"How the Most Lopsided Trade in NBA History Explains the World"

In struggle and sports Dave Zirin
http://bit.ly/ywp4Ch
http://www.thenation.com/blog/165610/how-most-lopsided-trade-nba-history-explains-world

When you study the rosters of all 30 National Basketball Association teams or even casually watch a game, you find yourself facing two stubborn facts: 1 - Every team possesses an international mosaic of talent. 2 – The last All-Star produced by the high schools of New York City is 32 years old and just changed his name to Metta World Peace.

Calling hoops “the city game”, as Pete Axthelm did 40 years ago, only makes sense if the city is Barcelona. Two decades of globalization alongside the crumbling of our urban infrastructure has dramatically altered who we see on the court. If there was one moment that represents both the birth and brutal pathos of this process, it was draft day 1998 when two teams took part in what must be seen as the most lopsided trade in NBA history. That was when a Michigan Wolverine superstar born and raised in inner-city Detroit, Robert “Tractor” Traylor, was sent from the Milwaukee Bucks to the Dallas Mavericks for a skinny teenager from a place called Wurzburg, Germany named Dirk Nowitzki, and role player Pat Garrity. Now Dirk is considered the best player on earth and Robert Traylor is dead, passing away earlier this year from a heart attack at the tender age of 34.

It’s unbelievable that these two folks were traded for one another. But equally unbelievable is that this was seen as a steal for the Milwaukee Bucks. Then CNN/SI scribe Dan Shanoff wrote at the time, “After trading away No. 4 draft-pick Stephon Marbury last year, the Bucks get it right in ’98 by stealing the marketable and talented Robert Traylor from the Mavs for an overhyped foreign prospect.”

I asked Dan Shanoff about this ill-fated prediction this week, and he said, "Looking back, I am mostly appalled at my simple-minded analysis and implicit xenophobia. Projecting (and developing) draft picks into Hall of Famers demands imagination that Don Nelson and Mark Cuban clearly had and I lacked. I also didn't account for the maniacal dedication that Dirk would put in to honing his craft. It is perhaps the ultimate irony that as my 5-year-old son became aware of basketball this past spring, he announced that Dirk was his favorite player. Nowitzki's talents are that obvious. I only wish I could have understood that back then."

We can laugh, scoff, or shake our heads at Dan Shanoff, but his analysis wasn’t a wild statement by any stretch. They represented my thoughts at the time along with most observers. But in hindsight it’s now clear that this deal was more than the most lopsided trade in hoops history. It was a "canary in the coal mine" for the way the game and the world has changed over the last 15 years.

The Dirk story is now well known. From Wurzburg, Germany, the 19 year old blew up in pre-draft workouts and, despite having the muscle tone of a baby deer, became the object of numerous team’s affections, including the Celtics (who had to “settle” that year for Paul Pierce.) But in the shadow of Dream Team I and II and the utter domination of “our guys” at the Olympics, the conventional wisdom was that Euro players were too weak, too fragile, and basically too lame to make it on the big stage. A soft seven-foot jump shooter? Not in this man's league.

The Traylor story is less known. He averaged 16 points and 10 boards as a junior at Michigan, and was the Big Ten Tournament MVP. His freshman year, “the Tractor “ tore down a rim and made it look easy. With the sweet charisma of a gentle giant, Traylor was in a national sneaker ad before his first pro game. He was “Big Man”, “Barkley, Jr.,” and any nickname that speaks to those rare players whose baby fat makes them magically aerodynamic. Traylor, as Shanoff wrote, was seen as a “can’t miss”: the Big 10 Superstar with the big league body.

But Traylor’s body didn’t go from baby fat to Baby Shaq. Instead he battled obesity throughout his career. He also battled income tax evasion charges that ended in a conviction for hiding the money of his cousin, a convicted drug dealer, But Traylor's greatest obstacle wasn’t weight, taxes, or scandal. It was his production on the court. In 438 NBA games, Traylor averaged 5 points and 4 rebounds. He then bounced across the globe, playing for professional teams from Turkey to Puerto Rico. It was in Puerto Rico when Traylor was talking on the phone with his wife when, she thought, the line disconnected. Unable to reach him again, she called team officials who found him dead of a heart attack.

It was remarked by those who knew Traylor that this cause of death was painfully ironic, given his generous heart. ESPN’s Jemele Hill, who is from Detroit, wrote, “He was generous to a fault. Traylor, like a lot of promising, black athletes from troubled backgrounds, never learned to say, ‘no.’ He received three years probation after he admitted he prepared a false tax return that hid the assets of his cousin, Quasand Lewis, a convicted drug dealer. He squandered a lot of his NBA millions, admitting in a 2009 Detroit Free Press story that he once took care of as many as 20 friends and family.”

Traylor was the guy from the projects who’s bigger, stronger, and faster than everyone else and is pegged for the NBA from the time he walked onto a court. Everyone told him that he would be a star, that the money would always be there, and that he had to take care of his friends at all costs. He also, even in Detroit, had the inner-city infrastructure, from youth leagues to avid boosters, that gave him a path to the League. Dirk was a skinny kid who had no justification to believe that a beanpole from Germany could ever be hailed as the best in the game. For several years other GM’s watched Dallas, and dipped one toe in the water, thinking the game’s globalization might just be a mirage.

Now the league is filled with badass players from across the earth. It’s also filled with Dirk imitators, born both inside and outside the states: seven footers who rain jumpers for days. It says a great deal that arguably the league’s best player, Kevin Durant, plays like Dirk and is from the Maryland suburbs. Rough, rugged, and raw rebounders like Traylor, with a little meat on their middle are in very short supply. As for Detroit, the attacks on the city's union and non-union workers has never missed a beat, and it's spent 15 years as victim of every neoliberal "shock therapy" on the populace. Last year, it was named the United States’s “most stressful city” by virtue of being in the top 10 for murders, robberies, poverty, and, yes, heart attacks. Brutal cuts to city programs has also meant that extracurricular activities, exercise, and for some, opportunity, have become casualties of “the new normal.” As we spend this shortened season celebrating Dirk, let’s also remember Robert Traylor and the way this one trade marked a fork in the road toward a very different NBA: a different NBA that reflects they way our world has changed and left many behind.

Dave Zirin is the author of “The John Carlos Story” (Haymarket) and just made the new documentary “Not Just a Game.” Receive his column every week by emailing dave@edgeofsports.com. Contact him at edgeofsports@gmail.com.

Look Who's Standing for LGBT Rights: Tim Hardaway

Dave Zirin 8-22-11
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2011/writers/dave_zirin/08/22/tim.hardaway/index.html

The lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community has a new ally and his name is Tim Hardaway. The former NBA All-Star traveled to El Paso, Texas, last Thursday -- where he perfected his killer crossover dribble, also known as the UTEP-Two Step -- to stand up for gay rights. There is a group in El Paso who are trying to recall mayor John Cook and two members of the city counsel for re-establishing domestic partner benefits for both gay and unmarried couples. Hardaway arrived from Miami to speak at a press conference organized by the "No Recall" group.

"It's not right to not let the gays and lesbians have equal rights here," Hardaway told the crowd. "If I know El Paso, like they came together when the 1966 team won a championship and Don Haskins started those five [black] guys, I know the city will grow and understand that gays and lesbians need equal rights." Hardaway was referencing UTEP's 1966 national championship team when coach Don Haskins' all-black starting five made history by beating Adolph Rupp's all-white Kentucky squad.

Hardaway is the last person you would expect to speak out for gay rights. It was just four years ago when Hardaway said "I hate gay people" on a Miami radio show after John Amaechi became the first former NBA player to come out of the closet. Hardaway went further by adding, "I don't like to be around gay people. I'm homophobic. I don't like it. It shouldn't be in the world for that or in the United States for it. So yeah, I don't like it."

Hardaway was hit with an avalanche of criticism. He apologized, even promised to go into counseling and -- as public figures are prone to do -- pledged to change. Now it looks like he actually has.

I spoke with Amaechi to get his thoughts on Hardaway's change of heart. Amaechi said that he "heard about the story. I was in contact with the people he did his 'emergency rehab' with after his 'I hate gay people rant.' They were underwhelmed to say the least. Back then his contrition seemed more to do with the financial and reputation hit he had taken in the aftermath. However, it seems to me that this is a far more genuine piece of outreach ... I hope this is a story of true redemption rather than a savvy p.r. ploy. Either way, he is at least saying the right words, and that will make a positive difference."

Amaechi's cynicism is understandable. But Rus Bradburd, the assistant on Don Haskins staff who recruited Hardaway to UTEP, was in El Paso for the event and said Hardaway was there for the right reasons. "Tim has shown great compassion in re-thinking his position," said Bradburd. "It's one thing for a celebrity to apologize as damage control. But in this case, Tim has taken a much bigger step: he's pushing for the correct cause now, and equated the movement with Civil Rights struggles of the past. And the fact that he's pushing for equal rights in a place that is not exactly the national stage makes his move even more authentic."

As for Hardaway, he told the media in El Paso that he was a different person. "My family and friends came to me and were like, 'What are you doing?'" Hardaway said of his comments four years ago. "I talked to them and they made me understand that wasn't right."

