College players don't play any harder than pros, you fool

I get that some folks like college sports more because of this myth that college students play harder.  I don't know where it came from, but it had to have been started by someone who doesn't understand football. It's a really stupid argument that NFL players aren't playing hard all the time, because you will be killed if you play football at half-speed while everyone else isn't.  You could try to argue that teams collectively decide to slack off, but we've seen that before, too.  It's called the Pro Bowl, and the Pro Bowl sucks.

People really push this idea when it comes to basketball, though.  Personally, I don't buy the fact that pro players don't play hard, because there is no other sensible reason for Kobe Bryant to sweat that much.  If Kobe is sweating like that and not playing hard, I suggest that he see a doctor.  I mean, besides the one about to cut open his shoulder.

Now, if you told me that pro players didn't play hard every night, you might have an argument, and even then, I don't blame the players.  The players aren't slacking off because they're overpaid fat-cats that can't be bothered to entertain the fans.  The players are slacking off because they have to play the Knicks six times.

The NBA season is already an 82 game grind, and you expect these players to bring the same fire that they'd give to Chicago to the Philadelphia 76ers?  The good teams get more of a challenge playing themselves in practice.  Playing the Sixers multiple times is like the morning conference call of basketball games.  It has to be done to make the boss happy, but you're not about to pretend like it's truly necessary.

It's only an expectation because it's believed that Michael Jordan did it.  Oh, Jordan never took a game off.  And he probably didn't, because Michael Jordan is a lunatic.  You saw from his Hall of Fame speech how much trouble he's having adjusting to civilized society, where every perceived slight isn't grounds for some form of revenge.  When regular people do that, they usually need to seek some form of counseling, because making the other person keep shooting half-court shots for two hours until you win (this actually happened) isn't a realistic option.  But let's make Michael Jordan's rare psychosis the standard for NBA players.  Kobe shares this affliction, but you hate Kobe, and right now, he's trying to figure out how to tape up his rotator cuff so he can play next week.  This isn't healthy behavior.

Besides, the NBA season is four times as long as a college season.  Who can't bring it for twenty games?  True, being browbeaten by some redass college coach could be exhausting, but if you're any good, you're only gonna be there for a year or two, anyway.  When you're a 19 year old college player who has agents secretly telling him that he's going in the lottery, and girls sneaking in and out of your dorm room, you're not listening to the coach, anyway.  Play defense? Defense is for suckers.  Carmelo didn't play defense at Syracuse (and it was a zone defense, at that), and he has a $124 million dollar deal.

And that's what it's all about, anyway.  They're not doing this for some mythical love of the game.  This is their audition for the same millions that Carmelo gets.  They don't love the game any more than the pros do.  They just don't have to keep up the illusion as long.

But let these kids have to go on a six game road trip in the middle of a forty game season, through flyover country, against a bunch of schools that even Digger Phelps would struggle to recognize, and see how much effort you get.  John Calipari could offer his players cash bribes on top of their secret signing bonuses and Kentucky still wouldn't show up against Kennesaw State.  Hell, if they did show up against Kennesaw State and beat them by 70, these same folks would complain that Kentucky ran up the score.

So I don't mind if players take a few games off because who cares, they're playing Charlotte.  If Golden State really brought it for four quarters against Charlotte, Charlotte would lose by 200 points and Michael Jordan's anger would make him try to suit up again.

And you shouldn't care, either, because it's not like those games get aired by anyone except NBA TV.

Dion Waiters doesn't have to stand for the National Anthem, and neither do you

I swear, y'all get so touchy about the wrong shit.

There's a story going around that Dion Waiters, shooting guard for the Cleveland Cavaliers, declared that he isn't standing for the National Anthem anymore, because of his religious beliefs.  He's a Muslim, and as we all know, Muslims hate America.  Well, we would all know that if we all did the right thing and watched Fox News.  

And as you'd expect, there's a whole lot of people mad at him, because reacting without knowing reasons is so commonplace in America that you'd think it was in the Constitution.  To let the folks I saw online tell it, we should all be offended that he hates America so much, and that he should go play in the Middle East if he loves Islam so much.  Only the most measured and reasonable responses go on the internet.  It's not like he'd stand for the National Anthem over there, either.

