Can I cuddle up in your bed?

I just had a bad dream. I dreamed that the NBA season was about to start, but everything was all weird. I don't know how to describe it, but things just didn't look right:

I was so relieved to wake up and realize that it's still 2001; Allen Iverson is the reining league MVP; Rasheed Wallace and the Jail Blazers a favorite again in the West, and Ron Artest is a budding superstar on the Bulls (who are gonna turn the corner this year--I just know it).

Ok, I'm better now. I'll leave you alone. Sorry if I interrupted any sex.

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Totally misleading headline department

Even if it said "starter" that wouldn't be accurate. Either way, I want Brian Cook's pubilcist working for me. I could be "acclaimed writer."

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Correlation may be causation: Is Zach Randolph the worst NBA player of all time?

Now, for the next installment in my continuing series of commentaries on trades between bad franchises no one cares about, news today is that Zach Randolph has been traded by the L.A. Clippers to the Memphis Grizzlies.

How very appropriate.

As many of you may already know, I have an intense, borderline-pathological dislike for ol' Snack-Attack Zach that's particularly inexplicable considering he's never done anything in his career to hurt my hometown Bulls. Really, my only genuine beef with the guy is the utter stylelessness of his game, which helps preserve the legacy of unwatchable post-Jordan II iso-postup tuhrri-ball.

That said, I can't help but laugh over the fact that he has once again been shipped off to an arguably worse team than the already bad one he's left.

Blazers-->Knicks-->Clippers-->Grizzlies. Throughout his career, Randolph starting for your team has proven a pretty good indicator that your team's fortunes are not so good and are probably going to stay that way.

Randolph did come off the bench for playoff teams in Portland his first two years--the second of which saw him play significantly playoff minutes. Since becoming a full-time starter in his third year, however, Randolph has played for a 50-game loser every year but one--that being his first season starting with Portland, 2003-2004, which saw the Blazers finish 41-41.

Granted, Randolph hasn't been surrounded with the best of talent in that time, but I can't help but feel he's a big part of the problem. Cherrypicking a single advanced metric to prove my point, Randolph finished the year with only 3.1 win shares--good for only third on a 19-win Clippers team. The year before last, he compiled only 2.9, which put him fourth on a 23-win Knicks team. To put it another way, he was only about as valuable to the Clippers as YCS favorite (but subpar NBA player) Steve Novak and less valuable to the Knicks than Nate Robinson.

Of course, things are unlikely to improve for the Grizzlies, which could mean Randolph will have a few more 50-loss seasons on his record by the time he leaves Memphis (if the Grizzlies don't leave there first). That leads me to wonder: Who has the alltime worst winning percentage as a starter in NBA history? Is such a stat kept? If so, I would imagine big Zach is in the running.

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But are they really????

Reports earlier tonight indicated that Rhianna and Chris Brown would be sitting together during tonight's NBA Finals Game 4.

But moments ago, when ABC made their celebrities-in-the-crowd rounds, they only showed Rhianna, with no mention of Brown. Was this a rare and uncharacteristic case of shoddy reporting by a celebrity gossip tabloid, or was ABC afraid that showing the pair together would sully the broadcast with the unpleasant undertones of domestic abuse?

I don't know the answer, but I can tell you that Rhianna was bruise-free. Bitch, pleeze!!!!

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Sadder commentary on the human race:

This? Or this?

Discuss.

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Real fans grudgingly welcome

Other rejected slogans:

"Riffraff officially priced out"
"The Clubhouse on Madison"
"Only a 40-minute drive from Highland Park!"
"Your Lincoln Navigator is safe in Lot C"
"A reason to wear that tailored Chicago Bulls golf shirt"
"Our temporary tattoos are now lead-free"
"Your kids will love the fourth-quarter 'YMCA' TV timeout!"
"Where gentrification happens"

(Wait... did I just audition to be a Late Show writer? ...Yuck.)

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How's about the Gold?

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That's a technical foul!

Don't be fooled my image selection: The screenshot of adorable cartoon character Whitey from Eight Crazy Nights (which I mostly chose to get that song stuck in my brother's head for the rest of the week) belies the feelings of angst and disgust that NBA playoff officiating has brought me once again after last night's Game 5 of the Eastern Conference Finals.