In many ways, sports are different today than in 2007. Teams like the Boston Red Sox and the Chicago Cubs do public service announcements against anti-gay bullying. Steve Nash, Michael Strahan and Sean Avery do commercials for New York State's Marriage Equality campaign. Charles Barkley says he knows he had gay teammates and couldn't care less. Hardaway's unglamorous activism in 100-degree heat on an August day is commendable. It brings us closer to a sports world where the sexual orientation of athletes is little more than a detail. For that Hardaway deserves recognition, if not praise.

This was truly Hardaway's best crossover.

Dave Zirin is the author of the forthcoming book “The John Carlos Story” (Haymarket) just made the new documentary “Not Just a Game.” Receive his column every week by emailing dave@edgeofsports.com. Contact him at edgeofsports@gmail.com.

The Autumn of David Stern

Dave Zirin
NBA Commissioner David Stern emits an aura that inspires an energy-sapping, dull fear in those around him. Players, media, and even the owners that pay his rumored eight figure salary all acquiesce meekly in his presence. The brave get gelatinous. The brown nosers polish their kneepads. The toadies ribbit.

It’s certainly understandable why. Players fear that their employment opportunities will wither upon retirement. Media members fear that their access to the league will simply end. Fans fear that Stern could pull a Seattle Sonics and simply jack their team. Even owners don’t speak out against him. After thirty years, he’s become more like a tin-pot dictator or a small town southern sheriff than a commissioner. Stern has become the emperor no one dares say is buck-naked and now the basketball world is paying the price. We are going to lose much or all of the 2010-2011 season due to a David Stern engineered owner's lockout. The NBA right now has more storylines than General Hospital. Could this be the year Lebron and the Miami heat figure it out? Will Kobe tie Jordan with six rings? Can the Miracle Mavs repeat? What could Derrick Rose do for an MVP encore? But these questions won’t be answered. We don't get answers to these questions because too many teams are losing money, and Stern has determined that only a lockout and taking it out of the union’s hide is a path to solvency.

There are of course exceptions to this conspiracy of silence. Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks once made a sport of tweaking Stern, but after several million dollars in fines, he got the hint. Last year, Orlando coach Stan Van Gundy said that there is no free speech in the NBA and Stern responded, “We won’t be hearing from him for the rest of the season.” He then said of Van Gundy, “I see somebody whose team isn’t performing…who seems to be fraying.” Rasheed Wallace was an exception, saying, "I ain't no dumb-ass n----- out here. I'm not like a whole bunch of these young boys out here who get caught up and captivated into the league…. I know what this business is all about…. I know the commissioner of this league makes more than three-quarters of the players in this league."

Stern responded publicly, "Mr. Wallace's hateful diatribe was ignorant and offensive to all NBA players. I refuse to enhance his heightened sense of deprivation by publicly debating with him." You might notice that Rasheed Wallace isn’t providing commentary on NBA TV.

Mess with Stern, and become an object lesson. As Stern said to a group of NBA All-Stars, “I know where the bodies are buried because I’ve buried some of them myself.” Stern has built an atmosphere of fear and intimidation over three decades with the subtlety of Rupert Murdoch. Even the owners, the ones who pay his salary, don’t dare ask how much Stern, ostensibly their employee, gets paid.

Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo Sports quotes a source who says that “two maybe three” owners even know the answer to this question. As Wojnarowski writes, “Mostly, it speaks to the authoritarian culture created within the league office, and how Stern carries it out through the NBA. Some younger owners have been warned to never push the issue with him, never ask, because it’s simply unadvisable to get on the wrong side of the commissioner."

Meanwhile the solution to the NBA’s financial crisis is obvious. It’s doesn’t lie in dramatic slashing of salaries, or more public subsidies. It’s revenue sharing. The NBA shares less revenue than any other major league. In the NFL, the Green Bay Packers make the same television money as the New York Giants. In the NBA, it takes the Portland Trail Blazers more than 10 years to make the same broadcast revenue that the Lakers make in one year. Forbes magazine determined that the league as a whole made money and if revenue was shared, the league would be fine. Stern’s response to Forbes’s findings was a sneer and a growl.

It’s obvious to me that what stands in the way of a logical financial agreement is Stern himself. His intransigence is the logical extension of a decade of dress-code dictates, bullying officials, and even changing the material on the basketball despite the fact that it was cutting the hands of players. He has created a logic that no one dares stand up and say, “This guy has to go.” He has become like Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s dictator in the novel Autumn of the Patriarch. As Marquez wrote, “The regime wasn't being sustained by hope or conformity or even by terror, but by the pure inertia of an ancient and irreparable disillusion, go out into the street and look truth in the face, your Excellency, we're on the final curve.” We are on the “final curve” of a Commissioner’s reign that saw the league go global, win millions of new fans, and create a remarkable constellation of superstars. But it’s a reign that now ends with us, the fans, being robbed of the game we love. Yet this "inertia of disillusion" has fans, players, media members and owners on the sideline, too cowed to speak truth as obvious as it is unspoken: we don’t need David Stern to have the NBA. His removal as commissioner would provide a path to labor piece and get the league back in business. But if no one stands up, Stern gets to fulfill every dictator’s wish: to destroy the very world of his own creation.

Dave Zirin is the author of “Bad Sports: How Owners are Ruining the Games we Love” (Scribner) and just made the new documentary “Not Just a Game.” Receive his column every week by emailing dave@edgeofsports.com. Contact him at edgeofsports@gmail.com.

N.B.A. Lockout: Can Players Save Owners from Themselves?

Dave Zirin
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/sportingscene/2011/07/nba-lockout-can-players-save-owners.html

National Basketball Association players, like their N.F.L. counterparts, have now been “locked out” by team owners, putting the 2011-12 season in jeopardy. But other than the presence of a lot of very angry athletes, there are few similarities between the two conflicts. In the N.F.L., the owners want a longer season and even higher profit margins. They claim future losses but refuse to open their books and prove it.

The situation in the N.B.A. is a much stinkier kettle of fish. The N.B.A. just completed its most profitable season ever. Driven by fan interest around LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, and the Miami Heat, among other attractions, the league pulled in a record $4.3 billion in revenue. Last off-season, $2.5 billion was spent on contracts. Attendance was the fifth-highest total in league history. Despite all of this, twenty-two of the thirty teams in the league claim to have lost money this past season. And Commissioner David Stern has opened the books to prove it to the player’s union.

It’s all very bizarre. How can record profits and financial hardship coëxist?

One answer is the economy. Owners are getting less in public subsidies than had been projected before the bottom dropped out in 2008. But the true answer lies in understanding the mindset of the typical N.B.A. owner, many of whom seem to have the impulse control of an Adderall addict armed with a lighter in a fireworks store. The league-wide losses, which Stern pegs at $200 million, can be put at the feet of awful contracts that teams have given older players. It’s guaranteed money that has to be paid long after a player’s value has expired.

To take one example: the highest paid player in the N.B.A. next year won’t be LeBron, Kobe, Dirk, or any of the icons that rule the league. It’ll be Rashard Lewis, a player who was signed to a $118 million contract four years ago with Orlando and never earned that kind of money on the court. (He’s no longer even with the team, having been traded to Washington.) The owners argue that there is no mechanism for them to “get out” from under these kinds of bad contracts. Yet no one put a gun to their heads when they offered this money in the past.

The owners want the union to agree to a hard salary cap enforced across the league, “guaranteed profits for each team,” and the freedom to escape from these lousy contracts. In other words, they want the union to help them exercise the fiscal discipline they are unable to exert themselves.

Atlanta Hawks center Etan Thomas said to me yesterday as the lockout loomed that “most union negotiations start from the existing contract. David Stern has started from the point of a fantasy Christmas list. No guaranteed contracts. A hard salary cap. Drastic concessions. Guaranteed profits … as if we have control over the broader economy. We have been open to renegotiating how we divide revenue. But instead they showed up with this Christmas list of anti-union wishes that would have hurt not just players but the game of basketball.”

Thomas makes the point that if the owners most fevered wishes come true, teams will have a couple of superstar players that make a fortune and then ten guys fighting over the crumbs. “Basketball without a middle class is a game where people are playing selfishly, trying to pad their stats at the expense of the team because there is no security,” he said.

Since the last lockout, in 1999, the conventional wisdom has been that players would always lose labor conflicts because time is not on their side. They need to play when their bodies are in their primes. (Owners have more ability to wait it out.) Or some people have suggested that players lead the kinds of profligate lifestyles that demand consistent game checks. But this time it seems different. This current crop of players, faced with a lockout, have adopted a resolute determination not seen in decades.

Fifty players showed up to negotiations last week wearing the same bright yellow T-shirt that read “STAND.” David Stern was not amused, but the players are solid.

As Derek Fisher, president of the National Basketball Player’s Association, said, “We will not accept a bad deal that is not fair to our players. We’d love to avoid a lockout, but we are unified in the sense of not being afraid if that’s what we’re faced with.”