Now, as an old man, it isn't the first time I've seen this.  I remember when Chris Jackson, later known as Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf, of the Denver Nuggets (and hated Gulfport High School), did the same thing back in 1996, for the same reasons.  He eventually decided to stand and pray, as a way to, um...what's the word that means "meeting in the middle?"  Compromise.  You'll have to excuse me for forgetting the word, but it never happens in our culture anymore, so I haven't needed to remember it. 

But in the meantime, people went crazy, just like they're on the verge of doing now.  Insults, death threats, the whole nine.  And over the stupidest of reasons:  Over a song written by a slave owner who ironically didn't want his own freedom restricted.  And for a song about freedom, people out here sure are hell-bent on Dion Waiters not keeping his.

After all, it isn't a crime not to stand for the National Anthem.  It's a nationalistic custom that became codified, but no one ever goes to jail for this, and people refuse to stand for the National Anthem all the time.  Hell, I've personally refused to stand for the National Anthem before.  And it's not like there aren't things happening in America that give people reasons to feel like America isn't with them.  Dion Waiters is black and a Muslim.  Buddy's got a list.  

But he probably isn't doing it for those reasons, anyway (although he'd be justified).  It isn't some political statement that he's making.  Muslims simply believe (according to the Google research I did right before sliding into an endless vortex of Salon articles. There's one that explains why we have pubic hair. Pubic hair.) that they're not supposed to humble themselves or stand in veneration for anyone except Allah.  There's a lot I don't agree with when it comes to Islam, but I have no problem with that.  After all, they're trying to stay good with their omnipotent and eternal Creator, and you want to give them grief about a custom built up around a song written 200 years ago that'll probably be forgotten in another hundred.  When it comes to historical importance (from their perspective), you might as well be mad at them for not wanting to do the Schmoney Dance. 

And if you're a Christian (and most of you are claiming to be, because atheists really don't care that much), you probably should back up off all this anger, because your religion says something similar, all up in the Bible.  Yeah, revering this flag and song is tantamount to idolatry.  I'm an unrepentant heathen, and even I know that your God doesn't like that.  Come on now, you know that dude is jealous and angry.  You think he's gonna be reasonable about your nationalism?  I guess you could throw Romans 13:1 at me (Google it, like I did), but again, there's no authority that says you have to stand for the flag.  Just advisory rules that suggest how you observe the custom.  

Really, none of this means anything at all, because while Dion Waiters didn't stand for the National Anthem in Utah on Wednesday (he was still in the locker room), he did stand for it Friday night in Denver.  Waiters says that the story isn't true at all (might not even be a Muslim), and what's more likely is that he was pouting about being pulled from the starting lineup in Utah.  Waiters has been talking shit about how he should start from the minute LeBron said he was coming back to Cleveland, so I'm sure he wasn't happy about coming off the bench.  But I felt like I should address it, because I know how Americans like to overreact about meaningless things.  

It's what I get for insisting on reading the comments.  Never read the comments.

Maybe Mark Jackson ISN'T a victim. MAYBE.

So Mark Jackson got fired from the Warriors yesterday, despite being the best coach they've had since the first time Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles came out.  Remember those days?  You could still buy a black and white TV.  Michael Jackson being white was a new thing. 

All the reports are saying that no one liked him and that's why he got fired.  Well, no one except the team.  You know, the most important people to impress.  Because there's plenty of coaches that got along great with the front office who would get outcoached at the YMCA youth league, which is why they now have a well paid job working the telestrator on ESPN.  ESPN is nature's way of removing shitty coaches from the business of winning basketball games. 

Logically speaking, though, that's probably the dumbest reason of all time to fire a coach.  The dude won 51 games, got the team into the playoffs the last two years, and has the support of the team.  You know, the guys who put asses in the seats.  He's making you money and he's winning games.  How fragile does your ego have to be to end all of that just because the coach doesn't like you, Joe Lacob?  I would say that coaches have been fired for less, but there will always be Jerry Jones and George Steinbrenner.  You have to sink to subhuman levels of pettiness to get where they are, but that's where Joe Lacob seems to be now.  Firing a coach for not getting along with the owner is like firing a coach who just won two Super Bowls for you, because the media didn't give you enough credit for putting the team together. 

