NBA Blog

I know, I know, a second post in a day.  Like I said, I’m halfway out the door here.

I was watching some of the Giants-Dodgers game last night and caught Barry Bonds’ at-bat in the eighth inning to hear the loud, raucous booing going on.  I know this is one of the greatest rivalries in baseball, second only to the Yankees-Red Sox (only for publicity’s sake). 

And, I know that Barry is Dodger-faithful enemy number one.  That all is completely obvious. 

Though last night, I could not help but think of the Dodger fans as hypocrites.  Not only is Los Angeles the kingdom of fake people.  Per capita there is more fake-baking and silicon, botox, and plastic walking around there than anywhere else. 

Not only that, these are the same fans that joyously rooted for Eric Gagne when he was shattering save records.  I, and I am not the only one, truly believe that Gagne, who never could cut it at the Major League level, came out of nowhere to have the greatest two seasons a closer has EVER had.  Then, just as fast as his rise, he had serious injury issues and vanished, only to resurface with a fastball at least 9 mph slower.  Hmmm.  That was clean stuff.

Another Dodger favorite that may not be as squeaky clean as everyone wants to believe is Nomar Garciaparra.  During his heyday with the Red Sox, Nomah was a little more bloated than he is now, and there was a lot more pop in the line drives he used to rip.  After a long bout with injury issues, Nomah is now a contact hitter who will occasionally spring for a long ball, like he did last night.  I’m not calling him a steroid user, I’m just asking a question.  That is all.

This was just a quick little rant.  You all can go back to hating Barry Bonds for doing the exact same thing at least 27% of MLB was doing during the late 90’s and early 00’s. 

I’ve been out of commission for about a week.  For that, I am sorry.  However, per usual, I have a plethora of excuses.  I recently put in my notice that I will no longer be an litigator working primarily in insurance defense cases.  That’s right, I will not be working for the ‘man’ (or ‘those big, bad insurance companies) anymore.  Nope.  Unfortunately though, I will not be going into journalism, nor have my postings drawn the attention of NBA franchises to the point that I am making the move to a front office gig.  Instead, I will be going into the transactional side of legal work.  I’ll work primarily in real estate deals, which should benefit me and the lady friend a great deal financially.

Also, I returned from my bachelor party in Las Vegas on Sunday night, and you could say that I am still recuperating.  No, I will not share ANY stories with you guys.  I will advise that spending a night at Club Tryst (and going VIP with a table and “bottles”) is highly advisable.  Also, spending 10 hours poolside at the Palms on a Saturday with Weeman from Jackass and the Apple computer commercial guy (with a bucket of the beverages of your choice) is highly advisable, but your skin will hate you for the next 5-7 days (especially if you have that Casper the Friendly Ghost complexion). 

Oh, and there is that little thing called a wedding that we are planning.  I’m down to three weeks of bachelorhood.  It is a sad, sad time.  However, one of my groomsmen has guaranteed that there will be a car with the engine running and handles of choice beverages waiting outside the church if need be.  (He’s the guy who set me up with the lady-friend, long story, so I doubt he will follow-through). 

One story I will share from my weekend is the fact that I had the opportunity to fly next to the new head coach of the Sacramento Kings, Reggie Theus.  Great guy, because he actually answered every question that the in-flight friend in front of us wrote down for him, but because he just sat there and talked to us.  It looked like he enjoyed it as much as we did.  He was a little impressed with the hoops knowledge yours truly dropped on him.

(Quick sidebar) Anybody who knows me will verify that most of the knowledge I tend to drop on this site comes completely off the top of my head.  Unless I hit you with a list of stats, like in the Kobe season stats rant or the Timmy/KG comparison pages, I’m throwing things out without any research.  Reg was pretty impressed that I was asking him about his days with the Bulls, Heat, and Kings both in Kansas City and Sacto.  (By the way, look for the powder blue throwbacks for the Kings this season, and do not expect many eyesore gold uniform sightings.  I begged him for those two things).  I also hit him up with some quick knowledge about his roster, specifically NBA HOOPS favorite, Justin Williams; his days at UNLV under Tark, announcing NBA games, and much more.  Return to story:

I do not want to misquote Reggie, nor do I want to turn this into an interview session that he did not know about, so I will just give you a couple of positive quotes about some of the things we talked about.  Let’s just call this the ‘Cliff Notes’ version of my flight.  (Keep in mind, these are not EXACT quotes, rather condensed versions).

Reggie on:

-NBA HOOPS favorite, Justin Williams: “He’s an athletic freak.  An absolute freak.  He just cannot shoot or score yet.  He has to learn that I won’t yank him out for doing everything else, like rebounding, hustling and blocking shots.”

-playing in Italy: “It was tough, because, at the time they always pinned the losses on the American players.  If we lost it was my fault.  I was averaging 30 a game and leading our team in assists, but it was never enough, even if the Italian guys were only putting up 9 points a night.  After one season, I asked them to buy me out, because I didn’t play 13 NBA seasons to be the scapegoat all the time.”