Etan Thomas also described to me how schooled the younger players are on the game’s past. “There’s a stereotype that athletes don’t know their history,” he said. “But I talk to these guys and they know about Oscar Robertson, Jerry West, Spencer Haywood. They know about the players who refused to take the court for the 1964 All-Star Game unless the union would be recognized. They all paved the way and fought for this league to reach the level it is now, and we respect that. We cannot take all of their hard work and throw it down the drain.”

For hoops fans, we should hope that the National Labor Review Board ends the lockout, per the request of the N.B.P.A., that the two sides pound out a long-term deal, and that owners start to practice the very self-discipline that the league preaches to its players. That would truly, to use the playground vernacular, be money.

Dave Zirin is the author of “Bad Sports: How Owners are Ruining the Games we Love” (Scribner) and just made the new documentary “Not Just a Game.” Receive his column every week by emailing dave@edgeofsports.com. Contact him at edgeofsports@gmail.com.

LeBron James and the Quote Heard Round the World

Dave Zirin | June 13, 2011
http://www.thenation.com/blog/161374/lebron-james-and-quote-heard-round-world

The most polarizing athlete in sports, playing for the most polarizing team, just gave us the most polarizing post-game quote in living memory. Lebron James, after his Miami Heat lost the NBA Finals to the Dallas Mavericks, and after playing profoundly beneath his Herculean stature, said the following:

“All the people that were rooting on me to fail, at the end of the day, they have to wake up tomorrow and have the same life that they had before they woke up today. They have the same personal problems they had today. I'm going to continue to live the way I want to live and continue to do the things that I want to do with me and my family and be happy with that. They can get a few days or a few months or whatever the case may be on being happy about not only myself, but the Miami Heat not accomplishing their goal. But they have to get back to the real world at some point."

Damn. Those who aren’t sports fans — or I guess it’s more appropriate to say, “fans of the many soap operas that swirl around sports” might not realize what a break from the book of clichés this statement represents. Most post-game comments are so polished and filed down, they’d make a Mitt Romney speech look edgy. Players routinely behave for the cameras like they just graduated from the Madeira School for Girls. It’s like athletes went to a Meet the Press seminar on “how to say nothing.”

After last night’s crushing loss, Lebron’s All-Star teammates Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh were predictable portraits of propriety. Wade said, “First of all we give credit to the Dallas Mavericks…. We ran into a team that was obviously better than us.” Lebron, after a season that saw him ditch his hard-luck teammates in Cleveland, take his talents to South Beach, and transition from hero to heel, chose to go a different route.

As one could imagine, he is getting crushed across the sports columns and the interwebs for letting the mask slip and speaking his mind. It's being read as the ultimate statement of the “spoiled, arrogant” athlete. One headline read, “Lebron: reminding you that he's super rich and you're not.” Jalen Rose on ESPN said, "He needs to learn to speak to the media. He puts his foot in his mouth time and time again.” The NBC sports site Pro Basketball Talk blared the headlined, LeBron has a few arrogant words for those who hate him [1]. Writer Kurt Hellin wrote, “LeBron is never going to win over many of those haters. But calling them jealous loses some on the fence.... Lebron has a long line of public relations blunders in the past year. You can add this one to the list.”

When I read Lebron's words, frankly, I did a triple take. It’s practically a pro-wrestling quote designed to bring audience "heat" as an end unto itself. I kept thinking of former WWE heel Rick Rude starting matches by saying, “What I'd like to have right now is for all you fat, out of shape, [insert city] sweat-hogs to keep the noise down while I take my robe off and show all the ladies what a real man is supposed to look like." But even in the scripted world of professional wrestling any heel knows that you rile people up before matches, not after.

There's little point in mining Lebron’s psyche for his intentions. Was he being defensive? Insensitive? Even cruel? I have no clue and don't really care. But I do think the quote deserves examination on its own terms. How can we deny the truth that many of us look to sports as a distraction from the trials and tribulations of our own lives? How can we deny that the reason so many of us read the sports page before the front page is that one is both bearable and comprehensible while the other simply isn’t?

We live in a crumbling nation with epic unemployment, two million people behind bars, and vast wealth inequality, while being told that we inhabit the best country on earth and to think otherwise is heresy. In such a world, sports become more than an escape: it’s a refuge. It’s much easier - and emotionally manageable - to hate Lebron James than face our collective future.

Make no mistake, I'm not arguing that Lebron James was trying to point out the way sports deflects attention from other realities. I don’t put his comments in league with another hated athlete, Barry Bonds, who in 2005, asked why Congress had time to investigate steroids while people were dying in New Orleans. But his words should give us pause. There’s nothing wrong, in my view, with sports being a sweet evening escape from the problems that face us the next morning. There is something wrong with seeing athletes as avenues for our aggression when the real culprits exist outside the arena.

Dave Zirin is the author of “Bad Sports: How Owners are Ruining the Games we Love” (Scribner) and just made the new documentary “Not Just a Game.” Receive his column every week by emailing dave@edgeofsports.com. Contact him at edgeofsports@gmail.com.

Farewell Shaq

Shaquille O'Neal retires from the NBA with 28,596 points (fifth all-time) and four championship rings, including three straight with the Los Angeles Lakers where he was the NBA Championship MVP. Often plagued by injuries, weight problems and bad free-throw shooting, some may snipe he never fully reached his full potential (winning only one regular season MVP.) That said, from 2000-2, he was the most dominating postseason player ever outside of Michael Jordan. That's a pretty hard compliment to knock. Oh yeah, he also makes great shoes...

Derrick Rose, NBA MVP

After averaging 25 points, 7.7 assists and 4.1 rebounds for the Chicago Bulls and leading them to the NBA's best record, he was overwhelmingly named league MVP.
Here's the final top five voting for NBA MVP:

1. Derrick Rose, Chicago Bulls
2. Dwight Howard, Orlando Magic
3. LeBron James, Miami Heat
4. Kobe Bryant, Los Angeles Lakers
5. Kevin Durant, Oklahoma City Thunder

For what it's worth, Robalini's pick was Durant, followed by Howard, with Kobe in third...

Stern-Cold: Losing the N.B.A.

Dave Zirin
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/sportingscene/2011/04/david-stern-nba.html

“I don’t know where you were raised, but I lived with rats. I used to kill rats. We had a .22 rifle and we would lay in the kitchen and shoot them on the floor. One thing my grandmother taught me was that if you got a rat trapped, you’ve got to give his ass a way out, because he will fight you if he has to. If you don’t give us a way out, a chance for a compromise, you’re going to get a fight.” An American labor leader made the previous statement last month. It wasn’t a Teamster, United Autoworkers official, or anyone from the public-sector battles in the Midwest. The union in question is the National Basketball Players Association, and the man who promised “a fight” was their executive director, Billy Hunter.

Hunter was referring to the stalled negotiations over a new collective-bargaining agreement for the N.B.A. The current labor deal expires at the end of June; if no progress is made before then—and there hasn’t been much in several months—the league could join the N.F.L. as the second major American sports league whose players (and, of course, fans) are locked out.

There is an extra lacquer of anger and mistrust in the N.B.A. because of the particular commissioner with whom Billy Hunter is negotiating: David Stern. For thirty years, Stern has been arguably the most successful commissioner in all of sports. Having Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, and Michael Jordan in his league certainly helped, but Stern has taken the N.B.A. from a second-tier attraction to a global phenomenon. In recent years, however, another, utterly implacable side of Stern has emerged.

Fans in the greater Seattle area, who didn’t want to spend three hundred million dollars on a new, publicly funded stadium and lost their team, are familiar with Stern’s vindictive side. (The Sonics were moved to Oklahoma City, where they are now the Thunder.) But never has Stern seemed as unbending, isolated, or arrogant as he does now. Players are warned; complaining coaches are silenced; and negotiating partners are enemies.

Stern, speaking to a room full of N.B.A. stars during All-Star weekend, reportedly said that he knew where “the bodies are buried” in the league—presumably because he had buried some of them himself. “It was shocking,” the Chicago Bulls star Derrick Rose told Yahoo! Sports. “I was taking off my gear, and when he said that, I just stopped and thought, ‘Whoa…’ I couldn’t believe that he said it.”

Then, on April 7th, the N.B.A. referees union announced that they were complaining to the National Labor Relations Board that Stern and the N.B.A. had violated federal law by engaging in unfair labor practices. Their filing includes accusations relating to an “obscene expression” that Stern directed at union negotiators in a January 24th meeting. According to the report, Stern stormed out of the meeting in a rage when the stenographer refused to take his obscenity out of the record.

And there’s the tale of Orlando Magic coach Stan Van Gundy. When Van Gundy told reporters that Stern doesn’t allow dissenting opinions, the commissioner responded, “We won’t be hearing from him for the rest of the season.” He then said of Van Gundy, “I see somebody whose team isn’t performing, whose star player was suspended, who seems to be fraying.”

Most fans could care less about Stern’s attitude—but his state of mind is a problem for the sport of basketball. If he’s not willing to negotiate in a way that shows respect, then there likely won’t be a season in 2011. Stern is pursuing a strategy similar to the one N.F.L. Commissioner Roger Goodell has adopted: demanding wage cuts and claiming financial hardship, while offering players, at best, a limited look at the books. But Stern’s demands extend further. Stern and the owners also want teams to be able to retain players at their discretion, even if their contracts have run their course. This would effectively end free agency and turn back the clock on sports labor relations by decades.

