This may not be as exciting as Phil Jackson going into the Hall of Fame, or learning the real reason why Gilbert Arenas didn’t have his passport to go to Canada a couple weeks back, but if you’re into the Houston Rockets, and you’re into basketball court refurbishing, this is the post for you.
“The best part of this design is the court is really going to stand out because the lighting isn’t going to get saturated into the red,” said Rockets creative services manager Jose Lopez, who designed the court. “Since we have red seats, it will be a great contrast.”
We’d say the best part of the design is it brings the Rockets a little closer to simplicity.
Ever since they went to the “exploding rocket ship cartoon” design of the mid-90s, the Rockets have had maybe the worst logos/uniforms/etc in the NBA. The Pistons were smart enough to ditch their “exploding horse engine cartoon” and return to a variation on their classic logo/uniforms/etc in time to win their flukey title a few years ago – we wish the Rockets would do the same.
Maybe they could have similar luck – like how they signed Steve Francis this summer. (Insert your own joke here – we exhausted our Franchise backlog in December.)
Sorry about the lack of posts/updates. A very wise reader once said, “That snake movie ruined what used to be my favorite website,” or something to that effect. That’s probably true, but it’s also what will resurrect your favorite website from its grave condition, so be thankful.
Never forget – we’ll be remembered one day as the greatest NBA blogger of all time – it’s important that become cemented in your heads. That may be like being the tallest guy at the midget convention, but like, midget conventions are growing in popularity, so there’s some significance to that.
The 14th biggest story of the offseason is over, as difficult-to-sign #6 pick Yi Jianlian has finally signed a deal to play for the Milwaukee Bucks.
Bucks GM and casual stand-up comedian (we can’t find the post to reference this, sorry) recently took a trip overseas to sway the man’s reps with his subtle wits and charms, and dear lord…it worked.
Of course, ESPN’s John Hollinger is declaring this development irrelevant, since Yi is possibly as old as 46, and he’s alos not very good at the basketball playing thing.
In summer league, when he played for Team China, Yi was a disaster. In five games, he had nearly twice as many turnovers (23) as baskets (13). He shot 25.5 percent from the floor, and he was much less productive on the glass than he’d been at the world championship, averaging just over a rebound for every six minutes.
In case you’re not stat-savvy like we are, that translates to two rebounds every twelve minutes, three every eighteen minutes, and if he played a whole game, Yi would have 19 rebounds and 33 points, to go along with his 12 assists.
How this becomes “can’t play basketballing good”, we have no idea. Go Bucks, etc.
More exciting than any of this international intrigue are the rumors/analysis that LeBron James has done some tweaking to the old jump shot. He shot 11-11 in lasterday’s tourney game, and by many accounts is showing improved (and consistent) form.
When exactly he did this work is unknown, but if it happened, it happened. If it’s true, we may be able to survive as an NBA fan – add in perhaps some hoped-for “killer instinct by osmosis” from Kobe, and LeBron may be watchable this upcoming season.
In case that weren’t enough excitement for you, we’re officially starting a new club here on the site – The Anti-Mamba Revenge Squad. This would be for any of you who continually talk trash and exhibit a lack of faith regarding WSM?.
How do you get into such a group? Two ways – you either declare yourself a member, or you litter the comments sections with your snide declarations that we’re full of ish. Your membership is both easy to use, and will also be torturously embarassing when the film arrives, be assured.
Well, to the above there is your first actual screenshot from the dead snake movie.
Many of you had guessed this already, but there are indeed boxes in the film. For the extremely clever among you…yep, there are several boxes.
We’ve had an incredibly busy two weeks, but everything is coming together as almost planned. What did we miss while we were gone?
It seems like the site has mostly turned into embittered readers sniping at each other and/or Boney. This hardly seems fair – if anyone deserves your scorn, ’tis us.
We’ve teased you, strung you along, and prodded you left and right for over a year. And what do you get for all of that? Nothing as of yet!
Luckily, we’re exactly like Kobe Bryant, whose summer-long quest to agonize Laker and NBA fans with his on-and-off again trade demands yield no answers, outside of vague red squares with words engraved on them.
As we walked toward the team bus some 40 minutes after Team USA’s practice ended Saturday, this was his response:
“I’m not going to answer that question. The Lakers know exactly where I stand, and they’ve known exactly where I stand since the beginning of the summer.”
