. Why am I still alive?

The next morning, Ben caught the early bird home, but the rest of us did some walking around, went to Cafe Du Monde, hit the tourist spots to buy people gifts, and that was that.

At the airport there was a 70 year old man working a computer and removing tiny stickers to track luggage while a guy 60 years younger than him pushed around a cart. I bought a $9 sandwich that was horrible. Khalid showed up with cookies, pretzels, and a cup of cheese for lunch. It was like Knicks game food. I had a full-on giggle fit like a high school girl. Delirious.
We had one final delay with our connection in Charlotte, but we’re home now. Lang had a family issue to take care of, and had to continue his travels, and he probably won’t be around this week. I got back to my place, where my girlfriend was up writing a term paper for a grad school course. Very different weekend experiences for me and her.
And we are back. Hope you enjoyed the story of the trip. I know we loved being there beih-bey.

The post The 2008 SLAM New Orleans All-Star Experience appeared first on SLAM.

Flashy lights, drunk people, superstars walking among us. But it’s not all fun and games. After the dunk contest was creeping to a close, we had to walk back to the hotel cause the media transport from the arena to the hotel was to put it gently, a huge clusterf–k.

For the partying portion of the evening our group split into two. Khalid and Lang hit up the more exciting NBA star hosted party events, while Ben, Aggrey Sam, and myself did the Bourbon St. thing. It sounds weird to say this but drinking a hurricane and walking down Bourbon St. with the beads flying around and strippers running through the streets was the tamest part of the trip so far. New Orleans is a strange place. In the interest of balance, I would like to share a tale of adventure from yesterday morning…

As you know by now, we had to rent a car in Baton Rouge to drive here, and that car needed to be returned a few miles away from out hotel. I drove there, dropped it off, paid the ridiculous bill, and the whole process took about 15 minutes. I stepped out into the street to look for a cab or think about walking back, and as is prone to happen I was right in the middle of a feed the hungry parade. So I marched with hundreds of 12 year olds for a few blocks, behind the marching band, and then they suddenly turned left.

I was all alone on “the wrong side of the tracks.” This was not the touristy safe part of New Orleans. There is a place that is called Tent Town I believe, where the homeless live in tents under the freeway. It was a lot like the current season of The Wire, where the lying reporter spent the night with Baltimore’s homeless. One guy seemed to be walking straight at me. I’ve been in bad neighborhoods before, dodged muggings, been chased. But this time, I tensed up and I really thought he was about to stab me…

No knife, no stab wound.
Back to work. By work I mean brunch.

The post The other side of New Orleans appeared first on SLAM.

I’m confused. Ben, Lang, Khalid are running out the door… eff this, DWIGHT is the winner! Let’s party!

—

My bag is packed. Obviously Dwight is the winner. Just give the word, let’s get on the bus. Everyone’s making their way to the exits during Dr. J’s speech. Come on man, let’s GO. Oh, Gerald Green has another dunk? What the hell is going on?
—

Inevitable since the back of the backboard dunk, Supermanning a slam dunk contest was the peak… great show Dwight. Now comes the fan voting. A or B, you decide.

—

Gerald Green no shoes? Doesn’t he realize who’s paying for this whole weekend? Gerald Green, you have made… uh there’s like a mini-nerf hoop up there for Dwight. A ball is stashed in it. Dwight Howard is running his campaign on ideas.
—

Alyssa Milano gives Gerald Green’s first dunk a 9. He goes through the legs for her and it’s not enough, man I’d… whoa, focus. Dwight’s having a big night. This time it’s the tap to the dunk. Turns out Alyssa’s vote doesn’t count, this is for you the fans. Make it interesting Gerald, make it interesting.

—

Actually, I don’t think Superman himself could have pulled that off! It’s over.

—

SUPERMAN!

—

Lang says “for his second dunk, Gerald Green is going to blow out his NBA career.”
—

Gerald Green’s cupcake dunk, very creative, but maybe a tad too gimmicky. He was back at the other end so we didn’t have the same view we did of the Dwight dunk. Lang is very pleased that Dwight is out in front though. And the Conley-Gay 1-2, that was good. 48. A lot of ENERGY here! The dunk contest kind of feels like it’s back.
—

Jamario Moon first dunk, you saw it… they cut to the scoreboard of Amare with his kid in his arms, out cold. Rudy Gay, not great but it’s early…there may be some action on this event with people I know. Let’s go Gerald Green! They switch sides so we’re up close now as Dwight gets ready… he tried the bounce off the back to the front dunk that was on youtube… then he outs it down. That is a 50. This might not be a contest.

—

Jason Kapono is Dwyane Wade’s ex-teammate. Sometimes I like to make mistakes on purpose to see if you’re all paying attention. Give yourselves a big pat on the back. The judges are announced and Magic is one of them. Lang and Ben may have mentioned Magic being at the Jordan party last night. He had an entourage of like 100 people. Little kids and mascots out on the court. It’s dunking time. We are at the wrong end of the court to see it. We had a big lunch today so I skipped pre-event dinner. That’s starting to get to me now.
—

Khalid’s computer is doing things computers aren’t meant to do. I think it needs an exorcism. There is a photographer going around the press box taking photos of me and other people sitting here typing away. Very strange trip so far. Jason Kapono lives for this sh-t! He just tied the old Craig Hodges record and the podium is out. KAPONO! Alright, little break, the dunks are coming.
—

I think I have a Rick Ross at courtside sighting. He’s got a big bucket of popcorn, like Rick Ross should. The guy next to him is Terrell Owens, in a glittery shirt as always. So now I think the Rick Ross guy is just a henchman, holding his boss’s popcorn for him. Dirk eliminates Steve, and it’s Peja time. Me and Lang played a little NBA Live at the LRG suite earlier today. I was making it rain on him with Peja. Jason Kapono, the defending champion now shoots. FIRE at the end… The opposite of how his teammate DWade went out in a non-title defense.
—

Boobie Gibson… man Damon Jones must HATE him. You guys and girls (hi Holly) are all complaining about Reggie Miller. We’ve got like the Mortal Kombat soundtrack on full blast here while they shoot. Steve Nash had a horrible run, 9 points. He’s in dead last for now.
—

I just met THE Aggrey Sam! Jealous? Rip Hamilton finishes strong to start the competition. Oooooh… but his foot was on the line. Rip talked a lot of trash about beating Kobe, a.k.a. the noodle finger. Second Jimmy Jamm sighting of the trip.

—

Three point shootout time. They put Arnold on the jumbotron. His wife Maria Schreiber is here with him. Why is she wearing so many beads? Just kidding. Oh how I love a friendly game of character assassination.

—

It is finally settled. DERON > CHRIS! Re-draft! You blew it Hornets. Here’s your extra link to my brief Q&A of a warrior’s preparation. There are boos. He’s not an All-Star by the way.
—

Deron Williams sets a new record. I told you! I mean, I told you this was a budding scandal. Spygate lives! Chris Paul, be a hero.

