Me-sanity

WHAT DO I NEED TO DO!

Y'all don't know what it feels like to have Miami serve you up three losses in a row. I'm about ready for summer vacation already- this whole "55 minute double overtime game of ACTUALLY TRYING" is more tiring than my entire last three seasons in Toronto. And that's including press conferences and demanding trades- y'all know how draining those are. I mean, usually after demanding a trade, I've got the hit the crib, pop open some apple juice, fire up the PS2 and take my custom-made Vinsanity team (five copies of me, one of 'em jacked up a couple inches to the play the post) and beat the heck of out the 1992 Dream Team. (Sometimes, I take up the all-new Slam Dunk contest and school the heck out of my cousin, but don't let T know that).

So peep my line: 36 points, 9 rebounds, 10 assists, 3 steals. Now THAT is some heat for your ass! And we still can't win. So this is what New Jersey is like.

Well, at least RJ got some nasty dunks last night, and my boy Nenad "Cherry" Krstic is going off like crazy. Maybe next year. Maybe I'll just retire and play golf. Whatever.

The Rich Get Richer (and Taller)

Man, if San Antonio's management team was any smarter, they'd be splitting the mawfuckin atom in the front office after Eastern Conf GMs go home for the night. There were a lot of flashy deals in the Association this week, but the Spurs quietly made a deal that tangibly improved an already championship-ready lineup. In exchange for Malik Rose, a solid dude but one of Popovich's least favorite guys and the only mildly bad contract on SA's books, and a couple of likely worthless draft picks, they filched New York's starting center. Nazr Mohammed's been in a little bit of a slump lately, but tell me waking up to find out you're headed to back up Rasho and ride Tim Duncan's coattails and watch the Tony and Manu Show zipping around you wouldn't snap your ass out of a slump. Nazr's probably on the plane to Texas right now staring at his finger, thinking how nice it's gonna look with that ring. Seriously though:

Mohammed lets Duncan get more rest and allows Popovich to bench Rasho when he sucks; lets Pop rely less on the fading Horry and Massenberg as his big bench dudes; and gives them legitimate defense and 6 more fouls against The Wallace Brothers or Shaquille in the Finals. Oh and his contract ends this year and isn't brutally insane, and unless he pulls some Stephen Jackson inflated self-value b.s. he'll be back for the kind of totally reasonable shine SA puts on all its boys.

Why on earth would you do this if you are New York? Technically the League rulebook does not prohibit a team comprised of five power forwards from taking the floor, but maybe when the Commish works on the bargaining agreement and rules this summer he ought to instate a rule that teams should actually be trying to win.

Let's do that again:

Bench guy with bad contract plus crappy draft picks

equals

Starting center

equals

one totally insane man:

