Devin Brown

Carmelo Anthony: Why's 'Melo so mellow? He's buzzed, that's why. I get the same way. Also: Hungry for burritos. Nice mugshot, by the way.

Carmelo Anthony's fiance: She wouldn't come and pick her meal ticket up from the po-po house? Daaaaamn, girl. Whatchu doin'? You gots to take care of yo' baby daddy!

Ron Artest: Great googly moogly. Ron-Ron's scared of snake eggs. I guess the Sorting Hat would never put him in Slytherin, then. (Do you think J.K. Rowling will try to sue me for making that comment? Speaking of which...)

J.K. Rowling: Do not write about Harry Potter. It may leave the book's author "close to tears," "violated," and "all but paralyzed" by "stress and heartache." Well, I guess we know now that Lord Voldemort didn't die at the end of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. His spirit must be possessing J.K. Is there a countercurse for that?

The Stern Button: Man. What a clusterbumble in Philly last night, huh? I did an extensive writeup of this mess for Deadspin, but let me sum things up: The Sixers were up by one point with a few seconds left. LeBron drove to the hoop -- and totally travelled, by the way -- before getting the ball knocked out of his hand. Devin Brown recovered it, forced a shot, missed it, and the 76ers pulled out a huge 90-89 win. Or did they? The referees reviewed the film and decided the "right call" was that Devin Brown got fouled on his last-second shot attempt. Brown sank the freethrows, and the Cavs won...setting of a ripple-effect throughout the Eastern Conference playoff pond: Cleveland clinched the fourth seed, Washington got stuck with the fifth seed, Toronto backed into the sixth seed, and Philadelphia fell to the seventh seed.

Forget the fact that refs don't make those calls in end-of-game situations -- the prefer to let the players decide the game -- if they really wanted to get things right, they would have called the travel on LeBron, which happened before the foul on Brown. And that should have been the end of the game, with the Sixers winning. But that's not how The Stern Button works, is it?

Death and taxes: Both suck, but only one of them is coming for us today. I hope.

Dwayne Jones: From Jonathan: "Sasha Pavlovic is injured when he's supposed to shoot freethrows, so Mo Cheeks gets to choose a replacement from the Cleveland bench. Enter Philly college favorite Dwayne Jones. Jones proceeds to dutifully clank two free-throws, confirming the 76er's choice, and is summarily yanked 33 seconds later. Technically, isn't this even worse than a 1-trillion?" I'm going to go ahead and say "yes" on that one, Jonathan.

Golden State Warriors: They only needed to hold on to an 11-point fourth quarter lead against the Suns to stay in the playoff race. What do you think happened?

Don Nelson: Why? Why would Don Nelson bench Baron Davis -- the team's captain, emotional co-leader, leading scorer and assist man, and best clutch player -- for the entire second half?! Nelson's explanation? "I gave Baron a much-needed rest in the second half." And that's all he had to say on the subject. I understand that Baron was only 2-for-13 in the first half, but benching him for the entire second half with a playoff bid on the line was stupid, arrogant, and indefensible. The only possible excuse I would accept is that somebody had planted a bomb in Baron's head that was set to go off if he played more than 17 minutes. Whatever the reason, you've made at least one Lakers fan very happy.

Update: Mark from Black Jesus Disciples and Your Face is a Sports Blog may have answered my "What the hell was Nellie thinking?!" question: Apparently, Baron was hungover. Oh, B-Diddy...Jerry West does not approve.

Indiana Pacers: They only needed to win a game against Washington's reserves to stay in the playoff race. What do you think happened?

Miami Heat commentators: From Kevin: "As I was watching the Heat/Raptors game, there was just one comment from the Miami Heat commentator (sorry don't know his name, it's the guy that usually talks the most) that made me almost spit out my drink.'Well not that I'm trying to put a silver lining on this Heat season, because honestly you can't....' Funny to see how the commentators just want the season to end too." This may be the first time I've ever heard of a broadcaster tanking. Also, I'm going to assume that the comments came from Eric Reid.

New York Knicks: Forget the fact that they lost their final home game of the season to the Boston bench, the Knicks gave away free food and nonalcoholic beverages to thank fans for helping them record 21 sellouts. Man, with the season those fans have been through, the Knicks could have at least provided alchoholic beverages. And a lot of them.

Isiah Thomas, poet and philosopher: After last night's loss to the Celtics' reserves, Isiah addressed the uncertainty of his future with the Knicks. "There are certain times when you live in uncertainty and you're not comfortable with it, but you have to learn to settle and be patient and see what plays out. And we all want certainty in our life. However, in the uncertain times you have to sit with it and in sports there are a lot of uncertain times." You want certainty, Isiah? Here's some for you: I'm dead certain you won't be coaching in New York as soon as, say, Wednesday night. Thursday morning at the latest.