Now, everyone's mad at the owner, because everyone loved Mark Jackson, and in basketball, that's important.  The media needs to like the coach, otherwise, they'll start a campaign to D'Antoni your team.  Of course the players have to like the coach.  The fans should like the coach, because they're buying tickets.  Who gives a fuck what the people working for the organization think?  No one's coming to see you.  And do you know how irrelevant the owner can be when it comes to public outreach?  Donald Sterling is a racist and has owned the Clippers for 33 years.  When he bought them, almost everyone I know was semen.  He's been a racist the whole time, and it hasn't stopped the Clippers from selling tickets. 

So as long Mark Jackson isn't messing up that cash, it really shouldn't matter.  Then again, scuttlebutt around the Bay says there's more to it than that. 

Word from the SF Gate has it that Mark Jackson, who is a pastor (I honestly had no idea until a few hours ago), and team president Rick Welts, who is "a gay (that's a quote from Donald Sterling)," were at odds about Welts's openly gay lifestyle.

Well, that changes everything.  Because if that's true, then it changes from a story about a sensitive ass owner to a guy who was openly insulting his boss.  'Cuz Mark Jackson wasn't shy about weighing in about gay issues in the NBA, and he didn't seem like the most gay-friendly guy.  On a scale from "one" to "Tim Hardaway," I would hope he was closer to "one," but he doesn't exactly sound welcoming.  When Jason Collins came out, Mark Jackson said something about having "beliefs of what’s right and what’s wrong."  He also said he was going to pray for Collins's family.  And as a guy who hasn't been to church since the last time the Warriors were good, someone saying that they're going to pray for you means that they want something about you to change.  By some accounts, Jackson really wasn't feeling "the gays."

And if this is true, it's probably going to become a thing about how a "God-fearing Christian man" lost his job because of his religious beliefs, and I'm going to start insulting people for being hypocrites again.  If it is true, Mark Jackson lost his job because he wouldn't shut the fuck up.  You can't go around insulting your boss, even if you believe your religion entitles you to shit on everyone else's lifestyle (it doesn't).  That's what this is about.  Mark Jackson isn't a victim when you put it like that.  Mark Jackson isn't even a man of conviction.  Mark Jackson is stupid.  Just because you believe something doesn't mean it needs to be said all the time. 

Besides, can you really get that mad about some religious guy getting fired by his openly gay boss?  It's actually kind of ironic, considering all of the roadblocks people are throwing up at gay people in the name of "religious freedom."  I almost hope this story is true, just so I can laugh at the people who get mad. 

But if it isn't true, then I retract all of that and I'll meet everyone at the picket line to cape up for Mark Jackson.  I'll have my trash can ready for optimal window-throwing and everything.  Promise.  

The Donald Sterl-mancipation

So I guess I'm supposed to be happy that Donald Sterling got a lifetime ban from the NBA.  Yeah, that's fantastic, considering that his days on this earth are probably in the single digits, anyway.  It's a lifetime ban for a person without much life left.  And he still owns the team, so all Adam Silver really did was tell him he can't come to the stadium.  When you buy Clippers merch or tix, you're still putting money in his pocket. And speaking of money, on a percentage basis, the amount that he got fined is about the same as you being fined around $20. 

Yeah, we got a huge win today.

But during a few checks on social media when I was supposed to be working, I see y'all out here acting like we just got emancipated.  Like it was the OJ verdict all over again.  And I gotta ask, what are you so happy about?

Now, I'm not one of these people who's gonna try to ruin your good mood by saying that there are more important things to be concerned with.  Those people are assholes, because of course there's always something to be more concerned with. It's just that there hasn't been much change on the Keystone XL Pipeline and Congress still isn't passing any bills.  And since The Walking Dead still hasn't come back, we're pretty starved for excitement.

No, I'm going to ruin your good mood by telling you that this is nothing to be happy about, because Donald Sterling didn't get banned because he's a racist.  Donald Sterling got banned because it became big news that he was a racist. 

