If you can drag yourself away from DetroitBadBoys’ “most comprehensive ever” Carnival of the NBA for a moment, we’d like to direct your attention to something we mentioned briefly in a previous post.
This seemed to have been bubbling and/or rumored for awhile, but now it’s more or less official – Memphis All-Star power forward Pau Gasol and his electric are on the trading block.
Griz head man Jerry West is adamant about not having a fire-sale type of deal, but based on Pau’s frankness about wanting to leave and West’s statement that the team is listening to offers, we’d say IT IS ON.
“The conversation [with the Bulls] was brief,” West said. “But we’re not giving him away. This franchise won’t give him away. Period.”
“If we trade Pau we’re looking to substantially improve the team for the future or we would be looking to get more picks in this draft,” [team owner something something] Heisley said. “If we can improve the team, we would trade Pau. But there’s a difference when you’ve made up your mind like with Jason Williams and Bonzi Wells. Pau Gasol is not available in that sense. I don’t make trades. But if Jerry came to me with a trade that would improve this team, Pau will be traded. Jerry is always exploring possibilities.”
We’re not sure why the owner is even worried about this stuf, since he’s been trying to sell the team for some time now, but whatever. Let’s do the Sam Smith and fire up the ESPN Trade Checker…and let’s do it now.
CLE TRADES:
Anderson Varejao
Shannon Brown
Sasha Pavlovic
MEM TRADES:
Electric Pau!
As you saw if you followed the link, this trade doesn’t work. In fact, based on our brain functions, there’s no way in hell the Cavs are getting Pau Gasol unless MEM will take Drew Gooden (who they already had a go-round with), Z (who’s like a downgraded Pau who’s older), or Larry Hughes (who they have no use for and we kinda need).
Even so, we’re going to continue to make up fake trades that include contracts like Eric Snow, Ira Newble, and David Wesley until Pau packs his bags and heads to…here’s our call…New Jersey.
No, we don’t know how that’ll happen. Maybe via recent surgical volunteer Richard Jefferson? Do they have gay bars fun clubs in Memphis?
As if the Nets didn’t have enough awesome gossip problems with the Jason Kidd divorce saga and the “Vince Carter starting in the All-Star Game over Gilbert Arenas” fake controversey we’re trying to start, now forward Richard Jefferson is throwing in with his own drama.
Apparently the assembled media were wondering where Richard went after a game against Toronto earlier this week, partially because he was excused from practice the next day.
We say “partially” because when RJ resurfaced, he showed up with a black eye – one he claims he got in the Toronto game.
When called upon to explain the situation, great offense was taken by the lad.
“[When] all of a sudden I get people writing stuff about what I did the night before, where I was and what was going on, I take that as a personal attack. I’ve been open with you guys as much as you possibly can. But when somebody writes something like that, how can you not take it as a personal attack? I said I hurt it in the game. People are calling me and asking, ‘Did you and one of your teammates get into a fight?’
“I got people calling me. My mother’s calling me and my agent’s calling me,” continued Jefferson, staying calm but visibly trying to control his emotions. “It was nothing. It’s not like I got punched by Mike Tyson. I just feel disrespected.”
Hey, a lot of people would feel good to have agents and mothers calling them not everyone is so lucky as to have those things, let alone have them nagging you.
And what’s with all the emotion? It’s not like there are rumors floating around about why you might be such an emotional type.
Just explain how and why you got the black eye, and stop making up stories about “getting it in a basketball game”. There’s nothing to be gained by trotting out such likely scenarios.
Tell us you got it while you were were out drag racing your car after you drank seven 40s of King Cobra, and the winner of the drag race would get to make-out with the big hunky man who runs the underground drunk drag racing circuit. That’s something the media can grab hold of and believe in.
Besides, your team is finally starting to win – hell, you’re almost to .500 and everything. This is the time to embrace your inner homosexual drunk drag racing self. It’s what makes you special and unique.
(That kissy thing Kidd does on his free throws – that’s to his wife, right? How cool would it be if instead of the kissy thing, he would just gnaw and chew on his hand a bit?)
((Regarding the link in the previous parenthetical – why are the Nets running 9th grade biography essays on their website?))