“That’s a dealbreaker,” Billy Hunter told me. “I’m dead set against it, and most players would be as well. This would oppress players. Why was free agency fought for and achieved? You take that away if you have a franchise player tag. We will be just as adamant as not accepting it as we would about not accepting a hard salary cap…. If they continue to put forth the same demands, we are going to find ourselves in the same situation as the N.F.L.P.A.”—the football players, who are still locked out.

In a season where ratings and interest are up, and players like Chicago’s Rose and the L.A. Clippers’ forward Blake Griffin are leaving a new generation of fans breathless, David Stern is practicing his own version of the extreme austerity. But, just as there are no schools without teachers and no fire stations without firefighters, there is no league without the players. No one buys an N.B.A. ticket to watch David Stern. This seems to be a reality he has forgotten—no matter where the bodies are buried.

Dave Zirin is the author of “Bad Sports: How Owners are Ruining the Games we Love” (Scribner) and just made the new documentary “Not Just a Game.” Receive his column every week by emailing dave@edgeofsports.com. Contact him at edgeofsports@gmail.com.

Dennis Rodman, Chris Mullin Named to Basketball Hall of Fame

Mason Levinson, Monday, April 4, 2011
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/dennis-rodman-chris-mullin-named-to-basketball-hall-of-fame/2011/04/04/AFwLm3fC_story.html

(Bloomberg) -- Five-time National Basketball Association champion Dennis Rodman and five-time All-Star Chris Mullin were among 10 people named to the Basketball Hall of Fame.

Former NBA players Artis Gilmore, Arvydas Sabonis and Tom “Satch” Sanders, longtime coach Tex Winter, college coaches Herb Magee and Tara VanDerveer, Women’s NBA player Teresa Edwards and Harlem Globetrotter Reece “Goose” Tatum also were elected, the museum announced at a televised news conference in Houston today prior to the college basketball men’s championship game.

They will be enshrined in the Springfield, Massachusetts- based Hall on Aug. 12.

Rodman won three NBA titles with the Chicago Bulls and two with the Detroit Pistons. He twice was named the NBA’s Defensive Player of the Year and seven times made the NBA’s All-Defensive first team.

“I feel kind of out of place because of some of the things I’ve done,” Rodman said at the news conference, citing his behavior. “They could have went the other direction, saying ‘You know, Dennis, some of the things you’ve done off the court is not conducive to the Hall of Fame.’”

Rodman, who was arrested numerous times during his 14-year NBA career, gained notoriety for numerous tattoos, multicolored hair and behavior such as wearing a wedding gown to promote his book and kicking a courtside cameraman.

“They saw a little bit about Dennis Rodman, as far as (being) a character person,” Rodman said.

Two Golds

Mullin was also a finalist last year. The two-time Olympic gold medalist had 17,911 points, 4,034 rebounds and 3,450 assists during a 17-year career for the Golden State Warriors’ franchise and the Indiana Pacers before retiring in 2001.

Mullin said he learned of his election this morning while on the West Coast.

“I actually went back to sleep, but I slept with a big smile on my face,” he said.

Winter coached in college and the pros from 1947 to 2006, winning nine NBA championships as an assistant. He is considered an innovator of the triangle offense, which both the Chicago Bulls and Los Angeles Lakers used under Winter and Phil Jackson to claim league titles.

Magee, the coach at Division II Philadelphia University, is the career leader for wins at the same institution for any level of college basketball. He has won 922 games in 44 seasons at the school.

Sabonis, a center from Lithuania, was among the top international players in the world. He played for the Portland Trail Blazers from 1995-96 to 2002-03.

Points, Rebounds

Gilmore played in both the NBA and American Basketball Association, and was named to 11 All-Star Games. His 24,941 points ranks 20th all-time, while his 16,330 rebounds ranks fifth.

Sanders, elected as a contributor, played for the Boston Celtics from 1961 to 1969 and later coached the Celtics and Harvard University. Sanders helped form several NBA player- development programs.

Women’s committee selectees were Edwards and VanDerveer. Edwards was the first U.S. basketball player to participate in five Olympics, winning four gold medals and a bronze.

VanDerveer, who has led Stanford to two national women’s championships, was named this season’s collegiate coach of the year by the Women’s Basketball Coaches Association. Over a 32- year career, VanDerveer has an 826-198 record.

Tatum, who died in 1967, was the original “clown prince” of the Globetrotters, who mix basketball with comedy.

Choke Artist Kobe

Attention all Laker Haters out there! Here's a tasty brew of freshly made Haterade. A piece from Henry Abbott of ESPN questions the claim that Kobe Bryant is a clutch player, and uses statistics to make that argument:
"Bryant makes crunch-time defense easy for opponents by shooting just about every time he touches the ball (over a five-year period, he mustered 56 clutch shots, to go with one assist).

Fans of his raw machismo howl that such criticism misses the point, but the point is that when Bryant gets the ball in crunch time, it's a virtual certainty that he'll shoot it, and it's better than 2-1 odds that he'll miss...

ESPN Stats & Information's Alok Pattani dug through 15 years of NBA data -- Bryant's entire career, regular season and playoffs -- and found that Bryant has attempted 115 shots in the final 24 seconds of a game in which the Lakers were tied or trailed by two or fewer points. He connected on 36, and missed 79 times.

One shot for all the cookies. And the NBA is nearly unanimous that this is the guy to take it, even though he has more than twice as many misses as makes?"

Abbott lists some of his greatest misses:

"In 1997, he famously air-balled two shots that could have beat the Jazz; instead, the Jazz won the series. In 1999, he whiffed on a 3-pointer at the buzzer that would have tied Game 2 against the Spurs. In Game 4 against the Kings in 2002, he missed a 2-pointer that would have tied the game (before the ball was tipped out to Robert Horry for the winning 3). In Game 7 of that same series, Bryant missed a tip that would have won the game in regulation. In Game 3 against the Timberwolves in 2003, he missed two key shots in the last seconds of overtime, and the Lakers lost.

I'll spare you the entire list, but it's long. In the final 24 seconds of playoff games, Bryant has racked up almost as many air balls as makes, making just below 30 percent of game-tying or go-ahead shots. He hasn't hit such a shot in a playoff game, in fact, since 2008, including key misses in the closing moments against the Jazz and Magic in 2009, and the Thunder and Suns last spring. He made one of his four shots in the fourth quarter of Game 7 of last year's Finals."

Ouch. About the worst thing you can call an NBA player is a choker. But it still beats being called a rapist...

The truth about Kobe Bryant in crunch time
Henry Abbott
1-28-11
http://espn.go.com/blog/truehoop/post/_/id/24200/the-truth-about-kobe-bryant-in-crunch-time

NBA Bans Basketball Shoes by Athletic Propulsion Labs

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/NBA-Bans-Basketball-Shoes-by-bw-1226014972.html

NBA Bans Basketball Shoes by Athletic Propulsion Labs Based on League Rule against "Undue Competitive Advantage" That Increases a Player's Vertical Leap
Press Release Source: Athletic Propulsion Labs
Tuesday October 19, 2010

LOS ANGELES -- For the first time in its 64-year history, the National Basketball Association (NBA) has banned a new line of shoes based on the league’s rule against an “unfair competitive advantage” that increases a player’s vertical leap. The league’s ban on Athletic Propulsion Labs’ Concept 1 confirms the company’s claims that the shoe, with its Load ‘N Launch™ Technology, performs as advertised. No professional player will be allowed to wear the product in games for the upcoming 2010-2011 NBA season.

This action comes on the 25th anniversary of the NBA’s ban on Nike’s Air Jordan shoes, albeit for reasons of their colorful appearance rather than any performance advantage.

Athletic Propulsion Labs (APL) was notified by a senior NBA official who stated, “League rules regulate the footwear that players may wear during an NBA game. Under league rules, players may not wear any shoe during a game ‘that creates an undue competitive advantage (e.g., to increase a player's vertical leap).’ In light of that rule…players will not be permitted to wear the APL shoes during NBA games.”

Prior to the ban, the Concept 1 shoe had already attracted the interest of NBA players, including a raft of rookies, some of whom have tested them in non-NBA settings. Retailing for $300, the shoes continue to be sold primarily through APL’s website (www.athleticpropulsionlabs.com), and the company is exploring a potential expansion into select athletic footwear and sporting goods retailers.

Athletic Propulsion Labs, based in Los Angeles, is the brainchild of twin brothers Adam and Ryan Goldston, two former University of Southern California basketball players. APL’s Concept 1 basketball shoes were introduced in July 2010 and have been covered extensively by media outlets including Sports Illustrated, ESPN, CNN, CNBC and SLAM Magazine.

“Our proprietary Load ‘N Launch Technology has managed to accomplish something never before achieved in the athletic footwear industry: a product that makes you jump higher instantly,” said APL co-founder Ryan Goldston. “The Load ‘N Launch device is implanted in a cavity in the forefoot of the shoe and serves as a ‘launch pad’ by taking the energy exerted by the player and increasing lift with the aid of an intricate, spring-based propulsion system.”