Donald Sterling was a racist a long time before now, and there were a whole lot of incidents that he was involved in that were reported on and promptly ignored.  The only difference between this one and all of those was how you found out about it.  The other ones came out through lawsuits and court depositions and OH MY GOD THIS IS SO BORINGZZZZZZZZZZZZ. This one came out because his jump off (I refuse to call her anything else) goaded him into talking about black people so she could record it and leak it to TMZ.  Already, this story is more sexy.  Certainly, sexier than she is.  She looks like she used to be a man. 

All of a sudden, Donald Sterling is an embarrassment and needs to be removed, but wasn't he just as embarrassing, if not more so back in 2009, when he paid out the largest settlement on housing discrimination lawsuit ever?  Or what about those sexual harassment suits?  His callous nature when it came to evicting tenants?  The time that he made his wife pose as a government worker and visit the residents of his buildings to find out what race they were, so he could evict them?  Refusing to rent to Blacks or Latinos at all?  Donald Sterling has been a horrible piece of shit racist for a long time.  So really, it should insult all of you that this is what it took to bring him down. 

You mean to tell me that the NBA didn't know about any of this?  And that his racist views expressed in a private conversation is worse than the stuff listed above that the NBA certainly knows about?  The NBA doesn't care that Donald Sterling is racist.  The NBA cares that you know he's racist.  If this was about his racism, they would have banned him in 1983 when he asked Rollie Massamino, "I wanna know why you think you can coach these niggers."

The truth is, if Donald Sterling's jump off was a woman of a higher character, you wouldn't know anything that he said and they wouldn't have done anything.  Period.  Despite the fact that he's continued to make himself rich by denying living space to minorities.  Despite the fact that he's sexually harassed women in his employ.  Adam Silver can get in front of reporters and make his dramatic statements, but the truth is, it wasn't a problem for them before.  It only became a problem when it became public.

And the same goes for all of these sponsors who cut ties with the Clippers.  If y'all don't stop acting like you have morals.  Every one of you is a conglomerate of corrupt pieces of shit.  Every one of you knew who Sterling was and chose to sign deals with him anyway, because OOH LOOGIT BLAKE GRIFFIN JUMPS HIGH.  And now that everyone knows that he's a bigot, you don't want your brand associated with him.  Good thing those lawsuits got swept under the rug, otherwise, you would have been forced to leave all that money on the table.  So CarMax, State Farm, Kia, Corona, AQUAhydrate. Red Bull, Sprint, Lumber Liquidators,  LoanMart, Yokohama Tires, Samsung, Mercedes-Benz, and Virgin America, you ain't shit.  Not a single one of you.

So don't get too excited about all of this.  All that happened is that they reminded you what their real priorities are.  No progress has been made.  Unless you're Donald Sterling's jump off.  She's about to come up when she gets that spot on Basketball Wives.

You should be ridiculed for caring about Dwyane Wade's outside kid

You people express shock at the dumbest shit. 

Dwyane Wade and Ludacris were revealed to have knocked up their side pieces in the same week.  Both are in relationships (but were on breaks at the time).  Dwyane Wade is an NBA player.  Ludacris is a rapper.  The only thing shocking here is that they didn't knock up the same woman.  I mean, we don't know that rapper and ballplayer sperm can't do that.  

If anything, it's your own fault for believing that a pro basketball player or a rapper would stay faithful to his wife.  And I don't say that because I think they're bad people.  I say it because they're constantly having random model/stripper ass thrown at them as they travel in luxury around the world.  The man who can resist that forever either has supreme will or is already gay.  The rest of us would have to have his wife standing next to him at all time, like Doug Christie did.  As freakish in the face as Doug Christie looked, the only reason why he got through his day without tripping into a pair of strange, spreadeagled thighs is because Jackie Christie was never more than 10 feet away at all times. 

True story.  Sat in on his interviews and everything. 

So, I don't see why what Wade and Cris did was anything outside of what you should expect from them.  If you want to call them out for anything, call them out for raw dogging their jump offs.  I mean, I assume they've both had enough jump offs to know better.  I also don't see why you're coming to Gabrielle Union's defense all of a sudden, because y'all know y'all hate Gabrielle Union. Gabrielle Union was this generation's Robin Givens until people stopped casting her in movies.  And the hate came solely from the fact that she was too good at her job of playing smart-mouthed shrews in every flick she'd been in.  It wasn't even based on real life.  So let's not act like you're doing this for her benefit.