If you're like the "snooty European guy in the audience" character from Late Night with Conan O'Brien and were watching the U.S.-England friendly instead of our savage American game of basketball, you missed a pretty awesome game. Unfortunately, even such a fine display of basketballmanship was not spared the scourge of questionable officiating--this time in the form of unnecessary technical fouls.

Ultimately, neither fourth quarter technical ended up being much of a factor in the outcome of last night's game. And in light of Tuesday night's Brent Barry duck 'n' cover and Lamar Odom's tackle of Tony Parker, a couple weak technicals don't seem very controversial. Having said that, Rasheed Wallace is now one tech away from a one-game suspension for what seemed like a modest protest, and it's very conceivable that he'll pick up his seventh in Game 6 and have to sit out Game 7, assuming the Pistons win Game 6. The technical called on Kendrick Perkins a few minutes later was even more petty.

I realize that the NBA instituted a shorter leash for player protests last season, but... it seems a little absurd to T up a guy for a non-threatening protest when it's the fourth quarter in Game 5 of a tied series. Of course, the classic line justifying a technical after a mild protest is, "He must have said the magic words," to which I respond: What could these magic words that are so horrific they merit a technical foul/ejection possibly be??? Is it "Fuck you"? Honestly? Are the simple words "Fuck you" the break point for an NBA official? I would at least hope they're something a little more creative and vicious like, "Don't take out your frustrations on me just because I'm young and rich, and you're loveless, lonely, and impotent." Even then, I don't think a technical is warranted when it's the fourth quarter of a crucial playoff game.

I'm not saying players should be able to verbally assail a ref without repercussion just because a bad call was made. But I think a lot of officials forget that being a punching bag is sorta part of the job description. Excuse me for sounding like Hawk Harrelson, but as an official, you are an arbiter, meaning your role is to make sure that the two opposing sides act civilly toward one another and are subject to the same set of rules. It is not your role to show what balls you have by standing up to the big, bad famous athlete who gets a little upset or pottymouthed. Because guess what--nobody watching the game cares what you get called or how much you get yelled at. We just wanna see the action called correctly.

That's why it's inappropriate for an umpire in baseball to glare at or egg on a batter protesting a called third strike as he walks back to the dugout. I think it's just as inappropriate for a basketball ref to call a cheap technical on a player for expressing verbal displeasure at a call. Protesting is part of being a human with emotions. It's the first thing a baby learns after how to suck on a breast, and there's really not much anyone can do to turn off that instinct. And by rule, a player has no recourse when he feels was wronged by a bad call. A verbal protest is the closest thing he has, and I think it's a tad cruel to take that away. On the other hand, the ref does have recourse once that player protests, and therefore the burden is on the ref--not the player--to show restraint during a dispute. It's the ref's responsibility not to abuse that power but only use it as a last resort on a player who's totally lost control.

I know that questionable NBA officiating is a tired and annoying topic (my favorite kind, it seems), but it's one that gets me every time. Bad split-second calls are one thing. They happen. Most split-second calls are ambiguous and reactive. Sometimes the ref even knows immediately afterward that he screwed up. But a technical is proactive. And in most cases, it's totally unnecessary.

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What's a contract but a silly piece of paper?

As upset as I was when Mike D'Antoni first signed on as the Knicks' coach, I, like most Bulls fans, am all the more pissed ever since the Bulls' ping pong balls proved to be this year's version of the '07 Blazers' ping pong balls.

D'Antoni made his panting lust for Derrick Rose well-known prior to the lottery, and it would have been a near certainty that the Bulls would be drafting him next month if D'Antoni were coach. Now--despite Rose's hometown ties and the PR bonanza said ties would reap--I'm not so certain that John Paxson will draft him. As we all know, some GMs--though I'm admittedly not sure where the Pax-man stands on this issue--explicitly avoid bringing in guys who will be playing in their hometown. Plus, Lord Paxington has taken a lot of heat in the past few seasons for not acquiring a good low-post scorer, hence some pressure to take Beasley.