Other than that, nothing has happened in the NBA since we left, outside of someone getting shot at Deshawn Stevensons’ house and nobody talking the police about it. That’s not suspicious or anything, so don’t think it is.
What kind of conclusion have you drawn here from this return post? We’ve got nothing – we’re still alive. We’re still on target for that 1X.X0.07 date for the WSM?. Everything is, as Mamba would say, cool.
UPDATE: Anyone have any idea what’s going on over at the WSM? site? Weird. We had lunch with Becky the other day and already met her parents. She’s pushing everything pretty fast on us like that, but hey.
As they say in that one song, “Sumpin’ happenin’ here…”
C’mon – it’s not like anything’s going on, anyway. It’s August in the NBA!
By the way O’Neal – you’re a contracted player, not a free agent.
“[Pacers GM] Larry Bird is a hard man to deal with,” O’Neal said. “He tries to make unfair trades. He wants to gut a team, but the Lakers are trying to get over the hump. I want Indiana to benefit, but with some nice young players and draft picks. I want to make it clear that I don’t want to gut a team that I come to because then it’ll be like I’m in Indiana all over again.”
You don’t just get to go, “I want to be traded to the Lakers, and please take a garbage deal so they’re still good when I get there.” Yeah, we know – you’ve got the opt-out next summer, blah blah blah.
Have some tact – that’s all we ask. Your team already made a garbage deal to help out the Warriors – that’s enough Pacific Division charity for now, okay?
See you on the other side of August 20th, friends. Remember – it’s all for you.
In the interim, please use this comments thread to discuss what Rondo can do for you, to you, with you, or at you.
(UPDATE: Look at Darius Miles’ car. Some people would call that stupid – we are one of them. Okay, we’re back to not being here until the 21st again.)
UPDATE 2: Yeah, chew on this for the next two weeks:
That says more about Rondo than we could ever hope to. Thanks to commenter yahtzee for shedding the light on a true hero, and a true villain. The Rondo is a complex creature, to be sure.
UPDATE 3: Yes, this post did hide itself for awhile. Not sure why. Okay, we’re really gone this time.
If you were on the lookout for NBA stars this weekend, you could’ve done worse than LA.
Yes, the LA Stars Charity Game was going on, and a whole bunch of stars, plus Dahntay Jones came out to hoop it up. Tim Hammer of the LAist was there to witness it all, and it couldn’t have been more dangerous. Snoop Dogg sprained an ankle and everything.
It is fair, however, to say that every celebrity basketball game has the one guy who takes the game a little too seriously. On Sunday night, that guy was Flex Alexander.
Flex was calling for the ball with the traditional hand clap, which was then followed up with a conversation with the teammate who didn’t pass him the ball to let them know that he was open. Flex would eventually get the ball, and would lose it out of bounds on a fast break layup with not one person near him. This, of course, lead him to look at his hands and wonder how the ball slipped out of them and into the second row.
This is great to know, because when we’re famous we’ll fit right in. Minus the part where we can actually catch the ball before turning it over. Why waste the time, when you can go right to the TO?
Now, celebrities and pros playing basketball is exciting and all, but the best part is that the ever-enigmatic Orange Roundie made an appearance! Yep, they used him, and if you think he didn’t have ulterior motives in giving of his time for free, you’re dead wrong. Emphasis on dead.
From what we hear, the Roundie is angrier than ever, and it’s not gonna let up anytime soon. In fact, the closer we get to [date redacted], the more the anger flows.
On a semi-related note for those who can read between the lines, email on if you’re interested in helping promote Who Shot Mamba? on your blog or site. We’ll be doing communication via Ballhype for the impending storm, but if you’re like us, you may not use Ballhype as much as you should. We don’t want to leave anyone out. Get on the list now – learn the secrets and bask in the glory.
You’ll be rewarded for your assistance, and you’ll be like “oh shoot…we shoulda got on that train…” after the fact if you don’t help. No BS, no hyperbole, no nothin’ – just the truth. Email and email to yaysports@gmail.com with “WSM” in the subject line.
We slept for 12 hours last night, which is more than twice the amount we usually sleep, and longer than we’ve slept in probably 7 years.
Being a fair-skinned lad, the amount of time we had in the sun the past two days did us in, both from an internal chemistry standpoint, as well as a “that’s a hell of a farmer’s tan” standpoint.
No, we weren’t at the beach – we were working for you – so there.
Anyway, we were pretty happy to just let the previous post’s comments section ride, but figured we better update in some fashion before Cobra rips out more posts tomorrow than we did all week.