And I'm sure, somewhere out there, someone's thinking about the kids, because Dwyane Wade and Ludacris (I guess) are supposed to be role models.  And if you're letting Ludacris's example raise your kids, then you're a worse parent than Siovaughn Wade.  Allegedly.  There might be an explanation for that day she sat on the corner wearing a sandwich board. 

But anyone who would look at Ludacris as a role model shouldn't be allowed to raise the kids that they're claiming to protect.  I mean, this is the same person who led off with "What's Your Fantasy," "Phat Rabbit," and "Ho," and followed up with "Area Codes," "Move Bitch," "Splash Waterfalls," and "P-Poppin."  These are probably the parents who post videos of their twerking children on YouTube.  The video would probably be set to a Ludacris song if he had any hits out right now.  As for Wade, true, he has a fatherly image that would be a good example for young boys. But so did Bill Cosby, when we were kids.  And look at how our generation turned out.  Our generation didn't follow his example.  Our generation didn't even eat the damn pudding pops. 

Also, I'm not throwing shade on Luda for those songs, because I own every last one of them.  Believe me, I ain't judging.  I'll be able to recite the words from "Ho" when I'm on my deathbed.  I'm just saying, if your kids ever knew the words to those songs, you're a horrible parent, that's all.

So what are we really talking about here?  Two men who ruined the concept of a "break" for black men everywhere, for starters (a ridiculous concept, anyway).  And a bunch of women who care more about two strangers' relationships than their own, evidently.  Also, I'm seeing that I have a far different concept of what is "shocking" than everyone else.  Magic Johnson was shocking (and scary).  Tiger Woods was shocking (and hilarious).  No one's been burnt or driven into a tree in either of these stories, which makes them quite boring.  I need to be scared or entertained, so I refuse to pay attention until we hear that one of the women is actually a man or something like that. 

It's so easy to root against Lebron James

I don't think it's any secret to anyone who knows me that I'm rooting against the Miami Heat in the NBA Finals. Been rooting against them the whole time, even though it's been a fool's errand for most of the playoffs. And they're not really a hateable team, like Patrick Ewing's Knicks (or Carmelo's, for that matter) or the Bad Boy Pistons. Those teams were filled with assholes, top to bottom. And yet, even though i like most of the players on this team, i just find them so easy to hate collectively.

Maybe it's the fanbase, or maybe it's the way they came together, but there's something about this team that makes them fun to hate. It's more than just the fact that they're the best team in the league. San Antonio has been the best team in the league frequently, and they've never brought out the hate like this team has.

Most people would point to the Decision as the catalyst, and they'd be right to a degree, because that was one of top dick moves of this young millennium. When they're doing a retrospective of this century in 87 years, the Decision will be listed among the detritus. Granted, so will any number of Kanye West moments, but Lebron can't be expected to top someone who spends every waking moment perfecting his asshole craft.

But that blew over, for the most part, after Lebron shit the bed in the Finals. The next year, people were pulling for him again. This year, people seem to be back to rooting against him, but not with the anger like two years ago. And that's the part that i can't seem to figure out.

Because it isn't Dwyane Wade. He's pretty much universally loved and respected, despite his ex-wife's best efforts to paint him as an abusive father, as well as his suspect fashion choices. It isn't Chris Bosh, because everyone was pretty indifferent to him until the internet turned him gay. It isn't even Ray Allen, mostly because he benefits from two people on his old team being giant peckers. Could be Norris Cole, though. I can't stand Norris Cole.

That leaves us with Lebron, because in the end, it always comes back to Lebron. Thing is, he's almost impossible to hate, and i know because i know my way around some hate. I really tried to hate Lebron, but once he won his championship, and i saw the joy on his face, i couldn't help but be happy for him. That's the joy that i see in him in so many other moments, like that time he tackled that guy who won all that money hitting that half court shot. When i saw that, my campaign of hate was done. I was so disappointed, because i used to pride myself of being able to hold a grudge, even to the point of deteriorating health.

