Category: NBA (Page 92 of 595)
LeBron is in some fairly hot water (…again…) after he spoke without thinking (…again). Here’s what he said about the idea of a less watered-down NBA.
“Hopefully the league can figure out one way where it can go back to the ’80s where you had three or four All-Stars, three or four superstars, three or four Hall of Famers on the same team,” James said. “The league was great. It wasn’t as watered down as it is [now].”
“[Contraction] is not my job; I’m a player but that is why it, the league, was so great,” James said.
“Imagine if you could take Kevin Love off Minnesota and add him to another team and you shrink the [league]. Looking at some of the teams that aren’t that great, you take Brook Lopez or you take Devin Harris off these teams that aren’t that good right now and you add him to a team that could be really good. Not saying let’s take New Jersey and let’s take Minnesota out of the league. But hey, you guys are not stupid, I’m not stupid, it would be great for the league.”
Anyone who knows the definition of ‘contraction’ knows that’s what LeBron is talking about here. Some people believe that it would be good for the NBA if there weren’t so many teams because there would be more stars on each team and the quality of play would go up. The downside with this strategy is teams (like Minnesota and New Jersey in LeBron’s example) would no longer exist.
So LeBron is in favor of contraction. Wait — no he’s not:
“That’s crazy, because I had no idea what the word ‘contraction’ meant before I saw it on the Internet,” James said after the Miami Heat’s practice Monday. “I never even mentioned that. That word never even came out of my mouth. I was just saying how the league was back in the ’80s and how it could be good again. I never said, ‘Let’s take some of the teams out.’ ”
“I’m with the players, and the players know that,” James said Monday. “I’ve been with the players. It’s not about getting guys out of the league or knocking teams out. I didn’t mean to upset nobody. I didn’t tell Avery Johnson to leave either. I didn’t say let’s abandon the Nets, and not let them move to Brooklyn or let’s tear down the Target Center in Minnesota. I never said that.”
Welcome to Semantics 101, with Professor LeBron. No, he didn’t say that we should be “knocking teams out,” but he did say how great it would be if the league weren’t so watered down, which would absolutely require fewer teams. He didn’t say the T-Wolves shouldn’t exist, but he did say it would be great if Minnesota’s star player were arbitrarily moved to another team. What happens to the T-Wolves in his world?
Just because he didn’t say the word contraction doesn’t mean that he didn’t come out in favor of contraction.
I like the Sportress of Blogitude‘s take on this:
Aha! That is sound, logical reasoning right there. How can LeBron be in favor of something if he has never even heard of the word until he saw it on the internet? Allow me to illustrate: let’s say – simply for the sake of argument only – that some misguided pundit argued that killing some of the babies born into the world every day would be an effective means of population control. Obviously, such a deplorable opinion would generate a lot of controversy. But if someone later asked said pundit how they possibly could be in favor of infanticide, that person could potentially argue that if they have never heard of the word “infanticide” before, how could they be in favor of it? Unless a person can identify the exact word which perfectly describes some particular act, they cannot in any way support said act, even if that person previously stated they were in favor of exactly what that particular word means. It’s all about semantics, you see.
Well played, LeBron. Well played. Your keen mastery of logic mystifies us all.
That about sums it up.
After a miserable start to the season in which he took shots at his players and himself, Larry Brown is out as coach of the Charlotte Bobcats in another messy exit in his well-traveled career.
The team announced later Wednesday that former Charlotte Hornets coach Paul Silas, who lives in the Charlotte area, will take over on an interim basis.
Here’s what team owner Michael Jordan had to say about the move:
“I met with Coach Brown two weeks ago about the team’s performance and what we could do to improve it,” Jordan said. “We met again this morning after practice. The team has clearly not lived up to either of our expectations and we both agreed that a change was necessary.”
Charlotte is 9-19 on the season and has lost four straight. The Bobcats won 44 games last season, so their start is obviously a big disappointment. Brown has a reputation for being able to turn around a franchise, but he has a tendency to wear out his welcome when things aren’t going well.
SIlas is a pretty good coach. His teams in Charlotte always played hard, so his presence should (somewhat) revitalize the roster. We’ll see.
For what it’s worth, Brown’s camp is saying that he fully intends to coach again.
Years from now, when people look back on 2010, what will they remember as the defining sports moment? Uh, they can only pick one? We discovered that Tiger Woods likes to play the field and that Brett Favre doesn’t mind sending pictures of his anatomy to hot sideline reporters via text message. We found out that LeBron listens to his friends a little too much and that Ben Roethlisberger needed a serious lesson in humility. But we also learned that athletes such as Michael Vick and Josh Hamilton haven’t blown second chance opportunities (or third and fourth chances in the case of Hamilton). It was also nice to see a certain pitcher turn down bigger money so that he can play in a city that he loves.
We’ve done our best to recap the year’s biggest sports stories, staying true to tradition by breaking our Year End Sports Review into three sections: What We Learned, What We Already Knew, and What We Think Might Happen. Up first are the things we learned in 2010, a list that’s littered with scandal, beasts, a Decision and yes, even a little Jenn Sterger.