If the happy news of the day is Coach Mike’s fury, the sad news would have to be the news about Jason Kidd’s family situation.
The Nets PG has filed for divorce from his wife, who at this point sounds like she can be categorized as “questionably sane”.
Why? Because this isn’t just a divorce – there restraining orders and allegations of child abuse involved.
We could get all deep into the stories about Kidd’s wife Joumana sneaking into the locker room to go through Jason’s locker, and then leaving their son downstairs alone while she goes up to the arena to heckle her husband during the games, but we’d rather just post the email that informed us of this news.
My Dearest,
How can you mention the Nets and crime, yet fail to provide the domestic abuse details? Joumana is a big bad in-game heckling ho who DESERVED to get punched over that french fry…I mean for hurting her kids. JKidd, protector of children. Because sometimes, the bitch DOES deserve it.
[LINK WAS LOVINGLY PLACED HERE]
Love,
Becky
Yeah, you know it.
This is the type of stuff that happens when you take a long layoff from blogging and then come back Photoshopping LeBron James as the Hulk.
Love letters. She may as well just come out as say she wants to give us hugs and kisses. And then we’d be all like, “Yeah, I want to hug and kiss you, too. Oh man!”
As for Kidd, sucks for him – guess “bang that lady out” takes on a whole new meaning with he and the soon-to-be-ex. (We reference his own domestic abuse charge from when he was in PHX.)
Anyway, as complicated and difficult as all of this will be, at least he can go have sex with groupies and not have to worry about hiding it from his wife anymore, so that’s a big plus.
The UtahJazzBlog is shocked that nobody is talking up the Dallas at Utah game tonight, considering it’s a matchup between two of the best teams (record-wise) in the Western Conference.
Well, when perusing tonight’s schedule a few minutes ago, that game did indeed stand out to us as significant. This is not a lie, nor is it as significant as somebody getting murdered like 3 blocks away from us this morning.
Sample conversation between a jogging us and COP ON THE SCENE:
COP ON THE SCENE: Hey, you can’t come this way, kid.
CAVALIER: What’s going on?
COTS: Somebody got murdered.
CAV: Okay, that’s cool.
COTS: It’s cool?
CAV: No, I mean it’s cool that I won’t run this way. Like I’m not fighting you on it.
Long, long, long pause.
COTS: They caught the guy.
CAV: Oh, that’s cool.
COTS: Is everything cool to you or something?
CAV: I’ma go now.
Yeah, so we ran the alternate route, all the while wondering how and why we just used an “I’ma” in actual conversation.
This all brings us back to DAL@UT. Nice game, but Utah isn’t the dominant team they were in November. They’re also somewhat boring, although that may just be the stigma coming from being in Utah – we haven’t actually watched them play this year.
The real deal though is thus: we’d much rather check out (besides the obvious CLE@SAC) Toronto going into New Jersey, in a battle of two sub-.500 teams battling it out for first place with the 15-21 Knicks.
The Atlantic Division continues to be absolutely fascinating, and truth be told, Toronto is playing some decent ball. They could be like a real team and everything in a year or two.
Murder, East-West conflicts, disgruntled Mormons – wow, this is an exciting morning, and it’s made all the better by our climb back into the Top Ten on LowPost DOT NET.
Before our OCT/NOV “slowdown” and DEC “complete shutdown”, we were in a consistant battle with True Hoop for the top spot, and we’re determined to return there.
You hear that, Abbot? You hear the footsteps? You here the rain and thunder? That’s weather, kid. And when weather gets angry, the principal is you PAL, cause that’s how the spelling on that works. Teach that to your possibly basketball-legend named child, and then take it to the bank!
NOTE: First we need to roll on The Nugg Doctor, so like, look out for your own weather based threats, coming soon, Doc. We’ll probably be bringing like an avalanche your way, or maybe a hail storm, in the case that an avalanche is classified under “natural disaster” and not “exteme weather condition that can make people’s lives uncomfortable and scary”.
Turns out that “Denver Broncos cornerback gets killed” story has a small NBA slant to it – the deceased player was leaving a birthday party for Nuggets forward Kenyon Martin.
