NBA Blog

The Pacers’ organization is justifiably pissed off with Ron Artest’s trade request. The team and the players put up with his b.s. for far too long, and they even welcomed him back after he sabotaged their entire season last year. With that said, I would try to figure out a way to get Ron Artest in a trade. One scenario I came up with could possibly help both teams, if they could work it out. The trade would be between Minnesota and Indianapolis. Indianapolis would get Wally Sczerbiak and Michael Olowakandi and Minnesota would get Ron Artest and Scot Pollard. This trade would actually work out under the collective bargaining agreement rules. Indianapolis would bring in a starting small forward who can shoot lights out, and is actually the same height as Artest. With the removal of Artest, the Pacers could actually throw more minutes Danny Granger’s way, who by the way, could easily become the type of defensive stopper that Artest is. The Kandi-man and Pollard are both at the end of their current contracts and would come off the books this summer, so considering they are career underacheivers, I think they are pretty much a wash. I think Indy would get the better end of that part of the deal, but getting Kandi out wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing. Besides, by adding Artest, Minnesota would be able to turn around and try to use pieces like Trenton Hassell, their resident defensive stopper, and Troy Hudson, point-per-minute backup point guart, to acquire a big man or another shooter to fill Wally’s shoes off the bench. Just and idea. Let me know what you think.

Well, finals are over, and aside from the fact that I completely screwed up my Con Law final (seriously, I think I failed the test), everything went off pretty well. Hopefully I will help my grades somewhat to improve the job search.

Sidebar 1: Looking for jobs when you don’t know where you are going to end up really stinks. Especially if you think you are going to move back to Texas, and are coming from Kentucky. Nothing garners the respect of a form rejection letter quite like a resume coming from five states away. On the plus side, I have taken a positive approach and have made a collage of the letters in order to remember those who failed to recognize the greatness that is me.

Back to the story. I’ve been hoping to get a few things off my chest for the first quarter of the season, so I’ve got some superlatives to give out:

The “Holy &*(#%, I Didn’t Remember He Was Still In The League” Award goes to Smush Parker for his excellent play thus far for the Los Angeles Lakers. (See folks, I can give the Lake-show some credit too).

The “Comeback Player of the Year Who Broke His Back In A Nasty Fall” Award easily goes to T.J. Ford. Coincidentally, he actually will win the comeback player of the year award once the season ends. He’s been awesome thus far, and I’m excited about the prospects of getting to watch Ford, Paul, and Parker run circles around the league for many years to come.

The “Wow, Should Have Taken Chris Paul” Award goes to the Atlanta Hawks. At least they now have Josh Childress, Josh Smith, Al Harrington, Donta Smith, and Marvin Williams who are all the exact same height. What is this franchise, the Bootleg version of the New York Knicks?

Speaking of… The “I Have to Eat Some Crow, Because This Guy Is Better Than I Thought” Award goes to me for completely hammering Isiah for taking Channing Frye. Frye has been much better than I anticipated. I should have known something was up, because, despite all his incredible failures, Isiah can draft some talent. He picked up Damon Stoudamire, Marcus Camby, Trevor Ariza, and Tracy McGrady. That’s not too bad a crew right there. I apologize to the Channing supporters, but I still don’t think he’s going to be anything better than an imitation Drew Gooden with more blocked shots. By the way, I don’t like Drew Gooden either. He’s too spastic on the floor.

The “Yep, Right On Track” Award is split between the Indiana Pacers and the San Antonio Spurs for their play thus far. The Spurs are right on pace to run away with the division during their annual February-Rodeo-Week long-Road-Winning-Streak. It’s like the tides, you can set your clock to it.

The “Screw Larry, We’re Better With This Guy” Award goes to the Detroit Pistons. I think L.B. is a great coach and all, but we’ve been sweatiing him for way to long. With Flip’s new offense, the Pistions have opened things up, and Tayshaun and Billups have taken their games to another level so far. And Darko exists. Just worth mentioning.

The “I’ll Be Pulling A Hammy In A Few Weeks Before I Get Dealt” Award goes to Paul Pierce. He doesn’t seem happy on this young team. They aren’t going anywhere this year, and I don’t know if Paul has the patience to wait for Perkins, Jefferson, West, and Green to develop. Sidebar 2: Went to the Spurs game tonight to watch them beat up on the Celtics, and boy does Boston look ugly. They weren’t blown out of the water, only losing by 12, but they were never in the game. Even before the game my dad made the comment that they were just “walking around out there.” My dad and I have been to a lot of NBA games over the past 10 years, and I have to say that this Boston team just didn’t seem to care at all before the game. I mean, they could have passed for some guys just hanging around the local gym shooting avoiding breaking a sweat, while everybody else is getting some run in pick-up games on the other courts. They appeared to care less than any team I’ve seen in several years, and that includes last year’s Blazers and the old Clipper teams. There you go folks, just a few awards for the first quarter.

(Uh oh, rant alert): And before I go, I feel it is necessary to call out the entire music radio industry, since I just drove 17 hours yesterday without any cd’s to listen to during the trip. I remember when d.j.’s cared about what they did for a living, and would take requests and pick songs on their own to listen to. Now, since everything is pre-programmed on computers, d.j.’s just sit their and ramble about nothing. They bring nothing to the table anymore. In between Austin and San Antonio, for example, my girlfriend and I had the pleasure of hearing the exact same song on two different radio stations, one Austin broadcast and one San Antonio, for about 25 minutes. Sure the d.j.’s were different, but they were playing the exact same programming for their shows. That’s preposterous to me. It’s like when I had the pleasure of life guarding for several summers at the local pool. We would play the radio over the loudspeaker all day long, and by the end of the day, we heard every song five times in the exact same sequence. I just had to get that off my chest. I’ll be in better spirits with the next post.