Doc Rivers, quote machine, Part I: Doc employed an unsual motivational tactic during halftime last night: He let Masters winner Trevor Immelman give his team a pep talk. "He gave us a halftime speech and it obviously worked. It was great. Half the guys didn't know him, but most of them did." Wait...half of the guys didn't know them...but half of them did...? Is this one of those lateral thinking puzzles? Or did my brain just breaked? I mean, did my break just brained? Crap.

Doc Rivers, quote machine, Part II: More on Immelman's halftime visit. "It was really cool. They gave him a nice standing ovation, shook his hand. We wanted everyone to touch what a champion felt like." Well, hell, who doesn't want to touch what a champion feels like?

The YES Network: From Jorag: "I just wanted you to see this error made by the YES Network on Sam Cassell's night vs the Knicks. I guess that puts him at number two behind Wilt for most rebounds in a single game." Wow...54 rebounds. I knew Sam I Am had some huge balls, but...wow.

samiamtheman

Chicago and Milwaukee: Defense? What's that? Oh yeah. It's just waiting to get back on offense. The Bucks were eating popcorn as the Bulls scored 151 points -- just four points off the franchise record of 155 set on December 4, 1990 against the Phoenix Suns -- on 67 percent shooting (including 74 percent from inside the arc). Chicago was sharing that popcorn, apparently, since Milwauke put up 135 points on 57 percent shooting themselves. And there were plenty of other crazy numbers in this game. Like Loul Deng's 32-point, 15-for-20 shooting night. And Chris Duhon's 22-point, 15-assist performance (which I'm guessing would qualify as the best game of his career). And let's not forget Ramon Sessions, formerly of the D-League's Tulsa 66ers, who scored 20 points and had a Milwaukee franchise record 24 assists. Man, I scored 10 points and I wasn't even there.

San Antonio Spurs: With the way they struggled to put away the Kings -- who were without Kevin Martin (right knee), Ron Artest (crazy) and Brad Miller (leg) -- it seems like they're playing "dead" moreso than "possum."

Matt Bonner: From Vinny Gorgeous: "The Argentinan Jackie Robinson is out tonight, but the white Rosa Parks threw up a 6 trillion." Why, Matt? Why?!

Anthony Johnson: That's mister four trillion to you, buddy.

The ESPN Scoreboard: From Sky Flakes: "I can't believe that this is happening at ESPN." Hey, who needs the actual scores? It's more fun to just make them up!

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19 Comments:
Anonymous Anonymous said...
JKR isn't trying to block someone writing about her books, she's blocking an idiot who basically took her stories and reformatted them into a dictionary of sorts. There's nothing original about his lexicon, unlike other books out there that explore what the books may mean (most moot by now since they're all finished). Anyway, the guy hoping to publish his lexicon had originally put it up on a website, but now wants to publish it for profit, whereas JKR's own dictionary's profits were for charity.

So yeah. See links here [http://www.journalfen.net/community/fandom_wank/tag/this+is+the+wank+that+never+ends] for more info about that. Also, don't hate me for hijacking the thread for Potter D:

In bawful news, how about that call against the 76ers? CRAP.

-LCG

Blogger Trevor Redfern said...
How about a shout out to Howard "Savior" Schultz? All the Dude wants is his team back man.

http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/news/story?id=3347564

Blogger stephanie g said...
I'm not sure what to say. Excellence all around. I'm about to burst in excitement waiting for the playoffs to start. It's going to be sooo good. I'm going to have to line the couch with towels.

Oh, Stern Button. I forgot about that one. I really like that article, it's a really nice summary. LA/BOS in the finals, if it's in danger Kobe/Pierce will shoot 30 free throws fo sho.

Anonymous Anonymous said...
What's with that instant replay BS? Seriously, when did the NBA start using instant replay to review plays and retroactively call fouls? I thought the instant replay was only to check if a last second shot at the end of a quarter or game came in time? This is unprecedented, isn't it? I haven't heard of anything like this before.

Anonymous Anonymous said...
If Howie's hair-brained plan actually works, he'll dethrone Kurt Cobain as The Man in Seattle.

And even though he's a douche for selling it to the fucktwit known as Clay Bennett, I'd be willing to hold off on the notion of slapping him with my tits for a few seconds at the moment.

Anonymous Anonymous said...
I don't get that espn picture.....I must be blind or something HAHAHAH

Anonymous Anonymous said...
HA just after I send the response I find it GEBUS

Anonymous Anonymous said...
Re: the JKR thing, I kinda agree with LCG on this one.

Re: Indiana: my condolences, Basketbawful. That was a season of mediocre suckitude, and unless some ping pong balls fall their way, I don't see the Pacers getting much better anytime soon.