—

Dikembe Mutombo is handed a microphone to talk about some of his and the NBA’s charity work. I have no idea what he said, but as always it was amazing. Hi commenters down there. Russ, the Henry Abbott was a Lang call. It’s a look. Chris Tucker sighting. Alyssa Milano – who was a coach in the celeb game Friday night which we missed. (serenity now)
—

Dwyane Wade loses the handle early, and it’s all downhill from there, much like his Miami Heat season. There are actually boos. This was a sorry title defense. Booooooooooo! Refund! Deron Williams vs. Chris Paul. There is nobody cheering for Deron Williams. But remember, he trained like Drago in Rocky IV, with computers.

—

Skills challenge time. Deron Williams did it exactly the way he played it as a video game earlier today. Jason Kidd missed many open jumpers, it’s true. Chris Paul gets his ovation. Then he goes out and effing kicks a$$ at this… he’s good. Wade, you got your work cut out for you.

—

Sometimes scoreboard trivia they ask the players is stupid. This time, it was not. Some All-Stars were asked what does Andoullie mean? LeBron said it means “and do we” do this or and do we do that. There was laughter. None of the players knew it, but Steve Nash had the right answer (a type of sausage). The NBA clearly fed him that answer a la Quiz Show so you all think he’s smart.

—

The Spurs are the champs of everything. A quick look around the press box… hey J.E. Skeets, look over your right shoulder, end of the row behind you. Jason Kidd is on the bench in a Nets warm-up suit. The skills challenge is up next. I believe I have spotted Arnold Schwarzennegger courtside.

—

David Robinson can’t hit a shot, and I think he’s up to like 4% bodyfat. Lazy. Admiral hits the half court shot to close it out and does a geeky Admiral fist pump…. never mind…

DAMON JONES IS IN THE BUILDING! Why wouldn’t he be? Wasn’t he in the three point contest last year?

Whatever, one of those acrobatic trampoline dunk groups, the rimrockers just put some energy in the building. This shooting stars event just doesn’t do it for me. Final round, Chicago vs. San Antonio. I have no idea what’s going on.

—

The players and ex-players are warming up for the shooting stars competition. Bill Laimbeer, David Robinson, Eddie Johnson, and so on. Whoa B.J. Armstrong.
—

Hello there. It’s Saturday night. You can stop holding your collective breath, Khalid and I have our luggage. The anthems are over, it’s Erin Nicole time. Lang is excited.

A nice Canadian anthem sung by Henry Abbott by the way. Have people tuned in to watch this on TV yet? People I’ve been talking to around town have kept asking me “When’s the dunk contest?” It’s early.

I guess the way to do this is to have the newer writing on top and just keep re-posting. Let’s do it.
—–

The post All-Star Saturday Night. We in the building… appeared first on SLAM.

Our friends from SONY hooked up the chance to talk to Utah Jazz superstar PG Deron Williams in the hours leading up to the the Playstation Skills Challenge. Deron is getting ready for the big showdown tonight by practicing with the video game NBA ’08. Wrap your head around this circular logic: Deron is a real life basketball player, training for real life using a video game simulation, but the company that makes the simulation also sponsors the real life event… wait I’m confused.

Anyways, tonight is the skills challenge. I sat with Deron as he trained. The interview was interrupted with lots of bursts of Aaaaaah! when he’d mess up, and I respect his level of focus. There’s nothing worse than having someone force you to talk to them when you’re trying to play a video game. But Deron was a good sport.
SLAM: Have you been practicing for tonight at all?

DERON: Nothing extra in real life. This is it right here. I’m practicing with this game.

S: Are you nervous?

D: Oh yeah, I’m nervous. I think I’m gonna miss the shot, maybe a bad pass or something.

S: How much does this mean to you? How badly do you want to win?

D: Well, I’m a competitor. I always want to win at whatever I do. Basketball, golf, I suck at golf. But I don’t want to lose, man.

S: You always seem to be associated with someone else, the great team at Illinois, always tied to Chris Paul or Carlos Boozer. Is this your big night where you get to say I’m Deron Williams dammit!

D: (chuckles) It’s more about going out there and having fun. I want to go out there and give the fans a good show. I would like to be playing in the All-Star Game but since that didn’t happen this year, my chance to perform is right here.

S: What if you win and people find out you were using this game to train?

D: I won’t tell them I was playing the game.

If Deron wins, do we have another spygate on our hands? We’ll see. He’s predicting Dwyane Wade as the winner tonight, which would make it three years in a row. Taking the pressure off himself, playing the underdog card. Nice move. I asked a question that came out as “So, no Larry Bird everybody else is playing for second place trash talk from you?” He just stared and said no. This was focused, intensive training. Best of luck tonight, Deron.

The post Deron Williams calm before the skills Q&A appeared first on SLAM.

For all of our All-Star 2008 coverage, click here.

Good morning New Orleans! Note to bosses: this is supposed to be a free internet connection we have in the rooms. That wasn’t happening. You’re on the hook for $15 today. I’m way beyond giving a f–k.

Yesterday as Lang, Khalid, and myself sat around at one of our “bonus stops” on the journey down here, we were discussing how much whining we could get away with. Lang made the point that we are lucky to be here, we get to have a lot of fun for free, so what’s some inconveniences in the grand scheme of things? After wallowing in self-pity for a while… I agree.

I mean nine hours ago, I was at the bar at the Jordan party next to a quiet young man named Rajon Rondo, just taking in the scene. I turn around, and in line behind me was Kevin Durant, Brandon Roy, and Rudy Gay. The women there were not unattractive. The sightings list is too long to get into at this time. Lang has notes that he’ll get around to writing about later on, but right now him and Ben and Aggrey Sam are attending a Peace Players event for work.

We did it quasi-big last night, hitting a few parties, ending a long day at 3 A.M.

One funny observation, I was standing near the Michael Jordan V.I.P. area of his party. Believe it or not, the guy has heavy security. Charles Oakley came in, and tried to get into that V.I.P. area, and a security team member jokingly tried to stop him. The death stare he received was awesome.

As far as the complaining goes… SERENITY NOW! I just called the baggage information number to track down lost luggage. Hope you didn’t have anything valuable in yours, Khalid.

I wish I could talk about some basketball from yesterday, but all I saw was the ESPNnews highlights. The closest I came to anything basketball-related was witnessing up close the shape of Steve Stoute’s head. I was supposed to interview someone who played in the celebrity game for the next issue of SLAM, but we missed that game, as well as the game after that.

Okay… this is my complaint post. Gotta take care of some business. More thorough party report and other stuff later.

The post The Morning After… it’s good to be here appeared first on SLAM.

Ben, Lang, Khalid, and myself are heading down to New Orleans early tomorrow morning. It is crucial that I remind you to go to this page all weekend long. New Orleans… one of my favorite cities. They have a well-known clothing store called Rubenstein Bros. Twice I have tried to throw my name around there to get free stuff, twice I have been rebuffed.

While I’m still on a Valentine’s Day chocolate sugar high, I’ll share some facts from my two previous trips to New Orleans.

