i dont know if you were being sarcastic about the hump day comment but it isn't referring to getting humped, it means that its the middle of the week therefore its a hump

Bricks at Pacers: The Pacers are trying to win for the 10th time in 11 games. And yet their season record is 29-48 to this point. It's amazing how weird the end of the regular season can be when some teams care and other teams don't, eh?

Of course, the Purple Paupers will lose to any team, caring or not, as long as that opposition has a pulse.

From Simmons's piece:

Sheed makes me say the words, "Why won't we play Brian Scalabrine?"

And considering how loudmouthed Bill is, I can't help but feel a warm sense of mirth at that sentence.

Yeowch... the Spurs are going to be paying Ginobili a lot of money for a 35 year old with (presumably) no knees left.

"The San Antonio Spurs and guard Manu Ginobili have agreed to a three-year extension worth $38.9 million, a league source confirmed Wednesday.

The deal is the maximum the Spurs are allowed to offer Ginobili under the current collective bargaining agreement, based on Ginobili's current salary and age (32).
"

Anonymous -- Yes, it was meant to poke fun at the silly double entendre. The parentheses were supposed to help set that off, but I guess it didn't work well enough.

I still don't understand the Camby trade. As a blazers fan I'm very grateful, but it seems like it was such a bad move for the Clippers. At the same time, being sent from the Clippers to the Blazers doesn't really merit a revenge game. If anything, he should probably reign things in a little to try and thank them.

If you check the box scores for any of the tournament games, mens or womens, it's clear that shooting the basketball is a dying art. I blame the three point line. Did anyone crack 45% from the floor in last two weeks?

Then again, none of them got to play the Warriors.

Oh ,and I forgot to say, Bibby may be contact-shy, but an ingrown toenail is NOT a pussy injury, anymore than turf toe is.

That article on Sheed was the best thing Simmons wrote in the past 2 years. It was a thoroughly enjoyable piece

The Camby trade was just another example of the Clippers being who we thought they were.
--They got less than they could have months earlier, they could have had a draft pick and/or a player who would stick with them.
--They got nothing to help their team moving forward since they won't keep Outlaw or Blake going forward.
--They upset everyone on their team.

BUUUUUUUUUT

They got $3 million in cash from Portland and saved a few bucks in salary this year (since Camby made more than Outlaw + Blake).

Yet again, the Clippers and Donald Sterling chose money over reason. The Clippers are who we thought they were. Cheap.

One quarter in, it seems the refs are determined to make up a game to the Thunder. So they gave a game to the Jazz, and now they're jobbing the team that's half a game behind the Jazz with the tiebreaker. *sigh*

The pattern may not hold up all game, but through the first quarter, I've been amazed by the difference in contact KD takes to get to the line versus even guys like Carmelo and Billups.

@Kazam92: Did you read his open letter to Blake Griffin? I laughed my ass off at that one.

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=simmons/090624&sportCat=nba

Just tuned in to watch Nuggets/Thunder, and it immediately delivered on the bawful:
Around 3:20 left in the second quarter, Durant kicks out to Sefolosha who bricks a short jumper from the right baseline. He chases his own rebound, but Anthony grabs it...and proceeds to whip his head around and grab his face as if he got shot. I'm talking 60-mph-deceleration-to-zero level whiplash. Foul on Thabo. Replays then show Sefalosha had his BACK to Anthony and was starting to head upcourt. Just filthy.

If someone has video of this PLEASE upload it so we can all enjoy in the bawful.

Also, in the time I was writing this post and looking up how to spell Thabo Sefolosha, Durant just twice abused Joey Graham for a shake-and-bake jumper, then blew by him and dunked it home.

"That 3-pter by Billups ended a Nuggets field goal drought of 11:08"
Wow, basically an entire quarter without hitting a shot? Really Denver?

NELLIE WINS!!! NELLIE WINS!!! NELLIE WINS!!!

I don't know whether to cheer, shrug indifferently, or passionately argue that a win against the Timberpoops just doesn't count.

As a blazers fan I'm very grateful, but it seems like it was such a bad move for the Clippers.

EXACTLY! If it's a bad move, chances are that Clippers "management" has considered it and WILL do it!

---

As I texted Dan B. and Matt McHale: Technical Writer today...I saw on the Jazz-Rockets broadcast that the Dream Team is being inducted into the hall of fame...

...which therefore means that...

