NBA Blog

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 have been shouting this from the mountaintops for a long time, Tim Duncan is the G.O.A.T (Greatest Of All Time) when talking about power forwards.  Considering the fact that Timmy has won four titles in 10 years, and his franchise has been the BEST across all of the major sports for that same period of time, I think that is a pretty compelling argument.  I would get into greater detail, but I need to get some work done.  Instead, I’ll let the people at realgm.com do it for me.  It is a solid article, and you should go here to check it out for yourself.

Timmy,  LL Cool J has nothing on you.

If you are like me, you are in full NBA mode right now.  The NFL season (and fantasy football is too far away), the MLB All Star rosters have already been set, and there is still some dead time until the game.  However, the NBA is in full off-season mode.  The Finals just ended.  I realize some of you probably did not know that, judging from the ratings.  The NBA Draft just happened, and the first rookie contract has been signed (Oden).  Free agency has kicked off, and the first major free agent has switched teams.  It has been released that Rashard Lewis has agreed to join the Orlando Magic this season for an estimated 5-year, $75 million deal.  To get this deal done, the Magic have renounced their rights to Darko Millicic, making him an unrestricted free agent.  I am intrigued to see who goes after him now.

For those of you still yearning to watch some hoops games, the NBA Vegas Summer League is set to tip off in a few days, and the Summer League rosters are beginning to trickle in.  For more information, and updates throughout the day, go here.  As usual, the Spurs are dragging their feet to post their roster.  You can already assume that Marcus Williams, James White, and Jackie Butler will be there.  The rest of the active roster will not, after all, they are the oldest team in the NBA.   Yet, I can’t help but wonder if the Spurs don’t make a push for Beno to play in order to increase his trade value.  He is in the final year of a contract, and there are too many teams in dire need for some point guard help, for Beno not to move on.  Luis Scola and Tiago Splitter have no reason to come over and play, because they continue to show what they can do against top competition in the Euroleagues.  I just wish Mahinmi had not gotten hurt.  I was really looking forward to seeing his development.  He’s a tremendous athlete for his size.

I scoured the rosters of the other teams and found a NBA HOOPS Blog favorite, Justin Williams.  You may remember some of my previous posts discussing the former Wyoming shot blocker.  Williams finally started to get minutes at the end of the season last year, and in the final 10 games of the season, he averaged a pretty impressive 9.4 points per game, 7.1 rebounds per game, and 1.0 blocks per game.  He was only getting about 20-24 minutes at that point as well.  Those figures would cause ESPN.com’s John Hollinger to jump out of his skin when getting into per-48 minute averages.  For the season, Williams only played 12.8 minutes per night, but still shot 61% from the field and put up 5.0 points per game and 4.4 rebounds per game.  The kid only played at Wyoming for three seasons, and I am not sure if he even played in high school.  At 6′9″, 211 lbs., the Kings may have something very special if they can be patient.  Hopefully, they won’t be patient enough to allow Williams to develop some more, and will let him walk away.  If you want to check out more on Williams, go to his realgm.com page here.

I will be back with more news later.

• For 364 days out of the year, San Antonio is my favorite team.  But on draft night, I am going with Portland.  Paul Allen and Kevin Pritchard have been thoroughly entertaining over the past two seasons.  They go about the draft in a manner that can best be described as frantic.  Seriously, they cannot sit still during the draft.  It is like watching an eight-year-old with ADHD who just downed 12 jolt colas, 4 red bulls, and 27 packs of sour patch kids.  They cannot be stopped.  I believe the final tally was 11 trades in two consecutive drafts.  It has to be some kind of record. 
• Portland did a great job last night by finally cleaning house.  All of the relics of the Jail Blazers are finally gone, and they have a tremendous young core of players to start over with.  Frye, Rodriguez, Jack, McRoberts, and Fernandez can all be solid NBA players, while Roy, Aldridge, and Oden will be superstars.  Nate McMillan will have a lot of fun toying with his rotation, because of the versatility of Fernandez, McRoberts and Roy.  They’ll go extremely big, but still be able to get up and down the court.  It will be great to have the Rose Garden rocking again.
• Phoenix sold another pick last night.  I just don’t get it.  They realize that they are allowed to use those things, right?  This year they sold Rudy Fernandez to Portland.  Last year, they sold Sergio Rodgriguez to Portland.  Rodriguez easily could have been their back-up point guard.  Two years ago they sold Nate Robinson.  Last year they also passed on Rajon Rondo.  I’m pretty sure none of this would have happened if team Colangelo were still running the show.  Then again, if team Colangelo were still involved, I’m pretty sure Kevin Garnett would be wearing the PHX right now, because he would have shipped Amare’s lazy, no-defense, slow rotation, no practice, selfish rear-end to Minnesota for the chance to win at least two titles while Nash still has something in the tank.
• Houston now has three point guards who shoot first, two shooting guards, two injury-prone centers, and no small forwards or power forwards.  At least they drafted Aaron Brooks and Carl Landry about 15 picks too early.  That was borderline retarded. 
• Isiah continued to impress by trading for headcases with long-term contracts.  But he always gets the best player in the deal.  I just don’t see the Eddy Curry-Zach Randolph-Stephon Marbury trio ending well.  Get ready for some fireworks.
• Get ready for a mega-blockbuster deal.  Golden State has been trying to get Kevin Garnett, and by dealing Jason Richardson last night, they picked up a $10 million trade exception.  That means they would only have to come up with roughly $12 million in contracts to land Garnett.  I wonder what type of package would be necessary to get him.  Do you think Brandan Wright, Al Harrington, Monta Ellis the exception and two future firsts would get it done? 
• Another possibility for Golden State is to make a run at Kobe Bryant, because Mitch Kupchak and the Buss family certainly did not help themselves last night.  They drafted a point guard who is not NBA ready, just like last season, even though they don’t need a point guard for their current head coach.  In the words of Scooby-Doo, “Ruht-roh!”  Kobe is definitely gone, and soon.