• Police have determined that 20-year-old Sahel Kazemi shot & killed ex-Titans QB Steve McNair, ruling the deaths a murder-suicide.

• Seems sadly ironic that McNair had filmed a PSA about suicide prevention just a few weeks before. And Steve’s wife was reportedly “blindsided” by her husband’s affair.

• Interesting that Sahel had recently put up all her furniture for sale. More interesting that her ex-boyfriend performed a rap about shooting someone.

• During Michael Jackson’s memorial service, Magic Johnson recalls his fondest memory of the “King of Pop” - sittin’ on the floor & eatin’ KFC.

• FIU’s cheerleading squad is saved. Thank you, bikini car wash!

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Michael Jackson was laid to rest this afternoon with a star-studded (and taxpayer-funded) memorial service that included Mariah Carey swinging ‘n’ missing and Stevie Wonder hitting a home run. (Seems like kind of a weak analogy, with the blindness and all, but whatever - Stevie was way better.) But there were plenty more stars than just those two, some of whom were thoughtful enough not to sing.

(Ever think that the Colonel’s tie was actually a small body dancing like Michael Jackson? Did I just blow your mind?*)

As we reported earlier, two such stars were Laker greats Kobe Bryant and Magic Johnson, because AEG needed to cynically leverage their Lakers/Staples Center assets in order to maximize exposure and advertising dollars since they’re on the hook for MJ’s lost concert revenue everybody needed to know what Kobe Bryant thinks about the late Michael Jackson. Frankly, any Kobe speech that didn’t include something along the lines of “Can you imagine if I blatantly ripped my act off this MJ instead?!” seems like a waste, but we’re getting greedy.

When it was Magic’s turn to speak, though, he went a route that was at once surprising and, really, not even slightly surprising.

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Kobe Bryant is bad, he’s bad, you know it (come on). So Bryant is going to be one of the big celebrities at the Michael Jackson Memorial on Tuesday; of course he is. But what I’m unclear on is what his function will be at the big party - will he favor us with a tune? Break out a red leather jacket? Reenact the “Black or White” video with Luke Walton as Macauley Culkin? The answers are shrouded in mystery.

What is known: Magic Johnson will also be there, along with thousands of others who were lucky enough to get tickets by whatever means or form of random drawing they used. And because what this thing needed more of was additional celebrities, let’s throw in Berry Gordy, Brooke Shields, Smokey Robinson, Lionel Richie, Usher, Martin Luther King III, and, in a bit of troubling irony, Shaheen Jafargholi, the 12-year-old who was a finalist on the latest edition of “Britain’s Got Talent” recently. Read more…

A recent FORBES ranking shows that despite the real and perceived advances in the last generation, 10 of the 20 wealthiest African-Americans have a strong relationship to sports, either as a player or an owner.  Oprah Winfrey, as expected, leads the list by a long shot, garnering $2.7 billion through shrewd investment and media moguling.

(”I could buy and sell you with my Dr. Phil profits alone”)

However, Tiger Woods follows at $600 million and growing.  From there, Robert Johnson (Charlotte Bobcats owner) and Michael Jordan (Bobcats president) lead a procession that implies the best way to become a wealthy black man is still to hit the gym or own one.

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I’m sure when most of you read a story about a professional athlete filing for bankruptcy, you think the same thing I do: How in the hell could a millionaire athlete blow through all of their cash? SPORTS ILLUSTRATED looked into the matter and found two big problems: reckless spending and bad investments. Very, very bad investments.

How bad? How about an inflatable raft meant to go under your sofa so that if a flood came, you could float to safety on your sofa? Or a mouth guard that claims to increase your performance by setting your jaw in an “optimal position“? It seems that for every Magic Johnson, who parlayed the money made from his playing days into a business empire, there are scores of athletes making P.T. Barnum sound like a prophet.

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CBS college basketball analyst Seth Davis has a new book out about the 1979 NCAA basketball title game between Magic Johnson’s Michigan State Spartans and Larry Bird’s Indiana State Sycamores called “When March Went Mad: The Game That Transformed Basketball.” I noticed one detail in a story on it in the MILWAUKEE JOURNAL-SENTINEL that had me scratching my head. In the book, Davis claims that before Indiana State’s nationally televised home finale against Wichita State, “many people thought Bird was black.”

(I’m pretty sure he’s white.)

You can imagine that I was pretty skeptical of Davis’ claim. Then I read a quote:

“All the next week I got lots of calls from my friends back in Denver who saw the game,” said Bob Heaton, Bird’s roommate and teammate. “They couldn’t believe Larry Bird was a white guy.”

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Pennsylvania residents Trammel Bledsoe and Phillip Sainsbury are not exactly model citizens.  In fact, they’re bank robbers (though they aren’t related to Deidra Lane) who are currently in prison after getting busted by the cops.  They also happen to be sports fans, and have found a fun new way to use sports knowledge to help commit crimes.

While Bledsoe is in prison he knows his telephone calls are being recorded.  So when he called his friend Joshua Burton to give him instructions on where to find the gun he ditched and the $3,500 he stole from the bank, he had to come up with some kind of code to let Burton know where to find the loot.  So he used athletes and their jersey numbers to give locations.

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After throwing nearly $50 million away on Stephon Marbury, Eddy Curry, Jerome James and Malik Rose, who may combine to contribute only Rose’s garbage time minutes, the Knicks are finally making a sound business decision: they’re recouping their Marbury costs, one game at a time.

Get your notepad ready, because a series of events this complex and asinine could only happen under James Dolan. First the Knicks told Marbury he wouldn’t play, but they’d still pay him. Then, shorthanded on Wednesday, they told Marbury he had to play, since they were paying him. He then refused to play, mad because they hadn’t been playing him. Now they’re refusing to pay for his refusal to play. Got all that? Now you’ve caught up on the last week of As the Garden Turns. (All this, plus Magic throwing Isiah under the bus, after the jump.)

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When I worked as a Program Director in Kansas City in the late ’90s, I got to know a talk radio host named Chris Baker. Seemed like a decent enough guy. Baker was hosting a general talk show on KCMO-AM at the time - I was across the hall on an all-sports station.

Baker’s ratings were less than spectacular, and eventually he moved onto Houston. And now apparently he’s popped up in the Twin Cities.

His show wasn’t my cup of tea then, and upon hearing his comments about Magic Johnson on his current show in Minneapolis, it certainly isn’t now.

Baker and co-host Langdon Perry both said yesterday that they are “convinced” the former Lakers star “faked aids.”

Audio and transcript after the jump. Read more…

• Anna Rawson, 150th on the money list but 1st on our hot list, finished on top of the leaderboard after the first round of the Bell Micro Classic.

Feel free to call her up to offer some congratulations.

• Terrell Owens says it could’ve worked out with him & Donovan McNabb, but the Eagles QB was just too jealous of T.O.’s star power.

• Looks like Rutgers has rolled back to his rotten football ways. How’s that new stadium funding coming?

• Set a place for Sidney Crosby at your dinner table, ’cause he’s coming over with your Penguins season tickets.

• The Patriots are fuming over the latest fashion statement celebrating Bernard Pollard’s takedown of Tom Brady.

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