Sportsfrog.com

It is hard to imagine that at this point, even as undeniably cool as New York City is, that Lebron James is New York Knicks bound, all things considered. That doesn’t stop the drumbeat of “oh please” articles from New York. Today’s entrant is the note that the Knicks hope to increase their appeal to James this summer by getting back in the Marcus Camby business. Or, at the least, improve their interior defense regardless. It’s good to have goals.

To review, the Grizzlies looked a franchise defining moment in the face and said, “hey, we want to be defined as believers in massive stiffs. So let’s get in the Hasheem Thabeet business.” Which has worked out great, in that he has been ever worse than one could possibly have imagined. And is currently hanging out in the D-League. In the Dakotas. The northern one. In wintertime.

So, in honor of such a gawdawful draft choice by a masochist franchise, some posts on the players the Grizzlies passed on in their quest to be continually a joke. Tonight’s entrant? Stephen Curry. The player who could have given the Grizzlies a point guard to build a franchise around. Instead, he is bringing hope to Golden State’s 9 remaining fans and creating a buzz about finishes at the basket that put him in a rare class. His numbers on the year? 15.7 ppg 5.3 apg 4.2 rpg 1.83 steals per game. And there is this:

Last month, he became the sixth rookie in league history to put together a 35-10-10 triple-double, putting him in a club with Elgin Baylor, Michael Jordan, Jason Kidd, Oscar Robertson and Jerry West.

But, hey. Thabeet! In Dakota! Even when the Grizzlies win, they still find ways to lose.

In a strong move that has to make him the clear favorite to play the lead villain in the next Indiana Jones movie, Marquis Daniels decided to hire a Beverly Hills jeweler to make a three-pound gold statue of his head, and cover it with diamonds, to wear around his neck.

No word yet on how much it’s worth, or insured for – if it’s insurable (Dear Lloyd’s of London…) – but doesn’t this automatically become the #1 target of every amateur thief in the country?

Video of how it was made here. Hat tip to JE Skeets of Yahoo.

In the excerpts from this Salon column, the analogies scream Simmons. Even though the not-so-subtle racism doesn’t.

Shirley, as you may know, made waves with his blog post about Haiti this week. Immediately after his post, ESPN got rid of him.

Now that we’ve got a bit of a backstory, it’s pretty clear where the Haiti column came from. I remember Shirley first as the Iowa State player (yes, Iowa State actually had black players. Shirley played with Kelvin Cato and Jamaal Tinsley, if I remember right) and secondly as the dude who wrote a book about barnstorming throughout Europe.

Instead, he’s now known as the guy who may or may not dislike people who aren’t white. That’s pretty sad, and Shirley’s got no one to blame but himself.

The NBA is understandably sensitive about gun violence, given that two of its players recently brandished guns in a locker room. But they’re losing perspective, and coming across as unreasonable hypocrites. Months ago, Nike did a LeBron-Kobe print ad where Kobe says, “I’ll do whatever it takes to win games. I don’t leave anything in the chamber.”

The ad has been released, and the NBA is offended, releasing this statement: “We had no prior notice of this ad. We think it is inappropriate.”

Really? I mean, really? Are you even remotely serious? Because, if you are serious, you’re either a blind idiot (which we know Stern is not) or a massive hypocritical bully. You operate a sport where the entire dialect revolves around the word “shoot” and its variants. Shoot. Shot. Shot clock. Blocked shot. Shooting percentage. Three-point shot. Sharpshooter. Sniper. Rifleman. And you’re going to take offense at a shooting reference?

And don’t try to tell me Kobe agreed, so the NBA is correct. Of course Kobe agreed. He’s corporate. He knows this isn’t a battle worth wasting breath on, because he understands Stern is just doing this for PR. Something Kobe understands completely. But this is beyond stupid, and it should be called out as such. It’s Stern’s obsession over the public image of the league run amok.

If this is how you want to play it, Stern, then be consistent. Rename every aspect of the game. Change all of the NBA’s historical records. Take down the NBA.com website now until you can reconstruct it without any reference to shooting. Stop selling all books that use the term. Re-write them. Stop selling all DVDs. Re-dub them. Never replay any game on the NBA Network where any variation of the term is stated by an announcer or displayed on the screen.