My own worries aside, it's of course D'Antoni who should be--and no doubt is--upset right now, and if it were possible, he might be considering a retroactive "just kidding!" on his contract. Instead of coaching Rose and big men like Joakim Noah and Tyrus Thomas who can run the floor, he's stuck with Jamal Crawford, Eddie Curry, and Snack-Attack Zach, one of the most stationary and team offense-killing big men in the game (the D'Anti-Christ?).

People who believe that the last five years in Phoenix proved D'Antoni's system to be flawed may certainly have a point. Whether it's the case that the type of players needed to run the system properly aren't equipped to win a playoff series against a super-elite team or that the type of players needed to beat super-elite teams can't fit the system or neither, the results never fully panned out for him in the past. But as a spectator in the Bulls' media market, I lament never having the chance to see him try with Rose at the point, even if it failed over and again. Even when Phoenix was losing the last few years, it always looked like it was working, and most importantly, it was purty.

Championships are fun, as all us Chicagolandians got to find out last decade, but they also got sorta old after a while. Maybe Rose (if the Bulls draft him) can score "us" some more. But for me, crazy up-and-down, free-flowing, high-scoring basketball has never gotten old, and unfortunately, it might be a long time until D'Antoni can make it work with the Knicks, if he ever can.

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NBA Pander-Monium

While teams have done one-off ethnic heritage jerseys before, this one just seems lazy.



"Spurs" in Spanish is "Espuelas."

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Why inequality in the NBA makes me happy

Some chumps are still hanging on to the tired proclamation that the NBA is boring, but whether you realize it or not, we're in the midst of perhaps the most exciting NBA season ever. And it's all thanks to inequality.

There has been a recent trend in sports to rate a league on its level of parity, which is good as far as making sure that small market teams have an opportunity to compete with the big dogs. But in any given season, I don't want to watch a league where every team has a good shot of winning on any given night.

When teams are equal (and I'm specifically talking about basketball now) it means that the great players are evenly dispursed, but it also means that the bad players are evenly dispursed. So you may get to see a lot more close games, but those close games will involve one or two star players on each team trying to make up for the ineptitude of the Tractor Traylors and Eric Snows they are teamed up with.

But thanks to a flurry of midseason trades, all the Tractor Traylors and Eric Snows are now playing together on teams that we can ignore, and all the stars are playing together on teams that are playing at the highest level.

I really hope that this trend continues, where struggling teams give up their good players for future picks and undeveloped talent, while contending teams mortgage their future to make a run. It works in baseball to an extent, but would be even better in basketball because there are no Yankees or Red Sox that can afford to grab all the big names year after year without having to pay for it in future seasons, and teams can climb the ranks in the NBA a lot quicker than they can in MLB. This means that if you don't win when you have a chance, there's a damn good chance you won't win at all.

That's what makes this NBA season (and at least the next couple seasons) so damn intriguing. Most of the contending teams are facing closing windows, producing a sense of urgency to win now. The Pistons' and Spurs' core players have been around for an eternity, and they can only hold together for so long before age starts to set in. The Celtics' new Big Three have only a few years of elite play left in them. T-Mac and the Rockets are running out of time to win a playoff series. AI was willing to give up the spotlight because he realized his opporunities are running out. And of course, you have the Suns and Mavs who pretty blatantly traded their future for former superstars that are running on fumes.

Barring some ingenious front office moves, all of these teams have three years or less to win a championship, and Vinnie can check my math, but I'm pretty sure seven teams can't all win rings in three years. And it's probably that not even three of these teams will win, because of the younger teams like the Lakers, Hornets and Jazz.

One of the big knocks against the NBA is that there is not enough passion compared to NCAA hoops. But when you combine tons of talent with tons of desperation, you can bet your ass that you're going to see some emotion and passion...and with a lot more talent than college.

This is just one of the reasons I am watching at least one NBA game a night. There's the whole situation with nine elite teams in the West fighting for eight playoff spots. There's the absence of any scandals. There's my opinion that in Kobe and LeBron, we are watching the two greatest players to play the game ever. There's the championship promises from my favorite player ever. But I'll spare you any further raving about how great the NBA is right now. The only thing that could make it any better would be if they brought back the 'NBA on NBC' theme music.