As you may or may not know, Kenyon’s knees suck. They’ve both been surgerized, and we’re pretty sure those are multiple surgelicals.
That’s the extent of the connection, and the knees don’t even count – we just needed filler.
Martin and the other attending Nuggets allegedly left before midnight, probably because they’d set up an NFL drive-by shooting and needed to get there on time.
“I was there. He was there. I left. I saw him. That was about the extent of it,” Martin told The Denver Post. “It is what it is. It’s an unfortunate thing.”
“About the extent of it” is the key in this particular case.
“About” meaning, “except for the part where we came back and shot people.”
Sorry to be all brash and accusatory, but we’re essetially new at this again, plus it’s a well-known fact that any borderline All-Star power forwards who once played for the New Jersey Nets have a tendency to kill people.
That’s a Jayson Williams jab, by the way.
So…as of this post, we’re officially caught up, and as you may note, 2007 is all about wildly false accusations and bringing up okay players who retired somewhere between 3-9 years ago. Look out Rex Chapman – we’re coming for you, as soon as we get done with John Starks and Hersey Hawkins.
These were the Atlantic Division standings as of day the last.
If you haven’t guessed, this was something we were gonna get into yesterday afternoon, but didn’t. We’ve slyly transported the picture into an all-new post, and that’s the experience you’re having now.
Alas, the Atlantic Division is worse than ever, but after last night’s Nets victory over the Celtics, New Jersey has at least taken sole control of the group.
As they say, that’s all we have to say about that, although you might go read Bill Simmons’ latest for a full breakdown of the sadness that is the Eastern Conference.
Moving on to one other NBA-specific note before we go forward with the YAY-centric notes…
After the uninspired Cavaliers lost to the Knicks at home last night, we’re doing something we haven’t done since LeBron arrived on the scene: we’re voluntarily boycotting the game against the Hawks Friday night.
We refuse to watch Malaise LeBron and his merry band of Whatever Men play down to another team they should slaughter.
LeBron – we love ya, but if you don’t care, we don’t, either. Losing is fine, and we can deal with it. What we can’t deal with is losing because you didn’t try. You guys are making us sick – it might be Mike Brown, but it’s also you, LBJ. You’re the King – act like it.
F’ING TRY – even Damon Jones, of all people, got in your face about (repeatedly) not closing out on Quentin Richardson last night.
Okay, moving on, which is a sick transition. UNGH!
We’re switching server companies, so we no longer get raped on bandwidth costs, and also so we can transfer everything over to WordPress blogging software. (From Movable Type.)
What that means is thus – our content output this month is going to be down – there’s no way around it.
This isn’t really a change from the last three months actually, but between switching over to WP, doing a complete and total redesign of the site (possibly with a different name), finishing up work on WSM?, travelling to see family in various places, some other non-blog professional things that have developed, and our vast charity works, we’re swamped.
Of course, if we’re forced to completely boycott the Cavs altogether, this frees some time up, yes?
Anyway, this starts soon – don’t be surprised if the whole deal looks different one day, and it’ll probably start on a generic design and stay there for several weeks. We don’t think we can even get to the new graphics and such until we’re home with Mom and Dad in mid-December. (Who beat us!)
Thanks for your patience – things will get back to somewhat normal in January – promise.
The talk about the new roundie has died down quite a bit – mostly in favor of bitching about the refs.
More and more, the guys are just playing with the thing, realizing at last that it just isn’t that big of a deal. (Moreso, they’ve probably realized David Stern isn’t budging on this one.)
In fact, last night the lil’ guy actually got a little bit of backhanded praise.
Vince Carter hit an unlikely shot that sent the Nets/Wizard game to OT – an OT that New Jersey would dominate, thus winning the game.
Afterward, Vince and Jason Kidd gave thanks to the mighty glowing object of synthetic power.
Would the old [roundie] have gone in on Carter’s last-gasp tying shot?
“If it would’ve hit like that? Heck no,” he said. “No way.”
“It didn’t rattle. It just stuck,” Kidd said. “The old [roundie] maybe just hits the rim and bounces out. But you’re going to see a lot of those [roundies] maybe get stuck and roll in or get stuck and roll off. We were very fortunate that it stuck and rolled in.”