-the eyesore gold Kings jerseys: “I’ve heard that they were bad from a lot of people.  I don’t think they won a game in those things last year, so don’t expect to see them very often.”

-on the suggestion to go throwback powder blues: “I like that idea.  Wear the blues with the names under the numbers.  That would be pretty cool.”

-on announcing NBA games: “It’s the greatest job in the world.  I felt like I was robbing them.  I’m going to watch the game anyway, and they were paying me to talk about it.  I loved it.”

-on why college coaches struggle at the NBA level: “In college, the head coach controls everything and can manipulate or will a player to do what the coach wants.  You cannot do that at the NBA level, those guys (players) will not go for that.  You will lose them that way.”

-on Spencer Hawes: “He has tremendous feet.  It is really impressive.  He will struggle some early, because he is so young and raw, but his footwork is amazing.”

-on Ron Artest: “Nobody realizes how big he really is.  He’s like 260 lbs. of solid muscle.  He’s a tree out there. … He’s got some things going on, and I know that at some point during the season, he will have his issues, but that is to be expected.”

-on college life as a basketball star at UNLV: “If I told you everything that went on, I’d have to kill you.”

Quick hits:

• I am excited about the new era of basketball in Boston.  Watching Garnett’s passing ability with a real shooter in Ray Allen will be great.  No longer will he be kicking the ball out to Marko Jaric or Trenton Hassell.  Now he will be feeding dimes to Ray Allen, only the prettiest jumper in the NBA. 
• Too many people are saying that Boston lost it’s depth by dealing five players to Minnesota.  I don’t see that.  Theo Ratliff was not going to see any minutes this year, and neither was Bassy Telfair.  If anything, they lost two key components in Ryan Gomes and Al Jefferson and one erratic scorer in Gerald Green.  Ray Allen was already going to eat up the minutes for Green and Gomes will be replaced by Leon Powe, who will give them the exact same style of hard-nosed, glue guy hustle.  Now, Rondo will be forced to develop his game, which is a good thing.  Watch for him to make a jump to a Second Team All Defensive player this year.  And there will plenty of vets looking to hook up with Boston now.  P.J. Brown should sign with them soon.
• Switching gears: The Braves should lock down at least the Wild Card spot in the N.L. now that they added Mark Teixiera to their lineup.  McCann will see a ton of pitches hitting behind the switch-hitting first baseman, which is a great thing.  And the Braves added the one thing their offense was missing, production from the first base position.  Was giving up Saltalamaccia a lot? Yes, but he is probably better suited for the A.L. anyway, so he can catch some and play a lot of DH.  He certainly was not going to see a lot of innings behind McCann.  Also, Dotel will give them some great set-up production, like he did in Houston as Billy Wagner’s set-up man.  He belongs in that role, because he is too much of a head case to close games.

Enjoy the weekend, because A-Rod and Bonds will both reach their milestones very soon.

And I’m not referring to my lady friend’s bachelorette party in Chicago (or my makeshift bachelor party in Louisville this weekend which served as a precursor to the upcoming festivities in Las Vegas). 

I am actually referring to the Tim Donaghy fiasco that could potentially rip up the NBA.  If you do not know what I am referring to, you obviously live in a cave (or a van down by the river).  You should probably study up on the subject, because right now Mr. Donaghy is all over the ESPN.com front page.  The Sports Guy even had a fresh column ready to read this morning.  (Check it out here).

More importantly, several people have already started throwing stuff on YouTube regarding games that Donaghy officiated.  Some of you may remember one of these games fondly, Game 3 of the Spurs-Suns series, which we had been referring to as the “knee-to-groin” game.  If you need a refresher, check out the link.  I’m pretty sure that I mentioned how awful I thought the officiating was in that game as well, and I was a fan of the team that ALLEGEDLY got officiating assistance. 

This is terrible news for the NBA, which has always had those rumors floating around about potential fixing, no matter how outlandish those ideas were.  You know what I am referring to.

Now it has been released that Donaghy has retained an attorney who has developed the reputation for working with ’whistle blowers.’  Who will Donaghy talk about, his mob ties or other officials?  This will get a lot worse before it gets any better. 

For right now, I will wait to post anything else about this subject.  What I would like to do, is find out the list of games that Tim Donaghy officiated over the past two seasons and then get a report about the betting lines and outcomes of those games.  How many games did Donaghy actually alter?  Another question to ponder is how far back does this go?  Just go ahead and Google Tim Donaghy’s name and see what else you can find out.  This could get really ugly, and it will give those NBA haters plenty of material for the coming seasons.

In other criminal news, the NFL is set to open training camps, and Michael Vick may have some more indictments coming, this time from the State of Virginia.  Unfortunately for Vick and the Falcons, this is not his first legal battle since coming into the league.  Who can forget the story of Ron Mexico?  Mr. Vick and the Falcons are rumored to be working on the voluntary leave of absence that I mentioned at the beginning of last week.  I would highly recommend it.

