Jocks and Call Girls in Denver; Avery Freezes Kidd; Isiah Is Done; A Little NFL Free Agency News

Call a girl in Denver

A high-end prostitution ring was busted in Denver (you know where this one is going). A few Denver Broncos players were on the “roll call.” Denver Nuggets players were, too. Arizona Diamondbacks players were prominent users. And it looks like some of the good Christians in the Colorado Rockies clubhouse were ——- hookin’ up for Jesus.

Now, if there are millionaire athletes involved with “garden tools” you can bet there are other pros in Denver ploughing the fertile territory of the call girl-prostitute ring:

On Kurt Thomas: Don’t Dare Question My Au-thor-i-tie!

ESPN’s Chris Broussard, along with Ric Bucher are two of the best NBA analysts in the sports journalism game. The WWL leaves the pop-pom waving for the Lig to others while these two get real news.

This morning Broussard, after speaking with a long time scout, said the second best late trade this season (the LA Lakers getting Pau Gasol being number one) is not Shaquille O’Neal but ahem – drumroll, Kurt Thomas going to San Antonio. That’s right. KT.

While other pundits and think they knows were hufffing the Big Shaqtus glue, this author said of all acquisitions, Thomas was the second-most important acquisition. What’d I say about KT?:

Rating the Latest Flurry of NBA Trades

The NBA trade deadline has come and gone. In the coming weeks we will come to understand which GMs were proactive and which were reactive. And in the coming weeks we will know which moves brought their teams greater success and which moves were busts.

It is going to be a very interesting stretch run.

1. The Lakers go —- Pau!

The Los Angeles Lakers trade for Pau Gasol was so good it invited conspiracy theories. It was so good that San Antonio Spurs head coach Gregg Popovich advocated for the league to have the ability to determine that a trade was “stupid” and have it rescinded.

For Phoenix, 30 Games Until the Truth Is Told

The Los Angeles Lakers were in an unenviable position last night in Phoenix. Win against and you’re supposed to because the Suns are getting acclimated to the Big Philanderer, Shaquille O’Neal. Lose, and Phoenix becomes an instant NBA media darling with O’Neal as a conquering hero.

Fortunately LA won, 130-124, led by Kobe Bryant’s 41 points. And fortunately Shaq’s biggest effect was on the back of Raja Bell’s – a perpetual-motion hack machine – head with a little less than three minutes remaining in the game. (Now for my NBA officiating crew rant…)

2007: The Year In Retrospect; May-June

May – NBA Playoffs, Michael Vick dominate the news

May 2: The month is off to a raucous start as the Golden State Warriors were in the midst of upsetting the Dallas Mavericks in the first round of the NBA playoffs. The defense played by Stephen Jackson on Dirk Nowitzki, the man who would be the MVP, is a sight to behold.

A University of Pennsylvania (Justin Wolfers) and Cornell University (Joseph Price, graduate student) study finds racial bias in NBA referees through the disparity on fouls called on black players. David Stern decries the study, but it turns out that the NBA privately gathered similar data.

NBA Power Rankings: The Top 10

Now that I’ve caught up with the happenings in The League, it’s time to lay down my power rankings.

1. Boston, 22-3: Could this pick be any more obvious?  At present the Cees are playing the best team defense and some of the most consistent offense in the NBA. Last season’ debacle in Beantown was a blessing in disguise because it allowed Rajon Rondo to play extended minutes. The experience readied Rondo for this season and he’s all the steadier for it. The only question for Boston is will they develop bench play that won’t relinquish leads or lose touch with opposing teams when they are behind in games. Kevin Garnett, Ray Allen, and Paul Pierce have to rest sometime and they need to know all their work won’t go out the window as soon as they hit the pine.

2. San Antonio, 20-7: The injury bug has finally made its way to the Spurs. Tim Duncan (sprained right ankle), Tony Parker (sprained left ankle), and Manu Ginobili (sprained left index finger) have all missed time. Additionally, Francisco Elson is battling a sore foot and Brent Barry’s calf is aching. With enough problems to tax the best of teams, Gregg Popovich and the reserves have managed to hold the team together.  If the Spurs can pull off 20 wins without their big three playing together, just think of what will happen when they’re all healthy.

NBA Opening Night: Three Games Tell A Little About a Lot and Magic Johnson Shows – and Tells – Us Why the Lakers Are a Team in Disarray

It’s my second opening night on Sports On my Mind. There are three games to open the season (I just watched the San Antonio Spurs receive their championship rings and thin. Tim Duncan and Tony Parker scored the first two buckets for the Spurs and Fabricio Oberto committed the first foul of the 2007-08 NBA season.

