Noj

I thought this Samberg bit was hilarious.

I'd think the taped conversations of Mrs. Sandusky would be enough to implicate her. She's a sicko too.

The star of Groundhog Day: Sandler's best stuff was on SNL. And some of his early comedy tapes, if you're silly enough for really immature nonsense. And Happy Gilmore's got its moments.

Well...at least the creep is officially out of circulation and won't be raping any more little boys. Paterno is dead, but whoever is alive should also be held accountable and promptly be removed from the Penn State program. Protocol for dealing with any future child molesters should be in place on every campus such that the proper authorities are involved from day one.

Boooo.

I think you guys have done a great job chopping to the meat of this thing, but what I loved about this is Cuban confronted that TMZ-level chatterbox blowhard Bayless with actual X & O insight and he didn't have much of a comeback. There's a balance between emotion and execution, and the guys who spend more time speculating about the emotional aspect really aren't all that interesting to listen to as far as I'm concerned. Bayless and others overanalyzed LeBron's psyche (Bayless has been extremely critical of James, as I understand it) and were extremely critical of James as a person. So as much as I wanted to see the Heat lose it's great that LeBron (who is the best basketball player in the world) gave Skippy a big shitburger to eat, and Cuban added insult to injury.

As much as I might try to have against him, Cuban really flexed some hoops knowledge and exposed Bayless for the worthless, uninsightful TMZ-level basketball gossiper he is.

Re: NBA officiating I watch the Lakers from preseason to postseason every year and I have since I was a kid. I typed this up earlier this year in an attempt to show how NBA officials will make the game flow for one team or the other: NBA ref's recipe for biased officiating: 1. Quick whistle for on-the-floor touch foul to stop well-developing offensive play by the team you're cheating. Ball on the side, shot clock to 14 seconds. 2. Allow one team loads of off-the-ball contact while calling touch fouls on the team you wish to lose. 3. Get team you wish to win into the bonus as quickly as possible, preferably at the expense of a crucial starter for the team you're cheating. 4. Give any questionable out-of-bounds tip to the team you wish to win. 5. Just invent a travel call here and there against the team you wish to screw. Fouls can easily be construed as travels too, you know. Players stagger when someone lands on them. 6. Call illegal defense out of the clear blue sky to stop a run by the team you're cheating. 7. Obvious hacking fouls in the paint can easily be made into a no-call, or a jump ball. 8. The team you wish to win can reach in without consequence on any drive. It's a turnover! 9. There's no such thing as an over-the-back rebounding foul for the team you wish to win. The slightest contact from the team you're screwing is a loose-ball foul. 10. Technical fouls can be issued at any time for the slightest argument from the team you're cheating. Players on the team you wish to win can literally scream at you and spike the ball off the floor without catching it and it isn't a T. It's a little more subtle than that, but it's still obvious to the trained eye when the officials are controlling the game. They'll even the calls out toward the end of a quarter after they've already decided the general score.

When I was about 16, a friend was given his dad's record collection. One of the first jazz albums that caught my ear was John Coltrane's Africa/Brass. Another song caught my ear but I didn't catch the artist and title. I went to the music store to buy Africa/Brass but they didn't have it, so I bought Giant Steps. Later through sheer luck I found the song that caught my ear on a Best Of Blue Note compilation. It was Horace Silver "Song For My Father." Then I bought multiple compilations on Blue Note, Verve, Impulse, etc. including a Wes Montgomery comp. Grant Green's Alive and a Miles Davis Best Of on Blue Note were also among my first jazz CDs.

Beautiful read! Thanks for posting it.

Quincy was quick on the draw! The highlights of that team were hilarious. The international competition just hadn't been playing the game long enough. A lot of them were simply laughing on the court because they had no hope.

Meh. To clarify my position on LeBron James, I think he's one of the best players I've ever seen play. From the way he fills up a stat sheet with assists, rebounds, and points, to his incredible combination of strength and speed, to his ferocious dunks in which he jumps head high with the rim. The guy is phenomenal, and is several years into being the best, most productive player in the NBA. What I didn't like was his TV special announcing that he was leaving Cleveland (just go, you know?), followed by he and his two conspirators dancing around on stage counting up the championships they'd apparently already won ("not one, not two, not three..." like the rest of the league was just going to lay down). It rubbed me the wrong way, and made me want to see them fail. Simple as that. Go Supersonics.

Durant was also clearly the best scorer on the 2010 USA international team that won gold. Best pure scorer in the NBA right now. LeBron with 30 in the first half tonight, Jesus.

The original video is easily one of the most hilariously disconcerting things to ever run rampant on the internet. So strange and creepy. RIP

The tendency of teams in close games with the clock winding down to place the ball in one player's hands and have him go one-on-five rather than draw up/have prepared a smart offensive set which creates an open look via screens and ball movement is a really stupid one. The NBA wants every star to be Michael Jordan. Guess what? They're not Michael Jordan. The refs are crooked and stink. There were terrible calls both ways throughout the whole game. The players play dirty and the refs call baffling nonsense while ignoring all types of obvious calls. David Stern is hurting the game and has been for a while. He and his refs should be kicked to the curb.

Go ugly super physical game that wears both teams out terribly. Preferably triple OT games the rest of the way for Miami and Boston.

Tony Parker is playing out of his mind. Go Thunder. Go Spurs.

My '04 Honda Element was way ahead of the game and has a functioning AUX port. The car's like a set of headphones. Before getting this car years ago, I'd long since stopped bringing my store bought CD's in the car and instead burned CD-R compilations for travel use. Car stereo players and the constant inserting/removing from the player and the case quickly ruins CDs.

Cool album.