At least Major League Baseball was able to stay out of the negative press over the weekend.  Thank goodness Barry Bonds only hit two homeruns last Thursday at Wrigley Field.  Although, with all the nastiness that is surrounding the other two big sports, maybe this is the perfect time for Barry to break the record.  It may be as under-the-radar as possible right now, and after all, steroids versus the slaughtering of animals, which one do you think is worse? 

I was checking my emails this morning and stumbled across a great forward from one of my old college roommates.  Typically, I would not be able to discuss what is contained in these forwards, simply because this site is at worst PG-13 and some of the stuff I receive would offend Howard Stern.

However, this email had the heading “FW: ROOKIE CARD FOR SALE!” and I thought it was an outstanding commentary on the state of baseball.  Check it out for yourself:

I ‘m selling one of my Barry Bonds rookie cards to the highest bidder.  As an aside, I do not believe the steroid stories about Barry and believe he will be completely exonerated of all claims against him and land firmly in the Hall of fame someday.

I am including a scanned copy of the card. As you can see, it’s in mint condition. 

I just cannot take it anymore, and I finally had to say something about it.  I let it slide when they continually overspent on over-the-hill hitters in the mid-to-late 90’s, and failed to bring in a manager with a pulse.  Then, they had a ton of young pitching talent coming up, both as starters and closers, yet failed to hire a pitching coach who was competent (at least until this season).  However, after watching them play like the worst team in baseball, fire a lame duck manager (who will actually be really good when he goes elsewhere), get rejected by a potentially great manager, and just be an all out disgrace to baseball, I cannot let the Orioles slide anymore.  It is absolutely pathetic how bad they are. 

Let’s take a look at guys they have signed to large deals over the last decade that never produced yet hung around eating up their money:

Albert Belle
Rafael Palmiero
Will Clark (this hurts me, but Will needed to go back to the National League long before his finaly half-season with the Cardinals)
Kevin Millar
Javy Lopez

Once again, these were just five guys that immediately popped into my head.  It required no thought whatsoever.  Now, the Orioles cannot get any young talent to come play for them, yet they have the finances to field a great team.  Instead, they keep bringing around retreads or junk from other rosters (read Millar, Patterson) and fail to make any moves to support their current talent (read Roberts now and Tejada two years ago).  They have even failed to hold on to quality young pitchers (read B.J. Ryan).  Even in deals where it looks like they made the right move, it blows up in their face (read the Jorge Julio trade) because the player they landed could not stay healthy.

If that weren’t enough, their owner is a meddler and will not let his general managers or managers run the team without his interference, despite the fact that he has continually shown his incompetence when it comes to baseball teams and talent.  He is also a complete jerk that alienated the entire D.C. fan base to the point that the Expos were welcomed with opened arms and Nationals hats outsold Orioles hats like 5-to-1. 

I had the opportunity to go to Camden Yards with the lady friend last summer, to watch an Orioles-Red Sox game no less.  I was fired up, because I always wanted to see Camden, and we were going to see my favorite team play a high scoring, mashing game.  I was so disappointed to see the lack of Oriole fan turnout, especially for a gorgeous Saturday afternoon in August.  To make matters worse, the entire left field section (E-bay is great for finding homerun porch tickets) was full of Red Sox fans.  I made the future Ms. Hoops wear the Orioles shirt that she purchased, just so I would not be alone.  For the record, she buys a home team tee-shirt/jersey at every MLB ball park she visits, and has a nice collection of shirts from the New York Yankees (Mantle jersey), Baltimore Orioles (Brooks Robinson jersey), Cincinnati Reds, Chicago Cubs, and Washington Nationals (spent two days in Washington D.C. and caught a Nationals-Mets game before driving to Baltimore for the Orioles game).  And you wonder why I popped the question.

To further prove my point, take a look at this article and make a note of how the Orioles are the most prevalent team on the list. 

That always intimidating middle-infielder, Neifi Perez, has been busted for juicing.  He has to sit out 25 games now.  Obviously, the ‘roids have been helping Nef out.  Check out his career numbers. 

If Perez was taking illegal performance enhancers, doesn’t this sort of support my theory of ’blame one, blame all’ when it comes to steroids.  Barry Bonds continues to take his beating, yet far too many players get the benefit of the doubt, which is, for lack of a better word, crap.   If guys hitting .172 and seldom seeig the field are on juice during baseball’s toughest drug-testing period, how many guys were openly popping pills, rubbing creams, and injecting juice when nobody was being tested and everybody was pining for homeruns?  It’s outrageous. 

Oh, and speaking of performance-enhancing supplements, the Tour de France is set to get under way.  I think this is steroids’ (and other performance enhancers’) best time of year.  The Tour de France gets under way.  MLB is in full swing, and some players might need that little ‘extra boost’ for the Homerun Derby, or to get through the ‘dog days of summer’. 

I fear that I am becoming somewhat jaded, but at least I have the greatest power forward of all time’s future teammates tipping off as we speak.  NBA Summer League actions has begun with the Spurs facing the 76ers.