Shaq and Shaunie’s divorce might be on hold. They were spotted relaxing in the Cayman, possibly getting access to all the money she hid from him. Allegedly.
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From TNT’s Inside The NBA. They were talking about the Lakers vs Spurs conference finals matchup Charles Barkley called this the best Laker team that Kobe’s been on - which led to much discussion and yelling including an incredulous Chris Webber.
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Dwayne Wade has been a shell of himself this season after the toll his knee and shoulder injuries from last season took on him. He looked like he tried to come back too quick, but this, along with Shaq’s 4-year itch and Riley’s roster failure combined to make the Heat the worst team in the league, a place they haven’t been since their expansion years. With Shaq gone and a playoff place requiring a miracle, you hoped that D Wade would just shut it down for this year. Well, it looks like it’s finally going to happen.
Heat coach Pat Riley announced Monday that Wade, the All-Star guard and 2006 NBA finals MVP who has battled left knee pain throughout the season, will not play in Miami’s final 21 games this year.
Coach Pat Riley told the Miami Herald that Wade will have a “stimulation treatment” on Tuesday.
“I think it’s time,” Riley told the paper. “We’ve been walking around on eggshells with this thing. This treatment will help him.”
The move was expected, although its timing — with so much of the season still to play — was mildly surprising. But Wade missed Miami’s game against the Golden State Warriors on Friday because of knee stiffness, telling Riley at the time that it pained him just to get out of bed.
Good - this season soooo needs a reboot. Who woulda thought this team would implode so quickly after winning the title 2 years ago. Pat Riley needs to hire a coach and concentrate on building the roster. And D Wade should think about skipping the Olympics too. Ask Yao Ming what year-round basketball does to your health.
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I’ve found a goldmine of humor - and it’s called Fake Blogs - or more accurately NewsGroper. It’s Stephen Colbert meets DailyKos almost. I was reading The Miami Sports Blog and found out that Miami Heat center Shaq had a blog … well, a fake blog - where I uncovered this gem about his recent divorce:
Shaunie, I am sorry that this had to happen. But when a woman tries to keep secrets from Shaq, she must pay the consequences. When you were hiding that cash in the garbage pails behind the pool, I thought it was just part of our kinky Sopranos role-playing. But it turns out that you were really hiding cash from me, and now Shaq is broke.
It’s not all your fault, Shaunie. It doesn’t help that Shaq only allowed you to address him as “#32.” It was probably wrong of me to demand that you dress as a Nubian Queen to all of our dinner parties. What probably put you over the top was when Shaq made you repeat “The Royal Penis is clean, your Highness” after every time we made oral love.
Had me ROLLING. But they have tons of other fake blogs there too! People like Hillary Clinton and Rudy Giuliani, Britney Spears, Vladimir Putin, Ann Coulter and Donald Trump. In fact MSNBC got in trouble, apparently, for taking these blogs seriously!:
IN a story that MSNBC.com ran last Friday on how the legal troubles of disgraced NFL star Michael Vick are dividing African-Americans, Web site editors apparently fell hook, line and sinker for a parody Web site that made up a quote from the Rev. Al Sharpton.
In the first version of the story that appeared on MSNBC.com, Sharpton was quoted as having written on his personal blog, “If the police caught Brett Favre (a white quarterback for the Green Bay Packers) running a dolphin-fighting ring out of his pool, where dolphins with spears attached to their foreheads fought each other, would they bust him? Of course not. They would get his autograph, complimenting him on tightly spiraled passes, then bet on one of his dolphins.”
You have to read the story to understand just how shitty a job this MSNBC reporter did. I mean there was some pretty obvious hyperbole in there. How fucked up an opinion must you have of Sharpton that you’d accept this as truth? That you can’t distill nonsense from sense. That you don’t notice the names of the other fake bloggers on the site including Vladimir Fucking Putin!?! (that’s his real middle name) So what does MSNBC call it in their retraction? A hoax. Hah! - Fake Al Sharpton had a response locked and loaded:
I can assure you, I’m no hoax. When I said that Brett Favre was probably fighting dolphins against each other to the death with swords crudely attached by duct tape, it obviously wasn’t real; it was a METAPHOR. First of all, the adhesive in the tape wouldn’t hold up in salt water, and also, how many backyard saline pools have you ever swam in?
