Poor Man's Commish (aka "dreambLogue")

Relaunch of Poor Man's Commish

2009-10-05T12:56:00.000-07:00

The new, relaunched version of Poor Man's Commish aka Dream League's Blog aka "dreamblogue" can now be found here.

I got "That One"! (um, taken)

2008-11-12T23:20:00.000-08:00

Barack Obama playing pickup ball
on Election Night.

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You may have seen the video of Barack Obama playing pickup on Election Night (via Ball Don't Lie), but here are some more tidbits I thought were interesting...

Obama's left-handed behind-the-back dribble and ensuing fastbreak assist suggest that he is a southpaw, indeed. A quick Google search on "Obama left-handed" easily confirms this. Now, if he was right-handed and pulled off that move, I would have to say that would have been quite tremendous.
The facility where Obama played, Attack Athletics in Chicago, is a mecca for pro hoops training (well worth the read).
Someone more important than Michael Jordan (more "important" as measured by security detail) actually showed up to the same facility that Jordan once frequented.
If you were thinking of making a million bucks producing "That One" jerseys, nice try. If you search on the USPTO.gov trademark site, you'll see that "That One" has already been trademarked as of 10/12/2008 by some guy in New Orleans, a mere five days after John McCain uttered those now famous/infamous words -- the first-used-in-commerce is claimed to be that same night of Tue Oct 7, 2008, so this guy who trademarked it jumped on it quick-style.

Why I love Olympics basketball

2008-08-09T20:51:00.000-07:00

Mohammadsamad Nikkhah of Iran.

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This is very similar to one of my NBA Vegas Summer League pieces where I admit that I love watching Summer League.

Devout dreamleaguer Andre Liu is currently in Beijing with tickets to the preliminary round of men's basketball (lucky S.O.B.!). Incidentally, I found a nice blogger giving cool first-hand accounts in Beijing. Sam Williams of the Atlanta Chamber of Commerce thinks he saw the Italian basketball team at the local market, but Italy is not represented in basketball this Olympics, men's or women's, so it had to be some other tall group of Europeans.

I'm doing the next best thing: catching the games live on nbcolympics.com. Of course, you'll probably need a computer with an up-to-date chip -- my old Pentium III yields choppy video, but good thing my wife has a Vista machine -- and for the Russia vs Iran game, the bigger-screen version wouldn't load, getting stuck on "Buffer=60%".

But here's a hint in case that happens to you. Click on the upper left-hand icon to get to the smaller 4-screen splits, and the tiny version of the video seems to stream okay. You'll have to squint, though.

The video stream is quite refreshing because there are no announcers and you can hear the squeaks, clanks, swishes, and players/coaches barking. In the Germany vs Angola game, you can hear the German coaching staff yelling stuff in English. In the Russia/Iran game, you can hear Russian point guard J.R. Holden tell teammate Andrei Kirilenko, "Go through, Andrei!"

ASIDE: Speaking of J.R. Holden, why hasn't the Chinese or Iranian team picked up a point guard ringer like that? Kinda reminds me of some of our Asian American leagues or tournaments: "Oh yeah, he's a quarter-Filipino." You know what I'm talkin' 'bout, people!

ASIDE II: Holden is playing the most minutes for Russia! And his name on the roster has been all "Russian-ized": "Dzhon-Robert ZHolden" (I guess there is no "J" in Russian and maybe you can't start a word with "H"?).

ASIDE III: In the Olympic uni number 1 thru 15 format, Dirk Nowitzki is wearing #14, the reverse of his Mavs' #41. Kirilenko is #7, the 2nd half of his Jazz #47.

Sure, without announcers you won't get to know the players very well unless you open up another browser window and navigate to the game rosters (you can see the uni numbers pretty clearly), but you're watching high-level, un-adulterated basketball in its purest form.

No distracting cheerleaders, no stupid pet tricks, no trampolines aiding normal-sized people dressed in tights to make slam dunks. Hardly any commercials! You stay at the scene during almost every break and soak in the music and, okay, every once in a long while, some dancers will come out, but they're too small on the screen to see. It's not like there's a camera-man ogling them.

And the crowd cheers every basket, no matter what team. Nobody boos -- well, to be truthful, there's some guy yelling, "Brick!" when a German shoots a free throw. Overall, the fans are there to root for good play, nice hustle, and guys giving their heart and soul for no pay. Just doing their best to represent their country.

Ah, refreshing! I highly recommend you check out a game or two.

Even the Chinese music (cool stuff, very catchy, very hip-hoppy at times) during timeouts make you feel like you're there.

Still, "Lucky Liu" has got it better right now. I'll try to direct him to this blogpost so he can give us some quick insights in the Comments below.

Vegas Summer League report

2008-07-23T11:14:00.001-07:00

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Just got back from Vegas and witnessing the Vegas NBA Summer League, one of my new favorite pasttimes.

Here's a list of blog entries I did on Golden State Of Mind, in chronological order...

Why I love Summer League

A rave review of Jerryd Bayless

Completely disagreeing with TrueHoop's assessment of Arron Afflalo

A collection of notes from Day 7

Anthony Randolph perhaps marking a new Mully-ball era

My highly acclaimed Randy/Marco follow-up (15+ recommendations!!!)

Scathing scouting report of DJ Strawberry

Man-crush scouting report of Dominic McGuire

Interesting observation that the Knicks epitomize the NBA circus

And closing thoughts in the Summer League Wrap-Up

Oh, and here's the direct link to all my posts at GSOM...

http://www.sbnation.com/users/dreamleague/blog.

Whew! I'm tired...

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Silicon Valley Celtics

2008-06-16T13:23:00.000-07:00

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I love reading stories on how NBA teams were purchased or the quirkiness of owners and ownership groups. You know, just daydreaming about if it's even remotely possible something like that could happen to me or another dreamleaguer.

Those of you in the Bay Area may have recently read the San Jose Mercury News article by Scott Duke Harris about the ownership group of the Boston Celtics, which is comprised of some venture capitalists from Silicon Valley. My favorite quote is about renowned VC Jim Breyer and how he used to be the paperboy of one of his senior partners of "Banner 17" (read the article if you want to know why it's called that)...

"I was the Sunday Boston Globe delivery boy for the Grousbecks,' recalled Breyer, now better known as an early investor in Facebook and a director of Walmart.com. "I remember that they gave me excellent tips at Christmas."

There's actually a better article written a few weeks earlier in the Wall Street Journal by Peter Lattman. My favorite quote...

Is this good business or good fun? It depends who you ask. Earlier that night, Mr. [James Pallotta], the hedge-fund investor, described his investment philosophy above the din of the Boston crowd:

"Am I hoping for a return? Are you kidding me? I don't care if I ever get my money back. I used to sneak in when I was a kid. It's much better to be able to walk in through the front door."

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NBA China: 12 arenas

2008-05-21T21:15:00.000-07:00

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This is really staggering news. Last week, John Lombardo of the SportsBusiness Journal reported that NBA China has entered the following agreement with AEG...

The two will join forces to develop and operate up to 12 arenas in China, representing another key step in the NBA’s vision for its own league in Asia, while adding more facilities to the global expansion effort under Tim Leiweke at AEG.

Who is AEG? Well, let's just say the Staples Center is one of the many different sports arenas around the globe that they run (yeah, 'nuff said).

Logic would dictate that the NBA expects to have at least 12 franchises in various cities in China. Oh yeah, and with only the Beijing Olympic arena built, NBA China with its projected Chinese audience is currently worth -- I kid you not -- $2.3 billion!...

Read the rest of the story

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NBA's "There Can Be Only One" split-screens revealed

2008-05-16T15:55:00.000-07:00

(Click here to see the Kobe/Shaq split-screen commercial)

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[From Stephen B. Snyde in the Un-bulletedHoop chronicles...]

Here's another one that BulletedHoop...er, TrueHoop, missed.

Brian Helfrich of the SportsBusiness Daily interviewed Goodby Silverstein & Partners’ Jamie Barrett, one of the creators of the split-screen spots.

I've been wondering how they pulled that off. Here's the secret:

The director team, [Jonathan] Dayton and [Valerie] Farris, used a nice little trick where we prerecorded each script and had the players listen to the recording in their ear while performing, so they didn’t have to use a TelePrompTer. When you see Kobe Bryant, for example, deliver the “Fear” script, he has a pea-sized earplug and he’s listening to the script and repeating it as he hears it. It actually happens to be my voice, because I read it with the pacing that we wanted so it would time out the right way and have the right pauses.

One thing I noticed is that they had to time the eyeblinks perfectly. I'll bet Barrett had to say, "Blink," as well in her scripts.