In biomechanical testing at a leading West Coast university laboratory, the APL Concept 1 shoes delivered increases in vertical leap of up to 3.5 inches when compared against a leading competitive brand’s most expensive basketball shoe.

“We were not exactly shocked to hear the NBA chose to ban our shoes,” said APL co-founder Adam Goldston. “The Load ‘N Launch Technology not only provides an instant and dramatic increase in vertical leap, but the biomechanical testing showed that the players exerted far less energy as a result.”

For more information, please visit the company’s website at www.AthleticPropulsionLabs.com.

Contact:

B|W|R Public Relations
Steven Wilson / Larry Winokur
310-248-6163 / 310-866-6801
swilson@bwr-la.com / lwinokur@bwr-la.com

LeBron's Heat, not Lakers, now the Vegas pick to win NBA title

http://www.latimes.com/sports/la-sp-lakers-lebron-james-20100709,0,1913256.story

LeBron's Heat, not Lakers, now the Vegas pick to win NBA title
Miami, with James joining Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh, passes the L.A. as the favorite, but Lakers past and present aren't exactly conceding the championship.
Mike Bresnahan and Broderick Turner
July 8, 2010

The Lakers are still the team to beat, winners of two consecutive NBA championships.

Or is there a new king of the league?

LeBron James' decision to join Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh on the Miami Heat grabbed hold of a sporting nation Thursday night, but did it shift the balance of basketball power from Southern California to South Beach?

The Lakers see it one way, the Heat surely see it another, and Las Vegas has its own unique view, no surprise.

Miami passed the Lakers as favorites to win the championship after James' announcement, according to Jay Rood, race and sports book director for MGM Resorts International.

The Lakers were 2-1 favorites before James' decree, but they slipped to 11-5 afterward, based on general wagering. The Heat took a huge leap from second choice at 7-2 to the favorite at 8-5 not long after James proclaimed that Miami provided "the best opportunity to win and win now and into the future."

Past and present members of the Lakers weren't quite ready to give the crown to James.

"They still need help," said former Lakers guard Ron Harper. "They need a center. They need help off the bench. Ain't nobody going to hand the Heat the championship just because they got LeBron James. I still think the Lakers are the team to beat.

"Look, Miami has got 2½ great players. Bosh, he's all right. Don't get me wrong, he's a good player. But he's not as great as Wade and LeBron."

Lakers forward Ron Artest, who has been lighting up his Twitter feed with numerous daily dispatches on a variety of topics, was relatively silent when he heard the news.

"No comment on it," he said in a text to The Times. "Fish is bigger news to me."

That would be free-agent guard Derek Fisher, who is engaged in slow-moving contract talks with the Lakers.

To Lakers assistant coach Jim Cleamons, James' decision shows that the six-time All-Star feels he needs help to win a title, even if it means playing on a team with an inordinate, if not imbalanced, amount of top-rate talent.

"They are young enough and if their hearts are in the right place, they will work it out," Cleamons said. "It doesn't mean they are going to win a championship. But if they get better, they give themselves a chance to win a championship."

One thing's almost a guarantee: Miami and the Lakers playing on Christmas Day. Even so, the Lakers and Heat are better off than at least one team.

"He just set Cleveland back 10 years," said Harper, who grew up in Dayton, Ohio. "That's my state and I feel for all them folks."

mike.bresnahan@latimes.com
broderick.turner@latimes.com
twitter.com/Mike_Bresnahan
twitter.com/BA_Turner

Miami in Pinstripes: the New Evil Empire

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/09/sports/basketball/09araton.html

Miami in Pinstripes: the New Evil Empire
HARVEY ARATON
July 8, 2010

In the moment LeBron James uttered the words “South Beach” on Thursday night in front of a national television audience, the country witnessed the birth of an Evil Empire — the Yankees of professional basketball — with that slick-haired hombre, Pat Riley, at the helm.

James and Dwyane Wade have been likeable enough fellows in their various selling poses, including James as a mischievous puppet and Wade as Charles Barkley’s co-star in clever cellphone commercials. But together in Miami, with Chris Bosh rebounding for the superstar wingmen, they have created something fascinating, potentially fearsome and possibly quite loathsome.

Who outside of South Florida wants to root for Miami after the way James walked out on Cleveland and his home territory of northern Ohio in a mercenary reach for championship rings? On the other hand, who won’t want to see the fledgling super team take a big fall?

Had James stayed in Cleveland, he would have had the support of a nation wanting to see The Loyal One rewarded. Teaming up with Wade, Bosh and Darth Riley makes him more anti-hero than hero — but an even stronger marketable commodity for the N.B.A. brand. That loud noise emanating from out West is Commissioner David Stern cheering from his vacation spot in Sun Valley, Idaho.

Bad guys sell tickets, too. In the course of one week, James switched personas, like a professional wrestler, and the way he explained it Thursday night, his mother, Gloria, gave him permission.

“I thought I’d hear a different reaction,” he said of the phone call he made to her Thursday morning. “She felt it was going to make me happy.”

Funny, though. Jon Barry on ESPN said he thought James didn’t look happy. Maybe that’s because the view from the mountaintop of leverage that he carefully constructed to be the springboard to the rest of his career turned out to be something short of breathtaking.

In all directions were shining cities ready to welcome him with open arms and ready checkbooks. But there also were flaws in the windows of James’s lofty perch, cracks that might have been invisible to the eye of the average pro basketball star, but not to the man who envisioned crystal-clear free-agent perfection.

As early as November 2008, James was calling July 1, 2010, “a very big day,” beating the drum for when suitors would come calling, or begging, and all he would have to do was say “eeny, meeny” and then board his chosen starship Enterprise.

Along the way, there were disquieting playoff power outages in Cleveland, no ultimate N.B.A. credential to anoint him as a genuine savior and not a single suitor that could guarantee him a bed of roses to go along with his ransom.

By the time James made his grand announcement, it wasn’t as if he was choosing among the lesser of evils. But if heaven is a playground, it hasn’t yet been granted an N.B.A. franchise, and James’s blatant overreach for attention only intensified the pressure not to beam into a situation that could damage his carefully crafted brand.

Miami lured him with his Olympic team running mates, Wade and Bosh, but he joins them on Wade’s turf, where the latter has already achieved sainthood by winning a championship in 2006. He leaves fans cursing him in Cleveland, where the owner, Dan Gilbert, called his ESPN show “narcissistic,” his departure “cowardly” and vowed — foolishly, no doubt — that the Cavs would win a title before James.

James can also count on rabid booing in New York, where the Knicks assiduously courted him, tanked two seasons for him and created their own bloated market for Amar’e Stoudemire for him.

“It takes courage to play where the lights shine the brightest,” James L. Dolan, the Knicks’ owner, said while introducing Stoudemire Thursday at Madison Square Garden. Was he suggesting that his $100 million power forward had something in his belly that James didn’t, or utilizing his last good bargaining chip, challenging James to be a man by taking on Manhattan?

Losing out to Riley, their former coach and sworn enemy, has to be the worst part of this. The Knicks will have to fill the blanks around Stoudemire, settle next season for low-level playoff contention at best. In Newark, the Nets will dream about better days in Brooklyn. Turns out James didn’t want to be the leader of a basketball renaissance in a great basketball city. The King followed Bosh to Dwyane Wade’s team.

A longtime friend and high school teammate, Dru Joyce III, argued that James’s critics are missing the point. “People always think it always has to be about the one superstar,” Joyce said in a telephone interview. “But I think what LeBron is saying is it’s about the team. He’s going against the grain and it’s hard for people to accept that.”

James made a more grandiose show of free agency than anyone ever has, but he didn’t create the culture of entitlement. He’s just the latest to exploit it, and Joyce was right about one thing: all would have been forgiven had he just told his interviewer, Jim Gray, he was staying in Cleveland, basking in his own stardust.

Maybe that was the main selling point in Miami. When the playoff dust finally settles, it won’t all come down on him.

A version of this article appeared in print on July 9, 2010, on page B10 of the New York edition.

LeBron James dumps Cleveland for Miami

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gHG3AMVw-CGtPxYhkoio-K9KEIowD9GRD2O00

LeBron James dumps Cleveland for Miami
TOM WITHERS
7-9-10

When the months of suspense peaked, LeBron James delivered a few words that rocked the NBA and changed two cities and franchises.

At 9:27 p.m., James, looking nervous and somewhat unsure, finally announced his plans from a small stage in Greenwich, Conn.

"This fall, and it's very tough," James said to a national TV audience. "I'm going to take my talents to South Beach and join the Miami Heat."

In Florida, there was rejoicing.

In Ohio, only heartbreak and tears — then anger.

The most wanted man in league history decided Thursday night that it was time to leave the comforts of home to chase a championship.

The two-time MVP, a player with supreme skills but without a title, decided to join forces with fellow superstars, good friends and U.S. Olympic teammates Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh — a dominant threesome that could rule the league for years to come.

"I can't say it was always in my plans, because I never thought it was possible," James said of this union with the two perennial All-Stars, players he has known for years. "I've looked forward to it. Those are two great players, two of the greatest players that we have in this game today. You add me, and we have a really good team."