1) Someone I was there with was thrown in jail for assaulting a police horse. I was on local TV ranting about how my Florida State Seminoles were going to win the Sugar Bowl. I don’t watch college football, rarely have.

2) My room key wasn’t working. I banged on the door. I was in the wrong hotel. Got to a meeting late, found out the speaker was… me.
3) Let’s do this!

Busy night in the NBA last night. Monta Ellis with 37 against the post-Marion Suns, but Baron came up with the key plays down the stretch. Amare missed a big free throw ending a streak of 36 straight. Wow, Shaq has been teaching him the game!

Carlos Boozer had a triple double, Dirk had 37 and 12 against the Blazers. 20-20s from Dwight Howard and Emeka Okafor. Buuuuuuut…

It has to go to Manu Ginobili, and yes now I regret giving it to him over Larry Hughes the other day. The Finals may have been ugly last year, but a Finals re-match is a Finals re-match, and Manu hit eight threes on his way to 46 points in the win. No revenge for Cleveland.

The post Player of the D.A.Y. appeared first on SLAM.

Once again, Fredo Tovar hooks us up by editing a SLAM cover shoot video. If you’d like to see more of Fredo’s work, check out his myspace page. You can email him here.

The guy with the pen and pad looking like a journalist in the video is none other than SLAM Senior Editor Khalid Salaam, who not only wrote the story, but modeled for Atiba Jefferson’s photoshoot, as you will see in the video. Now that’s a value added employee! Look for him in the LeBron James jersey while LeBron is in street clothes. Trading places.

Also of note: The video features a bonus cameo from SLAM Creative Director Melissa Brennan Winkler. She’s the one that ran the shoot, and can be seen with the measuring tape. Thanks again to everyone involved with the shoot, the filming, and Fredo with the editing.

Enjoy!

The post LeBron James SLAM covershoot video appeared first on SLAM.

Lots and lots and LOTS of stuff going on with the site… but I want to take a time out to ask the real world question, have you ever one day discovered that your downstairs neighbor – your landlord’s sister – has been deceased for four months? Awwwwwwwkward! We were aware that something was up, but uh… I’m a little nervous about the future…

Very excited to be heading out of town this weekend. What is rent like in New Orleans?

By the way this Clemens trial thing… wow. If this is where taxpayer money is going, I want a little something extra in my refund.

To the NBA, a much safer world.

Games played Friday night: Carmelo Anthony had his career night, 49 against the Wizards.

Games played Saturday: Monta Ellis with 34 and 9 in a win over Sacramento on a night when Baron struggled.

Games played Sunday: A toss-up between Amare’s 31 and 13 against the Wizards – who would be the victim of the weekend team – and Paul Pierce leading the C’s minus Garnett over the Spurs. Yes, Paul Pierce with his 35 points in that game gets it.

Games played Monday: Washington rears its ugly head again, as they blew a big lead to the Warriors, who got 41 from Stephen Jackson. This was the same night Larry Hughes had 40 over Orlando. Forty point games are gaudy, but I’m going a third direction and giving it to Manu Ginobili, who started and led the Spurs with 34 and 15, in a win over Toronto. His starting backcourt mate? Why, Jacque Vaughn of course.

Games played Tuesday: I want to honor the Pistons hot streak. There were no real “big games” last night, so I’ll go with Rasheed Wallace leading the Pistons with 21 in a win over the Hawks.

Okay, even though the Clemens thing is a huge waste of time, I have to admit I’ve got my eye on it. Back to the scene of the trainwreck…

The post Player of the D.A.Y. appeared first on SLAM.

Last night I attended the viewing of a film about some people leaving the safe routine of their daily lives to head into a territory known for chaos. It was much like what Lang, Ben, Khalid, and myself are preparing to do as we gear up for New Orleans.

The film was the new Rambo. If you’re familiar with the Rambo saga, you know it’s all about a guy who did horrible things to others and his own soul in Vietnam, was tortured by his captors, which turns him into a one-man war machine. I felt the same thing happening to myself just sitting there watching the movie. It is EXTREMELY VIOLENT.

Spoiler alert: Lots of limbs getting blown off, bullets through brains, arrows through faces, swords through necks, hands through throats(!), and a baby being casually tossed into a fire.

And of course, it’s Stallone back in his second-best character, a man of few words, that John Rambo. The money quote of the movie, which you should know from the trailer is “You bringing any weapons? No? Then you ain’t changing anything.”

Me and my friends were jumping out of our seats, laughing, high-fiving, indulging in smoked cheddar popcorn with peanut M&Ms sprinkled in (The Rambo of movie snacks), screaming out “Oh!” It was the feel good movie of the winter!

And so… the men of the SLAM in-house editorial staff get ready to head to New Orleans for All-Star Weekend. Should be the same kind of fun.

This week we have to do the prep work for the site, and we will have the same all-out coverage as last year from Vegas. Be afraid. The games, the parties, the random sightings, the new banner, the incoherent cab drivers, the schmoozing with PR people, the staged events… I’m excited. You should be too. I learned from mistakes made in Vegas last year, just some logisitical stuff that will go much smoother this time around. We’ll see.

Note: There is no parallel between Burma and any part of Louisiana. Despite the accusations of the U.S. Government turning a deaf ear or mishandling the resources after Katrina, trust me… Burma is not a place you ever want to be. Unless Rambo is your tour guide. I wish he were coming with us to New Orleans…

The post New Orleans, prepare yourself… appeared first on SLAM.

There comes a time in every man’s life where he has to say, sure my team won the greatest championship there ever was, I enjoyed it, and now it’s time to move on.

Hasn’t happened for me yet… I’ll let you know if it ever does. DOUBT THAT!!!

Missed work last Friday cause of some family stuff. I wrote my big Super Bowl as important as a World War thing before heading out that morning, but the events of the day took longer than expected, the weather was inclement to say the least, and I never got around to doing the Player of the D.A.Y. Besides it was Gasol for Kwame day. This was not a priority.

So here we are in backlog city. No time for small talk…

Games played last Thursday night (January 31!): It was the eve of the Gasol trade. Really funny to look at those boxscores now. The Lakers lost by one to the Pistons. Kwame Brown’s swan song was 3 points and 6 boards in a loss to the Pistons. Lamar Odom took the last “shot.” LOST season premiere night! Seems like a long time ago. There was a heavyweight showdown of Phoenix and San Antonio. Shawn Marion led the Suns in points, rebounds, and steals. See, sometimes its good that I’m so late on these cause you can look back and chuckle. There was somehow a third big game that night, the Celtics playing without KG, getting the W. This was the game where Rajon Rondo had 14 and 12, and wanted the game winning rebound more than Dirk. It throws the Player of the D.A.Y. standings into utter disarray to have Rondo with more than any other Celtic… and utter disarray you shall have! Rajon Rondo gets it.

Games played last Friday night: Brandon Roy had a triple double in an OT win over the Knicks… whoa, I said Knicks. I haven’t even thought of that word in weeks. But the big star of the night was Kobe, fired up by the Gasol trade as he went off for 46 at Toronto.