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Chris Paul "uncivilized" with Right Guard

2008-05-15T14:48:00.000-07:00

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[Stephen B. Snyde reporting from our new Un-bulletedHoop files...]

Remember those Right Guard commercials with Charles Barkley and Scottie Pippen back in the day where Sir Charles would say, "Anything less would be uncivilized!"?

Well, according to Terry Lefton of the SportsBusiness Journal, Chris Paul just signed with Right Guard, now owned by Dial Corp. via sale by Gilette in 2006. The "uncivilized" campaign was under a different advertising firm, so chances are, Paul's Right Guard commercials -- targeted for later this year -- will probably not be a sequel to Barkley's and Pippen's.

Paul is respresented by Octagon and currently only endorses Nike Jordan brand and 2K Sports.

Incidentally, where was this little nugget in BulletedHoop...er, TrueHoop? I don't know about you, but I'm increasingly disappointed by TrueHoop to the point that I'd start a rival blog called TruerHoop, if not for the facts that TrueHoop is already a trademark, and -- mind you -- ESPN ain't payin' me a fulltime salary. I'll save that for a rainy day rant [insert Stephen A. Smith glare here].

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dreamleaguers rejoice: Erik Spoelstra!

2008-05-08T16:42:00.000-07:00

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Remember when what's-his-name was named coach of the Miami Heat the other week? You said, "Ho hum, see ya later (again) Pat Riley, who's the whipping boy this time? Oh, it really is some boy. Whatever."

Well, I think you need to reconsider that. So last month's post here on dreamblogue commented on Rex Walters, legendary Asian league baller, becoming head coach of USF in NCAA's D-1.

Who woulda thunk that another Asian-American (Filipino, in this case) would trump that by being named head coach of the freakin' Miami Heat by none other than hall-of-famer Riley. Please welcome Erik Spoelstra!

Nick Vicera wrote a great article in Filipinas Magazine two years ago on Spoelstra, who actually started out as the Heat's video coordinator. It even closes with Spoelstra saying this:

"...there is one thing that I am definitely interested in doing in the future, and that is helping develop basketball in the Philippines. I have been talking recently with the NBA about me putting together basketball clinics in my mother’s home country, hopefully in one of these next couple of off-seasons. It will be a wonderful chance for me to see some of my family over there and get reconnected with my roots"

You da man, Erik, you da man. (Props to Joel Sales, Sr. for referencing the above article.)

And not only does the man respect his bloodlines, but he also seems to be a very humble, smart, down-to-earth, and common-sense guy, interviewed by Kerry Eggers in the Portland Tribune:

“A lot of people are saying that [I was Dwayne Wade's personal coach], but I don’t want to overstate it,” Spoelstra cautions. “Really, it’s a relationship that has developed over Dwyane’s five years in Miami. It’s really been more because of him, because he is so determined as a player to improve...”

...Player relationships are one reason many believe Spoelstra will succeed as Miami’s head coach...

...Spoelstra would like to be more up-tempo with the offense, “but it will depend upon the personnel we gather throughout this summer,” he says. “We have a young, athletic core. I would like to find ways to take advantage of that. It doesn’t mean running up and down wild and at random, but I would like to take advantage of the speed and athleticism by attacking early in the (shot) clock and in transition.”

Mr. Spoelstra, I think you just picked up about 2,000 fans from dreamleague over here.

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More Asian Americans on the rise in college ball

2008-04-15T08:00:00.000-07:00

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There are maybe three or four "franchises" in the history of organized Asian American basketball leagues in the USA: (1) the Japanese-centric Nippon Athletic Union of Northern and Southern California, borne out of the Japanese internment camps of World War II, (2) the Chinese National Tournament borne out of the East Coast, (3) the IndoPak tournament circuit, and (4) the East and West Coast Filipino leagues started by immigrants to large metros.

Guess what, perhaps Asian American basketball's greatest player ever has returned home. Rex Walters was named the head coach of USF yesterday (Rex is 50% Japanese, 50% Caucasian).

This is a little eerie because I was gonna post our NYC commish's recent article on some ballers of our Asian league/tourney circuits of today -- from the potential of Xiro Navaulath, to the token-Asian-guy-at-a-world-class-program Matt Lee, and the steady starter of a small D-1 Jeremy Lin, who actually has not appeared in an Asian league/tourney yet (...and props to Ryan Reyes, although we are talking about D-1 here, not pro) -- who have made it to the D-1 level.

And just last week I also recently came close to hiring a new ref in our Bay Area league, Joe Belfry (he called me back too late, but you'll see him soon in stripes on our courts), former teammate of John Tofi. Tofi started at UTEP and is now, according to Belfry, playing professionally in Italy.

Here's the report from NYC... Read the rest of the story

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Gun violence overlaps into our basketball community (again)

2008-03-31T14:43:00.000-07:00

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I'm almost too depressed to type this. I think I'll just do a little stream of consciouness -- I can't really think about organizing paragraphs and coming up with a good way to express this. When someone you know dies and you know you will never see that person again, let alone say hello to him/her, that's a bitter pill to swallow. When that someone dies by gun violence, simply put it just feels worse. And I can hardly imagine how it feels when that someone is someone close to you, as in, an immediate family member.

Jason DelaCruz was shot and killed at around 2am outside a pizza and bar area of San Francisco. Jason is the brother of former Vegas tourney MVP Jeremy DelaCruz. Jeremy's been my teammate before in dreamleague and a long-time member of renowned Filipino tourney team the Bay Area Wizards, as well as the Bay Area Heads. Dozens more here in the Bay's Asian American basketball community probably know Jeremy and Jason better than I do. I never really met Jason, but I did see him make a couple cameo appearances on the court with his brother's strong NL-caliber teams. The thing I most remember about him: he's the spittin' image of Jeremy...

Read the rest of the story

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More clicks of fame: Matt Lee and Seth Robles

2008-03-29T16:02:00.000-07:00

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Been awhile since the last post (the 38-team LA tourney followed immediately by our Bay Area league which now has 125 teams got very tiring in Feb-Mar), but here are a couple more "clicks of fame" -- you know, instead of 15 seconds of fame on the boob tube, it's a click of fame on the YouTube. Thanks to dreamleaguer Torrent Lee for keeping a pulse on Matt.

(1) To add to his previous half-court buzzer-beater, UCLA's Matt Lee (who has made a couple cameos in dreamleague) with two alley oops -- using a left hand scoop for one of them, no less!

(2) Seth Robles of Dream League Bay Area's San Jose Jollybee getting indirect props from Bill Simmons in his weekly article (#12 YouTube link at the bottom). Seth worked hard on a video rap compilation of last year's Warriors ouster of the Mavericks.

Incidentally, Seth's brother is none other than Golden State of Mind's Tony.psd, who has recently finished our WE BELIEVE- and Stephen Jackson-inspired league t-shirts for the Bay Area. Hey, maybe even the New York dreamleaguers might wanna get their hands on this given the blah-zay of the Knicks and Nets this year.

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Courtside Chat With Jeff Staple

2008-02-02T21:28:00.000-08:00

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[From NYC commish Brian Yang...]

Over the holidays, we had a chance to catch up with Jeff Staple, the man behind Staple Design, The Reed Space, and the Nike Recess Federation. If you haven't heard of any of these things, shame on you. If you have, and you may even own some of their designs, well, we'll let Jeff explain who/how/what it all is.

All we can tell you is that Jeff, he's the hardest working man in America. Scratch that, maybe the world. (He finally found time to answer these questions while on his way to Melbourne!)...

Read the rest of the story

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Look for Yi (and Lebron) to max in 2010

2008-01-31T15:28:00.000-08:00

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With thanks to TrueHoop for all the links today, I've been inspired by this article on BrewHoop, the Bucks' resident blog, and others reporting on the Bucks' newfound revenue through on-court signage and whatnot by Chinese-based firms, to say this:

When Yi Jianlian's rookie contract expires after the 2009-2010 season, barring any NBA salary rules I'm not sure about (hey if I'm not getting paid to know all the rules, I won't know all the rules), the kid deserves a MAXIMUM CONTRACT.

For a small premium over your standard on-court signage fees, you can advertise your brand to about 200 million Chinese. Wow.

Memo to the Warriors: better free up some cap space, otherwise Atma Brother ONE's dream of a "Yi Movement" over at Golden State Of Mind will never come to fruition. I think it's fair to say that owner Chris Cohan can only drop the ball on this one. It's pure marketing to tout the power of the Bay Area market and how it relates to Yi. Assuming Yi is merely as good as he is now and without a debilitating injury (knock on wood), Yi's play would be the icing on the cake, not the other way around. Think ROI.