I’ll throw down my observations of the Spurs-Portland Trail Blazers, the Houston Rockets-LA Lakers, and the Utah Jazz-Golden State Warriors games. As a bonus for this post, after my game notes I’m going to answer some questions about the coming season as supplied by “Origin (Comment #2)” who is a valued visitor and commenter.

I hope y’all out there are enjoying tonight as much as I am.

peace,                                                                                                                                          -DWil

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NBA Thoughts: The Jazz Get Help at Home Once Again

The NBA’s image was further damaged last night with yet another Utah debacle. I refuse to run through the litany of bad calls in big games at big moments in Utah. But last night’s call in the waning moments of the Utah-San Antonio game, a 97-93 Jazz win, ranks up there with the worst on the list.

Yeah, the Spurs appeared to play poorly for three quarters and admitted as much after the game. They were sloppy on both ends of the floor, out rebounded, and out hustled. But NBA games are long. The 24-second clock allows teams to scrape their way back into games and come back from seemingly insurmountable deficits. The clock also is a psyche-detector. When there’s two minutes left hit the 4th and you need only three more buckets to seal a game, can an offense continue to execute its offense? Who steps ups when the offense breaks down? Can a coach call the right plays to run in the crunch? Gregg Popovich and the veteran Spurs are masters at executing in the crunch. Masters at the come back; masters at breaking an opponents’ psyche.

Despite three poorly-played quarters, San Antonio entered the fourth quarter down only six, 71-65. Unless a lesser team like Utah can extend that lead to between 12 and 15 points in the first six minutes of the fourth, they can count on being in trouble when the crunch comes. And with a little more than a minute left in the game, the Jazz were about to break.

Tony Parker scored 14 of the Spurs 30 fourth quarter points and kept S.A. close and the Spurs defense clamped down on the young Jazz who were minus injured Carlos Boozer keeping them scoreless for four separate around 1:30 stretches – a scoreless total of half the fourth quarter.

Between the 3:18 and 1:19 marks San Antonio scored on four consecutive possessions with Robert Horry’s 3-pointer being the exclamation point, putting S.A. ahead 89-88.

The following Utah possession saw more of the Spurs sticky defense and saw the Jazz about to fold. Mehmet Okur curled to the top of the key and on a switch; Tony Parker took Okur as he received a pass. Okur elevated over Parker for a late clock three-point shot. Parker turned to watch, put out his forearm, knowing he might feel Okur attempt to slip around him for a long rebound off a miss. At the moment of the shot, Parker was a good two feet from Mehmet. As Okur came down he ever-so-slowly scissor-kicked, looked down and made sure his right foot found Parker’s shoe. The ball clanged off the rim into Tm Duncan’s hands.

But. There was a whistle.

Somehow, someway – the Utah way – Parker was whistled for a foul by the referee crew of Derrick Collins, Jim Clark, and Zach Zarba, and Okur went to the line to shoot three free throws. Parker went ballistic. Popovich was apoplectic. The refs were stoic in the faces of Parker and Pop. Okur sunk all three freebies giving Utah a one point lead. After two San Antonio misses on one possession, Okur hit a quick pull-up three that sealed the game for Utah.

I can’t say it enough. There’s a problem in with officiating in the NFL and the NBA. But in the NBA, because officials make more calls, because the game is more open than is football, and because NBA referees tend to insert themselves and their personalities into the game, their mistakes a more readily seen. As a result, NBA refs and league officials up to commissioner David Stern must be acutely aware of public perception when mistakes are made of the kind that took place in Utah last night. But the Association continues blithely along because if Popovich or Parker or another San Antonio player complained publicly about the call, the punishment from the league in the way of a fine would be swift.

The League’s continued “there’s nothing to see here, move along” stance on the issues of the veracity of its referees makes a “mistake” like the one last night in Utah seem like it wasn’t a mistake at all.

NBA Teams as Planetary Systems: LA Lakers and Dallas Mavericks

This is a combination of two responses to a post on Free Darko about the Dallas Mavericks-Los Angeles Lakers game last night. The post is cool – and it caused me to come up with the following analyses of the two teams and a new way to, in general, view NBA teams.

The basic premise: The Dallas Mavericks are a collection of parts like the Knicks (except infinitely better) and the Lakers are a one-man team…..

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I’m not sure that the Mavs “collective” is any different than the Laker team. Dirk is the leader of the Mavs; Avery-appointed, Nellie-appointed, self-appointed, media-anointed (thought I’d throw that media-anointed one in because then it sounds like an Al Sharpton quote). Seriously though, for Dallas, Dirk is “The Man” with a cast of players confident in their roles and abilities, who know they too can step up and control certain portions of games. The difference between Jet and Howard (to name two Mavs) and Dirk is that Dirk is “the nightmare,” while the other two can only be “heroes” if they have favorable matchups.