Games played Saturday night: Brad Miller had a 20-20 game against the Bulls and Chris Wilcox had 20-10 against the Knicks. Nice numbers guys, get money, etc. but no Player of the D.A.Y.s. Tracy McGrady led Houston with 33 and 11 over Milwaukee – which actually has a worse record than Chicago. Allen Iverson had 24-13-6 and 5 steals in a win over the Bobcats, who have an even worse record than the Bucks now. How about this… NO AWARD GIVEN! That’s a power move, people. Respect it.

Games played Sunday night: THE BLESSED EVENT OF SUPER BOWLNESS!!! Detroit held the Mavs to just 67 points, kind of like how the GMEN held the greatest NFL offense ever to only 14. Spags, you made the right choice. You’re a legend now. Big game for Kobe, but the nod goes to Rasheed Wallace, who led the Pistons with 21 and 9 as Dirk shot 3 of 18.

Games played Monday night: Big game out West between Denver and Portland. That is not a sentence I expected to write this season. Anyways, Allen Iverson had a rough first half, and then oh so casually erupted in the second half, hitting the game winner in OT to top it off.

Games played Tuesday night: Boston went to Cleveland without KG in uniform… LEBRON did things to them. Bad things. 33-9-12-5-2, he even had 5 fouls and 7 turnovers. Shot 10 free throws, hit four threes. No category is safe!

Games played Wednesday night: With everyone’s head spinning from the Shaq-Marion trade, the Suns and Hornets played the way the Suns and Hornets should. The final result was Chris Paul with 42 and 9. Say what you will about the Suns as a flashy novelty act, they sure do go to multiple overtimes a lot. This is a good thing for you all-night types.

Games played last night: Caught up. LeBron vs. Yao. The marketing potential of this game… These guys and their people and the PR people for their people and the firm that represents those people are getting Johan Santana money. But Yao‘s team came out on top behind his 22 and 12.

On a final funny note, like many people one of my favorite baseball blogs is FireJoeMorgan. In particular I’ve always thought that Ken Tremendous is one of the great baseball poets of our time, really someone who is too insightful and entertaining not to be a professional Hollywood writer (hang in there!). Yesterday, the bloggers of the site gave the world their real names. It turns out Mr. Tremendous is also a writer for The Office, which is one of the only written non-sports non-news non-historical restrospective non-shaking my head in disgust at the Sucker Free Countdown shows I watch regularly (Office, Wire, LOST, Law and Order, Family Guy re-runs, that’s it!).

For a moment there I considered this guy to be an American hero… then through a little re-con, I discovered that his wife is a writer as well, and that she wrote one episode of Heroes, which just so happened to be the one that ruined any hope of the show being watchable. No offense, I’m sure she’s a nice lady. But it was the “Superman and Lois Lane in flight” epsiode where I thought to myself “I will watch the rest of the season out of stubbornness, but I already know it’s done.” There is no larger point here, I just found that personally amusing. Sometimes being anonymous is a better way of living.
Have a great weekend everyone!

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Twenty four hours ago, Mutoni sent an email explaining that he had the Shaq pending physical story ready to go, and could someone else just flick a switch if the trade went through. That was when it hit me that this thing wasn’t Jimmy McNulty’s fake serial killer story. This was real. There is an ancient Chinese proverb “May you live in interesting times.” Happy Chinese New Year everyone! And yeah, we are living in interesting times.

Greatest Super Bowl ever, Eli Manning on David Letterman, Super Tuesday with a woman and black man as co-front runners in a major political party, Bob Knight suddenly quitting, Tyler Hansbrough passing Michael Jordan on the UNC scoring list, Phoenix and New Orleans going to double OT hours after the trade was finalized…

INTERESTING TIMES!

The Shaq-Marion (Banks) trade for me is like they day after a new episode of LOST. I think I understand it abstractly, but I’m also more confused than ever. Shawn Marion must have been whining even more than we were allowed to know. The Suns wanted more diversity of position type, instead of having 10 guys who can drain threes and explode up and down the court. Amare wanted to go back to being a PF, since in the West he should have to match up with Duncan, Dirk, Gasol, the big-time scorers from the front court. Not Camby or Chandler or Dampier or Oberto. I don’t know if I believe what I’m writing, just trying to rationalize.

So Shaq can slide into the spot taken up by Western Conference brutes. For most of NBA history, the blueprint seemed to be to get an elite center to build around, then team him up with a rugged forward to do the dirty work. Now it’s the other way. Get a superstar PF, and have the center do the dirty work. So Amare gets to be the front court star, and Shaq is his goon. Shaq is to Amare what Horace Grant or A.C. Green was to younger Shaq. Very interesting development.

As for Shawn Marion, he makes $17 million, he can opt out at the end of the season, and he’s the bargain in the deal. Miami could save a lot of money after spending to grab a quick title. Reminds me of that other great Florida team, the Marlins. Two rings and two fire sales in less than a ten year window.

Okay, Holly will have lots to get to today if she hasn’t already. Double OT with a buzzer beater, Dirk’s triple double, the new-look Lakers losing to the Hawks!

If anyone can fill in more details and reasoning from the Phoenix side, I’d love to hear it. I watched Steve Kerr and Mike D’Antoni explain how this will motivate Shaq to get back into shape, to get healthy, to prove all the pundits wrong… I dunno man, I remember Michael Jackson once gave a speech at an awards show in the late 90’s, after History had already been out. The money quote was “You ain’t seen nothing yet.” I found that funny because he was the world’s biggest superstar for much of the past 30 years, and now he’s saying there’s more to come? Oh, there was more alright… no comment. Good luck Shaquille! Hit that gym hard. I had a veggie burger and asparagus for lunch yesterday. Highly recommended.

By the way, that Chinese Proverb might be a curse.

The post Help Wanted: explaining the Shaq trade appeared first on SLAM.

What to say, what to say…

I figure I have 50 to 60 more years to go in this lifetime, knock on wood. I will never forget how I felt last night, how I feel now, for the rest of my life. I almost feel like I should just “retire” as a sports fan, because this is as good as it can ever possibly get. You always hear the cliche “Nobody can take our championship away from us” once it has been one. It’s true! The memories of this journey will last forever.

Seriously, what am I supposed to say? I’m a fan of the team that just pulled off the biggest upset in the history of sports, taking down an undefeated team for the ages, which is no more. For me, everything going forward is anti-climactic, except when I get to think about the Giants miracle run.

I never believed until Belicheater was walking off the field with time still on the clock. Even after the Plaxico TD, I was yelling at people in my apartment to settle down…

And then the guy from Penn State that Ryan wouldn’t shut up about, just violated Brady, reducing Mr. Perfect into throwing the ball 60 yards in the air into double coverage. I really still can’t believe this has happened.

And Eli Manning… ELI MANNING!!! Today’s world is so much about people screaming insults at each other, or trying to be as hateful and sensational as possible. Eli took so much abuse – from myself and all of my friends, and from everyone that has ever seen him play football – and he never got off the high road. He never stooped to our level, he just kept working hard, performed on stages that were supposed to be too big for little brother, delivered impossible results.