Btw, why is Yi playing in the Rookie/Sophomores Game instead of Joakim Noah or the miffed Al Thornton? What, you forgot there was signage at the Rookie/Soph Game? You forgot this was a corporate sponsor thank-you weekend, not a real All-Star gathering?

Yes, as a sophomore count on Yi being at All-Star Weekend no matter what in 2009. I mean, I really hope he improves, but he might be the one of the few max-contract guys not to make the All-Star Game in 2010 (Stephon Marbury, et. al.?), barring an upsurge in his fan voting -- he needs to more than double his votes this year. You heard it here first.

Speaking of ROI and 2010, here's hoping my comment to Sports Business Radio's post about Lebron not being a good investment -- seconded by Cavs beatwriter Brian Windhorst -- gets posted...

You really need to talk to someone in the shoe industry before talking about Nike/Lebron's ROI. I don't have those resources, so my speculation is hereby just as good as yours.

Look, if Starburys can have a RETAIL price of $15, that would suggest that Nike's cost of goods can't be more than $15 per shoe -- okay, let's be conservative, let's DOUBLE that to $30. Economies of scale, baby.

If Lebron's shoes are selling for $150+, do the math. That's a nice profit margin.

Let's look at it another way. If Nike Golf is bringing in $600 mil and Nike's revenues are $2 bil, then perhaps we can safely say Jordan and Lebron brands are bringing in at least $1 bil. Then perhaps we can safely say Jordan is bringing in 2/3rds of that, so maybe Lebron is bringing in $333 mil.

Invest $90 mil to get $333 mil? I'd say that's a pretty good ROI. In fact, I'd say that $90 mil to get only $90 mil would have been good ROI in terms of merely the marketing. Like you said, Lebron will win MVPs and championsips. You can see why Reebok was willing to pay up for Lebron.

In 2010, what Lebron goes for will be more Lebron than Nike. Especially with Adidas unwilling to go for one-guy stratospheric numbers (hence the 1-of-5 "team" campaign with KG, Chauncey, Gil, et. al.). Esp. when you know LRMR has got to know the real numbers. It's entirely what the brand can bear without jeopardizing Lebron's ability to rake it in in the future. And right now I'd speculate that Nike the brand with $2 bil in revenues can bear a lot.

$90 mil was pretty much how it balanced out at the time. In 2010, I'm sure the forces of supply and demand will yield a larger number.

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Matt Lee's 15 seconds of fame

2008-01-02T16:42:00.000-08:00

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One of the three non-Pacific-Islander Asian guys currently playing in college D-1 basketball, Matt Lee, hit a buzzer-beating (albiet non-consequential) trey on regional TV coverage over the holidays. This for the fabled UCLA Bruins, the #7-ranked team at the time!

You can catch the video clip by clicking on the picture above or at BruinsNation.com.

For us dreamleaguers in the Bay Area who have seen Lee, brother of stalwart power forward Jon G. Lee, make cameo appearances during the summer in league and tournament play, the shot comes as no surprise.

Okay, maybe it was really just 5 seconds of fame, not 15.

Speaking of Asians in D-1, I just found out that Japeth Aguilar became the first player recruited out of the Philippines to receive a D-1 scholarship. He's currently at Western Kentucky and has been injured of late.

There's also KJ Matsui of Columbia and Jeremy Lin of Harvard, whom we interviewed last year.

And there's also two other Fil-Ams playing college ball in California, although I don't remember their names off-hand (at St. Mary's?). If you know of any others, please leave your info in the comments.

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I call it the best article on the PBA ever

2007-12-13T03:05:00.000-08:00

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Here's a great example of where TrueHoop's Henry Abbott and Poor Man's Commish have really different viewpoints of the world of basketball. Abbott refers to yesterday's AWESOME article by Rafe Bartholomew (I don't usually put a writer's name in bold, but Mr. Bartholomew deserves it) in the Seattle Weekly about former NBA prospect Rosell Ellis and his current life in the Philippine Basketball Association (PBA) as "You Choke One Referee...", while I would call it...

"THE BEST INSIDE LOOK AT THE PBA EVER WRITTEN!!!"

I say this because if you've ever toured the circuit of amateur Asian American basketball tournaments, despite the highly competitive and ultra-skilled nature of these tourneys, the closest thing we "common folk" ever get to being on the level of pro is that someone in the tourney once played in the PBA or maybe in China.

This occurs enough that we wonder if these ringers in our tournaments are really half-black-half-Filipino (quarter-Filipino?) or if we are just respectfully allowing them to play amongst our Asian American community because they once played in the PBA.

When you watch these guys play, you can't help but wonder what it's like to play in the PBA. I mean, we've heard about the corruption with heights and we've played against guys like Ryan Reyes who got drafted by the PBA. But we've never got an insider's look into the day-and-life of a PBA'er.

Until now.

Here are some choice nuggets from Bartholomew's piece, but really, go check it out. Every word is worth the read...

First off, there's a mention of a teammate of Ellis's named Dale Singson. I wonder if there's any relation to Reyes's tourney teammate Ryan Singson?
"To get to the ref, Ellis shoved his teammate out of the way, ran to the scorer's table where [the ref] was reporting the ejection, leaped on the referee's back, and put [the ref] in a sleeper hold...Less than two months before, in December 1997, Latrell Sprewell had beaten Ellis to the choke."
"Depending on his base salary and performance incentives, Ellis makes between $15,000 and $20,000 per month as an import on foreign teams. By skipping from one team to another as seasons in different countries begin and end, he can, for example, play in Australia from October to February, then in the Philippines from March to July, thus multiplying his earnings."
"It's also common for management to change team names to give struggling brands a boost. In 2005, the Purefoods franchise was pushing corned beef and their team was the Chunkee Giants. Now, they're hawking hot dogs as the Tender Juicy Giants."
"Companies that can't afford their own team pay to have mascots wander the aisles..."
"Ellis kept hearing someone call his name -- 'Ell-ees! Ell-ees!' -- during layup lines. 'Just by the way he was saying my name, I knew something was funny,' Ellis says. 'I knew better than to look, but I'm laying the ball up and he's right under the basket. So as I come down, I just happen to look. Gay dude, just had breast implants, whipped them out and showed me.'"
"The Alaska franchise provides Ellis with an apartment, a maid, a car, and a driver. He makes more money in a month than most Filipino families earn in a year. When fans spot him in malls and restaurants, they call him 'idol,' ask for high fives and autographs, and take photos with him."
"In the PBA, [former Portland Trail Blazer Billy Ray Bates], a gifted scorer even by NBA standards, was able to put up Chamberlain-like numbers in the bedroom as well as on the court. Even his PBA nickname, 'Black Superman,' contained a hint of innuendo."
"Philippine coaches talk about imports in terms usually reserved for used cars -- players who can't average 25 points per game are called 'lemons.' Loyalty is laughable; imports can be replaced anytime during a season, including the playoffs. In 2002, the PBA's Red Bull franchise started former Duke University player Antonio Lang for the entire season, then gave him his walking papers on the eve of Game 7 of the league finals."
"Argentine hardwood was similarly afflicted, but ingenious team managers there came up with a solution that's bound to please American soft-drink companies. As Ellis explains, 'Before the game, they pour Coke all over the floor so it'll be sticky.'"
"The space above the players' heads was equally perilous. In some drafty Argentine gyms, the players dodged fluttering insects and swooping bats."
"Although [Ellis's point guard teammate Willie Miller] looks like a full-blooded American, his mannerisms -- the jumping-bean eyebrows, the nose used for pointing -- are pure Filipino."
"Miller plays the same helter-skelter game Filipinos play on the playground, racing up and down the court at full tilt, weaving through defenders, and finishing with improbable circus layups. He throws risky full-court passes to breaking teammates for layups. He dribbles straight into double teams and slices them in half." [Hmmm, I wonder if Miller is a distant cousin of dreamleaguer tourney-man Jeremy delaCruz?!!!]
"It was a cross-cultural love-fest that would have seemed impossible a week earlier, capped by Ellis and Miller posing together for a picture. They stood side by side, each grinning with a crispy pig ear between his teeth while holding the porcine head in front of them."

See, I told you. Best article on the PBA ever!

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Mullin, McHale, and Ainge

2007-11-21T15:40:00.000-08:00

Hereby one of the most intriguing NBA photos ever.
(Click for larger view)

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[UPDATE: It's Scott Wedman, indeed!!! See comments below. Ah well, I guess it was too good to be true...]