Osh Kosh B'Josh

Josh Smith’s win in Saturday’s slam dunk contest was of course huge for all Hawks fans, a leper colony of which I consider myself a fledgling member. However, J-Smoove’s triumph was even more important for me as a Josh.
According to Basketball-Reference.com, there have only been five ballers in the history of the L with the Christian handle of Josh, a trail blazed by one-year wonder Josh Grant, who averaged a trey a game for Oaktown in 1994. The ’03-’04 season brought Joshes Davis and Howard, the former drafted a Hawk but now a Sixer, the latter a former Demon Deacon turned Mav. And of course, ’04-’05 has ushered in Childress and Smith, both Hawks.
Clearly we’re living in the Golden Age of the Josh, and not just that, but the ATL seems to have established itself as the Locus of the Josh, which is great for a Josh like me who lives 60 miles away in Athens.
Before Saturday, NBA Joshes had flashed their share of promise, but had as of yet left little imprint on the L, a microcosm if you will of Josh’s nascent impact on the world at large, a fact owing mostly to the newly-minted status of the name as a common household birthright.
Maybe you think I’m overplaying this felicity, this common bond I feel J-Smoove and I share, but don’t undersell what’s in a name. For every Tom, Dick, and Harry out there, not to mention every Clifford, Dennis, and Russell, there’s a name we’re all given at birth that we have to spend the rest of our lives either fulfilling, rejecting, or negating. Some, like my latter three examples, solve this problem by adopting an alias, whether it be Mr. Meth, Ghostface, or ODB, but most of the rest of us just stick with what we’ve got, and rarely if ever consciously wonder whether we’re embodying its implicit qualities or spurning them.
All the same, “Josh” has a social status and value hung with all kinds of presumed attributes and personality quirks, just like any other name, and whether we’re aware of it or not, all of us Joshes have in common a shared relationship with our Joshness.
I definitely think certain character traits and types of behavior are couched in the name Josh, which is why I feel pretty secure in saying J-Smoove is a better, or at least more fundamentally apt, Josh than I am.
Because it’s only recently been popularized, Josh conveys youth, but it’s not just that – there’s also a definite strain of impetuousness there as well, of playfulness. It’s a normal name for normal guys who do normal things in an off-kilter way. It’s not the archetypal All-American name, but it’s not really a name for outcasts either. Josh is the jokester or the prankster of the straitlaced group, the guy who doesn’t take himself too seriously (I hope I’m a good Josh in this respect, except maybe with this piece), the guy who’s having fun and keeping it sleazy.
So yeah, I feel a kinship with Josh Smith, who’s had to be a Josh for 18 years (he’s got nothing on me there), and who’s made me as proud to be Josh as I can remember since I copped Entroducing in ’96 (and Josh Davis only gets half credit for rocking the handle DJ Shadow instead of his Christian moniker).
Oh yeah, almost forgot – I caught J-Smoove’s high-wire act in person last week as well, taking in a Hawks-Nuggets tilt that doubled as my First Actual Regular-Season NBA Game In-Person Ever, which seems like a blow to my credibility, but in my defense I spent the first 21 years of my life a good 2 ½ - 3 hours away from an NBA arena, and the Charlotte Coliseum at that. By the time I was old enough to take my damn self, George Shinn had pissed off/alienated/played grabass with enough of the Queen City that nobody actually went to the games anymore, and the eventual exodus already seemed inevitable.
Anyway, Phillips Arena was actually fairly poppin’ considering a 2-for-1 ticket special that night (my girl’s lure as well)…and yeah, I know this is gonna be sequentially twisted but I’ll post more comments/impressions/chatter about that game later, this post was supposed to be strictly about nomenclature, so I’ll leave it at that.

How to Fix the Blazers, Part 1.

Big Shot Rob has asked me to fix my beloved Trailblazers. This is how we do it.

1. Say goodbye to Darius Miles. Wondering what we do then for small forward? NOTHING. NO SMALL FORWARD. We go Randolph and Ratliff down low, and let our guards do the heavy lifting.
2. Say goodbye to Derek Anderson. Van Exel has made him expendable. Get a center for him.
3. DO NOT say goodbye to Shareef Abdur-Raheem. Let him be SF when he gets back from injury, a special kind of SF who doesn't actually play SF.
4. Um, Joel Przybilla? You are not a starting center. You're getting better, but you needs to just chill on the bench a while longer. Focus on being the seventh or eighth man. And work on the hands, man, you should be the Young American Sabonis but you're all Roberto Duran out there, it's scary.
5. It has been proven by science that only one of our two point/shooting guards can play well on any given night. Therefore, start both Van Exel and Stoudamire, and yank whoever puts up more bricks/airballs after 6 minutes, substituting Telfair. In the second half, do the same thing. This will make the first part of each half VERY INTERESTING, it'd be like a Plus1 game! I volunteer to be the on-court narrator. "OH, did you SEE that? That was SICKENING to the very CORE of MY BEING!"
6. Dump Khryapa, find us an Eastern European who can get mad sick with the dribbling. People love to watch the white guys dribble.
7. SIGN YUTA TABUSE.
8. Give Maurice Cheeks a 25-year extension, just so he can calm down a little. Plus: Jumbotron all his best facial expressions in a little inset box: Astonished! Disgusted! Laughing at life's absurdity!
9. For god's sake go back to the original uniforms, with the lowercase letters and the straight-up version of the logo instead of that italicized crapola you've been foisting upon us.
10. GET ONE DUNKER TO ELECTRIFY THE CROWD K THX BYE SEE YA IN THE PLAYOFFS