Even we’ll admit it looked a little odd, but in this case, “odd” worked. (At least for the Nets.)
Since we have nothing else to say about that, allow us to offer up this plea for help:
See that ad at the top of this column for the sportbook place? (Click on it while you’re taking the moment to check it out – send some traffic over to the sponsors, eh?)
We don’t see it. There’s some setting on our laptop that keeps up from seeing it. Similarly, we don’t see ads on the main page of MSN DOT COM or on myspace (DOT COM!!!!).
Anyone have any idea why this is? It’s not really a big deal, except that whatever it is also blocking us from seeing NBA League Pass on our computer. (We think it has something to do with Flash-based things? Dunno – that’s why we’re asking.)
It’s not a huge deal, except that if we could get that running, we could have a game on TV and one on the computer, thus bringing us one step closer to a seizure, something we’ve always been curious about.
Whoever can fix this gets a free Who Shot Mamba? shirt of their choice from the YAYsports! Store of Purchasable Goods.
Email or comments section is cool – thanks in advance.
Watch.
Now discuss. Be safe if you’re out dressing up like a monster or pirate tonight.
The latest in the saga of Bonzi Wells (aka “the guy who ruined all the NBA annuals that are already on the stands”) is that he’s talking with the Houston Rockets.
They don’t have much money to offer, nor do they likely have a starting spot. They do, however, have an awesome 1-year, $2.1M insult to hand out.
We say insult not because that’s not a lot of money to a normal person, but because on the scale that gives Mike Dunleavey, Jr. $9M per (or whatever), Bonzi is at like $40M per. It’s his own fault. Let’s move on.
The first teaser to Who Shot Mamba?. After our subtle statement it’d be here today, it clearly isn’t.
The reason is thus: we got overexcited. It’s too early. See, there are four teasers in all. In order to properly run promotion of the film, they really should come out in BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM intervals, with a fifth, evenly spaced BAM being the glorious unveiling of Episode One.
Were we to debut the first teaser today, then you’re getting a BAM——-BAM-BAM-BAM spacing pattern. It makes all those dashes in the middle a big momentum killer, when in reality, the single dash is just enough time to let you breathe a bit and get excited for the next BAM.
Hopefully this makes sense, and you’ll accept our apology for saying we’d do something and then not doing it. If it doesn’t make sense, just go read about the Nets extending their current arena lease while still planning to move to Brooklyn before the new extension is over.
After reading that mess, coming back to the BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM theory should be quite soothing.
(MattB, you’re up. Make it a good one!)
After we took a mild slap at Nenad in the previous post, we got a couple quick emails in taking us to task for it.
For example:
why you always cracking on nenad
he aint that bad you should watch the NETS
later
First of all, we’re not “always” cracking on Nenad. We’ve only done it like 20 times, and only when we write about him and/or the Nets and/or the lack of real centers in the NBA.
Thing is…there’s a reason for this. A real reason.
We used to be best friends with Nenad. Bear with us.
Several years ago, during our fourth go-round with the Peace Corps, we spent some time in Croatia. While building a hut for a well-known Croatian diplomat, we met a young, promising big man named Nenad Kristophersonbach.
He was crude in both basketball fundamentals and common sense, but we saw a spark in the young lad. We saw that certain something that let’s you know someone is a future halfway competent NBA player.
Knowing what we had on our hands, we immediately emailed our dad and asked him to email our uncle, who then emailed Chad Ford. Anyway, to make a long story short, after Nenad got to the NBA, we accidentally (KEY WORD) had sex with his girlfriend, and he’ll no longer speak to us.
That doesn’t change the fact that he still goes by the “star-making” reimagined last name we came up with for him, or that he still has the same hairstyle we told him he’d need to make it here in the States.
Look, the point of all this is that at one time we’d had plans for an awesome fan club for Nenad – one we obviously aren’t in position to run anymore. We are, however, sitting on a stack of the t-shirts we printed up for it.
Hit the fast-expanding YAYsports!/Who Shot Mamba? shop to check them out.