Today the Golden State Warriors take on the Boston Celtics. Many, many years ago (twenty?) the Warriors visited the Celtics as they always have. Except on that night, there were three players who would eventually shape the very league that they play in from an executive level.

I found this photo at Amici's pizza joint down by Pac Bell Park (yep, I still call it that) not too long ago and just had to take a quick snap of it.

Chris Mullin, Kevin McHale, and Danny Ainge, all in the same action shot. Seriously, who woulda thunk 20 years later a superstar by the name of Kevin Garnett would be tossed in deal discussions involving these three (today's article in the Boston Globe talks about this)?

I mean, think about how amazing this photo is. How rare! Imagine a still shot today that shows, say, only Tim Duncan, Yao Ming, and Manu Ginobili. Think about that, twenty years from now in the year 2027, Yao's the GM of a new NBA franchise in Shanghai, Duncan's the GM of the Spurs, and Ginobili's the GM of, what, the Miami Heat?!!

Btw, my buddies at Golden State of Mind have a
nice interview with the Celtics blog that touches on the "collusion" between Ainge and McHale for Garnett.

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NBA Owners Manual: use forum negativity to your advantage

2007-11-01T14:24:00.000-07:00

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[From Stephen B. Snyde...]

Today was the NBA's deadline for contract extensions and left me scratching my head. Maybe certain teams are caught in circumstances they can't get out of, but Al Jefferson for 5 years at $65 million? When was the last time Jefferson came into town and blew up your local team, with highlights left and right and the news channels saying your boys couldn't stop Al Jefferson?

How about Jameer Nelson for 5 years at $32.5 million? That's a $6 million man right there! When was the last time you got tickets to the arena to go see Jameer Nelson?

Or how about "swingman" Sasha Pavlovic for 3 years at $12 million? What's up with this "swingman" notation? It's supposed to be "shooting guard" or "small forward", no? But yeah, no one can ever really call Pavlovic a shooting guard without laughing. The thought of him being a forward doesn't seem right, either. "Swingman" is like the guy who catches the ball and shoots after the ball is swung. How hard is that? Are you telling me there are no decent swingmen in the DL (haha, that's NBDL, not our "DL" of course! -- ???)?

This time of year also tells you which franchises got their heads screwed on right. Chris Mullin let Patrick O'Bryant become an unrestricted free agent. John Paxson told Ben Gordon and Luol Deng, take this non-exorbitant $50 million offer for 5 years or leave it (Gordon and Deng left them). The Bobcats and 76ers couldn't come to terms with Emeka Okafor and Andre Iguodala, respectively, so they'll let their inevitable non-playoff seasons pan out before pulling any panic triggers. In the business mode of buying low and selling high, what could be better than restricted free agents? Take Delonte West and Robert Swift of the Sonics. Neither was handed an extension and will therefore become restricted. That means other teams, unless they are bluffing, will set the market prices -- perhaps a more fair process -- on these guys at the end of the season.

Back to the questionable roster commitments, I'm wondering if some of these teams are pressured into signing fat extensions for these non-household or otherwise expendable guys.

You know what can counter that pressure? A little discussion forum riot, that's what. Turn something that used to be a nuisance into a weapon.

So if I'm an NBA owner, I elevate my team's blog or discussion forum and have a specific area where fans can go and gripe about roster moves and which players are worth what. Make a joke out of it, haha this haha that.

But all the while, you'll get the online trolls who love to spread negativity with their venom comments write stuff about these marginal guys. The more, the better. Remember, you the owner have got to elevate this online slandering into entertainment.

Then you take this little tidbit of info into your meeting with the player's agent and blow it out of proportion. "Sasha for $12 million? You mean I gotta keep getting these hate comments on our website for 3 more years? Are you kidding me? No way, man. 1 year at $4 million. If his popularity rises over the season, okay, we'll revisit next summer."

And there you have it. NBA Owners Manual page 11, paragraph 6: When under pressure to sign a marginal player, use the court of public opinion, especially if consolidated on the Internet in a common area of online interest and high content value, to help negotiate your contract with said marginal player.

Paragraph 7 would say something like: Focus your time and energy (and hence, MONEY!) on the players that matter. It's a long season. Focus on your leaders -- your blockbusters -- and you can have followers for a dime a dozen. Three words: The Big Three.

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Bay Area welcomes its own Chinese 7-footer

2007-10-12T22:41:00.000-07:00

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While Milwaukee introduces itself to Yi Jianlian, we ought to do the same here in the Bay, at Cal to be exact. Enter Max Zhang, who made a cameo appearance at an Asian tourney last year that we wrote about.

It's late-night on Friday and I'm just checking good 'ol CalBears.com to find out the opponent and kickoff time of the #2 nationally ranked (pinch me!) California football Golden Bears of Jeff Tedford -- that's a well-deserved Swami aka Chris Berman shout out.

A quick click over to the Men's Basketball section where there's coincidentally news of the team's first practice and lo and behold, a mention of Zhang. A name I had not heard in 13 months!

Btw, I've also got the World Series of Poker on ESPN2 in the background and there's been, in sarcastic reference to Tony Bennett, a mention of fellow Cal alum William Hung. Make that two names I have not heard in 13 months!

So anyways, the official press release on Zhang's signing was nearly two months ago. Totally under the radar. Here's an excerpt from what I wrote on him last year...

"Max Zhang is an eighteen year-old skinny 7-footer from China. He really has no offensive skills yet, but can obviously dunk the ball and block people's shots with ease...He appeased other LVI players in the stands urging him to show off during warmups...At first glance, because the sheer thought of a 7-footer playing in an Asian American tournament borders on blasphemy, people tend to estimate his height at 6'8", then 6'9", then maybe ok 6'10". But after a good look, the consensus becomes seven feet."

The coolest part for us: if you do a google on "Max Zhang basketball", guess what comes up first?

P.S. It also looks like former Cal walk-on Thomas Fang is no longer on the team. Vinsanity, I guess you are no longer on the hook for that dreamblogue interview. If anybody out there wants to interview Zhang for us, let me know and I'll put you in contact with our insider at Cal.

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The passion of community basketball

2007-10-08T14:29:00.000-07:00

Read on and you'll see what Jay-Z has to do with all of this.

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The folks at Bassett Productions (Tom, Sidney, and Andrew) recently made an incredible video about community basketball leagues. It was one of the most riveting pieces I have ever seen about basketball "for the rest of us". The documentary (I'm not quite sure if that's the right word) was actually market research for one of their clients, so unfortunately none of you will probably ever see it, as it remains the property of the client...

Read the rest of the story

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Argentinians got heart

2007-08-31T11:24:00.000-07:00

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Poor Man's Commish here in Vegas for our back-to-back Asian American championship tourneys (unrelated to FIBA Americas, of course).

Team Argentina lost to Team USA quite convincingly last night, but the Argentinian fans (or click the picture on the upper right) showed a lot of heart. Here they are having fun in the lobby of the Thomas & Mack Center in Vegas after the game on the way out.

The erstwhile fans got a brief mention in SI's recap of the game (yes, they were drowned out, but it did take some effort by the Vegas fans to keep up with the Argentinians).

Made me think of what it might be like to watch Olympics basketball in 2008 in Beijing, when I'm sure the Argentinians -- not to mention the Brazilians, among others -- won't be drowned out. Imagine a USA vs Argentina final, with an equal number of Argentinian fans as to USA fans. I can't wait!

Btw, props to dreamleaguer Ferdie Munoz for the great tickets. FIBA and Olympic basketball remain the most under-valued basketball event on the earth, but I'll save that topic for another post...

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Ryan Reyes picked 3rd in PBA draft

2007-08-21T08:00:00.000-07:00

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Ryan Reyes, who was MVP of dreamleague's not-too-distant Vegas All-Star Weekend tournament back in February 2007, was recently selected 3rd overall in the Philippine Basketball Association's draft (see video).

He will make 7 million PHP (Philippine pesos), which converts to about USD$150,000. Congratulations, Ryan! Guess we won't be seeing you on a dreamleague court for awhile, until maybe our 2022 Vegas Tournament, in the Masters division?

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Scoop: Heroes

2007-08-17T08:44:00.000-07:00

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Via TrueHoop, very cool stuff from Scoop Jackson of ESPN.com today, entitled Yes, there are heroes left in the sports world.

Our Dream League New York community recently had a shoe drive for Hoops 4 Hope. We're planning to have one soon for Dream League Bay Area, to start a challenge of shoes donated per dreamleaguer with the New York folks.