P.S. This is kind of very Chris Ryan of me but I have to say it after last night's Bucks game, my guys are all like Houston rappers en la casa:

Who Is Mike James? The Album

Paul Wall, the iced-out gringo

Hoes is a-bidein me/Media ride me/King a da underground/So the streets is steady hide-in me

Before the LeBron Era gets too far out of hand, I just wanna see if I can make a deal with the tabloid rags, the media vultures, the paparazzi, ESPN - PLEASE, just for LeBron, can we all be on some Roosevelt administration type shit, some Kennedy-era shit, and DO NOT DO DIRT ON THIS MAN!

I'm sayin' FDR got some cut-up on the side, JFK had his little indiscretions with wifey, and everyone kept it wrapped tight. Can't we do that with LBJ? THIS MAN IS BIGGER THAN ALL OF US. If he starts to party his life away/drink his life away/smoke his life away/fuck his life away/dream his life away/scheme his life away I don't wanna hear about none of it, no Beyond the Glory/Outside the Lines/Behind the Music features in 10-15 years, none of it. As long as Bron doesn't beat up his woman or pull some Kobe type foolishness, it's all love to me baby.

Kid's gonna make mistakes too, they all do, it's only a matter of time and I just hope they don't run him down like they did Melo this year or like they've tried to do Alley-I for about the past decade. Haters always say hoops is nothing but thugs nowadays when it's ALWAYS been nothing but thugs, just like baseball, football, hockey, tennis, advertising, journalism, politricks and the clergy have always been full of thugs, it's only now that everybody knows everybody's bidness and there are no more idols except white boys from Raleigh, NC who bite Barry Manilow.

So make me this deal, back up offa LeBron and let him do his thing, and see if he's not a hero to millions before he hangs up his sneaks.

Personally, I just don't wanna be watching LeBron playing five years from now and have my girl come in be like "fuck that deadbeat/crack slingin'/gun totin'/gang-bangin' fool, we're watching Law and Order SVU." So that's what this is really about. (Coming Soon: My Girl's 5 Favorite and Least Favorite Ballers, Look For It).

San Anfreakin' Tonio

Sweet Big Baby Jesus (R.I.P.)!

In all the Suns/Sonics/resurgent Magic/Shaq 'n Wade Miami/Heir-to-the-Throne King James Cavs talk, practically everyone forgot the best team in the West and probably the entire L, San Antonio. Right now it's an easy call to say these guys are probably title contenders again this year, as they have been every year since Duncan and Mr. Robinson rolled to their first trophy before Shaq and "Number 8" swiped three in a row. In fact, if it weren't for getting punched out by a mathematically impossibly Derek Fisher buzzer-beater last year, they would have had a mighty good shot and probably a seven-game grind against Detroit in the '04 Finals. Sure, they dropped one to the Portland MASH 4077 last night, but we're right about at the regular season halfway mark, so let's look at why this team is en fuego right now.

-Le backcourt internacional: Tony Parker is the bomb, Manu Ginobili is the best player Argentina has ever produced (and dropped a freakish 48 on Phoenix a few nights back) and Brent Barry, who pundits called the best off-season acquisition and then the worst when he had a predictably slow start fitting into this already-tight rotation, is hitting his stride and three pointers galore. Barry is a savvy vet and Pop likes nothing more than combining savvy vets with his young guns, so look for Barry to provide lots of stability, plenty of rest for both the young dudes, and the kind of outside threat Duncan always needs. He's Steve Kerr 2.0, a smart as hell player with great range and fewer miles on him. He'll turn it on late and start next year ready to roll again. And just watch a few highlight reels and tell me Manu isn't the most exciting player in the game- he's not as consistent as you'd like, but he will hit the kind of shots that are literally impossible and make Charles Barkley vibrate in his seat on that gaudy-ass TNT set.