It was not a matter of "fair compensation", it was a matter of what would be a wise deal for a team looking to start rebuilding right now. If you are looking to start rebuilding, you do not want to acquire expensive mid-tier veterans with years left on their contract. At best, they will make it possible for your team to be an 11-8 seed for a few years. As an owner, you pay out a lot of money for a mediocre non-contender that isn't bad enough to get good draft picks via the lottery and doesn't have enough salary cap room to acquire a big name. At the time of the trade, Kevin Martin had two years left (now one) at 12 million. Odom had two years (now one) at 8.5 million. Scola was on the second year of a 5 year $47 million contract. Why in god's name would a rebuilding club want to owe 4 years $40 million to Luis Scola and 2 years $25 million to Kevin Martin? With those two pieces + other players the Rockets made it all the way to a 10 seed. Dragic was a potentially nice piece. I don't think anybody expected him to play as well as he did in the last half of this year (and he will probably regress next year, but only after somebody overpays him). He's shown flashes of potential over the years and if he didn't work out his contract ended after this year anyway. However, Dragic was not as nice or promising a piece as Eric Gordon. Along with him the Hornets took Chris Kaman - $14 million, yeah, but off the salary sheet at the end of the season, and Aminu, who makes rookie money until 2015 and will be an RFA after that if he's any good. In both trades, the Hornets received a first round pick. Stern had no obligation to accept the Lakers trade, just because Scola + Odom + Martin + Dragic's fantasy basketball points added up to equal Chris Paul's fantasy basketball points. He thought Paul could yield a more strategically sound return for a rebuilding club, one that didn't saddle them with contracts that wouldn't take them anywhere. He was right. If you think that Stern had some obligation to accept the trade because it was the first one that had the veneer of acceptability, then you essentially believe the NBA had an obligation to sabotage the team it took ownership of (and make it a much less appealing purchase) so that the Lakers could make a misguided effort at putting together.a superteam. I don't think Derek Fisher acquired any special ability to make clutch shots as a result of winning championship rings, because I do not think a specialized "clutch" ability exists -- either you're a good shooter or you're not, and your FG% in the last three minutes of close games will not vary significantly from your FG% in the first 43 minutes -- and I don't think you get any special skills just by being on a team with good players. Even if you do want to overvalue Fisher's shooting, before he got really terrible at it last year, he still has a completely different skill set from Chris Paul. The point guards for the great triangle offense teams have never been especially great as point guards -- they're just decent-shooting guards who know how to bring the ball up, get it into the triangle, and make the open shot when necessary. For his career, Fisher averages 3 assists per game. This arrangement worked well because both Jordan and Kobe were/are domineering players who need to touch the ball a lot and don't want or need a Chris Paul or Steve Nash around to create offense for themselves and everyone else. Even if you think Fisher is absolutely the bees knees with his rings and clutchy veteran experience, he's still not a point guard, and we still have reason to seriously doubt that Kobe would adjust well and happily to an offensive system run by a creative point guard like Paul. Two years is hardly a lot of time on a contract to worry about. Lamar Odom was the sixth man of the year. Kevin Martin is one of the better young point guards in the league. And Scola has become a versatile, savvy player and a hard-nosed competitor. The Hornets would have shed one point guard, gotten a point guard back, and added size. The Rockets are still reeling from losing Yao Ming, that's why they're willing to move half the roster to get Gasol. Ramon Sessions has played well for the Lakers and he's a better ball-handler than any point guard the Lakers have had for years. Phil is gone and took the triangle with him. Paul is both a great playmaker and a scorer, and I firmly believe he could have played well with Kobe. In fact, Kobe has had his most success in years when he hasn't had to pound the ball as much. Fisher sure made a lot of big buckets for the Lakers throughout his career, and is a great locker room leader. He's never been an elite offensive point guard by any measure, although I think one could argue he was an elite defender for a long while.

And Kobe loves DFish because they won five championships together. "Not much of a player?" Fisher turned himself into a clutch shooter through sheer hard work and dedication.

The Hornets would have gotten Kevin Martin, Luis Scola, and Lamar Odom. It was fair compensation and a totally legitimate deal, and in the weakling East they'd have probably been a playoff team. Hasbrough was playing the ball and it ended up being a hard foul. Haslem went in with the intention of fouling Hansbrough across the head and no intention of going for the ball. Who gives a hard foul in the All-Star Game? Get her an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress.

Well, Wade's turned into a cheap-shotting punk, from his nose-breaking hack on Kobe in the All-Star game to that petulant shove from behind he gave Darren Collison earlier in this series. LeBron's taken to dirty little undercover cheapies probably under Wade's tutelage. Not to mention he and Wade's tendency to really exaggerate on flops in a dirtier way than even Fisher ever dreamed of. Haslem's karate chop on Psycho T should have resulted in a longer suspension than it did, and the scrub who hacked the Pacer's scrub deserved at least as long as what Bynum got last year. I hate the Heat so much I think I'd rather even see the Celtics win, so I'll admit that I have a jaundiced eye toward the whole squad. LeBron, Wade, and Bosh can kiss my ass with their dancing around with Kool-Aid smiles on their TV special bragging about how many rings they're going to win and I hope they never win any together. On top of that, fuck David Stern and the NBA owners for pitching a fit and vetoing the Lakers' trade for Chris Paul saying it "wouldn't be fair to have players of that caliber together on one team" after standing pat and allowing Miami to put that ridiculous all-star team together. It was nothing but bias against the Lakers for doing what they're supposed to do which is try to win. - I dislike Artest and I always have, so you'll get no argument from me on his dirty play. He helped the Lakers beat the Celtics in game 7 of the Finals, but other than that has been underwhelming in LA and made me miss Ariza. I'll root tooth and nail for whoever comes out of the West, that's for sure.

The Heat are a dirty team, from Wade, LeBron, and Haslam clear down to the scrubs.

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