Um…what to say. We could prematurely over-analyze the Celtics over and over, but it’s premature and such. (As we said in the already mentioned comments section, we spoke with a legitimate NBA expert who shuddered when asked about Rajon Rondo starting at the point for BOS.)
So here’s what we’ve got. A long car ride lasterday revealed a glaring hole or two in our early-mid 90s rap collection. If anyone can send us the following, you win a prize. That prize being a fat thank you:
“Ditty Ditty” by Paperboy
“Guerillas in Tha Mist” by Da Lench Mob
“Pistol Grip Pump” by (we think?) Volume 10
It’s really hard to remember this stuff. Anyway – we’d appreciate the help.
Also…in a stunning turn of events…we shall be meeting a significant poster to said comments sections in the next 10 days. how much of the encounter will be reported is unknown at this time.
Anyone who has read this site for any length of time knows that since the announcement of WSM? in May of 2006, this site has been in complete disarray.
The reasons for this are many, and after the release of the aforementioned film, we believe the answers as to why that happened will be clear. Basically, a ten minute short became a monsterous epic of a motion picture.
Alas, that meant our daily 5-6 post output of Photoshop fun was lost to the abyss with many other things, like All-Star 1-on-1, Kwame vs Cake, and Constant Harrassment of ESPN’s Scoop Jackson.
The return of those days are probably not possible. (Although many of those things do return in…WSM?.)
Anyway, with the offseason upon us, and the Cavaliers fresh off of their first Finals Massacre, we thought we should lay out the plans for the near future for you.
1) WSM? will not be out this summer. Theoretically it is possible, but commercially it’d be stupid. Not enough people inside on their computers. Not enough time to do the effective promotional push necessary to create legend status.
2) We will continue to write YAYsports! NBA, and we will do our best to at least hit Monday-Friday, with a Sat/Sun postage desired. (But not promised.) There will of course, be exceptions, and we will inform you of this ahead of time. Jack Cobra will continue to pop in on Fridays for as long as he feels it fulfills a void in his life.
3) We will be starting a personal blog somewhere tomorrow, the location of which will remain unknown and unrevealed until sometime in the future. The excitement of us writing with an “I” instead of a “we” might be too overwhelming to just give to you in an explosive instant – a transitional period may be warranted.
4) If the Cavaliers fail to hire an offensive assistant coach specialist type, we may boycott “life”.
5) The classic short film “An American Roundie in America” has, as noted in several places, been pulled off YouTube. It will be back, in a high quality format, on the WSM? DVD.
6) The habit of making all types of site-related promises and then not keeping them will cease, unless we just make a mistake and then find we did it again.
That’s about all. For the record, Geek Squad has informed us that our hard drive is shot, which means we need to track down a new copy of Photoshop asap for whatever machine we end up on going forward – we used to have a pirated one around somewhere, but haven’t tracked it down. (Plus we are still traveling – we get home later today.) If you have one, please send us an email!
We’d like to avoid one of those internet knock-offs you can get for free – the last thing we have time for is learning a new program at this time, unless you’re like a really pretty girl and want to sit and teach it to us while we look at you and say things like “gosh, you’re pretty.”
In conclusion, we apologize for the YAY always seeming to be in some sort of transitional state, but such is life, yes?
NOTE: Biggest story of the offseason is obviously Kobe Bryant. Sam Smith of all people is actually saying not to trade for him, which strangely doesn’t stop him from making up 150 different trade rumors involving the Bulls. Kobe v LeBron battling for the Central Division would be awful cool – we vote CHI should make it happen.
Computer – fried. Eardums -fried. NBA season – over. New hat – purchased. Readership – likely gone.
The NBA Finals have been a complete and total disaster, and those nerds at Geek Squad did nothing to alleviate it all. We’re in OH still and will be until Monday. Somehow we found out how to login to the site after hours and hours of gmail searches and password guessing.
As you can imagine, we have no Photoshop – no nothing, except 4 straight losses in the NBA Finals and the aforementioned new hat.
We did do, see, and hear some interesting things at and around the game evening the last, and we’ll do our best to write up a recap, provided the ultra friendly hotel staff stops offering us cookies or juice every 15-20 seconds.
We apologize for not being present for basically the biggest series of our NBA fandom, and yours, if you’re a CLE fan.
Also, we just now found out Tony Parker is from France – weird!