And maybe, just maybe, start being consistent. As the AP article points out, just yesterday, Pacers coach Jim O’Brien said: “We did not have enough bullets in our gun to make games of it.” Stern, are you going to fine him? Call it inappropriate? Or is your paternalistic hypocrisy reserved for young black men?

As if the gunplay in the workplace allegations were not already enough, Gilbert Arenas doubled down in the last few days with some pretty damn glib statements and tweets. The overall impression? He has not handled this well. No huge surprise there, I suppose.

At any rate, the NBA has finally had enough, apparently. An indefinite you-don’t-have-to-go-home-but-you-can’t-play-here has been handed down.

At the least, maybe it will be clear to anyone who might still be confused, but the whole thing was no laughing matter. No matter how Arenas tried to spin it.

How eager is the NBA to sweep the Tim Donaghy book and allegations as far under the rug as possible? The league office apparently passed on fining Rasheed Wallace for his comments on the book because they didn’t want to call more attention to it. That’s doesn’t mean they don’t want Wallace to shuddy, however. From the Boston Herald:

Bad news for the NBA. Rasheed Wallace is getting the Tim Donaghy book. “I want to check it out and see what’s there,” Wallace said last night.

Wallace already has been fined once for criticizing referees this season ($30,000), and as reported in Tuesday’s Herald, he lucked out on another occasion when the league didn’t want to bring more attention to the claims of Donaghy, the former official convicted of gambling. Celts GM Danny Ainge passed on word to Wallace from the NBA that he should watch his critical statements, but the forward won’t bow to the request.

“Either way they’re going to get me,” Wallace said. “If I don’t say nothing I’m going to get fined, and if I say something I’m going to get fined. So I might as well say something about what’s on my mind, what I want to say. They’re going to hit me up either way. I’ve been through that before in Portland. When I wasn’t talking to the media they were fining me. But then when I did talk to the media they didn’t like what I had to say, so they fined me some more. So I was like, ‘Well, (expletive), if you’re going to fine me I might as well say what the hell I want to say.’ ”

When it was suggested he could offer a “no comment” to questions about officiating, Wallace said, “Yeah, I could do that, but I think I have to be honest when I’m asked a question. And what happened to freedom of speech? You know, I say what’s on my mind, speaking my freedom, and I get fined for it. It’s a catch-22 with that (expletive), man.

“See, they think they can control people with money. Everybody don’t live like that. That’s how they live up there in that office. They think, ‘Oh, I’m going to hit him in the pocket. That’s where it will hurt.’ No, it don’t hurt me. I didn’t have it growing up, so, I mean, either way it don’t hurt me. As long as my family’s cool, I’m cool. It ain’t hurting my family. I make sure of that.”

Could someone arrange for Rasheed to record the Donaghy book for a book on tape release? And could they get Rasheed to drop in his own comments every so often during the recording? Because, if so, I would buy that. Several times. Hand it out as gifts and what not.

Per the NY Post, and, well, read it verbatim:

Guess they’re still the Bullets at heart. NBA all-star Gilbert Arenas and his Washing ton Wizards teammate Javaris Crittenton drew guns on each other in the team’s locker room during a Christmas Eve dispute over a gambling debt, The Post has learned. League sources say the pistol-packing point guards had heat ers at the ready inside the Verizon Center, the Washington, DC, home of the Wizards — whose name was changed from the Bullets over gun violence concerns.

It was the three-time all-star Arenas, 27, who went for his gun first, sources said, draw ing on the 22-year-old Crittenton, who quickly brandished a firearm as well. It was not clear whether other teammates saw the shocking standoff, which happened on a practice day. The duel in DC — unprecedented in sports history — was sparked when Critten ton became enraged at the vet eran guard for refusing to make good on a gambling debt, a source said. “I’m not your punk!” Crittenton shouted at Arenas, according to a league source close to the Wizards.

That prompted Arenas to draw on Crittenton, who then also grabbed for a gun, league security sources said. A playground pal of Crittenton’s from Atlanta, Kendrick “Bookie Ball” Long, confirmed the locker-room standoff and said he learned of it directly from the third-year player out of Georgia Tech. “He [Arenas] was f- – -ing with him; he [Crittenton] was just defending himself!” declared Long, who said the dispute was over money but would not elaborate.

Holy shit. On a list of things to be concerned about in seeking to turn the Wizards around, one might have hoped that gunplay amongst teammates would not be on the list. Bill Simmons with the quick and relevant speculation that Washington’s rapid reporting of the potential felony may be tied to a desire to get out from under the fuckawful contract…

Frog co-founder and twitter-master garyclark with the heads up in the Swamp here.

