I like how Durantula says he loves it in Oklahoma City and he doesn’t talk about his off-court business ventures or his focus on becoming a Global Icon. He’s honed in on making his team better, and at the same time making himself a better basketball player.

And by “awhile” I obviously mean “sit against every team that’s not Orlando or the Lakers?”

This would be great, and every Cavs fan would REALLY appreciate it.

And while we’re asking for players to sit, can Antawn Jamison sit too?  At least until he’s had an actual PRACTICE?  Last night, when Shaq and Jamison were getting their burn, the Cavs looked straight up pedestrian, and yet, the instant the high energy, high athleticism, high effort bigs in Anderson Varejao and JJ Hickson came in, the Cavs went from plodding to devastating, outscoring the Celtics by a large, large margin in the 2nd half.

I bring this up, not as a Cavs fan, but as a basketball fan in general.  When LeBron James has adequate spacing and athletic big men cutting to the basket with two spot up shooters just waiting on the wings, the Cavs are a true joy to watch on both ends.  LeBron gets to do his thing and becomes hell on wheels, either setting up Hickson for an oop, hitting a driving Varejao for who’s developed a nice offensive game around the basket, setting up a 3 or getting to the rim himself.  It’s just great.

And none of that happens when Shaq is on the floor. Read the rest of this entry »

+

= Read the rest of this entry »

/Rant

Good news, your favorite NBA team just traded away a valuable role player. In return, they got a guy who hasn’t played all year because he either sucks too much at basketball or because he blew out his knee a few years ago and can’t run anymore. Or perhaps both of those.

Right now, I’m hoping that my favorite team, the Chicago Bulls, somehow manages to convince another NBA team to accept a trade for Kirk Hinrich or John Salmons. At worst, both Hinrich and Salmons are solid rotation players on a playoff team. In return for Hinrich and Salmons, I’m not hoping for a player or players that would help the Bulls win games, necessarily (at least not this year). No, I’d be willing to accept any player just as long as their contract expires at the end of this season. Such is life for an NBA fan whose favorite team isn’t the Cavs, Magic, Celtics, or Lakers. This is the landscape that David Stern and the NBA Players Association has provided me. I’m not rooting for my team anymore; I’m rooting for contracts. I realize that my team can’t compete with Cleveland once the playoffs begin, so I’m willing to accept it if they essentially give away one of their starting guards, a guy I’ve been rooting for since 2003. And you wanna know the best part? No team wants him.

In today’s NBA, Jerome James is a more valuable asset to a non-contending team like the Bulls than Kirk Hinrich. By the end of this season, Jerome James will have played exactly 4 games in the last 3 years. In that timeframe, he will have made roughly 17 million dollars. I watch every Bulls game on television and I couldn’t even tell you what Jerome James looks like. Yet he’s more valuable than Kirk Hinrich, their starting guard who plays over 30 mpg. Nowhere but in the NBA could a situation like this exist. Let me try to think of an example.

Thinking…

Thinking…

Nope, can’t think of one.

This system is complete bullshit.

/End Rant

On the surface, Amare Stoudemire is a poor fit for the Cleveland Cavaliers any way you cut it.  He thrives in an uptempo offense while the Cavs have one of the slower offensive paces in the lig, as well as not being noted for his defensive prowess, something seemingly not jive-able with the defensive minded Crabs.

That said…it’s bullshit, and here’s why.

The key figure in this deal, for both sides, is JJ Hickson, an athletic dynamo of a PF who’s ceiling is, for all intents and purposes, a poor man’s Amare Stoudemire.  Phoenix wants him as a replacement at a lower cost while the Cavs want him as a replacement at a higher cost with more productivity.  It’s the world we live in where the Cavs have to face a brutal gauntlet in the Eastern side of the playoffs while the Suns realize that no Western team is going to beat the Lakers…alas, if only the Cavs had such an easy road to the Finals as those queer dressin’, rapist lead Los Angeleans.

Here’s why this thing must happen, and a dispelling of rumors and falsities. Read the rest of this entry »

…here’s a video of a dunk. It’s totes awesome, obvs.

While the bulk of the MLJ crew heads down to Mexico for the 2nd Annual Major League Jerkoff and Super Bowl Party, Intern Jace is covering the site.