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NBA Re-Alignment Pick

Calling it right now. The word is that the Sonics are moving to OKC to the collective yawn from the Puget Sounders. Doesn't make a lot of sense to move the team to within driving distance of Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio, then tell the local populace their rivals are in the Northwest Division, featuring Portland and Minnesota.

So here it is.

• Seattle moves to Oklahoma City.
• OKC Sonics move from Northwest to Southwest Division (Texas rivals as well as former NOLA/OKC Hornets).
• Replaced by Milwaukee, who moves from the Central to the Northwest (rivalry with Minnesota?)
• Milwaukee is replaced in the Central by Memphis.

Northwest Division
Portland, Utah, Denver, Minnesota, Milwaukee

Southwest Division
Oklahoma City, Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, New Orleans

Central Division
Memphis, Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, Indiana

Speculation? Dadgummed right (gave up swearing for Lent), but no different than Joe Lunardi filling out a bracket in July.

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The NBA is the most boring sport in America

I guess this post is a brief follow-up to Nate's post that actually demonstrates some level of interest in what is now the most boring sport in America.

The NBA sucks. Stories about big trades (Shaq, Gasol) and 'controversial' rumblings by 'controversial' players ('Sheed saying he doesn't want to cancel his vacation to play as an All-Star reserve) seem to be the only interesting thing about the sport. In fact, as a casual NBA fan, you hardly even hear about what teams are playing well, what star players are blossoming, etc. Instead, most of the NBA headlines are about these little dramatic side plots. And after watching parts of the Lakers-Heat game on Sunday, I found out why: The action on the court has become so deplorably boring that people have to talk about the side stories or else the league seems totally inconsequential.

I know I'm not saying anything new when I argue that the NBA regular season has become a joke. But really, I saw some terrible basketball on Sunday. I know the league has been trying for years to make the game more offense-friendly, but in reality, it has just become sloppy. Here are my proposed rule changes to clean up the atrocious mess that you see these days.

1. Seriously, start enforcing traveling and 3-seconds calls. A no-brainer.
2. Subtract a point for a turnover. Sure, a turnover should be a penalty enough in itself, but these guys really don't care if they throw errant, lazy passes. Penalize them more!
3. Eliminate the shot clock. A 24-second shot clock? I don't know what games were like in the pre-shot clock era, but the game has changed enough now that we don't need a shot clock. Teams consistently jack up shots with only 5 to 7 seconds off the shot clock. It now needs to be extended or eliminated. It's just not fun to watch teams trade (and miss) open 18-footers every ten seconds.
4. Reverse the defensive 3-second rule. The defensive 3-second rule makes no sense to me. Let a center camp out on defense and force offensive penetrators to be a little more creative and work a little harder for their baskets.
5. Let them handcheck! Bring back the handcheck. There's nothing wrong with a little push here and there.
6. Shorten the length of the game, shorten the regular season, shorten the playoffs.

In a somewhat unrelated note, I can't believe that two officials in two different college hoops games last night called a foul with less than 0.5 seconds to go. I'm not suggesting that the final <1.0 seconds of a ball game should be a free-for-all without consequence for fouling. But come on, in situations like that, there's so much bumping and chaos, just let them play. What a shame for the Nova men and Scarlett Nappy-Headed Hos.

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Conflicted rooting interests

I'll be the first one to admit that my rooting interests change in a heartbeat. Team loyalty is not my specialty. The Packers and Brewers are the only teams that I have always been a consistent, die hard fan of. I have been a fan of the Steelers, Bucks and Michigan football for almost as long as I can remember, but my passion and dedication for those teams has fluctuated largely throughout the years (usually correlating with those teams' success). The other exception is Marquette basketball, but that's heavily influenced by the fact that I am a Marquette alum.

