Every year about this time, we Torontonians take our pacifiers, blankets, and bibs, gather in a circle and wonder why nobody loves or respects us. Why oh why do players avoid coming to Toronto? We are nice people. Our women are prettier than any in Atlanta, of that I can assure you. You want to pah-tay? I’m sure Vince can throw you on the guestlist at his club. Hell, we even have full contact nude lapdancing!!! Yours to discover, indeed. Well, seems we now have to share a corner of our blanket with Charlotte. Figure that one out. Granted, it’s about as boring as watching a hockey game, but to play in a basketball hotbed under Larry Brown? Sure, everything (and I mean EVERYTHING) closes around 6pm every day there, but think of the money you’ll save as a young guy. Hell, they even have 24hr internet there now.
One of the classic discussions as it relates to the NBA draft is do you draft for positional needs or the best player on the board at the time. Shocking that people aren’t clamouring to get Bryan Colangelo’s answer on that question. In any event, a favourite of AltRaps, Jerry Sloan says that drafting to fill a hole at a position “doesn’t help the value of your franchise”. Gotta say, that makes sense. If you are drafting in the top 8, you’d think that you’d grab the best talent and parlay it into a trade for an established player or trade your pick for someone you wanted that will go later and save some cash. Oh, Bryan….
The NBA continues to count their haul as the Finals continue. One thing that won’t happen is the Staples Center opening its doors to fans so they can watch the game on the big screen. Guess all the fights and the YouTube sensation didn’t go over to well with the folks at AEG.
They might want to try and muzzle their fans near the Celtics hotel as well. Clean stuff, great taunting material. Pierce garners the most derision.
Did you catch the end of the game last night? Classy move by the Lakers to applaud their fans in their last home game of the season. Nice to see Kobe step into the spotlight and make sure he was seen doing the same just before his live interview. Also (sarcasm on) touching (sarcasm off) was Kobe cuddling with his kids at the end of the tunnel. Sweet no? Okay, maybe not so much.
Family PDAs, your wife posing on camera, some of this stuff sounds so familiar. Oh, right, Doug Christie!! In his most recent blog, he takes credit for making that type of stuff mainstream while taking a ton of heat for same. He also thinks that, yes indeed, that playoff series was fixed, and he can still outplay most training camp invites but his relationship is the first thing on teams minds. Do you think Jackie types the blog for him?
The Seattle vs Sonics trial started today. If you want to keep tabs, you might want to check here. With the economy going into the toilet and some feeling this could be a hard recession, the outcome of this could prove monumental when other teams pull up lame.
Two NBAers back to picking up the ball: Shaun Livingston and Yao Ming. Stockton and China are breathing sighs of relief.
The folks over at Courtside are setting up a blog to follow Canada Basketball this summer. I’m pretty excited about this team. World beaters? No. Able to take the next step after Steve Nash? I think so. If you are in the area and claim to be a ball fan, you should be making plans to go to Hamilton or Toronto to check these guys out and feel proud of what they can achieve for this country.
Speaking of achieving things for a country, Barack Obama says he will take the bowling alley out of the White House and replace it with a basketball court. Not so sure Hillary would have done that. Great basketball related interview by Jimmy Kimmel can be seen here.
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