• GREG ODEN WANTS HIS INTERNET FREE, OR NOT AT ALL: Deca-Fouler Greg Oden updates his blog on YARDBARKER from Vegas for the first time in over a week - but he has his reasons:

“It doesn’t help that my hotel does not have free internet access. I hate that.”

No free i’net access in Vegas - where all is gratis except that which graces the table felt? Sounds like the Blazers might need to consider breaking that trade-out arrangement with the Flamingo.

More Oden: “The autograph seekers are everywhere, it’s crazy here, guys just pull basketballs out there a**.”

Nice to hear Penn & Teller finally is changing up their act.

• David Barron of the HOUSTON CHRONICLE has more evidence Dan Patrick was pushed out at ESPN, with this nonsensical quote from the recently departed SportsCenter anchor: “I still would like to do network sports and to continue to do radio. I enjoy the format. I enjoy talking with my friends about issues and having guests on.”

Patrick wants to do network sports and radio? Then why did he *leave* ESPN? (he didn’t - he was shown the door)

Want to know where Patrick will land? Try the increasingly obscure Sporting News Radio Network. Patrick’s brother, Bill Pugh, runs the operation there.

Though the network’s flagship affiliate, KMPC-AM in Los Angeles, recently dumped sports talk for Vietnamese- language programming. Or was it Korean? And the L.A. TIMES discounts the possibility in today’s edition.

• USTA CEO Arlen Kantarian tells the LONDON TIMES that the idea of changing women’s Grand Slam finals to a best-of-five-set format is “definitely on the front burner.”

The stumbling blocks: CBS abhorring a five-set match “at primetime on Saturday night.” But the idea continues to gain steam thanks to high-paying “patrons [who bought tickets] and are fed up with being short-changed by women’s finals that barely scratch the surface“.

• JOHN MAYER FANS TAKE ONE FOR THE TEAM(S) IN JERSEY: Giants and Jets fans will be happy to note that potentional parking woes at Giants Stadium this season, thanks to construction at the Meadowlands, have probably been worked out.

The BERGEN RECORD reports that fans who used satellite parking at last weekend’s Live Earth concert at the ballpark experienced nightmare delays. Giants Stadium geniuses “failed to hire enough shuttle buses, … and by early afternoon most fans were complaining about waits of an hour or more to board a bus.”

William Squires, a stadium operations consultant for the teams: “This was a great opportunity to test. We found some holes, and we’re going to have to fix it.”

Yep, thank god for fans of the Mayer of bad music.