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Not much gained for Yi playing with Team China

2007-07-19T15:04:00.000-07:00

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There's nothing like studying top draft picks in decent competition from the 2nd row at midcourt. You just can't witness naunces from a TV screen -- or worse, a laptop monitor -- like you can this close to the players. I went to Vegas last week to catch two games live of Yi Jianlian and the Chinese National Team. ESPN.com's Chad Ford had Yi ranked right behind Greg Oden and Kevin Durant for the 2007 NBA Draft, and Yi looked pretty good as a mobile 7-footer with skills in pre-draft workouts.

After watching a multitude of various summer league 7-footers, of which Spencer Hawes was probably the most skilled, you could see from the ESPN pre-draft workout clip that Yi really does have a lot of potential. Unfortunately, the Chinese National Team is doing almost nothing to tap that potential...

Read the rest of the story

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And that's why they're Adiduhs

2007-07-18T14:39:00.000-07:00

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If you've read the book Sole Influence by Dan Wetzel and Don Yaeger, you know that the entire "how-we-got-here" of modern-day basketball hinges on two things: a fledgling Nike's signing of a young Michael Jordan and Phil Knight's declaration of war after Adidas signed Kobe Bryant.

Thus, if you want to study the history of athletic apparel and sit on the market's throne for a long, long time, you must look out for the next Jordan, Kobe, or LeBron James. There's little doubt that Kevin Durant fits that "savior" mold.

So why the heck did Adidas not offer Durant a much-respect offer such as $90 million or something at least nearby what Nike offered LeBron a few years back? Instead, they offered only $70 million to a guy that has been wearing Nikes ever since hitting the AAU scene. After all, it's been reported in the SportsBusiness Journal that Nike spends over $2 billion dollars on athlete endorsements -- and you'd have to figure that Adidas is at a level at least half of that.

Reality check. What's another $20 million? It's only 2 percent of $1 billion. If Adidas is spending $2 billion like Nike on endorsements, then we're talking one more measly percent to get Durant. It's practically Monopoly money at those levels.

Or maybe Adidas is actually smarter than we know; they have resigned to the fact they cannot beat Nike in the war of pop culture, and this whole Durant thing was a PR charade to show the world that they tried, while not rattling the endorsement market out of whack.

But here's the bottom line: despite the potential of Adidas, I'll be sticking loyally to my Nikes, at least until the next Durant comes along.

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Make up your mind, Milwaukee

2007-07-17T22:03:00.000-07:00

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[From Stephen B. Snyde...]

Does this epitomize the Yi Jianlian situation in Milwaukee or what? A few days ago, Don Walker of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel pointed out...

"In Milwaukee, meanwhile, the small Chinese community has set up a website welcoming Yi to Milwaukee. The site is at www.yifansclub.com."

First off, as of this writing, the "Schedule" link on the site goes directly to the Milwaukee Bucks NBA team calendar. I guess we won't be finding any local rallies to drum up support or anything.

Secondly, the "News" link goes directly to a blogpost entitled "We Don't Want Yi in Milwaukee". I suppose an angry dissident found the time and the wherewithal to post something that would automatically get displayed prominently on the frontpage as well as the News page of the website. The post is not all that friendly, either...

"Yi embodies everything that is wrong with professional sports [followed by a long paragraph]...Is Yi the next step in the evolution of the spoiled athlete? [followed by another long paragraph]...[and ending with] I hope you can find a better use of your time than maintaining this website"

Can you say oops?!!!

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Belinelli, Belinelli, Belinelli!!!

2007-07-11T12:08:00.000-07:00

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First off, I just wanted to thank Fantasy Junkie and Atma Brother ONE for allowing me contribute to Golden State of Mind the best that I can bring about my 48-hour experience at NBA Summer League in Vegas to fans of the Warriors -- and, as it were, of the Kings, Wizards, Mavericks, Nuggets, Spurs, Knicks, 76ers, Team China, and the NBA itself! If you've never met Fantasy Junkie and Atma Brother ONE, hope that you will someday soon. They are two of the nicest guys around.

Intro

I'll be focusing this write-up on the Warriors-Spurs summer league game, then the other 4-and-a-quarter games I caught last night. I'll tell you right off the bat, I really don't like to write, although you'll see that I'm quite verbose because I'd rather give you more than less. If you can't wait (because of you-know-who, I wouldn't blame you if you wanted to skip to the Warriors section first), here are the sections of this post -- you're lucky I'm pretty good at HTML...

Read the rest of the story...

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And the best thing about Draft Day was...Burn Notice!

2007-06-29T14:57:00.000-07:00

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[From Stephen B. Snyde...]

So if you're old school like me, yesterday's draft was the most highly anticipated one in a long, long time. Sure, 2003 was nice, but that was after a mucho-boring March Madness due to no draft age minimum.

This year, we got to see where Yi Jianlian was going to wind up. We had all these Florida Gators with the team concept. We had Joakim Noah. We had a little tiny bit of drama before Portland made Greg Oden the official #1 and then Seattle made the easiest #2 pick ever with Kevin Durant. Then it was the Warriors with the Italian guard and then trading Jason Richardson.

I mean, this was the most exciting NBA Draft for Bay Area fans, especially those who are now veteran Asian ballaz, since the day Chris Webber was drafted and swapped with Anfernee Hardaway to land with the Golden State Warriors! Folks, that was 1993.

So the draft's over (good job, ESPN and Mike Tirico) and I'm flipping around channels and stumble upon USA Network. Lo and behold, it is a new TV show. Seemingly tailor-made for the veteran Asian hoopster, the one who reminisces the 90's.

I bring you Burn Notice...

Read the rest of the story

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Poor Man's been-there-done-that veto: Kevin Durant

2007-06-27T10:35:00.000-07:00

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I don't blame Stephen B. Snyde. We had just seen the Utah Jazz, led by an unstoppable Carlos Boozer inside, beat our Warriors. Then we saw the same Jazz get beat up inside by Tim Duncan, who ended up eliminating one of the few teams that could hang, the Phoenix Suns, who had Amare Stoudemire in there to try and neutralize Duncan. So of course, we figured that you had to take Greg Oden with the first pick.

Come to think of it, I'm not so sure. Two big discoveries for me have made me jump ship. Big time...

Read the rest of the story

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Yi Jianlian Dan Fegan is the man

2007-06-08T08:00:00.003-07:00

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[From Stephen B. Snyde for Friday tidbits...]

No, not another post about Yi Jianlian! Well, actually, this one's really about his agent, Dan Fegan.

While everybody else is flying into various NBA towns for workouts, including Greg Oden and Kevin Durant going to the Orlando combines, how come if you want to take a peek at Yi, you have to fly to him?

The Bulls are flying into LA to see Yi, while Joakim Noah and Spencer Hawes are flying into Chicago.
The Hawks are gonna have a whole buncha guys looked at at Philips Arena, yet Hawks brass is flying to LA to see Yi.
If you've been following the now 9-part TrueHoop series on Leandro Barbosa, you know that he practically toured the US making tons of stops at NBA cities for workouts.

But with Yi, everybody has to fly to LA to go see him. Fegan da man!

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Success in capitalism = selling out

2007-06-08T08:00:00.002-07:00

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[From Stephen B. Snyde for Friday tidbits...]

The term "sell out" has such a bad connotation in everyday society, but did you know that more often than not, financial success in the capitalistic world requires you to sell out? The funny thing about it is when you sell out, usually you take the heart and soul of what you built with you. Unless you're Phil Knight and you take Nike public, in which case you are allowing the general public to become co-investors in your company. Or you're Jay Z, who sold Rocawear for something like $300 million, plus he retained around 20% equity (damn smart).

Remember, 50 Cent wasn't a founder of Vitamin Water. The founders sold him a 20% stake. If you're the original owners of Vitamin Water, you just made an insane amount of money (they are probably billionaires -- look out, NBA ownership!), but the tradeoff was that you gave up the excitement of being its heart and soul. That's the price of for-profit.

Anyhow, the point of this post is that the And1 apparel/shoe line and the And1 Mixtape Tour long ago sold out to the makers of Avia (remember when Avia and the Nike Air Revolution were the hot high school team buys back in the late 80's?). And all this time you could have sworn Avia was bankrupt and And1 was on its way to becoming a mini-Nike. I remember reading about the young founders of And1 way back when. Wonder what they are doing now. Probably still playing ball somewhere, dreaming up the next hoop fashion line (that's passion).

In fact, as Joe Vecsey reports for Bounce Magazine, not even the And1 Mixtape Tour will ever be the same. The original founders have broken off into a splinter group called Ball4Real and will go heads up against And1 Mixtape. Now I have to disgustingly hit the channel button at 1:00 in the morning to be cleansed of streetball twice?