NOTE: TrueHoop’s own Henry Abbot has been given Secret #3b of WSM?. The reason for this is not secret in an of itself. It’s called street cred, friends. Street cred and verification of a “Non-crazy Cavalier”. When the time comes, many will look to Henry and say “Wait, is he serious?” and Henry will now be forced to type you in the eye and say “Yes, he is. It’s gonna be big.”
Okay, we left a comment over in The Big Lead’s comment section regarding their list of greatest movie trilogies, and there was just no way we cold say everything we wanted to – let’s just start here: any list of movie trilogies that doesn’t include Back To the Future in its top 5 demands an overwritten response such as this.
This type of list is impossible for us without disclaimers, so consider this our official comment. Make sure you read to the end, where there’s a shocking announcement! (*means part 3 (or 2 or 4…) is out this summer)
Greatest Trilogies:
1) Back to the Future
2) Star Wars (Original)
3) Indiana Jones
4) Pirates of the Carribean*
5) The Brave Little Toaster
Legitimately Great, But Personally We’re Just Not That Into Them
1) Godfather
2) Austin Powers
3) Lord of the Rings
Pretty Great, But More Like A Series of Movies; Not Really A Cohesive Trilogy Because None of the Movies Have Anything to do With Each Other:
1) Die Hard*
2) Lethal Weapon
3) Mission: Impossible
4) Batman (Keaton/Kilmer)
5) Vacation
Could’ve Been Great, But Messed Up Either 2, 3, or Both:
1) The Matrix (We actually really liked 2, it was 3 that was unwatchable.)
2) Spider-Man* (3 – unforgivable.)
3) Star Wars (Prequels – we really liked the first one, second one sucked, thrid one was okay.)
4) Terminator (3 sold out the whole thing.)
5) X-Men (Actually, 2 was the only good one.)
Screwed Up Right From the Start, But Could Redeem Themselves:
1) Superman Returns
2) Fantastic Four*
Great, In Spite of Itself:
1) Rocky I-V (Rocky Balboa doesn’t count, because it was horrible. III & IV are classics.)
Not Great, But Very Watchable:
1) Ocean’s 11*
2) The Bourne Identity*
3) Rush Hour*
4) Scream
5) Robocop
Great, But Never Should’ve Been A Trilogy:
1) Major League
2) Naked Gun
Should Be Great Trilogies Once They’re Done:
1) WSM?
2) Batman (The new ones.)
3) Shrek*
4) High School Musical (Look, she’s almost 19 now, okay?)
That’s all, except for the shocking announcement that Becky will sleep with you if you take her to the Nets game tonight. Boney – here’s the link to Expedia!
We can’t say we blame them, especially when it was one of those games that kinda reminded us of the Baron Davis we know from our normal lives, ie “before that crazy Mavs series”.
The Warriors just seemed kinda off, or more likely, kinda realistic. A team with that kind of talent and speed can roll over anyone when they’re hot, but when they’re not…they’re just a messy basketball team.
That’s not take anything away from Utah, which is like all good and stuff. Luckily we’re over the whole Carlos Boozer/Cavaliers thing, because truth be told, he’s the type of player we love to watch.
Jazz PG Davey Williams knows it, loves it. Lives it.
“We’ve got to throw it in to Carlos first,” [Dimone Williams] said. “We’ve got to let him work, let him get some touches down low, and then it helps us out, because when he’s doing work down low, they’ve got to come down, they’ve got to double it, they’ve got to try to get it out of his hands, because there really is nobody his size out there on the floor that can guard him, and when he does that it opens up things outside and we can work from there.”
We don’t want to get all on that Williams is to Stockton as Boozer is to Malone thing that’s gonna grow more and more in the coming weeks, but it’s getting kinda hard to ignore.
Both Boozer and Malone are a little undersized, stocky, rock-solid work-horses who just play hard and play right. That aligns correctly with Dominic Williams and John Stockton, who both were known to wear Utah Jazz uniforms.
Anyway, this post has no point really – the whole Warriors thing is quickly losing its romantic angle, and frankly, the idea of the Jazz moving on is interesting, if only to see how ABC sells that big UTAH-SAN ANTONIO series.
They’re really gonna need to downplay it, because with this combination of explosive personalities, dynamic gameplay, and (especially) the wild antics the two teams’ coaches encourage, it’s just gonna be nuts. Add in the massive national followings of the Jazz and Spurs, and we can see ratings records falling all over the place.