You could call me a fairweather fan, and to some extent I am guilty as charged because I do lose interest in my teams when they are losing. But the main cause of my flimsy fanhood is that I cheer for players, and collections of players, rather than particular organizations. In the 90s, you would have been hard-pressed to find a bigger Pacers fan outside of Indiana than I was. But the team I loved was made up of Reggie Miller, Rik Smits, the Davis "brothers," Mark Jackson and the rest. I could give a damn less about the Pacers today. In the same manner, I have always cheered against teams who had players that I hated. The Cowboys of the 90s were easy to hate because Aikman and Irvin were easy to hate (it didn't hurt that they kept knocking the Packers out of the playoffs). My hatred for Roger Clemens has led directly to my hatred for whatever team he was playing for.

Once in a while, there is conflict caused by players I like and players I dislike playing on the same team: A-Rod and Jeter, Pujols and Eckstein, Garnett and Spreewell. But never before has the conflict been this great.

Shaq, perhaps my all-time favorite athlete, was traded to a contender! Hooray, I'll be able to cheer on the Big Aristotle in the playoffs! Oh, if only it were that easy. But it's not. Because, see, there's this other player on Shaq's new team that I kind of don't like. I mean, I really don't like him. I've made it very clear how much I don't like him. And it especially enrages me that he is never criticized by the sports media. So how can I bring myself to cheer for any team he is a part of?

What's more, my second favorite player in the NBA (yes, more than Wade, LeBron or Agent 0, and yes I was a HUGE Lakers fan in their most recent Championship days) had just got himself some all-star help in Pau Gasol, giving me a contender to cheer for in the West.

At first, I brushed it off, saying, "Shaq's got nothing left. He's a shell of what he used to be. He's not even the same player that I fell in love with. I can cheer against the Suns without feeling like I'm cheering against the 'real' Shaq."

Then came his press conference, and those sound clips that made him so damn loveable in the first place:

"You just don't really want to get me upset. When I'm upset, I'm known to do certain things -- like win championships."

And, as a Shaq fan, I want him to be right. I want him to prove everyone wrong, find a reserve fuel tank and, as he said, "Get ready to play another 10 years."

In a perfect world, Steve Nash would suffer a season-ending injury before the playoffs, and Shaq would lead the Suns to a championship averaging 30 points and 15 boards in the playoffs. Also, in a perfect world, I would get paid millions of dollars a year to watch porn and drink beer...oh, and there would be no hunger, poverty or any of that shitty stuff.

In the slightly more realistic world, I'm hoping that any success that comes to the Suns will be attributed properly to the appropriate players, whoever they may be. Alas, we all know that the gritty, under-sized white guy always gets more credit than he deserves.

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Young Whippersnappers II: My comment became a post

Like Nate, I'm a reformed "Kids should go to school" guy in a sports perspective, so I'm gonna agree with him, but for different reasons.

The NBA may say that it's helping players develop into the NBA game. Not being a professional, or even marginally talented basketball player myself, I can't believe that players like LeBron and Kobe would have been THAT MUCH better had they gone for 4 years, or even 1 year of college.

That being said, I'll bet a lot of TEAMS wish they had their draft picks back when they were afraid of missing out on the next Kevin Garnett. Jonathan Bender (Toronto, 5th pick in '99 Draft) and Kwame Brown (Washington, #1 in '00 Draft), I'm looking in your direction. I don't care about "role players" or "solid contributors" or "defensive specialists" in this discussion. If you use a top-5 or top 10 pick on a guy, he needs to be a player who can help your franchise more than 10 points a night.

I also think it's really duplicitous for the NBA to talk a big game about its players getting a college education now, while at the same time celebrating (and profiting off) players like LeBron, Kobe, McGrady, and Wade, none of whom have graduated from college, and only Wade went.

Really all that this "one-year" rule does is it disperses NBA teams' risk on a young prospect by giving them an extra year to watch them play against competition that doesn't involve 5'10" white guys and coaches' sons with bad shots who couldn't make it on the bench at a D-III school. If the NBA was really serious about wanting players to get an education, they'd require 4 years of college ball instead of one. The One-Year Freshman is really just a year-long pre-draft workout, but against teams like Duke, Georgetown, and Texas instead of teams like St. Luke's Academy and East Ridge High. It gives the GMs more insight into what kind of a player he would be before a top-5 draft pick is blown.