That play with David Tyree… (DAVID TYREE!!!) I have never seen anything like that in my life.

The Giants defense, in particular the D-Line… you ain’t so pretty no more Tommy Boy!

One man believed in Eli all along. His name is Khalid Salaam, who before the playoffs jokingly said “Eli Manning Super Bowl MVP.” Thank you Khalid! I do remember a few weeks ago Lang was being his bitter self, and he even said “You guys are acting like you won the Super Bowl…” Ooooooh, you better call in sick today. The hate from Salaam and Whitaker, as they cheered for Bill Simmons’ Patriots was a powerful aide to the timeless world champion GMEN.

But enough about them, as they fall by the wayside just like the “Greatest Team of All-Time.”
There was the drinking of the champagne in the house of Rubenstein. My friend’s fiance brought cupcakes with plastic Super Bowl rings to the party. I have my ring. LIFE IS AWESOME!

Thank to you everyone who sent congratulatory emails, facebook messages, text messages, voicemail messages, etc.

So, Kobe got a teammate… Lots of stuff from Holly coming if it’s not up already. You never have to hear about football again from me, unless I’m caught up in reminiscing about the greatest win in history of battle!

I will be late to work tomorrow cause I’ve got a PARADE to attend.

PHOTO UPDATES. Ben Osborne and I celebrate.

And a close-up of the victory cupcakes:

The post MORE PERFECT THAN PERFECT!!! appeared first on SLAM.

You always hear people say that we take sports too seriously, how we need to step back and gain perspective. There’s a war going on, there’s poverty, illiteracy, infant mortality, political races. But you know what else is really important?

MY TEAM IS IN THE SUPER BOWL!!!

But Sam, it’s just a game. Someone wins and someone loses. And that’s what’s so great about it! In every other phase of life, you never know. Things drag on for years and years. On Sunday, one ultimate showdown decides everything. We will have our answer. Either the Pats are the greatest team of all-time, or my GIANTS pull off the greatest upset of all-time, thus proving they are better than the best, thus making me very happy.

Don’t be fooled by those who tell you to find perspective or “It’s not life and death.” Trust me, it is. Football is like war. It’s an obvious analogy. The field general who throws bombs out of the shotgun formation is a charasmatic leader who gets all the glory and all the blame (QBs are treated like John Wayne at Iwo Jima). There are footsoldiers who get sacrificed like pawns (special teams wedge breakers), strategic generals who don’t go near the battlefield but devise war schematics based on their decades of experience (and yell a lot, I’m looking at you Tommy Boy), aerial assaults from delicate and dangerous weapons (an elite WR is like a $6 billion fighter jet), massive rumbling tanks that plow over land to sieze the high ground (offensive line, Brandon Jacobs), spies and traitors (the Patriots), kamikaze pilots (the undersized scrappy go-getter types), snipers who rack up bodies from a distance (kickers), theories of surrendering a battle to save resources for the larger war (punting), anti-aircraft missles with one purpose (reckless free safeties), doomsday weapons that cause the enemy to quiver in fear (Osi), torture and securing information no matter the cost to your own humanity (the things that happen at the bottom of a pile-on when a fumble is loose), and most glaringly the bodies (injuries. Horrible horrible disfiguring injuries.). You even have draft dodgers and people that want no part of the war but want to run their mouth about it all day and night (Tiki!), and finally, nations will sometimes go to war because of the economic boon it presents for the factories that build weapons as the whole economy is supposed to in theory become focused on one unified cause and lift the nation. That is kind of like fans buying up t-shirts and tickets, driving the $100 billion football industry which is much like a streamlined war machine stampeding over its lowly enemies.

So you get it… THIS IS WAR!!!

Throw in the fact that one team in this game is undefeated, treats its loyal veterans as expendable parts, cheats by filming its enemies with 700X zoom cameras, basically symbolizes everything we know about tyranny and oppression, and you have yourself an old-fashioned GOOD vs. EVIL showdown. Usually it’s the media’s job to create that kind of image in a big game, because we have been told those stories for thousands of years, and it generates a certain emotional response from our subconscious. Not required this time. The New England Patriots are actually a bunch of demons with no redeeming humanity. Randy Moss is actually the un-dead (he escaped from the Raiders a.k.a. hell). Look at their coach. He is a genius in drab clothing, hiding beneath his hood, never smiling. Could it be… Satan?

So it’s established. The Patriots are the villain. On the other side, my Giants…

This season challenged my notions of what being a fan is. Was I proudly supporting my team this season? My first thoughts of the Giants going into this season were “I hope they go 3-13, fire Coughlin, Eli throws a comical amount of interceptions like when people thought Vinny Testaverde was diagnosed color blind, and we start over.” With an 0-2 record, the worst defense in the NFL, and losing to the Redskins at the half in Week 3, the season was already over.

And then the lightbulb went on, they won that game, beat up on a soft schedule, went to London to play in the slop as Eli completed like 6 of 25 passes, came back to America and after a bye-week began their annual collapse. I say this not to be shocking or to promote hyperbole, but Eli Manning had perhaps the 3 worst games a QB has ever had all within the second 8 weeks of one NFL season. And they were different and horrible in creatively adventurous ways. Against Minnesota, me and my friend Josh were watching as he threw 3 touchdowns to the wrong team. He closed that game out by doing the old Tecmo Bowl move where you drop back and run around in circles and lose 25 yards. It was hilarious in a “If you’re going to crash and burn, try to land on an orphange” kind of way.

Then there was the Washington game. That was a Sunday night after I remember having a pretty good weekend. When I watch football, usually it’s laying on the couch, nothing too animated until the playoffs. For this game, I was a ranting raving lunatic, cursing at the TV. Accidentally mimicking the Faces of Coughlin. I’m surprised my neighbors didn’t call the cops on me, suspecting me of beating my girlfriend. I was angry. Eli threw the most incompletions in a game since Joe Namath. Preposterous!

And then there was the game up in Buffalo. I was driving to our Managing Editor Susan Price’s sister’s house, listening on the radio. The Giants fell behind 14-0. The collapse was complete, with unbeatable New England on the cusp of 16-0 looming in the future as a must-win to get in. Editor in Chief Ben Osborne was at Susan’s sister’s house when I got there, and I told him that I was having trouble deciding if I should drive off a bridge or just veer into incoming traffic. We watched the remainder of that game with a bunch of other Giants fans, and it was a great victory… except the Giants play ratio was run 24 times ELI RIDICULOUSLY INACCURATE PASS OR FUMBLE every other play. A team has never scored 38 points before getting so little from their QB.

So that’s three of the worst games ever played in a short period of time together. There is the phrase “Whipping boy” which is what Eli became. I would tell people that I enjoyed watching the Giants win, and I enjoyed screaming insults at Eli cause it was a fun interactive activity. I play video games, I like to feel I have a say in the outcome. So by screaming at Eli, calling him names, it made me feel like I was contributing something.