CHRISTIAN LAETTNER NOW HAS A SNIFF OF BALLER IMMORTALITY.

egads. :/

Scary thought:

I hope that when Matt McHale: Technical Writer and BadDave sang the chorus of "I hope Ron Artest ruins the Lakers" during their Europe experience, that that didn't accidentally translate to "I hope Rasheed Wallace ruins the Celtics" in Italian.

@Viscant

Good point about the savings. I probably don't think about that because the Blazers are spoiled with an owner with deep pockets.

@Chris

Which brings up a good point about "management." I never understood why we don't see more new faces coaching and GM-ing. Take Dunleavy. He's been coaching for two decades, passing through Los Angeles, Milwaukee, Portland and now the other LA team, and managed a few surprises, a lot of mediocrity, and a lot of abject failure.

It's like the NBA is some tiny town in the middle of nowhere and every guy in the whole town takes a turn dating a girl, even though they know she is certifiably insane and even lit one ex's house on fire. Still they can't help but think "But maybe if I date her we'll have somethin' special." Except she will never, ever have anything special with anyone. It's kind of sad really.

AAaaanyway.

Any reason why we keep seeing the same faces bravely leading team after team to the lottery or a first round playoff exit?

"Wow, basically an entire quarter without hitting a shot? Really Denver?"

Which was followed up by... get this... the Thunder not hitting a field goal in the final 9 minutes of the game. Jeff Green's dunk put them up 86-74, and from there on out they hit 8 ft (out of 11 attempts) and 0 fg (out of 13 attempts). Meanwhile, Denver scored 24 points in the last 9 minutes to win the game by 4.

And Carmelo Anthony and JR Smith played some great defense on Kevin Durant down the stretch. Seriously.

I also recommend watching the video of Carmelo lying on the court motionless while play went on around him. He contends he lost consciousness after colliding with Durant, but apparently everyone in the building thought he was throwing a temper tantrum, so the refs allowed the Thunder to inbound the ball, Denver didn't elect to call a timeout to stop them, and even when the Nugs got the ball back they dribbled into the frontcourt and tried to play around him. It wasn't until the next whistle that anybody thought "huh... he didn't get up to cherry-pick after the steal. Maybe he's actually hurt." It was a very, very strange sequence.

http://www.cbssports.com/nba/gamecenter/recap/NBA_20100407_BOS@TOR?tag=atlBox1698999;atlText1698999

Allow me to point out the interesting section.
"Finley nearly didn't play after he strained his back picking up his luggage at the team hotel.

"That's when you know you're old," Boston coach Doc Rivers joked."

-Josh: Ownership that is too stupid to care, i.e. the reason that Nellie was able to come back to the Warriors in the first place after being the prime reason C-Webb opted for a life with the Bullets (when they WERE the Bullets) for a year instead.

With the case of the Clippers, Sterling probably picks the worst candidates possible and has that team in existence as a tax writeoff (remember, the Camby trade IIRC was fueled by him having to pay out a million in some lawsuit settlement).

Every sport has their retreads, though, where past glories and success override a potential 15 years of incompetence, i.e. hockey's Mike Keenan, who successfully ran several franchises into the ground after winning one Stanley Cup as coach.

Football has the never-ending reruns of Schottenheimer and Norv Turner...not to mention the perpetual dictatorship of Al Davis in East Oakland. (It isn't surprising that East Oakland is home to two incompetent/incapacitated sports owners, as well as one painfully frugal farm team for the Yankees/Red Sox/et al., is it.)

I'm not sure the Association has suffered from the "farm team" situations that the Royals and A's in baseball have been...and to some extent, the Blackhawks in the NHL were in the 1950s for Detroit (when both teams were under the common, corrupt ownership of the Norris family).

Then again, the Lakers repeatedly fleecing people for draft picks in the late 70s and 80s (cue up the Gail Goodrich trade LOL, as well as their indirect spurring on of today's Stepien Rule) might be close...

And speaking of East Oakland, HOME OF THE WARRIORS...the former co-tenants of The Oracle, the NHL's Oakland Seals, managed to trade away a lottery pick in 1971 that gave Montreal the chance to pick up future cornerstone hall of famer Guy Lafleur...while the Seals would move to Cleveland in 76 as the Barons, merge with the then-Minnesota North Stars, and disappear (only to reemerge, in some way, as the San Jose Sharks under a 1991 demerger orchestrated by one-time Crabs owner Gordon Gund). (Montreal's ownership had someone related to them working on the Seals' staff at the time; and in an effort to guarantee that the pick would be in the lottery level, they even traded a decent backup goalie to the Los Angeles Kings to ensure more divisional losses for the Bay Area team!)