If you look at it through another lens, through the one-year-of-college rule, the NBA is keeping good players from freely working in jobs they're talented enough to do. In that respect the NBA is no different from any other profession which requires licenses for its members (Doctors, Attorneys, Pharmacists, Taxicab drivers, etc.). However, these industries differ from sports because there's not really the same public safety risk from a guy claiming to have knowledge and training in basketball and being unqualified that say...someone who claims to be a good heart surgeon . The stakes aren't as high. So if they can cut it, there's really no reason to keep them out. It can only make the NBA's talent pool deeper and better. So why not do it? I think you need to look at who would BENEFIT from new, young, talented players being left out of the league. In that case, I think you need to look at the NBA Collective Bargaining Agreement and who has negotiating power.

This is something that I think falls completely at the feet of the Players' Union. They're the only people I can see who would benefit from keeping the hottest new prospect off the bench. Perhaps old vets hanging on by their fingernails for one last ride? During CBA negotiations, the players' union sits at the table and has negotiating power to ask for "one-year college requirements" that will never affect them because they're already in. High school prodigies can't negotiate. While that may sound cynical, I think we need to get away from the childish view of sports that it's just for "the good of the game," when especially in the United States, the leagues are mostly run by a cartel of owners who run the teams for their own profit or amusement. Why should we expect the players' union to be any different? A team taking a risk on a high school player is doing so with the expectation that they will be the future of their franchise, essentially saying that the old guard is out. Even if the new player is God-awful, it could be two or three years before their spot on the bench is cleared up, and for some vets, that's too long to wait.

If the fresh-outta high school players suck, they won't make it in the league, and teams that rely on them will be out wins and dollars. But if a player has the ability needed to succeed in the NBA at 18, then I say, by all means go for it. Requiring players to go to college does not allow a player to do the job he loves. However, on the other side of the coin, I think it's very rare for college basketball to HURT a player's development, both as an athlete and as a person. Could Dwyane Wade have made a splash in the NBA right out of high school instead of going to Marquette for 3 years? Maybe. But he might have been another late-90s high school draft washout. Tim Duncan certainly hasn't been any worse for the wear after 4 years at Wake.

In the end, the NBA owners and the players union negotiate the terms of the CBA, essentially setting policy for basketball in North America for their own benefit (be it another year or two of playing past your prime, or less risk on the next Garnett/Bender), while the newer players, who will be affected by this policy, don't have a say.

That's just my $.02.

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USA, a-okay

David Stern and Roger Goodell might be interested in the international intrigue of their sports, but the sports media here in the US is apparantly disinterested at best.

In case you haven't heard (and judging by the media coverage, you haven't) Yao and Yi's teams play each other tonight. The ratings for the game are expected to more than double last year's Super Bowl ratings. This is the biggest sports story in the most populated country, which is hosting the Olympics by the way. Yao vs. Yi: Bigger than the Olympics.

Yet the game will not be televised in the United States, unless you're lucky enough to live in the Milwaukee or Houston viewing area. Lucky for Bechtel and I, we are. The rest of you chumps: well apparantly you're not interested. ESPN doesn't even mention the story on their front page. Fox Sports doesn't even have the story on it's NBA front page. Enjoy your Nuggets/Wizards game, America.

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Breakout Star

A familiar theme from the Bulls fans here at YCS (especially Vinnie and I) would be that Scott Skiles does not give Tyrus Thomas enough minutes, although he's rightfully a starter now. Not surprisingly, the good folks at Basketball Prospectus targeted Thomas as a potential breakout player this season based on their statistical evaluations. Frankly, the two best players on the Bulls reside in the frontcourt, in Thomas and Luol Deng. Thomas's performances against Philly last Friday and Detroit tonight will likely be more and more frequent this season as he develops into one of the NBA's better players. Of course, Skiles needs to give Thomas the 30-35 minutes a night he deserves to get in order for him to fully realize his potential.

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"Who's officiating tonight?"