But right on cue, ESPN was there to gin up hate for him again. The comparisons to Michael Jordan started up, and this time, they were for real. ESPN was going to make this shit stick.

Thanks to the Worldwide Leader, it became very easy to root against Lebron again. Because those of us who saw Michael Jordan aren't going to allow ESPN to put Lebron's one title, won in an era as soft as a memory foam pillow, up against Jordan, who was beat to shit by those hated Knicks and Pistons on the way to six titles. Undefeated in the Finals. No disappearing acts. Not even allowing a Finals series to reach a seventh game. Even if Lebron won seven titles, they would never be as respected as Jordan's because of how he won those titles. But ESPN is brainwashing a younger generation into thinking they would be, because younger generations don't know shit. We have to correct that, because if that's what ESPN wants, then ESPN is a threat to intelligent thought everywhere.

Lebron is an amazing talent and player, but when this dude gets to Finals, he looks like he doesn't know what he wants to do out there. Too often, he wants to try to get others involved, even when there's no play to be made. But just the week before, when it was just the Eastern Conference Finals, he was dropping 40 on a team that was flailing desperately in an attempt to stop him. All of his greatest moments seem to come in the conference finals.

He's so talented, but that talent makes him maddening to watch sometimes, because he's probably never going to be the player he could be. As great as he is, he could be so much greater. This man should be dominating everyone, all day, erry day. With his physical gifts, the question of who's better between him and Jordan shouldn't even be asked anymore. And depending who you think is better, it isn't.

So Lebron, despite his personality and his physical gifts, makes it easy to root against him. Because championship or not, no one wants to see a pretender get elevated to legendary status. And if Miami loses to San Antonio this week, he's going to be exactly that.

DeAndre Jordan's dunk was aiight. And that's it.

The other night, DeAndre Jordan brought down a lob pass on top of Brandon Knight, and Twitter went ape shit.  I didn't see it, because I was unconscious, like other old men who can no longer stay up past nine.  But the next morning, I read all of the tweets from the night before, with Bomani Jones most notably holding forth about about impressive the dunk was. 

So, I pulled it up.  I figured it had to be amazing, right?  Yea, verily; t'would be the nastiest dunk mine eyes had ever gazed upon and bards would sing it's praises for ages.  After all, the cats on Twitter spent all night photoshopping Brandon Knight laid out beside Manny Pacquiao, with Simba trying to wake them up.  Twitter had declared Knight dead.  I caught a picture of DeAndre Jordan grimacing at what he'd done.  Even he looked impressed.  I was so ready to watch this video.

And I swear, y'all are too easily impressed these days.

It was a nice little dunk, but it wasn't worth all of that.  Maybe my standards are too high, but a seven-footer dunking over at 6'2" point guard might as well have been Blake Griffin jumping over that car.  I had a short Twitter exchange with Myth (author of Shadow Precinct, available on Amazon), and he said about Knight, "You thought you was about to block that shit?"  And that's my point.  He was never going to block that shit, not without cheating.  Maybe if he pantsed Jordan or started making out with his girl in the stands or something like that.  But that's about it.  Otherwise, Jordan did what he was supposed to do, like how I used to jump over my cousins back before they were fully coordinated and I wasn't fat.  There was only one way that it could have gone down.  So what was so impressive about that?

I'mma need for DeAndre Jordan to go up over someone roughly his size, like Shaq over the majority of centers in the NBA in the 1990s.  Otherwise, it's just bullying.  And it's not Jordan's fault.  What was he supposed to do, finger roll it because Brandon Knight didn't drink enough milk as a child?  No, Jordan did what big men do; yam it over the faerie folk who shouldn't be in the paint to begin with.  But folks were trying to gas up his head like he did something and he didn't.  If that counts as an accomplishment, then so does that time I dominated all those 8th graders.  Stop crying, Charlie's little brother.  Shoving you after my crossover is part of the game. 

and even though it says more about Detroit's defense than anything else, Brandon Knight did what he was supposed to do:  He challenged the shot, even though no one would have blamed him for letting that one ride, because, c'mon; he's 6'2".  That's like being a preemie in NBA circles.  No, he couldn't stop it, but he tried to make Jordan work for it.  Anything could have happened.  He might have slapped the ball away, Jordan could have tripped over his corpse; anything.  But he tried, which is more than I can say for Andrew Bynum.  Bynum would have been thinking about race cars, then blown out his knee imagining himself getting out of the car. 