-Deep bench and defense: Bruce Bowen is still the best wing defender in the league, which is incredibly important come playoff time, when teams like Phoenix and Seattle will be relying on their fast-and-small outside players. The entire team plays good defense, even Ginobili is starting to lock down his man on occasion, and being able to fall back to Duncan in the middle for the occasional block is quite the luxury. If Robert Horry would take fewer bad shots and scope out the open jumpers, and Devin Brown would stay a bit more under control, these guys become a solid 8-9 deep, the mark of a nearly unbeatable playoff team.

-Duncan. Duh. He's flying a bit more under the radar than usual, letting his flashier guards take over games and win fourth quarters, but look at those endless games where the Spurs roll into the fourth with a double digit lead and barely break a sweat to win. That's all due to Duncan. His little turnarounds and hooks look good as ever, and two Spurs titles and three Lakers titles prove the Shaq Corollary: Your best guy can clang all the free throws he wants, as long as he does EVERYTHING else on the court. Duncan does just that.

-Black and silver uniforms rule. Post Up Moves loves Phoenix's crazy orange thing, and Lebron is singlehandedly making wine and gold an acceptable fashion statement, but seriously, what could be more intimidating than a professional set of team players in evil looking black and silver stepping into your building?

a phone call with Chris H

Chris H is my buddy from way back, we were neighbors in Brooklyn but knew each other before that. We went to several Knicks games with this dude Carlo and Chairman Jeff Mao, hanging up in the nosebleed seats at MSG, booing Anthony Mason. (Saw Shaq there his rookie year; also saw Charles Barkley try to fight every single Knick and two referees at the end of a game, total classic.) Every Saturday morning we and Chris D. would sit and watch all the taped "Batman: The Animated Series" episodes for the week while drinking coffee and doing fantastic damage to a box of donuts. Then Chris D. would leave and Chris H. and I would bullshit for hours about the NBA.

So he called me tonight and here is our opinion about many things.

Isiah Thomas: crap. CH: "It's a good time to be an Isiah-hater."
Stephon Marbury: strong, about to be dealt with Kurt Thomas.
Kurt Thomas: the better Thomas brother.
Tim Thomas: garbage.
LeBron Jesus: oh our GAWD. Me: "Okay, I believe the hype now." CH: "I believed it from day one. Dude isn't just a scorer, either; he actually passes the ball. Amazing."
Dwyane Wade: oh our GAWD. Absolute stud.
T.J. Ford: saddest story in the NBA. We both kind of hope he never plays again, one really shouldn't futz with a SPINAL INJURY. But I'm a Bucks fan, so I'm a little softer on that stance. Still though: speedy.
Sebastian Telfair: could be T.J. Ford in a few years. Like, five. If he ever bulks up to 140 lbs. and learns to drive to the hoop.
Derek Anderson: CH: "The Blazers need a shooting guard. Anderson: eh." Me: "We should deal Shareef and Van Exel for someone." CH: "Who would take Van Exel?"
Latrell Sprewell: BOTH, AT THE SAME TIME: "Shareef and Van Exel for Sprewell! It's perfect!"
Kobe Bryant: Asshole.
Shaquille O'Neal: Sweetie-pie, finally, again.
Yao Ming: lost. CH: "All these people who say 'Yao's garbage,' that's bullshit. He's a great player." Me: "Not on my fantasy team." CH: "We're not talking about that, we're talking about the NBA. All this stereotyped crap I hear about 'oh his culture, he'll never be an assertive player'...BULLSHIT." Me: "Still, he's lost, though." CH: "Oh yeah, right now, yeah."
Steve Francis: we don't like him, but he's useful.
Bob Sura: has been in the league too long to take any crap from Steve Francis.
Dwight Howard: good rookie. CH: "He's the real deal!"
Seattle: I was wrong, they're great. We both decided on that.
Josh Smith: a really good rookie. CH saw him against the Knicks, and thinks he's awesome. I saw him block Shaq from two feet on SportsCenter, that's dope.
Doug Christie: eh. CH didn't know about the wife thing, I filled him in.
Sacramento: garbage.

Some others but this is too long already. Don't be surprised if CH is the next member of Post Up Moves.