There was a lot of buzz leading into last year’s NBA draft about the young phenom from Duke both for his amazing outside shooting and the fact that he still has the potential to grow another two or three feet and add another 50 or 60 pounds to his wiry frame.  This year he has exceeded all expectations and then created new expectations and exceeded those too.  Consider last week when he scored 27 points, a season high for all rookies ever, against the defensively adept Sacramento Kings.  With a buzz like that surrounding him this early in the season there’s no way he doesn’t get the Rookie MVP award!

And it’s not just his awesome PPG that make we love him so.  Consider his 1.8 assist to turnover ratio, that’s Steve Nash-like!  Could he win 2 MVPs starting next year?  We don’t want to overhype the greatest young point guard in the league because he’s clearly not the player he will eventually be.  But we don’t feel it’s too much of a stretch that he’ll be in the Hall of Fame soon enough.

While the bulk of the MLJ crew heads down to Mexico for the 2nd Annual Major League Jerkoff and Super Bowl Party, Intern Jace is covering the site.

We’re not saying that we’ve heard rumors around our water cooler (our wife doesn’t watch much basketball anyway…mostly we talk about CBS sitcoms) but it makes sense to we that Suns head coach Mike D’Antoni should be fired.  Consider the facts:

• Since starting the season 14-3, Phoenix has a losing record!
• The Suns have never won a NBA Championship under the current leadership
• Since winning 2 MVPs, Steve Nash has yet to win another MVP

Clearly the Sun has set on the setting Suns and there’s no reason that Mike D’Antoni shouldn’t be put out to greener pastures.

On Thursday evening, the NBA announced that Chicago Bulls PG Derrick Rose was named to the All Star team as a reserve. Along with that announcement was a fun little bit of trivia that Rose is the Bulls’ first all star since Michael Jordan in 1998. In case you’re bad at math, 1998 was approximately 9 years ago. I know, right? Just think of all the things that have happened since then. Some guy who died in 1999 was still alive, something that happened in 2000 hadn’t even happened yet, and the Yankees were baseball’s best team. Craziness.

Being one of the few Bulls fans who remained loyal to the team even when they were winning fewer than 20 games back in the early part of this century, I hope you don’t mind that I take this time now to raise a glass and toast young Derrick for this achievement, one in which gives Bulls fans everywhere a chance to finally have a rooting interest in the main game during the NBA’s All Star weekend rather than just the rookie/sophs game.

/clears throat

Hi Bulls fans. I promise I’ll keep this short and sweet. And by “short and sweet”, I mean “long and torturous” [pause for laughter]. We’re here to honor Derrick Rose, a local kid out of Simeon High School, who was brought to us through the sheer luck of the NBA’s rigged lottery system. He’s given us thrills, like that time he dribble-penetrated into the lane and kicked it out to that shooter out on the wing who bricked it off the side of the rim, thus eliminating the chance for an assist [pause for laughter], and controversies, like that time when he was pictured giving a shout-out via hand signals to those gang member friends of his [make frowny face]. But today we look past all that and look only to the future. A future that looks brighter every day because of a young 21-year-old kid from Chicago, who dreamed one day of representing his home town in the NBA [wipe away tear]. Today we salute Derrick Rose. Here’s to the first of many All-Star appearances. Derrick, you wanna stand up and say a few words? Oh wait never mind. Let’s not ruin the moment. Anyway, here’s to you, Bud.

/raises glass, spits

Good job, Derrick. Thank you for helping me push the memories of Dickey Simpkins and Corey Benjamin and Dalibor Bagaric and Khalid El-Amin and Marcus Fizer and Roger Mason and Rick Brunson and Eddie Robinson and Kornel David and Rusty LaRue and all the other scrubs who had no business playing in the NBA way, way down into the back of my brain, never to be seen or heard from again. I appreciate it.

Now let’s watch some television: Read the rest of this entry »

The Phoenix Suns have lost 18 straight games that were broadcast on TNT dating back to March 13, 2008 including preseason and playoffs.  That’s right, for almost 2 years the Suns haven’t won a game when it’s been shown on a specific television channel.  If I were Dan Shaughnessy I would call this a curse and try to make millions of dollars off it.