Even as a non-fan of And1, in truth I (and Poor Man's Commish) am saddened by the reality of And1 now being another brand name. We respect passion for the game, even if we're not on the same team. Is that passion there behind the And1 "product" anymore? I don't think the motivation is the same. Best of luck to Ball4Real, but it's like the Terminator movies: humans vs machines.

RIP

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Bay Area hero Leon Powe returns

2007-06-08T08:00:00.001-07:00

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[From Stephen B. Snyde for Friday tidbits...]

From Jonathan Okanes of the Contra Costa Times, a very nice article about Leon Powe. Here are some snippets which, in my mind, already make him a humble hero no matter how he does in the NBA...

...he'd never done anything like the travel required of an NBA player. Powe said he enjoyed visiting different cities and learning about their history and culture. His rough upbringing in Oakland was pretty insulated; he didn't get much of a chance to see the world outside of his neighborhood. "I don't think I even went to San Francisco until I was about 15 or 16," Powe said. "I try not to take anything for granted. Without basketball, I wouldn't be able to see anything. I try to take advantage of it."
Powe, who is fiercely loyal to his simple roots, hasn't spent lavishly. [Father figure Bernard Ward] had to encourage Powe to buy a watch because he didn't own one. Powe's one big expense so far was a vacation he recently took to the Bahamas with his girlfriend, Lauren Cook...But he's not living the high life. He said he spends most of his spare time going bowling or attending movies with Cook.
Powe also believes he should use his position to get involved in the community. As a Cal student, he talked to children about the importance of education. He's doing the same thing in Boston. Cook is as well, working in an after-school program for underprivileged kids. Powe is going to spend most of this month in the Bay Area, and he is planning more charitable work while he is here. "He feels like it's his job to give back to the community," Ward said. "He wants to talk to kids because he knows he can teach them. He feels like it's a big responsibility. Leon is the same guy he always was -- so humble, so down to earth."

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The Greg Oden of pro hoop bloggers is... Greg Oden!

2007-06-08T08:00:00.000-07:00

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[From Stephen B. Snyde for Friday tidbits...]

We've said it before and we'll say it again: Rod Benson is the Kevin Durant of pro hoop bloggers (ballaz gettin' paid to play and sharing their thoughts on a blog).

Witness the last two hoop-related entries by Benson where he...

Reveals the inside secrets of the Wizzonator as it relates to NBA drug testing (do a "find" with your browser on "Wizzonator" to jump to the funny part), and
Lies to a whole host of airplane passengers that he played on the Sacramento Kings, all to get an exit row seat (do a "find" on "Sacramento Kings").

Where Benson is Durant, even Paul Shirley recently started to produce like the Greg Oden of pro hoop bloggers, with his comedic rendition of trying to Cassanova a pretty Spanish hoop fan while first prefacing that Spanish girls look less like Penelope Cruz and more like "female versions of Tony Parker."

But, no! Shirley cannot be the Oden of pro hoop bloggers. For the Greg Oden of pro hoop bloggers can only be...

GREG ODEN HIMSELF!

Yes, Oden has a blog. And it's not that bad. The funniest bit so far was about his trip to Nike headquarters...

I saw a guy with a Ohio State shirt and I got hype I was like thats amazing someone who loves Ohio State then once i saw 30 more people with the same shirt I was like hold up not all these people like Ohio State, but its ok.

One 7-foot question though: Why does Greg Oden need this YardBarker.com thing? The man could make serious ad money by having a blog all to himself. Of course, it's gonna be relative small change, but at least hire your friends to run the blog or something and basically rain some easy earn for your homies.

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Hoops rule the almighty dollar

2007-06-06T08:00:00.000-07:00

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Sports Illustrated just released its list of Top 50 highest-earning American athletes, which includes salaries and endorsements.

One thing we ballaz can be proud of: 4 of the top 10 are hoopsters Shaquille O'Neal, Kobe Bryant, LeBron James (who will surely move up now that his NBA salary is set to be the max), and Kevin Garnett. Just goes to show you that hoop rules the almighty dollar. Aside from LeBron, each of the stars was making about $20 million in salary and $15 million in endorsements, with KG making "only" $8 million in endorsements.

And before you start suggesting otherwise, don't forget about the recent $4 billion cash buyout of Glaceau, maker of Vitamin Water, by Coca-Cola. The May issue of Swish Magazine profiled Vitamin Water and not only did rapper 50 Cent make out with 10% or $400 million from the acquisition, but so did a large handful of NBA stars...

"I've got shares of stock, they give everybody shares in the company," says Dallas Mavericks swingman Josh Howard of his relationship with Glaceau. "They've also shown my camps a lot of support over the last year and a half. They come out to my underprivileged camps. When I was out there in Vegas (for All-Star) I did some events for them, just trying to help put their name out there. I'm pretty involved and I appreciate them. It's really a family-oriented business and an up-and-coming company, so Gatorade better watch out."

Whoa, Howard's gonna appreciate them, you bet. Back in my days as a Silicon Valley venture capitalist, it wasn't uncommon for startup companies to give out 0.25% in stock to people who sit on the Board or help out in other ways.

Let's see, 0.25% of four billion is TEN MILLION DOLLARS. OK, even if it was as low as 0.1% (I'd be surprised if it was that low), that's still four million! Just for pitching Vitamin Water, getting a few cases stocked in your fridge each month for free, and doing all of that for all stock and no cash. Howard, Chauncey Billups, Tracy McGrady, Shaq, Gilbert Arenas, Allen Iverson, Ray Allen, Tony Parker, Elton Brand, and Shawn Marion -- far outnumbering stars from other sports on the Vitamin Water roster -- just blew the Sports Illustrated average for endorsements out of the "water".

If they included the Vitamin Water deal, you'd probably see that at least 6 or 7 of the top 10 American athlete moneymakers are NBA stars.

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The Golden State of Mind guys

2007-05-26T08:00:00.000-07:00

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[From Vinsanity. This is a maybe-weekly chat with one or more of the guys from Golden State of Mind, who have a team in dreamleague Bay Area...]

Just a little disclaimer: This chat took place shortly after Game 2 of the Western Conference Semi's pitting the Utah Jazz vs. the Golden State Warriors. The Jazz were victorious in the end (winning 127-117 in OT) but were no doubt aided by the free throws woes of Baron Davis and Mickael Pietrus...

Fantasy Junkie: Hey Vinsanity, it's Fantasy Junkie from Golden State of Mind. What a horrible end to that game, someone needs to go practice free throws.

Vinsanity: Hey Fantasy Junkie...yeah...we definitely should have won that game. First Pietrus could have iced it, then Baron...

Read the rest of the story

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What happens in the Philippines...

2007-05-24T08:00:00.000-07:00

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[Thanks to TrueHoop for the link to this article, written by Rafe Bartholomew of Slate.com...]

We'd like to say that what happens in the NBA happens in dreamleague (well, sort of, and maybe that's vice-versa).

But we certainly would like to avoid what happens in the PBA (Philippines Basketball Association) from happening in dreamleague, although a good portion of you will no doubt be unflinched by this article and know that we are particularly -- and perhaps helplessly -- vulnerable to this type of stuff.

In case you're too lazy to click, the article is about how to skirt the PBA's rule of a height maximum of 6'6". My favorite quote...

"Coaches who watched players droop and bend their way into the league acquired a bemused fatalism similar to the outlook many Filipinos have toward their famously corrupt politicians—they couldn't stop the cheating, so they laughed at it."

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Durant = playoffs, Oden = conference finals

2007-05-23T13:22:00.000-07:00

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[From Stephen B. Snyde...]

Poor Man's Commish doesn't usually let me argue about NBA teams and what they should do, because normally we like to leave the rantin' and ravin' to the myriad of blogs out there, but when I brought this up, he didn't think anybody had touched on it, at least not the way I'm about to.

Now that Portland and Seattle are #1 and #2 in this year's deep NBA Draft, which will lead to this year's best Vegas Summer League ever, you have to be asking yourself: Greg Oden or Kevin Durant?

Ballaz everywhere will, of course, lean towards Durant because we can all "be like Kevin". You have to be much taller than everybody else around you to be like Greg. And it's hard to pass on a guy who scored 30 ppg in the college format. What if Oden is to Sam Bowie as Durant is to Michael Jordan?