A lot. As usual. I already mea culpa’d on the Josh McDaniels thing. In fairness, end of season mini-collapse aside, hard to call the first year for McDaniels in Denver anything short of a somewhat qualified success. At the least, he wasn’t a disaster.

Next on the list of things I was wrong about: my bitching over Memphis’ acquisition of Zach Randolph. Let’s put in context just how wrong I was. I went with the Randolph-is-a-team-killer theme. He may have been in the past, but he sure as hell has not been for the Grizzlies. In fact, he has shown an instinct for team ball that I had no idea he possessed. The Grizzlies are 15-16, and that is, believe it or not, their third best 31 game start in team history. And that record includes their recovery from the 1-8 Iverson-era disaster of a start to their season.

Randolph’s part in that? Immense. He, Marc Gasol and Rudy Gay have formed what is arguably one of the top two or three front lines in the NBA. Seriously. Randolph, who is not on the All-Star ballot, deserves a spot on the Western Conference team. For the month of December? He’s averaging 24 and 14. For the season he is at 20 and 11.4. He has been an offensive rebounding revelation, and, in a ridiculously good breakdown of his improvement from The Memphis Flyer’s Chris Herrington, the improvement appears to be not an accident. He has foregone jumpers to some extent, to really do some damage on the interior. And it shows in his improved shooting percentage and in the fun two-man games he is running with Marc Gasol.

As 2010 gets here, the reality is that a Grizzlies team that reamins frighteningly thin on the bench has the corp of a starting five in place that makes them borderline playoff relevant, even in the Western Conference (and even with one of those five being Mike Conley). They are entertaining to watch, and acquisition of Randolph has been a huge part of their success. And I sure as hell did not see that coming. Score one for Grizzlies owner Mike Heisley and figurehead GM Chris Wallace.

The Sports Frog marks its seventh anniversary on this tiny part of the intertubes with the arrival of 2010. A few months after it got going, I was given access to post. So, in almost seven years of thoughts, one or two of them perhaps original, some themes come around again. And again. And, again.

Like this: the Western Conference of the NBA, as a whole, continues to be ridiculously hard. The Eastern Conference, much less so.

The top the respective conferences are probably about equal (Boston/Cleveland/Orlando/Atlanta v. Lakers/Mavs/Suns/Nuggets). Maybe a slight lean to the east. After that? Not so much. At all. So here we are about 31 or so games in, and the sixth spot in the East, were the playoffs to start today, occupied by Toronto at 16-17. One game under .500 in the West? That would be good for 10th (nice improvement Grizzlies, but your location conference-wise fucks you).

Matt Moore of TrueHoop on espn.com’s Daily Dime with a relevant thought:

The Eastern middle is largely irrelevant. After all, it’s hard for some pundits to even consider the East a “big four” with the addition of Atlanta. But for league legitimacy, you hope at least for the playoff teams to be fighting above .500. Like, say, it is in the West. Out West, Oklahoma City has a solid résumé this season — finally playing with consistency, surprising skeptics and working its way to 17-14 with a tough schedule. The Thunder are now a team that you can expect to battle every night no matter how dominant you are. The Memphis Grizzlies have also stunned the league by jelling under Lionel Hollins. They were 9-4 in December, including wins over Dallas, Cleveland, Miami and Denver. Neither of these teams would be in the playoffs if they started today.

The disparity between the East and West has been a theme for more than a decade, but the recent surge of Boston, Cleveland and Orlando has helped even out the top-heavy portions of the East. But the continued incomplete formulas of the Eastern middle still drag the conference down. Toronto is currently the sixth seed! A team that consistently flirts with the worst defensive-efficiency mark in the league! The Warriors play better defense!

It makes you wonder about how we consider teams. After all, if the Grizzlies weren’t trapped in a death gauntlet with Dallas, San Antonio and Houston in the toughest division in professional basketball, where would they be? What if they were in the East’s Central Division, where Chicago, the second-best team, is 12-17? It’s enough to make you wonder about that whole “just take the 16 best teams” thing.

Yeah. A passing thought. Will never happen. But, hey, after seven years, when the point of this post is to largely revisit my perenially bitching about how shitty the eastern conference is, I am not as averse to the idea as I used to be.