PWN3D by the Mouse

Intercepted Transmission

--Douglas. I am not happy about this.
--I'm sorry, sweetie, there's nothing I can do about it.
--Don't you "sweetie" me. A man would do something about it. Chris Webber would do something about it.
--Honey, you know as well as I do that players have no control over a trade. If the Kings want me to go to Orlando, I have to go.
--Douglas, I have spent considerable time and energy on establishing myself here as a force with which to be reckoned. Do you think I'm going to give all that up just because you can't emerge as a star of the same magnitude?
--Sugar-puss, listen. The Magic are a much better team than the Kings. They're giving up two players for me, even though I am one of the most frustratingly inconsistent players in the NBA. It's a step up, professionally and reputationally.
--Douglas, what were you before I pulled you up by my bootstraps at Pepperdine?
--A ball of potential with no direction.
--What are you now?
--[A swingman who doesn't swing, a laughing stock, a dude so lame that even beer-bellied internet assholes feel free to take pot-shots at me with impunity. And it's all because of my devotion to you, and your campaign to make sure I'm under lock and key every minute of every day.] An NBA star, dear.
--Okay then.
--...
--I guess it is kind of impressive that you are worth two humans, even if one is Cuttino Mobley and the other one is injured.
--I know, right?
--And Orlando is much more interesting than Sacramento.
--You're bigger than this town, honey. I'll take you to Disney World every day of the off-season.
--Okay, let's pack.
[smooches. end transmission]

Hope Vince Got Jigga On The IPod

OK, I wrote this before I saw Rob's post on the trade, so if it's not too redundant, just consider this a second opinion:

So VC’s gon’ be a Net (or “Carter Gets New Jersey” as EVERY SINGLE news source – ESPN, SI, SLAM – punned yesterday). This trade might make the Jigga Squad marginally better, but I think it’s no good for Vinsanity himself. I see alot of parallels between Carter’s career and Chris Webber’s – both ballyhooed college megastars who got used to winning 90% of the time, get saddled with the savior tag in the pros and then scapegoated when they can’t deliver, use up all the goodwill they had with fans, and before you know it they’re the NBA equivalent of damaged goods (you could also throw Sheed in here as well). Of course, C-Webb revitalized his game and restored his rep once he got shipped to Sacto, he still couldn’t deliver in crunch time but at least he polished himself back up into highly-coveted free-agent status and made everyone forget about that sexual assault dustup he had in ’98. The situation Vince needed is similar to the one Webber found with the Kings, one where a) he’s surrounded by guys who can do all the things Vince can’t do – rebound, play defense, hit the big shot under pressure, but where b) he’d still nominally be The Man, the marquee player. C-Webb’s had Peja to shoot, Mrs. Christie to clamp down, and most importantly Bibby to play moneyball, but still everyone defers to Chris as the “star” of the team. As lovably dysfunctional as Portland is right now, I think they could have been just that kind of fit for Vince, with Z-Bo to contribute Post-Up Moves, Ratliff with rejections, Mighty Mouse with dimes, and D-Miles with hops (maybe he could’ve even let VC borrow some). At the same time, Half Man Half Amazing would still technically be the star there, wouldn’t he? I mean, Randolph IS an all-star, but no way with his unsexy game is he takin’ any of Vince’s shine. Now instead Vince is stuck in Jersey, where not only do they have cadavers up front, but VC’s arguably the third-biggest name on the team after RJ (who essentially plays Vinsanity’s game already, just better) and Kidd. Yeah, the Nets will probably get to the play-offs now (more b/c of J-Kidd than Vince of course), but any talk of “contention” is redic – what’s to stop Shaq or Jermaine or hell even BIG BEN from dropping 40 on this team?? Maybe now they can crack triple digits every once in a while, but how are they gonna keep ANYBODY under 110? Unless they can bring in an enforcer or two, defenses are gonna feel 100% immunity to play smashmouth with VC. Expect him to be looking for a new new jersey come May.

Jason Kidd Puts Bus Ticket Out of Town on Craigslist

Air Canada is reportedly about to touch down in New Jersey. Vince Carter, the Toronto Raptors swingman who is more frequently busted than my iPod, is finally on the move, headed to the Nets for Alonzo Mourning, a couple of Williamses and some draft picks. Carter, who inexplicably leads All-Star voting year after year, could help the seemingly moribund Nets spring back to life all zombie-style.