And then everything changed…

I went to that Giants-Pats game at the Meadowlands when the G-Men could have just rested everyone and gotten ready for the playoffs. As is written in the scrolls… they gave the world a show. Eli hit Plaxico deep early in the game, and he’s been a different QB ever since.

You know about the Giants magical run through the playoffs. I switched up my living room furniture situation, invited different people to watch the games, gave them assigned seats, and here we are.

I have lost 10 pounds in hand sweat, bitten my knuckles raw to the bone, survived countless heart attacks, black outs, life flashing in front of my eyes…

For the Green Bay game, I was aware of a bottle of champagne I had in the fridge. When Lawrence Tynes lined up to win the game at the end of regulation, my thoughts drifted to that bottle. I didn’t say anything out loud, but just the thought itself was a jinx. We were lucky to have won that game. I don’t need to re-hash everything that happened over the past month. It has been intense man!!! The Giants are at the dance… ready to try and beat the unbeatable.

Guess where we are all going? On a trip down memory lane…

Earliest football memory… Joe Montana dying on the field and leaving Giants Stadium on a stretcher in an ambulance. Giants win 49-3, get to Super Bowl a few weeks later. I remember watching half of that game at my downstairs neighbor’s house and the rest upstairs. I was young… Phil McConkey caught a pass off of Mark Bavaro’s face. Then I recall much joy.

By the time Super Bowl XXV came around, me and my delinquent friends were gambling. My best friend at the time was randomly a huge Buffalo Bills fan. His reasoning was he liked the names Thurman and Cornelius. He also used to open the windows in winter and watch the game on TV under a blanket, to feel that Rich Stadium cold. He was a big fan. We put $15 on the game. At the time my allowance was $5, meaning this was 3 weeks “salary” and I wouldn’t be eating lunch for a long time if the Giants lost. Scott Norwood! Perhaps the greatest event in world history. No… actually scratch that “perhaps.” It is. Sorry Vince.

The game against the Ravens… I was old enough to know they were lucky to be there. Not a good match-up. I had just started a new job that I would grow to hate, me and some co-workers went to a bar in a neighborhood that I would grow to hate (Upper East Side), and there was like a $20 for all the beer and wings you can drink deal. Bad ideas all around, don’t remember much else of game.

And now a fourth Superbowl. This means A LOT to me.

Everyone has predictions and expectations… I am terrified of the Tom Brady to Randy Moss 80 yard TD on the first play, and a game of running up the score, making sure everyone on the Pats has a TD or two. The Giants have been talking waaaaaaaaaaaaay too much. I am nervous.

I hope everyone has fun watching the game. But on the other hand, none of your lives will mean the slightest bit to me once that ball is kicked off… I hope the Giants pull off the greatest upset… OF ALL-TIME!!!

I AM PREPARED TO FACE MY DESTINY!!!

LET’S GO GIANTS!!! SUPER BOWL!!! WIN IT FOR THE GOOD OF HUMANITY!

Have a great weekend everyone. I don’t know what state of mind I’ll be in Monday…

The post The SUPER BOWL is here. I am hyperventilating already… appeared first on SLAM.

Yes the GIANT SUPER BOWL is approaching… yes LOST season 4 debuts tonight… yes we are in the midst of the final season of The Wire, it could go on with things that don’t happen inside of a television set. Yes the actor who plays Omar from The Wire was here yesterday and he had braces and was a very friendly man who didn’t have a shotgun and bulletproof vest thereby shattering my illusions. Yes it is grammatically annoying to begin every sentence with the word yes.

If you were looking forward to me writing something about the Super Bowl, understand I have to be very careful about jinxes. My Tom Brady voodoo doll was working, but as you can see his foot seems to have healed. Must adjust dosage. I’m also concerned with all the talk coming from Giants players… stay quiet.  Plaxico…  why are you doing this! More tomorrow.

Awards to give out:

Games played Tuesday night: Three-way race between Kevin Durant leading the Sonics over the Spurs, Antawn Jamison with a 20-20 evening in an OT win over the Raptors, or Yao with 36 and 19 in a win over Golden State. Very tough call between Yao and Jamison… and the winner is Yao. He hit 14 of 15 free throws. Here’s a great stat I just happened to see: Yao is a 91% free throw shooter on the road this season.

Games played last night: It’s LeBron, as Al Jefferson gets overshadowed once again. MVP race updated: 1) LeBron 2) Chris Paul.

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SLAM: Who from last year’s college season has impressed you so far early on in the NBA?

EA: I live in Atlanta so I see Al Horford quite a bit, and I’m very proud of him. Al is one of my guys. He, Joakim and Corey Brewer, those are my boys from Florida. Mike Miller, too. I know it’s not his first year, but it’s always neat to see the success he’s had, as well as Udonis Haslem. We were pretty good friends in college.
SLAM: You guys were friends?
EA: Yeah, I was on the dance team so I was always around the players. Udonis is such a great story. I remember when he first came to Florida, he was a little chunkster. He was a little overweight and I remember after his first practice, he came back to the dorm and he was laying on the floor and I asked one of the other players, “Is he alive?” And Udonis said, “I don’t know if I’m gonna make it.” The transformation he’s made with his body in the League is awesome.
SLAM: Now he’s the only guy on his team in shape, right?
EA: I know! He’s such a good guy, good for him that he’s got his ring.

SLAM: Do you ever talk to Mike Miller about what’s going on with his hair?

EA: No. I haven’t seen him much. We haven’t had the hair discussion yet.

SLAM: Someone has to. Maybe a woman should.

EA: Oh, he’s married. I’m sure she’s got him in shape. He’ll be fine.

SLAM: Do you have an NBA team?

EA: I grew up loving the Celtics. They were down for a while but now it’s pretty fun to watch them. I kind of lost touch with the NBA. When the Celtics started to stink, I was into Charles Barkley. Growing up, I had an argument with my dad and he grounded me. He didn’t take away my car. He didn’t take away anything from my social life, but what he took away was that I wasn’t allowed to listen to the radio or the television when the Suns were in the Finals against the Bulls. The night when Paxson hit the last shot, I snuck into my parents’ car and I listened to it on the radio. I was in tears when I walked into the house and my dad was like, “You’re grounded for two more weeks.” I said “The Finals are over,” and he said “Okay, well then I’ll take the car away now.” Now that the Celtics look like they’re the real deal, I told my dad it might be time for us to get back on the bandwagon.

—SAM RUBENSTEIN

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Hello basketball site! Let’s take a break from talking about football to talk baseball.

SANTANA! SANTANA! SANTANA! SANTANA! SANTANA! SANTANA! SANTANA!

Omar, you genius! Loving the big market life!

Okay, Player of the D.A.Y. time from over the weekend. After reading the numbers, it occurred to me that this voting race could possibly be a complete sham, just like many voter races!

On with the fun.

Games played Friday night: Shawn Marion hit the buzzer-beater in Phoenix-Cleveland, and there was the Dallas-Lakers game with Dirk leading the Mavs, but I’m going with Rip Hamilton‘s 32-8-8 in a win over Orlando.