But haven't we seen enough in the NBA Playoffs this year? You look at the Warriors and you go, "Plenty of swingmen. They need a Carlos Boozer, Kevin Garnett, or Elton Brand. They need a tall guy in the middle who can score, rebound and draw defenders to kick out." You look at the Suns and you go, "Something's wrong with the system. The Spurs closed down everything and let Amare Stoudemire get his. The Suns need another Amare." You look at the Spurs and you go, "Who the heck can guard Tim Duncan and not be forced into a double-team?"

Now, there are plenty of teams that merely need a Durant to get to the playoffs. Or a Yi Jianlian, who is simply a freak-of-nature inside-out pick a la Dirk Nowitzki. In fact, we've already seen the better playoff teams neutralize opposing fives made up of mini-Durants (think Leandro Barbosa and Stephen Jackson in their team systems) and, of course, MVP Dirk.

Remember, it's a team game. Granted, Durant maybe can disrupt a Jazz, Spurs, or Pistons defense enough to significantly alter their pack-it-in styles. But that seems like more of a risky prediction as we sit on the verge of the NBA Finals these next couple weeks.

If you want any chance of getting to the conference finals, you must pick Oden.

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Dish on Yi Jianlian makes it good to have Insider today

2007-05-18T17:21:00.000-07:00

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[Believe it or not, I actually compare Yi Jianlian to a dreamleaguer...read on!]

If you're a fan of Yi as we are, today's ESPN Insider article by Chad Ford makes the Insider subscription worth it (even though we got ours at a major discount, ha!).

Ford witnessed workouts by Yi over two days in LA and had rave reviews. Here are some samples, for those of you blocked out of the Insider wall...

Don MacLean (former UCLA star and current trainer for Nick Young, draft prospect out of USC): "Have you seen the Yi kid yet? That kid was amazing."

Joakim Noah, who was also training in LA, about Yi's workouts: "Something to behold. Where did that guy come from?"...

Read the rest of the story

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Team China in 2007 Vegas Summer League

2007-05-17T08:00:00.000-07:00

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Guess who's playing in the 2007 Vegas NBA Summer League? Yeah, yeah, we knew about soon-to-be new NBA players Kevin Durant and Greg Oden already, but how about a new team?

Perhaps as part of the recent NBA-China partnership, according to the NBA Summer League website, the Chinese National Team will be playing in the league this summer! It's probably a good deal for Team China too, getting valuable experience against top-notch talent one year before the Olympics.

Based on the modified look-and-feel of the site, the NBA appears to be taking over management of the league, as there are no more references to the league's founder, NBA coaches' super-agent Warren LeGarie, who had hinted recently (I can't remember where I read it) that the NBA could be aiming to do just that.

Don't forget how deep a draft this year is going to be! And can you picture Yi Jianlian going up against his former comrades?

Well, this just reinforces the probability that dreamleague will be hosting a tournament there to coincide with what's going to be the best Vegas Summer League on record -- probably the tail end, July 14-15.

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Asian Heritage Street Celebration

2007-05-16T14:39:00.000-07:00

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If you're in the Bay Area, join us this Saturday, May 19 from 10am onwards at the Asian Heritage Street Celebration.

Dreamleague will have its own booth (donated by AsianWeek) where you can shoot mini-hoops and win what will probably be coveted bottles of Gatorade, if the weather is nice and hot.

In case you're wondering, we're there to not only spice up the day -- how can you go wrong with shooting hoops? -- but also to promote our Beijing 2008 Olympics tour package, which will have free tickets to Team USA+China, among other things. More details on Beijing coming soon!

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What dreamleague's all about

2007-05-15T08:00:00.000-07:00

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[From NYC commish...]

When I first met Jonathan Guilfoile, I knew right away the guy was a aller. 100%, no frills, tell me where to go and I’ll be there whenever wherever, with bells and whistles on baller.

The year was 2004. I was hosting a tournament for a non-profit organization called Project by Project of which I was the sports director at the time. JG signed up for the tournament –- a 3-on-3 tournament -– and instantly came at me with 101 different questions...

Read the rest of the story

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dreamleague Hollywood

2007-05-03T13:44:00.000-07:00

Jun Kim off the court.

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[From NYC commish...]

Dream League isn’t just about basketball. Sometimes we like to make mention of things going on outside of hoops. Not that often, but sometimes. There was the time we wrote about hockey teams. There was the occasion Mike Owh wrote about a camping trip gone awry. And there was yet another instance of when he (who goes off on the most tangents) shared his story of how he got up onstage and stripped down to his skivvies in order to win a toy car. Hilarious.

Well, today, we want to go outside the box once more and bring to your attention (if you don’t already know) something known as the Tribeca Film Festival that is going on right in our own backyard. Yes, things happen outside of our basketball games in this city –- weird, huh?

One film in particular you gotta try to check out is Mike Kang's West 32nd. The world premiere is Saturday night and there are four more screenings of it afterwards. It stars John Cho. It stars Grace Park. It also stars a man who played in the Dream League AAA in NYC last season named Jun Kim. Kim played in just two games while he was here for the summer on now defunct Run B&C. He averaged a modest 4.0 points, 3.0 rebounds, 1.5 assists, and smokin’ 3.0 steals per game, but he’ll impress you far more with his turn as the cool, calm, cigarette sucking (don’t do that in real life folks) bad guy in this film. If you pay close enough attention, you might see a certain commissioner in the film during a sweet scene too.

Many of the screenings are already sold out online, but tickets are available for day-of folks who have the desire/patience to wait in line an hour or so beforehand. There are also parties parties parties with cast and crew both tonight (Gypsy Tea) and Saturday night (at Maru in K-town.) The DL's going Hollywood, baby!

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If you're gonna hire ballers to be on TV...

2007-05-01T08:00:00.000-07:00

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[From Stephen B. Snyde...]

Last week the SportsBusiness Journal reported a poll by Turnkey Sports and Entertainment, which found that...

58% of respondents preferred the NBA on TNT as compared to 42% on ESPN.

If this were a presidential poll, we'd call it a landslide. The NBA on TNT has more personality, more chemistry. We want to hear Kenny Smith's inside perspectives and whatever smart or dumb thing that comes out of Charles Barkley's mouth, as well as Ernie Johnson's tactful yet modest-sounding, ego-less rebuttals. We want to see the post-game interviews because we believe the players will respond better to the TNT bunch than your average news crew.

Last night Ernie wasn't there, apparently receiving a well-deserved Emmy. Now, if you're gonna go out and hire ballers like Kenny the Jet, Chuckie, and sometimes Magic Johnson and Reggie Miller, why not just run your crew like an NBA team?

Ernie is clearly the point guard, distributing the conversation and making sure everybody's heard. Ironically, Kenny remains like a 2-guard, initiating the conversation and going for the big points, while Chuckie's doing the dirty work, adding a little negative or positive, the emotional spark down low. When he's there, Magic actually is the role player who fills in the blanks.

To the NBA broadcasting world, Ernie's like what Magic was to the Showtime Lakers. He's just so fun to watch. If the old school Lakers didn't have Magic for a game or two, wouldn't Michael Cooper slide in from the bench to play the point? Or heck, if this was rec league, you'd almost rather play with 4 guys against 5, just not to mess with the championship/hall-of-fame/legendary starters' chemistry!

You'd just as soon move Byron Scott to the (gasp) 1 -- i.e., Kenny the Jet assumes Ernie's role and it's just him and Chuckie all night long -- before you give the car keys to some schmuck off the street, right?

Who's the GM of the TNT team?

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TrueHoop: Baron Davis

2007-04-30T13:18:00.000-07:00

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Ever since TrueHoop got assimilated into the Borg that is ESPN.com, there hasn't been one single post where you could just forward to your friends without further debate. After all, TrueHoop was supposed to be the facilitator of stories, where one thread could explode into a much bigger, well-rounded, knowledge-enfused medium with the help of its valued commenters. Now in the ESPN cube, you can't so much as make an educated guess as to what to type into your URL box to get there (what's with the "myespn-dot-go-dot-com" nonsense?) -- this is just the tip of the iceberg and Poor Man's Commish promises to make a full frontal assualt on TrueHoop's Borg assimilation in the future.

But let us not digress. Baron Davis has truly been playing like a perennial NBA MVP lately, in the most important games of his career and of the modern era of his franchise, against the best team in the NBA which has the consensus real MVP on its team. If you were watching last night in the closing moments when BD hit a clutch drive-and-fade swish, then surgically dismantled the proud Mavs' defense by finding Andris Biedrins for a dunk-and-one, you were sitting there shaking your head in disbelief of how good he his. The number of highlights this guy had from just this one game approached Michael Jordan's level, making it a similar sacrilege to leave your seat from tipoff to final buzzer.