Landing James was a huge victory for the team president Pat Riley, who was able to corral the top three stars in an unprecedented free-agent class and now must resist the temptation to leave the front office to coach them.

James' announcement ended weeks of speculation and capped a multi-ringed media circus in this age of social networking that spun out of control. It also concluded a somewhat embarrassing courtship of a player by cities, celebrities and franchises who fawned over the 25-year-old who doesn't have a finals win on his resume.

New York, Chicago, New Jersey, Los Angeles and every other NBA spot came up short, finishing out of the money.

So did Cleveland. As it always does.

This time, losing was tainted with bitterness.

Once James shared his secret, fans poured out of the same downtown bars and restaurants that have thrived during these tough economic times. A few set fire to his No. 23 jersey while others threw rocks at the 10-story-tall billboard featuring James with his head tossed back and arms pointing skyward.

"We Are All Witnesses," the mural says.

This was something Cleveland never thought it would see.

Cavs owner Dan Gilbert was as upset as anyone. He posted an open letter to fans on the team's website ripping James and told The Associated Press he believes James did not play up to his abilities in Cleveland's second-round loss to Boston.

"He quit," Gilbert said in a phone interview. "Not just in Game 5, but in Games 2, 4 and 6. Watch the tape. The Boston series was unlike anything in the history of sports for a superstar. ... People have covered up for him for way too long."

Not Gilbert, not anymore.

"As you now know, our former hero, who grew up in the very region that he deserted this evening, is no longer a Cleveland Cavalier," Gilbert wrote. "This was announced with a several day, narcissistic, self-promotional build-up culminating with a national TV special of his 'decision' unlike anything ever 'witnessed' in the history of sports and probably the history of entertainment. Clearly, this is bitterly disappointing to all of us.

"The self-declared former 'King' will be taking the 'curse' with him down south. And until he does 'right' by Cleveland and Ohio, James (and the town where he plays) will unfortunately own this dreaded spell and bad karma.

"Just watch."

Cleveland could offer James $30 million more than any team, but that wasn't what interested James this time. He was willing to make less for something else — a title. Maybe a bunch of them with the 28-year-old Wade and 26-year-old Bosh in their primes.

"It's about a team," James said.

After leaving Connecticut, James touched down at a private terminal at Miami International Airport at 2:30 a.m. He was met by Heat officials, shook Riley's hand, climbed into a car and was driven away while a small group of fans, paparazzi and other news media waited outside.

Meanwhile, outside the W Hotel on Miami Beach, 17 more celebrity photographers and about a few dozen fans lurched toward every SUV that neared the hotel entrance, eager to get a look at the two-time MVP. Also inside that club was Bosh, who walked in virtually unnoticed earlier in the evening.

Meanwhile, in Cleveland, fans so accustomed to disappointment, were let down again — this time, by one of their own sons.

Not long after James' decision was announced, one of his jerseys was shown being burned in the city's streets.

"I can't get involved in that," James said. "I wanted to do what was best for LeBron James ... At the end of the day, I feel awful. I feel even worse that I wasn't able to bring an NBA championship to that city. I never wanted to leave Cleveland. My heart will always be around that area. But I also felt like this is the greatest challenge for me, is to move on."

Even one of James' teammates was distraught.

"I feel like my heart has been pulled out," Cavs guard Mo Williams posted on his Twitter account. "But I'm happy for my friend."

James' decision ends nearly two years of posturing and positioning by teams hoping to add the 6-foot-8, 260-pound physical force of nature to their roster. He famously announced at New York's Madison Square Garden in November of 2008 that "July 1, 2010, is going to be a big day."

He wasn't kidding. When the clock struck 12:01 a.m. last Thursday, a free-agent frenzy unlike any before it — in any professional sport — got under way with the enough speculation, rumor and second-by-second intrigue to last a lifetime.

March may be madness, but this was a year's drama crammed into eight days.

Lebron James: The Uncool

http://www.thenation.com/blog/37180/lebron-james-uncool

Lebron James: The Uncool
Dave Zirin
July 8, 2010

There is already a big loser in tonight's Lebron James-ESPN-free agent-jamboree. It's Lebron James. No matter his choice at the end of tonight’s primetime special, he will have a diminished brand, a wounded stature, and a set of expectations there is little indication he can manage. It's one thing when an endlessly ravenous twenty-four-hour sports media leviathan obsesses over the next move for the most valued free agent in sports history. It's quite another when the athlete himself chooses to bathe in the hype to such an embarrassing degree. Within the last twenty-four hours, James has started a Twitter account with the handle "King James," launched a website and made the decision to further enmesh reality television with the world of sports. It's bombastic nonsense for a player who calls himself King even in the absense of a championship crown.

Right now Lebron is acting less cool than Al Gore on Soul Train. He should be treating this remarkable free agent process like the Fonz. Instead the King is being pure Potsie. What would Fonzie do? Let's remember 1995 when Michael Jordan returned to the Chicago Bulls after a season and a half playing minor league baseball. Jordan sent a fax to the media that said simply, “I'm back." We had another Fonzie moment just yesterday when 21-year-old NBA scoring champ Kevin Durant quietly re-upped for five more years with his thrilling, small market squad of infinite promise, the Oklahoma City Thunder.

Durant is trying to achieve the ultimate goal, a goal achieved by only Michael Jordan and Tim Duncan of the San Antonio Spurs before him: take a team with next to no tradition of triumph, and will them into becoming a dynasty. This should be Lebron's goal in Cleveland. Be the man who brings home the town's first championship since 1964 and change the very identity of a city. That’s what legends do. It would have catapulted him beyond Bird, Magic and Kobe, who were part of dynasties in Boston and LA, cities that demand nothing less.

Instead the strong rumor of the day is pure Potsie: Lebron, as is being reported by his reality-TV producers at ESPN, is leaning toward joining superstar Dwyane Wade and prime free-agent signee Chris Bosh in Miami. Immediately, Lebron would be joining Wade’s team. Wade brought Miami a championship in 2006. Wade would have the ball in his hands for many of the offensive sets. Wade would on some nights be the best player on the court. This is Lebron hiding in Miami. It’s the act of someone who doesn’t think he can create his own legacy, but has to ride on someone else’s. Wade would be Jeter, and Lebron would be A-Rod. It’s the worst possible choice because it immediately puts a cap on James’s career and mind-bending potential. He could certainly still change his mind and become the Man Who Saved Cleveland, or the King of New York. But all indications are that he will be hiding in the Heat.

There are those who say that no matter where Lebron chooses to play, he is in fact the great winner in all of this because he completely took control of the process. As Henry Abbott of ESPN’s True Hoop tweeted this morning, "How you feel about LeBron James today is a test of how you feel about fully-empowered athletes." This is completely wrong. There is nothing "empowering" about the full embrace of the media circus. There is nothing “empowering” in trying to claim and max out every last cent of the spectacle that defines celebrity culture. That’s what Paris Hilton does. That’s what Flava Flav does. It’s shouldn’t be the default move of Lebron James. These are the actions of a court jester, not a King.

Lakers-Celtics rivalry brings pulse back to NBA postseason

http://www.nba.com/2010/news/features/shaun_powell/06/02/postseason.pulse

Lakers-Celtics rivalry brings pulse back to NBA postseason
Jun 3 2010

LOS ANGELES -- The Lakers and Celtics better take this series to a Game 7.

The NBA postseason, you see, needs to be saved. Saved from the Atlanta Hawks, the only team to be eliminated in three games in a best-of-7 playoff series. Saved from Manu Ginobili's hand-made nasal strip. Saved from Kobe patting Alvin Gentry on the fanny.

And saved from LeBron James' presto-bizarro-disappearo act in the Eastern Conference semifinals, the biggest unexplained mystery since whatever happened to Vince Carter.

Those are the haunting images that remain of the last several weeks. Gee, thanks. Seriously. When LeBron's summer plans dominate the postseason discussion, just ahead of LeBron vanishing from Game 5, it's clear the NBA could use a moment or three here on center stage. Thank goodness the S.O.S. (Save Our Spring) was received by the Lakers and Celtics, who know something about drama and entertainment this time of year.

The promise of good basketball is on the way, starting Thursday in Game 1 of the NBA Finals, which for the most part also qualifies as Day One of the postseason. Really, it begins now. No more lopsided matchups, fizzles, blowouts, feelings of deflation and emptiness or televised shots of Stan Van Gundy looking like he's going through labor. At least that's the anticipation, anyway, in a series that seems a toss-up.

The Lakers are so concerned about the Celtics that Phil Jackson started working the referees three days earlier than usual. The Celtics are so respectful of the Lakers that Rasheed Wallace, given the chance, did not predict a certain part of their anatomy will tighten up, as he famously offered up for Orlando.

Above all, these teams bring history. The Junior-junior-sky hook, Henderson-steal, Nicholson-mooning, Rambis-clothesline kind of history. The real kind. The kind they don't whip up anymore.

"The backbone of the league was built on these two prestigious teams," said Kevin Garnett. "You have to have an appreciation for the players who made this rivalry. So it's our responsibility, as Celtics and Lakers, to leave everything on the floor because of the players who came before us."