Games played Saturday: Dwyane Wade finally put an end to the Miami losing machine, but the big game of the night was the stunning New Orleans blowout of the Spurs in San Antonio. David West scored 32 on 15 of 19. I know, Chris Paul is the engine, but David was the, I dunno, front tires that rolled over the Spurs.

Games played Sunday: Al Jefferson, your 40 and 19 was overshadowed. LeBron in the primetime showdown with 41 and 9 is the winner.

Games played Monday: Let’s go to New Orleans again. The #1 seed in the West. Who saw that coming? Chris Paul with 23-17-9.

The post Player of the D.A.Y. appeared first on SLAM.

We are a little bit more than halfway through the NBA season, right about the time when every columnist who has a vote, stands up on their pedestal and gives their personal reasoning why they would take Player X, and then they make their case for the player in question. I do no such thing.

This is not one man sitting around and deciding who he thinks in his expert opinion, he knows who is MVP. The one thing that has become crystal clear over the past few years is that we will never agree on what the MVP is. Does it celebrate one individual carrying a bad team to mediocrity? Is it the biggest winner on the best team? The last few years have turned the world into chaos. It used to be simple, the MVP was the dominant force in the game, one who could not be denied and had a championship on lock until he ran into Jordan or Shaq in their primes – and then you’d say well, Shaq or MJ should have been the MVP anyways.

Another problem of recent times is the dilution of talent through over-expansion. The NBA will never retract teams, because that would deprive tens of thousands of fans from paying for tickets every night, not to mention all of the T-shirt vendors and concession stand workers, and the arena maintenance crews would be out of work. More teams is good for business, but it thins out talent distribution, so the individual megastar has to carry inferior teammates more often.

Therefore, the whole MVP discussion has become skewed. There are so few teams you would consider to be loaded with talent, and those are the teams that have produced MVPs in recent years. The Mavs, the Suns, the T-Wolves in that one year with Spree and Cassell, and before that the Spurs. People always seem to feel the need to stand up and trumpet a guy who carries a bad team on his back beyond its capabilities. If you honestly look at the results, the only player ever to pull that off in the eyes of the voters is Allen Iverson.

Now, the voting process is everybody submits their ballot, makes the arguments to justify, and so forth. I have been giving out the MVP of the night, called Player of the D.A.Y., for every calendar day of NBA action this season. Each Player of the D.A.Y. trophy is one MVP vote. Think of me as Herschel Walker, I’m 85 different people, each with one vote. That’s right, I’ve given out 85 of these so far because it’s one every day, and I included weekends. Sometimes (many times) they come in bunches in a “make-up” post, but they are all accounted for.

My criteria is clear. Best performance in the most “meaningful” game of that night. Who was the #1 guy in the NBA on each and every given night. That means I weed out the flashy numbers put up by losers, as well as the solo artist on a bad team. A lot of people are just handing the award over to KG already because of how he’s transformed the mentality of a losing organization into something that resembles a winner. Well, he hasn’t had to put the team on his back and carry them… yet. Let’s call him the exception that proves the rule. Yes, that will do. Cause KG hasn’t won one of these since the Celtics home opener. Big Baby has the same number of these votes as KG. Hmmmmmm… I guess that makes Boston the “Team of the Year.” Not as exciting.

Enough pre-qualifying. Let’s get down to business. The merits that make up the MVP is a discussion that will play out all year long. These are just the numbers. And I didn’t count the games from over the weekend. I’ll add those on for the second half count.

LeBron James 7
Brandon Roy 4
Chris Paul 4
Kobe Bryant 4
Allen Iverson 3
Baron Davis 3
Josh Howard 3
Yao Ming 3
Emeka Okafor 2
Jason Richardson 2
Jose Calderon 2
LaMarcus Aldridge 2
Manu Ginobili 2
Mehmet Okur 2
Michael Redd 2
Al Jefferson 1
Amare Stoudemire 1
Andrei Kirilenko 1
Carlos Boozer 1
Carmelo Anthony 1
Caron Butler 1
Chauncey Billups 1
Chris Bosh 1
Deron Williams 1
Dirk Nowitzki 1
Dwight Howard 1
Eddy Curry 1
Fabricio Oberto 1
Gerald Wallace 1
Glen Davis 1
Grant Hill 1
Hedo Turkoglu 1
Jamaal Tinsley 1
Jason Terry 1
Joe Johnson 1
John Salmons 1
Josh Smith 1
Kevin Durant 1
Kevin Garnett 1
Lamar Odom 1
Linas Kleiza 1
Paul Pierce 1
Rajon Rondo 1
Rashard Lewis 1
Raymond Felton 1
Ryan Gomes 1
Sebastian Telfair 1
Shaquille O’Neal 1
Steve Nash 1
Tim Duncan 1
TJ Ford 1
Tracy McGrady 1
Travis Outlaw 1
Tyrus Thomas 1
Tyson Chandler 1

Biggest surprises: Deron Williams and Carlos Boozer with only one each, while Memo has two. I guess that’s because you can’t separate the PG from the PF. Nash and Amare with only one each… Ginobili with more than Duncan… Dwight Howard with only one, I feel like he’s gotten the honorable mention 10 times. I suppose you could say that is a critical flaw having Okafor with more D.A.Y. votes than Dwight, but I stand by the top of the list: LeBron is MVP, followed by Roy, Paul, and Kobe.

The real voters are going to give it to KG at the end of the year.

The post The MVP at the halfway point appeared first on SLAM.

Let me do this now cause I am a little bit under the weather, and the medication has made me kind of lightheaded. It’s a nice feeling. It must be like how David Harrison feels when he plays a game. No football game this weekend, that is annoying. Whaddya gonna do.

A quick word on the All-Stars… typically an All-Star is a great individual player who wins. They are celebrated for that. But what is the opposite? A bad group/team that loses a lot. There was a lot of talk earlier about the Celtics making their run for the Bulls 72 win record. But going the other way… the Miami Heat, the Minnesota Timberwolves, and the Seattle Supersonics are all on pace to win less than 20 games. Sure, Dwyane Wade is starting the All-Star Game. You know, Tracy McGrady won the scoring title for the ’03-’04 season when Orlando won 21 games. He was 2nd team All-NBA. But enough about individuals, it’s an easy trap to fall into to say praise this guy, blame that guy, or give a sermon about how teamwork is more important than the air we breathe.

To the Sonics, Wolves, and Heat… Let the tankathon commence!

No more team talk. Back to the individuals.

Games played Wednesday Night: Honorable mention to Al Jefferson leading those lowly Wolves over the Suns with 39 and 15. Minnesota owns Phoenix, just like Golden State owned Dallas. Just wait until they meet up in the first round! Ha ha, no that’s not happening. Honorable mention to Tim Duncan who had 28 and 17 for the Spurs in a game when the Lakers fell apart. But, the award has to go to Jose Calderon with 24 and 13 at Boston.