Really, East Oakland has been the collection to some of the abject worst management in the history of sports:

Warriors - Joe Barely Cares for McHale/Parrish (maybe this is where Kevin McHale learned his later skills of bad GMing!)...the C-Webb fiasco...the Nellie contract drama that resulted in the panic signing of Maggette...all those terrible draft picks of the 80s and 90s like Joe Smith

A's - Giambi/Damon/Dye/et al. farmed out to higher-budgeted teams...but that in some ways is a vestige of how Charlie Finley pretty much made hall-of-famers like Catfish Hunter and Reggie Jackson want out, AFTER a three-year dynastic team that couldn't even manage to sell out the Coliseum much!

Seals - the aforementioned Lafleur pick trade that doomed the franchise, and yes, at one point also owned by the previously noted nutcase Charlie Finley

Raiders - the Lane Kiffin Smackdown Slideshow? Tom Cable? Though in the LA era, pushing Marcus Allen out HAS to count for something...Al whining his way out of Oakland in '81 on the heels of his second Super Bowl win as owner in 5 years, only to come back in 1995, have the Coliseum rebuilt to ruin baseball sightlines (indirectly but significantly affecting the A's future viability there) and guarantee a lack of sellouts...forcing out the only competent coach in the second Oakland era (Jon Gruden) which led to a truly dire Super Bowl blowout...Art Shell LOL...hey, don't forget this whole "signing loose cannons like Barret Robbins and Sebastien Janikowski" on a repeated basis deal.

Four (now three) messes of teams right off of Interstate 880 Exit 36. And yet two of them have managed titles in 40 years of facepalming, isn't that incredible?

Granted, the Warriors' one Bay Area title came with a two-game temporary visit in the Finals to the Cow Palace in San Francisco/Daly City...because, either the Warriors chose the Cow Palace's better home court advantage (to confuse the Bullets who had never played there since that latter franchise moved to Landover) OR because...as is often repeated...the Oracle was too busy with an ice show or circus that week, which they felt more important than the Association's finals.

Yes, this was pretty long. But really, how can one capture the sheer mass of futility that lies in just 6000 square feet of municipal property? The Clippers can't say they've been able to cause that much of an negative impact, because the Lakers have had successful histories at Staples and even at LA Sports Arena.

I guess the closest thing to a modern-day fortress of fail like the Oakland sports complex would be Air Canada Centre in Toronto, home of the mismanaged but profitable (for a teacher's pension) Maple Leafs in the NHL, and of course, the Craptors and their Turkoglu Party Time.

Madison Square Garden probably could be up there too these days with the Dolans' destruction of a once-proud ballclub (thanks to Zeke, 'antoni, and other fools) combined with their reliance on overpaying washed up 2nd liners for the Rangers.

Nellie getting the record against Minny shouldn't count. I remember a fantasy projection of the 1997 MLB season where it had the following scenario:

September 26 - Griffey Jr hits his 62nd homerun of the season of Hideki Irabu. Asks for it not to count as he doesn't want to insult Roger Maris' record by breaking it with a homerun off Irabu.

September 27 - Griffey homers off Andy Pettitte and takes the record.

Don Nelson also has the record for most losses? No? Who does that belong to?

Blazers/Spurs/Thunder

Can any of these guys hurt the Lakers?

I mean, Oklahoma is young, fast, feisty... Durant can get the calls... Spurs are... well, the Spurs... should the lakers get worried, or 1st round will be a picnic no matter what?

Is the "I don't give a s$it" mode helping or hurting the Lakers? They lost home advantage to the Crabs (and possibly Magic). Do they care? Meanwhile, they're in rest mode... it's good because they'll enter the playoffs rested... but won't they loose the killer instinct? The Suns (and basically every team in the west) are in full throttle, and they can transport that fire to the 1st round.

PS: damn those back to backs!!!! Jazz need AK back ASAP!!!!!

Shouldn't we have some sort of Bawful Hall of Fame/Shame? We can nominate entire teams, or franchises, just drop the Clippers as a first ballot franchise.

Loved the Bill Simmons article. Sheed is the Derrick Coleman of our generation.