It's hard to say what this trade would do to Toronto, other than turn them into the new Blazers, but built around a skinny-ass teenage power forward (Bosh) instead of a goofy-looking rotund power forward with a similarly rotund new contract (Randolph). But then, as the Spurs, Wolves, Suns and Mavs are teaching us, this is the decade of the 4 spot.

Which means this trade ostensibly gutted New Jersey even further, taking away frontcourt depth, but let's be honest: without dealing Kidd, the Nets weren't going to get someone who can bang with Shaq or even Zydrunas Ilgauskas. And really, those are the guys they need to worry about, since they're in the East. So, a perimeter attack of Kidd, Carter and Jefferson is looking pretty dynamic. Carter's 16 ppg, three assists and three rebounds will probably bounce up a bit when he figures out he can finally stop sulking, and he easily replaces Martin's scoring punch. Kidd's speed and glitzy passing seem like a good fit for Carter, as both will egg each other on to make the nightly highlight reel.

Basically, the Nets dealt the scraps of paper they got for giving away Kenyon Martin, a bunch of junk and a great comeback story for an exciting player who will sell tickets like gangbusters and is every bit as big a jerk as Kidd. These dudes are made for each other, and a look at the standings right now, with the Knicks sitting pretty atop the Hotlantic with that gargantuan 11-11 record, Jersey has probably just popped itself right back into contention in the East.

"I'm hunting for little Mexican girls."

Sometimes, We Worry About Marv

Has anyone else noticed this, or is Marv Albert's voice different this year? It seems lower, his dynamic range seems smaller, and it all just sounds a little muffled. Maybe he's struggling with an early winter cold or something, but it's odd. We're worried about Marv. Maybe it was Mike Fratello's fault. Now that he's off to coach Memphis, maybe Marv can get a little more air at that overstuffed commentary table.

A Bunch of Kids, An Old Glove and The Truth: Boston Celtics 04-05

It hurts. It hurts to write this. It hurts because the Boston Celtics are the team this half of Post Up Moves grew up watching and rooting for, back when Larry and Kevin and Robert were the best frontcourt in the L and DJ and Ainge were ripping it up in the back, back when those dudes battled the hated-yet-beloved crosscountry rivals in LA and went to the mat within the conference with the Cavs the last time they were good and beat the living stuffing out of Dominique's Hawks just for fun occasionally and it was Celtics Pride and parquet floors and the Garden and stories of deliberately freezing visitor's locker rooms and dead spots on the wood that only Larry knew and all that lucky Irish BS.

(a pair of side notes: if you ever have the opportunity to see Larry's Celtics single-game scoring record against the Hawks, from '86 I think, on ESPN Classic or whatever, WATCH IT. You would think a record scoring game, he'd have to dominate the ball the whole time? Nope, he's barely there in the first half, yet makes the most of every shot. From everywhere. By the last few minutes, his teammates are so sick of being passed the ball when there's an 80-90 percent chance that Larry will hit it that they're throwing it right back at him, almost angry. And in the last minute the Hawks are clearing out, letting Larry score after an off-balance, falling-out-of-bounds, impossible three goes down to tie the record, knowing that letting Larry break the record will at least put the name "Atlanta Hawks" in SOME record book.)

(Other side note: Post Up jocks LeBron hard, and who doesn't, but it's worth saying again- dude has a better body and raw physical skill than MJ at the same age (remember MJ was in college at age 19; LeBron already has the body that 26 year old MJ had when he was the mayor of Domination City) and already has nearly the basketball brain and eyes that Larry did at his peak. Seriously- LeBron's total poker face on the dish-and-drive is right out of old Celts videotapes. And his teammates are still looking surprised by those passes sometimes, though they're catching on fast- the same way Larry's mates did just before the titles started rolling in.)