Well. Doesn't that give you more goosebumps than the surface of a Spalding? KG never said anything that profound before the Celtics-Heat first-round series. Just sayin': We're on another level here. The Lakers are defending champions. The Celtics won the year before. And if you ask them, each team believes it should've won both years. And could make a strong case.

"How could you not, as a fan, want to see us play for the championship?" said Lamar Odom. "I predict a great atmosphere, a great outcome."

The Celtics and Lakers are surging at the right time and, without question, are the best the league has to offer. Here's why:

Rajon Rondo: No, it's not because he came up with The Dive, The Steal and The Layup all in one smooth, shocking motion against Orlando. It's not because he went for 29, 18 and 13 against the Cavaliers in the sickest single-game effort of this postseason. It's not because he's now bossing the Big Three around the floor, as opposed to two years ago, when it was vice-versa. And no, it's not because he has ramped up his game to where he's one of the top five or six point guards around. No, he's now a household name because half of America finally knows how to pronounce the name: ra-JOHN. And Celtics fans will be quick to remind you his last name rhymes with "Hondo."

KG's knee: Do you have it? Maybe your neighbor? A friend, perhaps? Wherever it's at, the balky joint that KG dragged around for almost a year, the knee that required medical attention, the knee that supposedly would transform him into a soft, jump-shooting big man is now on someone else's body. Not saying KG is running bump-free these days. Nobody who goes through surgery at such an advanced age comes out better than ever. Still, KG believes he's good enough to last four more wins. You doubt that?

Ron Artest: Here's where we see if the ghost of Trevor Ariza haunts the Lakers. They made the cost-conscious decision last summer to let Ariza, their valuable complimentary player, chase the dollars in Houston while replacing him with Rodman Lite, who brings more of a defensive swagger. Artest is perhaps the only Laker other than Kobe who can get a rise from the laid-back Laker crowd, which recoils in horror every time he gets a 3-point itch ("Noooooo"). But he does accept the challenge of guarding the other team's shooter. And he did put back Kobe's airball last series. Does he get blamed if the Lakers don't take the title?

Tom Thibodeau: He's only the most famous assistant coach since Shooter in "Hoosiers" (RIP, Dennis Hopper), helped greatly by his role in designing the Celtics' defense. He gets major TV time by leaving his chair and pointing his finger every time the Celtics get into their stance. He'll have his own team next season, either in New Orleans or Chicago, neither of which are ready to contend. So he'd better bling up now.

Derek Fisher: Statistically, he was the worst starting point guard in the league this season, and actually was savaged on L.A. sports radio whenever the Lakers fell into a funk. How soon they forget that Fisher saves his big shots for June. He's the only Laker who Kobe will even look at in the final seconds.

Paul Pierce: I think it's safe to say Pierce is one championship away from becoming one of the all-time greats in Boston sports history. Not quite with Bird and Cooz and Russell and Brady and Orr and Yaz and Big Papi. But close. Funny coming from someone raised in Inglewood, who dreamed of playing for the Lakers and hated the Celtics.

Kobe Bryant: His face is twitching, his eyes are narrowing and his lips are tightening. Must be that time again.

Shaun Powell is a veteran NBA writer and columnist.

LeBron trades one drama for another

http://sports.yahoo.com/nba/news?slug=aw-lebroncalipari051410

LeBron trades one drama for another
By Adrian Wojnarowski, Yahoo! Sports
May 14, 2010

BOSTON – The clock struck midnight, the locker-room door swung open and LeBron James marched out a liberated man. Out of the playoffs, off the Garden floor, and barely out the tunnel before he ripped off that No. 23 Cleveland Cavaliers jersey on Thursday. As James marched his way toward the interview room, his stable of agents, middlemen and childhood chums had to walk fast to keep up with him. They never do like letting King James out of their sights.

Together, they have big ideas, bigger plans and the biggest agenda this sport’s ever seen. The playoffs move on without LBJ, but deep down it reassures him that the Boston Celtics and Orlando Magic will never be as big of a story as the suspense he and his hangers-on will spin together.

“Me and my team, we have a game plan that we’re going to execute,” James said.

Yes, his team. That’s where James’ loyalties lie, where together they’ll chase the one title he’s forever chased: the biggest free agent of his generation.

Together, they’re going to hold the NBA hostage. They’re going to flush out a thousand scenarios, manipulate front-office decisions in Cleveland, New York, Chicago and beyond. Kentucky’s John Calipari is along for the ride, working with agent Leon Rose and middleman William Wesley, and all hell promises to break out now.

The plan they’re talking about includes Calipari coming to Cleveland as James’ hand-picked coach. “He’s got to listen if they come calling,” a source close to Calipari told Yahoo! Sports on Thursday night. He was talking about the Cavaliers and Bulls, and Calipari’s camp is determined to open bidding to multiple teams.

Together, these narcissists will manufacture a drama that will undermine the conference and NBA Finals, the NBA draft and Fourth of July parades in small towns and big cities across America. James and the Cavs lost Game 6 of the conference semifinals to the Boston Celtics, 94-85, but he hardly seemed devastated in the losing locker room. James had a triple-double that was devalued with nine turnovers. He shot 44 percent for the series, turned the ball over 27 times and behaved like a lousy leader.

Truth be told, James did something no champion would’ve ever dared: He quit on his teammates in Game 5 and that made it easy for the rest of them – and James – to quit in the final minutes of Game 6. This has been an indictment of the coaching staff and organization, but James, too. Mostly, James. The Cavs have turned out to be a great regular season team unfit for the playoffs, but James was the most responsible for this collapse in the conference semifinals. There was no culprit even a close second.

Still, James will get over it fast because he engages in so little self-examination. In his mind, and that of his cast of sycophants, blame belongs on his coach, Mike Brown, for his lousy adjustments and game plans. It belongs to general manager Danny Ferry for the unworthy teammates. James was no MVP in this series, but no one stays in his employ with impure thoughts of accountability.

The next time you hear James, as the franchise star, say, “This was on me,” will be the first. All around James, his yes men never require him to deal in the currency of truth. Aaron Goodwin, his old agent, tried to be honest with him and his high school buddies, and it got him fired five years ago.

James is on the market, a free agent for the ages, and maybe now the kid out of small-town Akron gets to live out his big-city, bright-light dreams. Where next? Oh, James isn’t worried about that now. He wants the guessing to continue through July 1 and beyond. He backed over Brown one more time on Thursday night, and Brown’s as good as gone as the Cavs’ coach. Ferry has been fiercely loyal to Brown, but his mismanagement of matchups and in-game adjustments compounded an earlier playoff exit with a larger payroll and deeper roster.

Brown goes now, and Calipari moves into the forefront of the discussion. James is forever seeking leverage, and hand-picking his own coach with the Cavs could be the most appealing part of staying with them. What James’ crew will do is force an NBA market for Calipari that exists in only two scenarios: The promise of keeping James or the promise of luring James away.

For Rose and Wesley to attach the prime years of James’ career to Calipari would speak more to an economic power play and monopoly than a functional, workable and winning NBA environment. For some college coaches, talk of them going to the NBA hurts their recruiting. It’s just the opposite for Calipari: It isn’t those stiff owners and GMs who want Calipari, but King James himself. Calipari tells the kids it’s all rumor, except for the part about James, the MVP, wanting him. The Bulls deliver the bonus of Derrick Rose(notes) as the star point guard, and Rose does love his old college coach at Memphis.

Yet, the desperation of Cleveland owner Dan Gilbert makes Calipari’s hiring at $5 million-$6 million a genuine possibility, should James simply say the word. Nevertheless, one Eastern Conference executive close to Ferry told Yahoo! Sports this week: “I think Danny would resign before he’d hire Cal.”

Ferry understands that it would be a hollow, joyless existence, and he doesn’t need the job that badly. He has too much money and too much sense to sign on for more years of being held hostage. Nevertheless, his contract is up, too, and maybe he just walks once James makes his decision. There’s a reason Calipari sat courtside with Rose at Tuesday’s Game 5 in Cleveland, and it had everything to do with thrusting himself into the Class of 2010 conversation. As narcissists go, Calipari and James probably belong together. It would be a partnership constructed for all the wrong reasons and doomed to spectacular failure.

When it comes to free agency criteria, James insisted late Thursday, “I want to win. … That’s my only thing … my only concern.”

Winning is nice and all, and James will eventually get himself a title or two. He’s too talented. At the end of his seventh NBA season, James lost one more chance at it Thursday, and it hardly felt like the end of the world for him. He’ll get over it fast because that enormous ego will be nourished with the courtship of his lifetime, his free agency, and perhaps the hardest part will come sometime in July when James has to make a choice, pick a team and play there. Only then, the wooing of LeBron James will be complete and you have to wonder: How will King James ever live without that?

Adrian Wojnarowski is the NBA columnist for Yahoo! Sports.

A New Era: Here Come The Suns!