Last night: It’s tough, cause two of the best performances – Monta and Tim Duncan – were both against teams on crushing losing streaks where Murphy’s Law is more important than the rules of Naismith. So, I’ll go to the third game and give it to Michael Redd with 37-5-5 over Indiana. Sure, the Pacers are nothing to write home about as they say, but their hemmoraging is slighlty more subdued than the Nets’ at the moment. Also, Baron’s triple double cuts into Monta’s chances, as does Monta’s 39 hurt Baron.

Dizzy.

The post Player of the D.A.Y. appeared first on SLAM.

What day is it? Oh that’s right… two days since the blessed event. There is lots of basketball award giving to catch-up on. Let’s backtrack with some Player of the D.A.Y. awards.

Games played Friday night: On Friday night I saw There Will Be Blood. Now that was fine cinema! If I could do it all again, I’d be an oil man. And I would build a big fat toxic pipe right through all of your homes. After the movie, me and my friend had to calm down, so we postgamed a little, caught some of the Bulls-Warriors on TV. Baron Davis had 40 points, hit 6 of 8 threes, and even though the Bulls are one of those teams that should be ineligible for players competing against them and winning the award, I have to give it to him. Forced tie-in: I wish I were a ruthless oil BARON.

Games played Saturday: Corey Maggette had a big game against the Nets, Chicago bounced back behind Ben Gordon over the Pistons. But let’s give it up for Yao Ming. Tracy McGrady played, but was limited. Yao was a monster with 21 and 14 leading his team over the champs. Hey, here’s yet another uncomfortable tie-in: I saw Cloverfield that day! Monsters! Great movie for what it was. Sure, you human characters can get annoying sometimes, but there was lots of stuff going kaboom.

Games played Sunday: Only one game was played out of respect for the Arizona Bound SUPERGIANTS. How about those New Jersey Nets? Even when their season is going down the tubes they can’t get any coverage our outrage. They share a parking lot with the inspirational SUPERGIANTS! Lucky them. Amare had 28 and 9 against the Nets.

Games played Monday: On Dr. Martin Luther King’s birthday, there were many many NBA games played. Holly was all over them as always. I will do the opposite and distill thousands and thousands of words into one name: Ryan Gomes. 35 and 11 in a WIN for the Timberwolves, who just got by Golden State.

Games played Tuesday: Steve Nash, season high 37 with 10 assists. On a night with just two games the Suns players are lucking out with these easy awards. Then again, 37 and 10 is big enough to win on a competitive night. The other game involved Jersey losing, and so Ron Artest was inelgible despite the good game he had.

And we’re caught up. Excuse me, I have to go talk some rubes out of their land for my oil profiteering.

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It has been an incredible past 36 hours. The emails from people coming out of the woodworks, the giddyness, the over the top celebrations, the champagne toast, the twelve near heart attacks and strokes I survived. Once again, I LOVE LIFE!!! Birds are singing. The sun is smiling (it’s that sun from the Raisin Bran commercial). There is much joy.

First I have to say thank you to everyone that played their role in the grand victory. My three friends that came over to watch the game and sat in their assigned seats. Myself for avoiding the color green all week long. The trio of haters Khalid Salaam, Tiki Barber, and Lang Whitaker, who provided the Giants with the disrespect that fuels their engine. Brett Favre for that hanging hot air balloon of a throw at the beginning of overtime.

And the GIANTS players… too many to point out. Antonio Pierce making a tackle with one arm while being blocked by two guys, Plaxico Burress for playing hurt all year and coming up huge and having the best game of his life in the biggest game of his life, Brandon Jacobs for faking the Lambeau Leap (which would have killed several people if actually completed), the young secondary, the hustle of special teams…

Coach Coughlin who should have been fired after losing the team last season. Who gave a shaky kicker who had already blown the trip to the Super Bowl twice in the past half hour – a chance to kick from a distance where no man had succeeded in Green Bay in the playoffs. I was emotionally devastated when Lawrence Tynes missed the kick at the end of regulation. I collapsed in a heap on the floor. I was numb. We were right there and the Superbowl was taken from us by a kicker. A kicker!

And then… he lined up for the 47 yarder which he had no right to make. I still can’t believe they let him kick it. There was much rejoicing in the house of Rubenstein.

The stunner though… ELI MANNING. I have a signed framed photo of Al Pacino as Tony Montana. Yesterday I removed the photo and replaced it with the cover of the NYPost. SUPERMANN. That’s right, Eli gets Tony Montana respect! To quote my friend’s friend “WE SUPERMANNING THESE (insert word Isiah uses to call females).

Eli has transformed like Optimus Prime in the past month. No… scratch that, he’s like MEGATRON. A monster beast! The change in Eli Manning over the past month has been, I mean there are no words.

Which NBA player does Eli’s transformation remind me of? How about Rasheed Wallace! No, I haven’t lost it, although I am giddy. Remember, when Sheed was with Portland, people would say look at his skill and size, he should be 25 and 10 every night. But he just wasn’t interested. Rasheed wanted to play ball, take over the game when he needed to, but he never felt the pressure to be a big NBA savior whom the universe revolves around. He refused to play the other NBA superstar games like making a big show of his charity work or smiling in their goofy Space Jam as real life poses. He was written off as someone who just didn’t get it. Then he goes to Detroit and bam, everything that was Rasheed’s way becomes the way of a winning unselfish basketball player. He was right, everyone else was wrong. He did it his way.

Rewind to last summer. I saw an old college friend at a bachelor party, and we had the Giants conversation. He stood up for Eli when I was running through the usual insults. The next time I saw the guy, it was when he had tickets for the Giants-Pats game (OH MY GOD IT WAS A SUPERBOWL PREVIEW!!!) and I asked how he felt about Eli. He had come to my realm of darkness, the land of hatred. We got to the game expecting interceptions and awkwardness. He threw one, but young Eli grew up a lot that night, and he’s been a different person ever since.

So now, since I work for a basketball magazine’s website, how does it apply to the NBA? I am a firm believer in the “Everything happens for a reason” field of logic. Now I believe that the despair of the Knicks only exists to make the Giants run for greatness even more impressive. They could stop showing Knicks games on TV and nobody would care. Did they play yesterday? Against the Celtics? Was there a physical altercation on Dr. King’s birthday holiday once again? Who cares. All I know is that there were NY Giants at the Knicks game. MSG actually mattered for a few hours yesterday only because it was the land of Giants.

But the real lesson of the Giants for NBA teams is this… You never know. You just never know. Right now, obviously the wheels have fallen off for the Miami Heat, but if you go back to preseason some people thought they could win their division. Nobody thought Portland would be relevant once Greg Oden got hurt, and now they are one of the great stories of the season. Brandon Roy was considered a rookie of the year by default, and we all expected the sophomores to lose to the rooks by 90 points at All-Star next month. And now Brandon Roy is seriously an MVP candidate. I guess the whole point of making predictions is to set yourself up to be shocked when something unexpected happens. It’s a lot to ask to have something crazy happen the year after an 8th seed beats a 67 win #1 seed, but you really never know.

GIANTS!!! SUPERBOWL!!!!

The post But how do the SUPERGIANTS teach us about the NBA? appeared first on SLAM.