He successfully solved the crisis of high school baskeball players taking jobs away from hard-working, American and European blue-collar-with-white-trim ballers. And now NBA commissioner David Stern wants to take that one step further. Well, 12 months further, at least.
(If Stern gets his way, these guys wouldn’t have been draft eligible this past year. Well, okay, Greg Oden still would have been.)
If you’ve ever played Blackjack in Vegas, you see those guys who trip over to your table, half-drunk. They throw down one bet, for $500, $1000, sometimes more. They might win one bet, but inevitably they lose. Apparently the NBA has plenty of those types on charter flights during road trips.
“I’ve heard guys who have lost $30,000 on an hour plane trip,” Charlotte guard Derek Anderson, the former Heat reserve, says. “It’s amazing — $30,000 in an hour.
Stern justifiably mocks homer announcers who embarrass themselves (and their teams) every night. He also breaks the news that Greg Oden is actually 11-years-old.
O Great and Glorious Commissioner David Sternlaid down the ground rules this week for the highly unusual replay of the last 51.9 seconds of regulation from the December 19th game between the Miami Heat and the Atlanta Hawks. The do-over was called when the Atlanta Hawks scoring staff fouled Shaquille O’Neal out by accidentally giving him someone else’s foul. (Big man can hack his own slashers in the lane, thanks.)
(This explains a lot.)
However, since the replay was declared, both teams have modified their rosters rather significantly. The Hawks traded a pile of nominal NBA talent for Mike Bibby and the Heat bamboozled the Phoenix Suns out of Shawn Marion for the services of the man who did not foul out of the December 19th contest, Shaq.
We’re in Vegas at the moment, the site of last year’s NBA All-Star game. If you want to get a head-shake or a mean-face, bring that up to a local today. If you don’t know of what we speak, welcome back to Earth. We missed you.