So, how about this instead: The Lakers are the Mavs with a younger group of satellites surrounding their planet (Kobe-Lakes, Dirk-Mavs).

It’s my feeling that the Lakers’ satellites are actually much more talented than the Mavs’ satellites – and there are more of them. The difference is, the LA satellites are younger and just learning the “how to be” of their jobs.

Kobe’s line against the Nuggs was: 8,5, and 10. His line against the Mavs: 26, 8, and 6. His line against Sacto: 42, 10, and 9.

In the Nuggs game five other Lakers scored more points than Kobe. I’m unsure that ever happens with Dirk, if D-Now plays 35-40 minutes – unless he has an awful game and the Mavs get trounced on an off night. For another example of the mature planet Kobe’s effect on a team, look at the box of the Spurs-Grizz game last night. Check out Duncan’s line versus his satellites – and the final score. Now think of Kobe with more satellites more secure with their proximity to their primary object.

Without Dirk there would be a battle between Howard and Jet for team supremacy. Jet did the same with Atlanta. Though he was very good on a very bad team, his attitude was and is not conducive to pulling team members together – and he doesn’t have enough game to force his team to revolve around him. I’m unsure about Howard’s impact on his teammates, but he appears to be too quiet and not enough of a media attractor to fulfill the role of “the man” (at least at this moment in his career).

Conversely, the problem with Dallas’ defense is —- Dirk. Though he tries more than he ever has, he is as much a defensive liability as he is an offense juggernaut. When guys on the wing are consistently beating a defender off the dribble, defenses invariably collapse. That’s what happens with Dirk and the Mavs. The same thing happens to them when their centers are faced with a mobile opponent. Now you potentially have two liabilities sharing the same defensive space – now what? It’s amazing the Avery Johnson is able to will his team to the level of defense that it does play. I commend his and the team’s effort because it would be really easy for other players to say ‘screw it’ and not defend at all. However, they know their liabilities are at least putting forth effort, so they stick with the program.

The Lakers have similar problems with Smush Parker getting beat, except with Smush it’s a combination of him being a relatively young player in total experience and his lapses in concentration. He’s getting better, but last night’s game showed how far he has to go. And again, the Lakers are so young that when a player gets beat off the dribble, they often really break down.

If you notice, Phil is much more prone to call timeouts to remind Parker to concentrate or Sasha to stop gambling, than he is when LA is going through spates of unproductive offensive output.

So, the comparison, Mavs and Knicks is not accurate because the Knicks have no planet, they are a collection of satellites. In the NBA, unless the satellites are relatively mature, a collection of them cannot win and NBA crown (see Detroit’s title team for a collection of mature satellites). This is the quandary with the Bulls. Will their satellite collective be kept together long enough to mature together and become a Detroit-type of team, or will there, at some point, be a struggle for primacy between them?

Now, the Denver scene will be very interesting because we will soon get to see the effects binary-planet system on its satellites, plus we get to witness something rare: the gravitational effects of two planets on each other.

There’s fun to come in the NBA solar system.

Sports Illustrated – Bruce Bowen Plays Clean Defense; Video Evidence to the Contrary

I just finished Marty Burns’ Sports Illustrated.com piece on Bruce Bowen. My assessment? Burns needs to get his straw out of Frau David Stern’s ass. The article, entitled, The dirt on Bowen: Does Spurs’ stopper cross the line with feisty defense? alleges to objectively discuss Bowen’s league-wide reputation for dirty defensive play, particularly sticking his foot under jump shooters while they’re in the air.

Burns, oddly, turns to NBA executives for opinions on Bowens’ play. Here’s a sample:

“He’s a very tough, hard-nosed defender who crowds you and tries to get under your skin,” said an Eastern Conference general manager who spoke on condition of anonymity. “He’s basically a pest.

“[But] I don’t think he’s sticking his foot out intentionally. He’s a defensive player. He does what he can to bother you and throw you off your game. But knowing him and knowing his character, I don’t think he’d go out there and intentionally try to hurt somebody.”

Do you really think NBA exec, especially players turned execs, are willing to rock the boat knowing that Frau Stern and his resident bitch, “Discipline Czarina” Stu Jackson, is watching every word they utter?