Anonymous Anonymous said...
in nelson's defence, azubuike played great in the second half. not that he racked up any tangible defensive stats, but he was all over the floor and looked like how ALL the warriors should've been playing like. it was unfortunate that monta went ice cold in the latter stages of the 3rd plus all of the 4th, but barbosa deserves a lot of credit for shadowing him and funnelling ellis into doubleteams and charges

Anonymous Anonymous said...
Watching the reply I noticed that Dalembert was pushed into Brown by a forearm to the back by Z. And Lebron could probably cradle the ball like a running back and charge through the lane and get away with it.

Anonymous Anonymous said...
I kinda disagree with you about the Cavs/Sixers situation. I think the official screwed up, but not for the reasons you mention. First, I don't care that LeBron traveled, since his stumbling was caused by a hip check at the top of the key. It wasn't hard enough to be an end-of-game call, but ignoring it means ignoring whatever happens as a result of it. I also think that Dalembert's foul was hard enough to call.
Where the officials screwed up was when they missed the fact that Dalembert crashed into Brown because Zydrunas pushed him from behind. Not a hard push, but Sam was bit off-balance after blocking LeBron's shot. Had they made the call in live action, I wouldn't have had a problem with it. However, they went to the tape to make the call, and they only looked for the contact on the shooter and where the clock was. If you're gonna take the time to figure out what happened, make sure you look at everything.

I really hope that didn't read like the aimless ramble of a twelve year-old.

Anonymous Anonymous said...
LeBron was clearly fouled on that drive. LeBron's starting to enter in to the area that Shaq was in during his prime, when because both are freaks of nature, refs often times hold their whistles when they get fouled, because it tends not to phase them as much as other players.

LeBron travelled, but he was fouled first. Dalembert obviously fouled Brown. Consider it a makeup call.

Blogger David said...
Is it too late to nominate Kobe for WOTN for throwing his former teammates under the bus: "We had Smush Parker, who is not really playing now. We had Kwame Brown, who's in Memphis and not really playing much now. That was my point guard and my center, and in a pretty tough Western Conference, we still managed to win 45 games [in 2005-06] and get in contention. Now I'm fortunate to have weapons that my peers have had the last several years."
(http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/14/AR2008041403208.html)

You stay classy, Kobe.

Anonymous Anonymous said...
Basketbawful, the call against the 76ers was the right one, and I'll explain my reasons.

1) As LeBron drove, two defenders bumped him hard, causing him to stumble (any other player might have fallen over), so Philly could have been called for that.

2) Samuel Dalembert TACKLED Devin Brown. I'm not kidding or exaggerating; tackled is the right word. Watch the replay and look at Dalembert. The foul was extremely obvious, and Dalembert almost began to cry in anguish as he raised his hand after the buzzer, signaling that he was responsible (trust me, I watched the game)

3) The foul was not retroactively called. It was called during the game, before the buzzer sounded. Dalembert knew it himself, and the camera closed in on his anguished face (I thought he was injured or something at first). The problem was that the understandably loud crowd noise covered up the whistle.

4) There was no question at the booth of whether or not there was a foul. The foul was obvious, but the refs did not know if Brown shot it in time. However, a closer look at the replay showed that Brown got his shot off (and got tackled) well before the buzzer. No rules were broken.

For these reasons, I must humbly disagree with your analysis of the 76ers game. Keep up the great work though!

Anonymous Anonymous said...
Correct your Doc Rivers Quote 1
The italicized (sp?) words should be "half" and then "most"

Not "half" and then "half"



And also, Cassell got 54 rebounds, not 53 according to the picture

Anonymous Anonymous said...
And what am I missing about the ESPN scoreboard? What score is posted incorrectly :S I'm assuming it's an easy error but I can't spot it.

Anonymous Anonymous said...
@david:

That's why no one on his team likes Kobe. Couldn't imagine rooting for that guy.

Also, he's not the best player in the league (LeBron) and he's not the most valuable (Paul, KG, and LeBron are all relatively more valuable - Lakers weren't elite until Gasol arrived).

Kobe probably has been on average the best player in the league over the past 5 years, so its a lifetime achievement award. That's fine but let's call a spade a spade.

Anonymous Anonymous said...
um tackled?
I'm watching the replay right now trying to see what you see but I don't see a tackle.

lebron did get bumped but he clearly took like 3 steps and he was out of control so there's no way you can call that foul.

Big Z pushed Dalembert while he was in the air, you can see that too.
he gave him a little push forcing dalembert to go forwards so if there was any foul it woulda been a Big Z push off as well.

raised his arm? he coulda raised his arm in victory? anguish? he coulda been nailed in the head (which is posslbe)that's why he was holdings his head

FYI I'm a raptors fan which means a philly loss secures them a 6th seed.
anyways it's over doesn't matter too much garbage going around these days at the end of games

Anonymous Anonymous said...
What in the world was up with the face Dalembert was making after that play?