Anyhow it's 2004, not 1984, and these Boston Celtics belong to Paul Pierce, old hand Gary Payton, a bits-and-pieces frontcourt and a bunch of kids. No one really knows what to make of this bunch, least of all Doc Rivers, and they're certainly not title material, but in the Atlantic Division, if they pull out of the current skid, they could do alright. After all, Toronto could put up or shut up after the seemingly inevitable Vince Carter trade goes down (hasn't it been inevitable every year this century?), Illadelphia could melt down at any time and no one expects New York to dominate anything. Oh I guess the New Jersey Alonzos still play in this division too.

Anyway apparently Payton has been helping Pierce out of the sulky funk he's been in since Danny Ainge dealt away Antoine Walker- who would have expected GARY PAYTON to help anyone stop sulking, ever?- and Ricky Davis has been a model team player (what the hell?) holding down the sixth man spot after Doc told him to roleplay like it's fantasy ball and he's Vinnie The Microwave. Blount might be the third-best center in the East after Shaq and Zydrunas, but that's kind of like being the third-best Matrix movie- you suck a little bit more than the other sucky one, which totally sucks next to the awesome one. I will mail you a quarter if you managed to follow that one.

Jiri Welsch, Raef LaFrentz, mm hmm, whatever- lanky running and shooting white dudes. Ok. The real story here is the batch of rookies and second year dudes- between Al Jefferson, Marcus Banks and Delonte West, someone will break out. It just might not be this year. It's probably going to be Jefferson, a true banger in the Amare mold, who stepped right out of high school and hopefully into a bright green-and-white future. Out of three times he's broken the twenty minute mark for playing time, Mr Jefferson went 13-6 (four offensive boards!) and 16-5. But unless your name actually IS Amare or LeBron or Moses Malone, you're probably doomed to 15 minutes off the bench out of high school. Still, not so bad. Post Up Prediction: .500 team that finishes second, maybe third in the division. If Payton returns to true form, they could even win the division. But let's not get ahead of ourselves here, Celtics fans, Ainge is a man with a long term plan. Just nobody knows what it is.

okay here's the deal

Rob and I have really fallen down on this whole Artest thing, but we didn't know what to say. Ultimately, the best take on it can be found here, with this a close second. (Actually the comments on SportsFilter are pretty good too, even if some of them are on some white-flight bullshit.)

I'm not going to get into all that, it's been endlessly debated, people who hate sports have their opinions, etc. Oh, and Bill Walton, coming off like the saint of the NBA when you always pussed out of the fights you helped to propagate and let Maurice Lucas do all your fighting for you (and then paid him back by naming your Grateful-Dead-loving-fourth-banana son after him to get some karmic payback but it isn't going to work), and hung out and lived with friends of the Symbionese Liberation Army, and sued the Trail Blazers for messing up your foot (they threw it out of court after ONE QUESTION: "How much cocaine were you doing?")...FURB. You're everything that was bad about the 1970s, nobody thinks you're a good hoops analyst, your shtick is tired and your taste in music is execrable and you have no friends.

All I'm saying is anyone who thinks they can throw a cup at Ron Motherfucking Artest without starting a Panic In Detroit is a stupid person. I wish John Gr33n had gotten some of what Fat Pistons' Jersey Fan got, but it's over and we shall speak no more of this matter. To paraphrase the uncle in that William Saroyan short story, "IT IS OF NO IMPORTANCE! PAY NO ATTENTION TO IT!"

In other news: Andrei Kirilenko is a stone cold killer, I have a big crush on Yuta Tabuse, and Rashard Lewis is making me look like an idiot. I based my Seattle hatred on two things: blatant Oregon bias, and my observation last year that Ray Allen can't stand the spotlight being on anyone else (a.k.a. Lewis or Flip Murray) and will start siphoning off points and touches to make himself look better. That still might happen...but actually Allen will have to miss some time when Kobe pops his arm out the socket for Allen's press-diss, so Lewis will have carte verde to keep up his bananas shooting.

[EDITOR'S NOTE: Matt is just bitter because he had Lewis on his fantasy team last year and suffered with the post-Allen scoring drought. This was one of the reasons he lost the title...with two days to go...TO ROB.]

Anyway, um, Grant Hill blah blah blah Vlade Divac blah blah blah Denver blah blah blah.