Am I excited about the start of the NBA season? Of course. But the reservations abound. (And it has nothing to do with crotchety arguments why the NBA doesn't seem as magical as it did when you were in fourth fucking grade.)

No, I'm not all that concerned with the Donaghy thing, though I highly doubt that the every other ref is on the up-and-up as the recent round of NBA interrogations asserts. But that isn't the root of the problem. That goes back either to a) the dawn of the league or b) the beginning of superstardom in the NBA.

I'm mildly worried that another official on the take is going to impact a game or a playoff series. Who couldn't be? But it's one official--one official with limited chances to screw a certain team in over the course of a game.

My problem, as it's always been, is with the officials in general and their indelible impact on the game. Basketball may be the toughest sport to officiate. It's judgment call upon judgment call upon judgment non-call. The standards are necessarily vague, and thus, the power of the officiating crew is immense. And yet, the overlords aren't entirely powerless, but they sure do act like it.

I'm not sure I will ever take either of the last two NBA Finals seriously. I don't think any honest man can. In retrospect, the same might be true of the Bulls' fifth and sixth titles.

Tell me--What good is a championship when the officials give it to you? Or, to a lesser extent, the chance to play for one? Others may disagree, but I don't see that as much of an achievement.

Listen--I think Dwyane Wade is a great, stupendous, awesome guy like everyone does (especially those of us who went to Marquette). I'm also endlessly impressed with what LeBron has been able to do coming into the league as a freaking child and keeping his head so much better than any of the rest of us could and immediately becoming the most chirismatic man in professional sports.

But they've gotten help. Did they earn 99.5% of what they've returned on sheer talent and commitment? Absolutely. But neither deserved the pinnacle moments that have thus far defined their careers.

The Dallas-Miami finals in 2006 were a travesty. As was last year's Pistons-Cavs series. Neither Wade nor LeBron could do any wrong. No wait--They could. But they'd always have the stripes to pretend otherwise.

It's rare that I don't agree 100% with Rasheed Wallace, and this was no exception:

"There's a lot of people out here who think they really beat us," Wallace said. "It was ourselves. We beat ourselves. We fell victim to the little, personal NBA thing where they're trying to make it a world game and get ratings and all that. They wanted to put their darling (LeBron James) in there, and they did put him in there. Look what ended up happening.

"So this game, this ain't basketball no more, it's entertainment. It's like WWF. Ain't no more real wrestling. All the days of Ric Flair and Rick Rude and Jake the Snake. Right now, the (expletive) is all so fake. Just like this game. It's so fake."

How are people okay with this? How do people watch LeBron pile up points in overtime of a conference finals game with free throws that he didn't earn and not get frustrated?

People rip 'Sheed for overreacting late in Game 6 of that series, but if I were him, I doubt I've even been that civil. The Pistons had just endured a fuckover of a series like I've never seen, and yet they managed to neither attack anyone nor destroy any expensive equipment on the court. I don't think I'd have had such control.

Why does the NBA have to be like this? The black sheeps will never get a fair shake in the public eye or marketing world, but shouldn't the basketball court be the one place they can? It's bullshit--just pure fucking bullshit.

And I don't see it changing. Ever. And what's worse is that we're only at the start of a very long era of NBA superstar culture. Wade and LeBron have many, many years ahead of them. Duncan's not done either.

I still love the NBA. But yeah, it's gotten hard. I usually embrace the adaptations of a league and tell people to come off it when they try to say, "It's not like it used to be." But this is different. It's not progress; it's regression. It's not a natural adaptation; it's the blatant stiffling of natural adaptation. And it pisses me off.

I hope this season can prove me wrong. But my faith is dwindling.

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Open Letter to David Stern

Dear Commissioner Stern:

I'm not gonna lie. I'm not really an NBA guy. Hockey, baseball, college basketball, college football, and two different kinds of professional football get my attention before the NBA does. I've been over the reasons why I don't like you so many times they've become like the lines to any movie we've seen too many times. Knowing exactly where they come up and learning them by heart. No defense. Spoiled millionaires. Music piped in during the run of play. Too slow-moving.

I can probably count the number of NBA games on one hand I've watched from start to finish since finishing grade school. I can't bring myself to care during the playoffs, or the regular season, much less during the preseason.