By Dave Zirin
A battle has been joined for the very soul of Arizona. On one side, there are the Minutemen, the craven state Republican lawmakers, Governor Jan Brewer, and the utterly unprincipled John McCain, all supporting SB 1070, a law that codifies racial profiling of immigrants in the state. On the other are the Sun Belt residents who protested on May 1st, the students who have engaged in walkouts, and the politicians and civic leaders calling for an economic boycott of their own state.

This battle has also been joined in the world of sports. On one side is Major League Baseball’s Arizona Diamondbacks. Owned by state Republican moneyman Ken Kendrick, the team has drawn protestors to parks around the country. On the other side, we now have the Phoenix Suns. On Tuesday the news came forth that tomorrow on Cinco de Mayo, the team would be wearing jerseys that say simply Los Suns. Team owner Robert Sarver said, after talking to the team, that this will be an act of sartorial solidarity against the bill. Their opponent, the San Antonio Spurs have made clear that they support the gesture.

In a statement released by the team, Sarver said, "The frustration with the federal government's failure to deal with the issue of illegal immigration resulted in passage of a flawed state law. However intended, the result of passing this law is that our basic principles of equal rights and protection under the law are being called into question, and Arizona's already struggling economy will suffer even further setbacks at a time when the state can ill-afford them."

He followed up the statement by saying to reporters, “I looked around our plane and looked at our players and the diversity in our organization. I thought we need to go on record that we honor our diversity in our team, in the NBA and we need to show support for that. As for the political part of that, that's my statement. There are times you need to stand up and be heard. I respect people's views on the other side but I just felt it was appropriate for me to stand up and make a statement."

After Sarver spoke out, the team chimed in against the passage and signing of SB 1070. Two-time MVP point guard Steve Nash, who in 2003 became the first athlete to go on record against the Iraq war said, "I think the law is very misguided. I think it is unfortunately to the detriment to our society and our civil liberties and I think it is very important for us to stand up for things we believe in. I think the law obviously can target opportunities for racial profiling. Things we don't want to see and don't need to see in 2010."

All-Star power forward Amare Stoudamire, who has no political reputation, also chimed in saying, "It's going to be great to wear Los Suns to let the Latin community know we're behind them 100%.”

After the story broke, I spoke on the phone with NBA Players Association Presdient Billy Hunter about the Suns audacious move.

“It’s phenomenal,” he said. “This makes it clear to me that it’s a new era. It’s a new time. Athletes can tend to be apolitical and isolated from the issues that impact the general public. But now here come the Suns. I would have expected nothing less from Steve Nash who has been out front on a number of issues over the years. I also want to recognize Amare. I know how strident Amare can be and I’m really impressed to see him channel his intensity. It shows a tremendous growth and maturity on his part. And I have to applaud Bob Sarver because he is really taking a risk by putting himself out there. I commend them. I just think it’s super.”

He said that the union would have their own statement out by the end of the week.

This kind of political intervention by a sports team is without precedent and now every athlete and every team has an opening to stand up and be heard. Because when it’s all said and done, this isn’t just a battle for the soul of Arizona. It’s a battle for the soul of the United States. Here come the Suns indeed.

Dave Zirin is the author of the forthcoming “Bad Sports: How Owners are Ruining the Games we Love” (Scribner) Receive his column every week by emailing dave@edgeofsports.com. Contact him at edgeofsports@gmail.com.

Clippers stay true to word and draft Blake Griffin

http://www.latimes.com/sports/college/basketball/la-sp-clippers-nba-draft26-2009jun26,0,7652786.story

Clippers stay true to word and draft Blake Griffin
The consensus college player of the year from Oklahoma, who had 30 double-doubles last season and was considered by some to be the only sure thing in this draft, is taken No. 1 overall
By Lisa Dillman
June 26, 2009

Reporting from New York -- There would be no last-minute plot twist for the often-surprising Clippers.

The Clippers said May 19 after winning the draft lottery that they would take Oklahoma power forward Blake Griffin with the No. 1 pick in the NBA draft, and today, , their actions followed their words.

This time, the predictable course was the right one at the glitzy NBA draft tonight at Madison Square Garden. Griffin shook hands with NBA Commissioner David Stern and started his Clippers career.

Griffin, the consensus college player of the year, led the nation in double doubles, recording 30 of them, and averaged 22.7 points and 14.4 rebounds.

He was considered the only sure thing in what had been called an unpredictable draft. Griffin worked out for just one team: the Clippers, and the Clippers, who don't have a second-round choice, did not bring in any other players for an individual workout.

Clippers General Manager and Coach Mike Dunleavy made a trip to Europe in May to watch dynamic point guard Ricky Rubio, and happened to be in Spain the night the team won the draft lottery. That made his long journey a moot point.

The Clippers won only 19 games last season and have missed the playoffs in 11 of the last 12 seasons.

Griffin was asked earlier in this week about the Clippers poor history, and he said: "I am not worried about anything that has happened in the past. I wasn't a part of that and a lot of the guys that are there now weren't a part of it.

"So, I mean, we're only looking forward to the future."

lisa.dillman@latimes.com

Shaquille O’Neal Traded to Cleveland Cavaliers

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/26/sports/basketball/26shaq.html

Shaquille O’Neal Traded to Cleveland Cavaliers
By HOWARD BECK
Published: June 25, 2009

For the third time in four years, Shaquille O’Neal is on the move, rumbling across the N.B.A. landscape, forcing adjustments, reassessments and revisions from coast to coast.

The Cleveland Cavaliers, in a bold stroke aimed at winning the championship, acquired O’Neal from the Phoenix Suns, in a multiplayer trade that will have ramifications across the league.

O’Neal, a 15-time All-Star, will join LeBron James, the league’s reigning most valuable player, to form one of the most powerful tandems in the league. The Cavaliers were already an elite team — winning an N.B.A.-best 66 games last season — but one that was missing any star power, or reliable scoring, beyond James.

That will no longer be a problem. Even at 37, O’Neal remains a fearsome threat in the low post. He averaged 17.8 points and 8.4 rebounds for the Suns last season, played in 75 games — his highest total in four years — and was named to the all-N.B.A. third team.

With O’Neal, Cleveland now has an answer to Orlando’s Dwight Howard, who bulldozed through the Cavaliers in the Eastern Conference finals.

James’s championship dreams were crushed in Game 6 of that series, and he left the arena in a deep funk, without congratulating the Magic or speaking to the news media.

The depression that settled over Cleveland in late May has now cleared.

The Suns and Cavaliers had been discussing parameters of a deal since before the February trading deadline. At the time, it was deemed too great a risk by the Cavaliers, given their dominant season and their enviable chemistry. What appeared like a gamble then looks essential now.

Although the Suns initially held out for a better package, they settled for a deal that gives them financial relief, and little else. Phoenix will receive two marginal rotation players, the past-his-prime center Ben Wallace and the swingman Sasha Pavlovic, plus $500,000 and a future second-round pick.

If the Suns waive Pavlovic, whose contract is only partially guaranteed, they can save around $9 million in salary and luxury-tax payments. They could save millions more if Wallace decides to retire and accept a buyout, a possibility he has entertained.

Where that leaves the Suns is unclear. They have been dangling Amare Stoudemire, their other All-Star big man, in trade discussions all year. Their All-Star point guard, Steve Nash, is entering the last year of his contract and has been notably disconcerted by the team’s direction.

Once a perennial contender in the West, Phoenix has traded away three essential players — O’Neal, Boris Diaw and Raja Bell — since December. They traded Shawn Marion, once a core player, 16 months ago, in the deal for O’Neal.

If the Suns embark on a wholesale rebuilding effort, Stoudemire and Nash could be the next to go. Nash has openly entertained the idea of reuniting with Knicks Coach Mike D’Antoni — with whom he had his best years in Phoenix — if not via trade then as a free agent in 2010.

The trade also has implications for Orlando and the Boston Celtics, the last two Eastern Conference champions, who will now be revisiting their defensive schemes to cope with O’Neal, the most dominant big man of his era, and James, perhaps the best all-around player in the league.

“It’s a great move for Cleveland,” said D’Antoni, who coached O’Neal for a half-season in Phoenix, “and I think that Shaq being closer to New York, playing four times against us, it’s not good for us.”

Although O’Neal is not the powerhouse he was earlier in the decade, when he led the Los Angeles Lakers to three straight titles, “he’s still one of the better players in the league,” D’Antoni said.

The trade could reverberate right into next summer. James is expected to become a free agent in July 2010. At least a dozen teams — including the Knicks — have been clearing salary-cap space to pursue James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh, among others.

If O’Neal, who won titles with Kobe Bryant in Los Angeles and Wade in Miami — can help James secure his first ring, it will make it harder for James to leave his home state. At a minimum, the Cavaliers’ owner, Dan Gilbert, and General Manager Danny Ferry have again demonstrated to James that they will go to great lengths to win a title and keep James happy.

The Cavaliers will be O’Neal’s fifth team in his 17-year career, and his fourth since 2004, when the Lakers traded him to Miami. He has been partners with some of the best perimeter players of the modern era, including Bryant, Wade and Penny Hardaway. Now O’Neal will wind down his career next to one of the most talented players in N.B.A. history.

In Cleveland, James is known as the Chosen One and the fans as “witnesses.” O’Neal will now be the most significant face in the crowd, The Big Witness.