But let's not act like something routine is supposed to be a special moment.  It was aiight, like Lebron hurdling John Lucas III in a world where Vince Carter already jumped over Frederic Weis.  After all, John Lucas III is bite size.  What makes the impressive dunks impressive is that the outcome is in doubt, or in some cases, weren't supposed to happen at all.  Kevin Johnson over Hakeem Olajuwon.  Russell Westbrook over Omer Asik.  Michael Jordan over damn near everybody.  You mean to tell me that what DeAndre did is on the same level as something like Shawn Kemp over Antoine Carr?

Get the fuck outta here.

Lebron James is on steroids. MAYBE.

Looks like Lebron James is on steroids.  Maybe.  Well, he's being linked to them.  It was just a matter of time, because this NBA has escaped this drama for far too long.

This "suspicion" isn't because of some great leap in physical strength in Lebron.  We all know he's looked like a 40 year old man since the tenth grade.  So, let's not act like we can pinpoint an increase in head size like everyone did Barry Bonds.  He doesn't run any faster or jump any higher, either.  If you claim that this sort of stuff is proof against Lebron, you're basically spelling out your case for why you shouldn't be acknowledged. 

Basically, Lebron was named in an interview with some ex-con who interviewed a chick who worked for a guy who's under investigation.  She said that she dealt with some guy named "Mr. Phil," who picked up drugs for a guy named "LJ."  Since no one knows if Larry Johnson has any friends at all, let alone any named Phil, she and the interviewer just assumed it was Lebron James, because his agent's last name IS Phil.

Still, this report doesn't surprise me at all.  And it's not like I'm up on the ins and outs of steroids.  Truthfully, I don't even care.  The amount of money in my paycheck isn't going to change based on whether or not Lance Armstrong was loaded with bleach and horse piss when he was riding his bike.  I am not so self-centered to believe that my not voting for Barry Bonds and Mark McGwire for the Hall of Fame somehow upholds the honor of fucking baseball.  It's just something that happened to catch my attention, because of something I heard on a podcast. 

Victor Conte was on the Joe Rogan Experience in October, and I learned more about what that crap does in those three hours than at any other time in my life.  Victor Conte talked about what Lance Armstrong was likely taking and how he was getting away with it.  We all know about the stuff that increases strength, and why baseball players and track stars would use it.  Makes perfect sense.  I never knew about the drugs that increase endurance, because like I said, I didn't care.  I am not offended by the notion that professional athletes would cheat to win, because, of course they would.  They're the most competitive people in the world.  Michael Jordan cheated at goddamn checkers.  So I never looked deeper into it.

The second Victor Conte mentioned drugs that increase endurance, drugs that change how the body processes oxygen, and all of that, the first person I thought of was Lebron James.  Because that boy can run all day.

He isn't the first player to play whole games or do multiple things on the floor or play great offense and defense.  Kobe Bryant does that.  But Kobe Bryant has always paced himself.  And Kobe Bryant has looked tired.  Lebron James never seems to get tired.  Ever.  He barely even sweats some games.  Meanwhile, it's nothing new to see him be the first man down the floor on defense, get a steal, outrun everyone on the break, then get back first on defense again to block a shot.   He's everywhere.  And he does it every night.  In every quarter of the game.  I've been watching basketball since the 80s, and I can't remember seeing anything like it. 

It could be that he's just in great shape.  It could be that he's an athletic marvel.  Those things are possible, because he's been doing things that seem impossible since high school.  For instance, at 6'8" and 260 pounds, he's one of the fastest guys in the league.  Even with a basketball in hand.  You have to go back to young Jason Kidd to see comparable speed with the basketball.  But you never see speed like that in a guy that size.  So, maybe his endurance is just another thing that makes him a freak of nature.  I'm fully prepared to accept that. 

But if it turns out to be drugs, I won't be surprised.  I'll be more surprised that Maverick and them let their meal ticket get caught.