But this preseason, my head had turned. This NBA European experiment has caught my eye, and while it hasn't brought me back into the fold, it has made me curious. I'm not an NBA fan, and to quote Ferris Bueller, "I'm not European. I don't plan on being European. So who cares if they're socialists? They could be fascist anarchists, it still wouldn't change the fact that I don't own a car."

OK. The last part wasn't too relevant, and I'm not sure if you've done this for years, but whoever dreamed up this NBA-teams-take-on-European-teams is a genius. Even if it's just in the preseason, the most meaningless preseason of all, I turned and looked. Even though I knew the likely outcome, I legitimately wanted to see if the New York Knicks could knock off Maccabi Tel Aviv. I wanted to see how Spanish Champions Real Madrid would do against the Toronto Raptors.

Why? For the last several years, it has been universally regarded that the NBA is the best basketball league on the planet. However, whenever NBA players represent the Stars and Stripes in a major international tournament, they seem to come up short against foreign national teams that maybe have one or two NBA players, and "collection of stiffs." Well, those guys are never really stiffs. They're stars in their own right, just not in the NBA. Toni Kukoc was a well-established international star in Europe before moving to the Bulls in the mid-90s.

I can only hope these pre-season exhibitions are the start of something. It's no secret that the NBA seems to have more or less tapped out its market potential in the U.S.. Disagree? Where else would you put a new team? If the first cities that come to mind are Louisville and Kansas City, then there's nowhere else to go. It's also no secret that David Stern is looking to Europe, saying that London's O2 Arena could be the site of a future NBA regular season game. European stars like Tony Parker, Pau Gasol, Dirk Nowitzki, (or any assortment of Eastern Europeans who have succeeded over the past 10 years in the NBA) are making their mark on the NBA, and the next generation is looking to follow their lead.

What I'm proposing is a regular competition at the beginning of the season at a neutral site. Let's say...Madison Square Garden this year and O2 or some other European arena next year. Take 4 NBA teams based on results from the prior season and play them over a week against the Final Four of the Euroleague or four invited international teams to guarantee a good gate draw (ie: Bring in Maccabi, Panathanaikos, Real Madrid, Treviso, or some other big European team.)

Offer a big prize to the winners. Use it as a way to kick off the season. You could even play it in the summer, during both offseasons. It's not like the WNBA is drawing anything besides red numbers on your balance sheets. It would essentially become the Ryder Cup for Basketball. NBA scouts would get increased exposure to how up-and-coming European talent would do against NBA competition. The NBA players who may be representing Team USA would get increased exposure to international tactics and international rules. It would be new. It would be different. It would be exciting and interesting. It would reflect the growing international influence in basketball. Make tickets cheap if you're worried about low gates. Do it for charity. It couldn't hurt.

If it was done this past year, let's just set it up for shits and giggles using the NBA Finalists, the league's best regular-season record, and the host team (Let's say it's at the Garden) along with 4 invited Euro teams.

Group A
CSKA Moscow (Russia, Euroleague Finalists)
Panathanaikos (Greece, Euroleague Champions)
Cleveland Cavaliers (USA, NBA Finalists)
New York Knicks (USA, Host team)

Group B
Real Madrid Baloncesto (Spain, Spanish Champions)
Maccabi Tel-Aviv (Israel, Israeli Champions)
San Antonio Spurs (USA, NBA Champions)
Dallas Mavericks (USA, Regular Season Best Record)

Group stage games in Cleveland, New york, San Antonio and Dallas. Top two in each group advance to semifinals at the Garden. Winners move on to Final. You could finish the whole tournament in a little over a week if you start on Friday and end the following Sunday. Sure, for the first few years, the best of the NBA might trounce the best of Europe, and we end up with 3 or 4 NBA teams in the semifinals, but isn't that what we have already in the pre-season? Just NBA teams playing each other? But there, it's in meaningless games. Here, let's make it interesting. Let's put something at stake.

Call it stupid, but I think it's a great idea. And I think whoever came up with your NBA Europe Live is on to something.

Sincerely,
Me

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