Contributors: Anthony Stalter, John Paulsen, Paul Costanzo, Drew Ellis and Mike Farley
 | Tiger Woods gets around. |
We hesitate to put this under “golf” because the only clubs involved were his wife’s nine-iron hitting the window of his SUV and the various establishments where Tiger wined and dined all of his mistresses…over a dozen in all. This was the biggest story of the early part of the year, but it got to the point that whenever a new alleged mistress came forward, the general public was like, “Yeah, we get it. Tiger screwed around on his wife. A lot.” He has spent the rest of the year attempting to rebuild his once-squeaky clean image, but it’s safe to say, we’ll never look at Tiger the same way.
 | LeBron wilts when his team needs him most. |
Say the words “LeBron” and “Game 5” in the same sentence and NBA fans everywhere know exactly what you’re talking about. In the biggest game of the season, LeBron looked disinterested, going 3-of-14 from the field en route to a 120-88 blowout at home at the hands of the Celtics. There were rumors swirling about a possible relationship between LeBron’s mom and his teammate, Delonte West, and there’s speculation that LeBron got that news before tipoff and that’s why he played so poorly. Regardless of the cause, LeBron played awful in that game, and it turned out to be his swan song in Cleveland as a member of the Cavaliers. Talk about leaving a bitter taste.
 | You can auction off your talented son’s athletic abilities and get away with it. |
The NCAA set a strange precedent this season while dealing with the Newton family. The always inconsistent and completely morally uncorrupt NCAA decided in its infinite wisdom that despite discovering that Cecil Newton shopped his son Cam to Mississippi State for $180,000, and that is a violation of NCAA rules, that Cam would still be eligible because it couldn’t be proven that he knew about it. Conference commissioners and athletic directors around the country spoke out about the decision, while agent-wannabes and greedy fathers everywhere had a light bulb go off in their own heads: As long as we say the player doesn’t know about it, it could go off without a hitch. What was Cecil’s punishment in this whole thing? Limited access to Auburn for the last two games of the season. Easy with that hammer there, NCAA. Continue reading »
Let’s be honest: Sports bloggers know everything. Just ask us. As part of our 2010 Year-End Sports Review, our list of things we already knew this year includes Brad Childress’ biggest fail, Wade Phillips’ demise in Dallas and John Calipari’s troubles. We also knew Kevin Durant was the next great superstar (who didn’t see that coming?), Roger Clemens is the ultimate windbag and that “Matty Ice” knows fourth-quarter comebacks. We should have gone to medical school…
Contributors: Anthony Stalter, John Paulsen, Paul Costanzo, Drew Ellis and Mike Farley
| LeBron is a frontrunner. |
We all were a little surprised that LeBron left Cleveland, but the writing was on the wall. Growing up, LeBron didn’t root for the local teams. He followed the Yankees, Bulls and Cowboys, which in the 1990s constituted the Holy Triumvirate of Frontrunning. He wore his Yankee cap to an Indians game and was seen hobnobbing on the Cowboy sidelines during a Browns game. He says he’s loyal, but he’s only loyal to winners…unless they only win in the regular season, of course.
 | Brad Childress’ biggest flaw cost him his job in the end. |
There were many reasons why the Vikings decided to fire head coach Brad Childress roughly a year after they signed him to a contract extension. One of the reasons was because he lost with a talented roster. Another was because he never quite figured out how to best utilize Adrian Peterson, which is a sin given how talented AP is. But the main reason “Chilly” was ousted in Minnesota was because he didn’t know how to manage NFL-caliber personalities. He didn’t know how to handle Brett Favre, which led to blowups on the sidelines and multiple face-to-face confrontations. He also didn’t have a clue how to deal with Randy Moss’ crass attitude, so he released him just four weeks after the team acquired him in a trade from New England. Childress was hired in part to help clean up the mess in Minnesota after the whole “Love Boat” scandal. But the problem with a disciplinarian that hasn’t first earned respect is that his demands fall on deaf ears. In the end, Childress’ inability to command respect from his players cost him his job. You know, on top of the fact that he was losing with a talented roster, he didn’t know how to best utilize Adrian Peterson, he…
 | Love him or hate him, George Steinbrenner will forever be one of baseball’s icons. |
You may have hated his brash attitude, the way he ran his team or the way he conducted his business. You may even feel that he ruined baseball. But regardless of how you may have felt about him, there’s little denying that George Steinbrenner will forever be one of Major League Baseball’s icons. Steinbrenner passed away in July of this year. He will forever be a man known for helping revolutionize the business side of baseball by being the first owner to sell TV cable rights to the MSG Network. When things eventually went south with MSG, he created the YES Network, which is currently the Yankees’ very own TV station that generates millions in revenue. During his tenure, he took the Yankees from a $10 million franchise to a $1.2 billion juggernaut. In 2005, the Yankees became the first professional sports franchise to be worth an estimated one billion dollars. While many baseball fans came to despise the way he ran his team (mainly because he purchased high priced free agents with reckless abandon due to the fact that he could and others couldn’t), don’t miss the message he often made year in and year out: The Yankees are here to win. He didn’t line his pockets with extra revenue (albeit he generated a lot of extra revenue for his club) – he dumped his money back into the on-field product. Losing wasn’t acceptable and if the Bombers came up short one year, you could bet that Steinbrenner would go after the best talent in the offseason, regardless of what others thought of the approach. How many Pirates and Royals fans wish they had an owner with the same appetite for victory?
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