Fake Blogs RULE!
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Shaq - ever the clowner, ever the kid. Instant team chemistry. This vid is courtesy of MiamiSportsBlog.com
Shaq left LA where he helped the Lakers to the Finals 4 out of 5 years and collected 3 rings. Why? Because the owner of the Lakers is cheap and Kobe didn’t stand up to it. Fast forward 3 unproductive seasons later and now Kobe wants out. Chad Ford wrote an article about why other teams aren’t lining up for the Kobster.
I spoke to a number of NBA sources who have been engaged in or are familiar with the Bryant trade negotiations. Almost all evidence from these conversations points to this conclusion: Bryant’s trade value isn’t nearly as high as he or the Lakers would like to think…
1. Does Kobe have too much mileage?
Kobe is already 29 years old. When he turns 30 in August, he’ll reach an age at which many players decline… It’s not only the years that concern some teams, but also the minutes. Counting NBA regular-season and playoff games, Bryant has logged 33,576 minutes — 918 games of about 37 minutes each, in just 11-plus seasons. That’s more “mileage” on his legs than on the legs of Ray Allen (age 32) or Allen Iverson (32)… And about the same as Chris Webber (34). More than Alonzo Mourning (37). More than Sam Cassell (37). Further, Kobe has had knee problems the past few seasons, including arthroscopic knee surgery in 2004 and 2006…
2. Is Kobe really the best player in the NBA?
It’s often said, by players, journalists and fans alike, that Bryant is the best player in the league. Without a doubt, he’s one of the greatest offensive forces we’ve ever seen. Indeed, his skill level in all aspects of the game is probably the most advanced we’ve seen since Jordan. But not everyone thinks that makes him the best player in the game… Bryant has never led the league in John Hollinger’s PER (player efficiency rating), which combines a player’s stats and percentages into a single measure. Last season, Bryant was well behind Dirk Nowitzki and Dwyane Wade . To put his numbers into historical perspective, his career-high PER of 27.97 in 2005-06 ranks No. 42 all-time in the league. Several current players have posted a higher PER than Kobe did in his best season… A newer measure from 82games.com, adjusted plus/minus, “reflects the impact of each player on his team’s bottom line (scoring margin), after controlling statistically for the strength of every teammate and every opponent during each minute he’s on the court.” By this measure, Bryant ranked sixth in the NBA last season, behind players such as Jason Kidd and Gilbert Arenas. In one in-depth report, Bryant ranked 21st in the NBA in clutch performance…
3. Is Kobe a winner?
This question probably resonates the most in NBA front offices. Several GMs I’ve spoken with have questioned aloud whether Kobe is really a winner… On the surface, it appears that Kobe is a winner. But dig deeper and there are real questions…The more central questions, according to some observers in the NBA, revolve around Bryant’s approach to the game. His amazing determination, while certainly a key part of his success on the court, does not always translate into leadership or a winning attitude… Certainly Bryant wants to win. But he wants to win his way, according to many who have followed his career. And when you break it down, that translates to this attitude: I would rather lose my way than win your way…
4. Is Kobe worth it?
Those three issues lead up to the ultimate question: Given all the complex considerations, does it make sense to acquire Kobe? First of all, it’s just not that easy to make a deal, especially during the season, when the roster rules make it more difficult to trade many players for one. Second, Bryant makes a lot of money — $19.4 million this season… Third, such a trade would be a gamble, and NBA teams are generally risk-averse, as we saw at the last trade deadline…Fourth, there is the straightforward question of talent: As great as Bryant is, can he replace the talent a team would have to give up? And if a team gives up too much to acquire Kobe, that team would be no more equipped to compete for a championship than the Lakers are, which would potentially start the cycle all over again, with Bryant’s unhappiness dominating the team.
… But if the status quo holds, teams will have to look forward to the summer of 2009, when Bryant can opt out of his contract at the age of 31. By then our eyes and hearts will likely have caught up with what the numbers and logic are already telling us: Kobe Bryant is a great player, but in a team sport like basketball he lacks the ability, on his own, to deliver an NBA championship.
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