Burns goes to great lengths to justify Bowen’s actions and criticize Thomas- even quoting Tim Duncan (as if Burns was going to be able to elicit a confession from a San Antonio player). Duncan says of Bowen:

“It’s a bad situation when a coach puts himself in that position and goes after a player,” Duncan said. “It’s very uncalled for. I don’t know what his intentions were with that and we have bigger plans than trying to hurt somebody. I would hope that people would understand and respect that and obviously they don’t.”

Later in the article Burns attempt to make the reader feel compassion for Bowen:

They point to his incredible rags-to-riches tale of a disadvantaged kid who went undrafted out of Cal State Fullerton making it as a key contributor for an NBA champion. They cite his sparkling reputation off the court, his long list of charitable deeds in the community. They also say the Spurs’ organization would not tolerate it.

Rags-to-riches tale? It’s not as if he went from being a walk-on at a DII school to the NBA. Bowen did receive an athletic scholarship to attend CS-Fullerton. It’s not as if Bowen was raised in a shack that looked like something from the Third World in Tennessee to become an NBA star like, say, Penny Hardaway. Or grow up in a one-parent household where that one parent was on drugs, which is the story of so many black professional athletes.

Nice try Marty.

If you want the truth about Bowen, ask coaches and players, at least those who aren’t in the San Antonio Spurs organization. L.A. Lakers head coach, Phil Jackson, calls Bowen, “Eddie Scissorhands,” so nicknamed for Bowen’s penchant for jabbing opponents with his hands and slicing them with his fingernails.

Ray Allen, Vince Carter, Steve Francis, and Rip Hamilton are just four players who call Bowen’s tactics dirty. The most recent Bowen basher, and co-subject of Burns’ piece, is Isiah Thomas, New York Knicks head coach. Thomas accused Thomas of repeatedly poking his foot under Knicks’ shooting guard Jamal Crawford while Crawford was in the process of jump shots.

Zeke’s comment in regards to Bowen to his players was: “Next time he does that, break his fucking foot.”

Burns makes it a point to back up the notion that Bowen doesn’t stick his foot under opposing players whiler they’re in the air with a lengthy comment from another anonymous GM. The following is a portion of the comment:

“How many times has he been accused of [sticking his foot underneath] over that time span? Four or five? Out of [4,000] plays?,” the GM notes. “When you look at it like that, it doesn’t seem like it’s intentional.”

And finally, Burns uses lack of punishment from Discipline Czarina Stu Jackson as the true sign that Bowen is innocent:

Perhaps the best argument in Bowen’s defense, however, is that the NBA has never seen fit to punish him. The league has cracked down hard in recent years on fighting and flagrant fouls in a clear effort to eliminate the old justice system in which players took matters into their own hands on the court. Yet so far discipline czar Stu Jackson has seen nothing to warrant any penalty — though he did phone Bowen on Sunday to warn him to watch his feet in the future.

Oddly, the Burns piece ends there. There was no attempt on Marty’s part to find out why Czarina Jackson gave Bowen the warning; no attempt to explain the warning.

Now, if you believe Burns and Bowen and the Spurs and anonymous GMs and anonymous ex-players turned NBA execs, here’s some video proof that flies in the face of their protestations that “Brucey Big Foot” is on the up-and-up:

Here’s another view of Bowen attempting to ruin “Stevie Franchise’s” career:

Here’s Brucey Big Foot kicking Ray Allen:

And finally, here’s Bowen at his dirtiest (against Vince Carter):

(I just love, in the above video, how Bowen runs under Carter and then continues to push Carter with his legs until Vince falls. Notice too that, at that point in the game, Carter had lit Bowen up for 43 points and the Nets had the lead. With Carter gone, the Nets folded down the stretch and lost the game.

On opening night this season Josh Howard of the Dallas Mavericks was lighting up Bowen. In the 3rd quarter Bowen stepped up his push-and-shove tactics. At one point Bowen and Howard got tangled and Howard ended up on the floor. Brucey Big Foot purposely stepped on Josh’s chest. Howard’s reaction to Bowen’s chest stomp earned Howard a technical foul. Bowen’s dirty play in that game, just as in the Carter incident got the desired effect – Howard was ineffective from that point on, only netting four points the rest of the game. The Spurs were in peril of getting trounced by the Mavs, but the Howard tech muted him to the point where the Spurs were able to regain their “footing” and eventually win the game, 97-91.)

Bowen is a punk, right along with “Mr. Anger Management” Raja Bell. When I think about it, this Burns article is basically saying that peeps are just Bowen haters, just like they’re Bell haters. But I don’t ever remember anyone calling Alvin Robertson or Dennis Johnson dirty, and they’re perhaps two of the greatest lock-down defenders in the modern NBA.

All told, Bowen is a bitch with no real game to speak of and Burns is just trying to keep the NBA contacts he deems valuable.