Alas, there's really nothing to add, no extra comment to make about TrueHoop's post, "The Baron of Davis".

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What's with all the Warrior hatin'?

2007-04-24T14:30:00.000-07:00

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[From Stephen B. Snyde...]

What's with all the Warrior hatin' these days?

It's amazing how people who have no first-hand knowledge of what a 13-year playoff drought feels like, write as if no 13-year drought occurred. Every anti-Warrior article contains something to the effect of...

"What the Warriors (or Warrior fans) fail to realize is..."

No, no, no. What Warrior-haters fail to realize is, after 13 years, we'll gladly accept -- RE-ACCEPT! -- Nellie ball even though it has no justifiable championship-level future.

Let's wait until the Warriors are the #8 seed for the next 13 consecutive years before you can start wiping the euphoric grin off Warrior fans' faces.

Didn't anybody see The Pursuit of Happyness? After so many years of livin' on the streets, we'll gladly take a decade of living paycheck to paycheck. It's no high-life mansion, but at least there's a roof over our heads.

Go pick on some other team, you cowards.

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The eeriness of MJ's last championship

2007-04-23T15:39:00.000-07:00

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While researching for the blogpost about the Warriors win meaning the Mavs will win the championship, I came across another couple eerie finds about Michael Jordan's last championship against the Utah Jazz. You know, the one where he drove on Bryon Russell.

Now, we all know about his 45 points, with 23 of them coming in the first half (for those of you have been living in Antarctica, he wore #45 when he came back from retirement and then went back to his #23 shortly thereafter).

But here's another couple that are weird, that I just discovered today:

The all-time scoring leader in terms of points per game shot exactly 15-for-35 from the field in both Game Six finales in 1997 (boxscore here) and 1998 (boxscore here).
John Stockton only had exactly 5 assists in each of those games. We're talking the all-time assists leader, who averaged 10.5 assists per game his entire career.

Wow, two all-time NBA leaders in their respective categories in one game happening twice in a row, and one clearly outshining the other on both occasions.

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Guess this means the Mavs will win the championship

2007-04-23T06:16:00.000-07:00

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The #8 Golden State Warriors just beat the #1 Dallas Mavericks by double-digits (12, to be exact), leading to much joy in the Bay Area today. Which got me wondering, when was the last time the team with the best record in the NBA lost its first playoff game?

Let us preface by noting ESPN's Elias Says, embedded in the game's boxscore, which mentions the following...

Only one other team in NBA history lost its first playoff game following a season in which it won more than 63 games. The 1966-67 Philadelphia 76ers won 68 games during the regular season and went on to win the NBA title despite dropping their playoff opener to the Cincinnati Royals (120-116 at Philadelphia, March 21, 1967).

If you look up the last 10 years of playoff results on Wikipedia [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1997_NBA_Playoffs, where you can type in your desired year in the URL], you'll see that there are only two instances in the last 10 years when the team with the best record lost its first game in the playoffs...

2003: The Stephon Marbury-led Phoenix Suns defeated the San Antonio Spurs, 96-95, on Marbury's buzzer-beating bankshot trey.
1998: The Houston Rockets, behind Hakeem Olajuwon, Clyde Drexler, Charles Barkley coming off the bench (?), and -- believe it or not -- an 18-and-14 by Kevin Willis, defeated the Utah Jazz by 13, 103-90. Utah tied the Chicago Bulls for the best record in the NBA that year and had the tiebreaker over the Bulls.

So now that they have botched Game 1 against the #8 seed, this means the Mavs are guaranteed to reach the Finals, because we know the 76ers did it 1967, Jazz in 1998, and Spurs in 2003.

Both the 1967 76ers and 2003 Spurs won the championship. Since the 1998 Jazz don't count because they faced Michael Jordan's 2nd three-peat and impending retirement, as well as the Willis factor (remember, he's now on the 2007 Mavericks!), this means the Mavs will win the 2007 championship. I'm not a Mavs fan, I'm just showing you the voodoo.

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What happens in dreamleague happens in the NBA

2007-04-13T10:00:00.000-07:00

PERMALINK

[From Stephen B. Snyde for Friday tidbits...]

Any given dreamleague AAA game, any given night: guy dribbles down the court with about 10 seconds left, down by 1. He's already taken most of the team's shots and, quite frankly, the team is better off with him shooting this last one, and they want him to shoot it. Only one problem: the other team knows this too.

So anyways, the guy's defender is doing a pretty good job, especially as the guy dribbles some more to the sideline, further choking his options, as the clock ticks down 10, 9, 8. Another defender from the other end of the court comes over to try and pick it while his teammate has the guy preoccupied. Guy heaves it with two hands in his face at the buzzer, ball comes nowhere near hoop. Game over. Yuck. Guy and his teammates all go home depressed a little, but not that bad. Gotta get up for work in the morning. Hey, it's AAA. We're here for fun anyways. No need to go yelling at each other and strive for perfection.

Well, this same thing happened to Lebron James and the Cavs last week. Same exact thing (sadly, even the post-mortem). The 2-guard was nowhere to be found. The 3 and the 5 decided to watch from the baseline. The 4 failed to cut to the wide open middle. No one on the bench really knew what to say. Coach forgot to draw up a play. Total, utter lack of basketball IQ exhibited.

It's just a good thing we dreamleaguers don't end up in the newspaper later in the week with sentence after sentence of ridiculously obvious observations and comments.

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How 'bout Yao now?

2007-04-13T09:30:00.000-07:00

[From Stephen B. Snyde for Friday tidbits...]

This one goes out to all you who dumped on Yao Ming in the past. From Charles Barkley to Shaquille O'Neal to TrueHoop reader "Femzilla", who once wrote...

...there haven't been many Chinese players in the league, and going by the track record Yao has really been the only one to accomplish success--and he hasn't even lived up to the hype...

The upcoming NBA playoffs in a few weeks is probably going to be the more visible, noticeable turning point for Yao. To be accompanied by silence. From all those critics from before who will be shut up with nothing to say.

I give you The Evolution of Yao, by Chris Ballard for SportsIllustrated.

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Afflalo doesn't watch American Idol

2007-04-13T09:00:00.001-07:00

[From Stephen B. Snyde for Friday tidbits...]

While Kevin Durant, Greg Oden, and Mike Conley, Jr. (and Joakim Noah last year) are/were all weighing regrets about leaving their cherished college lives, Arron Afflalo's on the first train outta UCLA. Ah, to be The Man on campus. But not just any campus, we're talking UCLA, the mecca of college hoops -- almost guaranteed Final Four, these days (!). Not to mention the weather and surroundings in Westwood ain't all that bad either.

To leave that for, what, maybe getting picked in the 2nd round (via Chad Ford, ESPN Insider subscription required). And if he doesn't get picked, that's it, because as Ford points out, it's his 2nd and last try at the NBA Draft; he can't return to UCLA.

The more you make it appear you want something, the less those who have it want to give it to you. Hasn't Afflalo learned anything from watching Sanjaya Malakar and his "victims" on American Idol?

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Cuban came close to selling the Mavs -- yeah, right

2007-04-13T09:00:00.000-07:00

[From Stephen B. Snyde, for Friday tidbits...]

Preetom Bhattacharya of Hoopsworld.com had a One-on-One with Mark Cuban, in which Cuban reiterated his dismay with the NBA and how close he came to selling the team last summer...

"I hated dealing with the NBA, the league itself. I love the players, I love the organization, I love the fans, I love being part of the community - there's just so much that's so positive. I hated dealing with the minutia of the NBA. They specialize in administrivia a lot of times and that's not me. We just have a different view on the business side of things and from there, it's my choice."

Uh, dude. You're a billionaire. Money grows on trees in your backyard. For chrissakes, will you just hire someone to deal with the administrivia for you? What's that, like 8 bucks an hour?

As for the whole charade about selling the Mavs, there is no way to describe it other than visually (above).

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76ers keep oversized rabbit for 10 years

2007-04-13T08:30:00.000-07:00

[From Stephen B. Snyde for Friday tidbits...]

Heard this past week on a random NBA telecast on ESPN: a pre-game ceremony in Philadelphia to honor the tenth anniversary of their mascot, Hip-Hop.

The Sixers have a mascot?

Ewww, what the hell is this thing? Attack of the giant killer bunnies!!!

Seriously, who's the genius over there in Philly who thought of this?

Who's his boss who decided to keep it around for ten years?

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SuperfluousGuy gets paid

2007-04-13T08:00:00.000-07:00

[From Stephen B. Snyde for Friday tidbits...]

John Ourand of the SportsBusiness Journal (SBJ) reported a couple weeks ago...

ESPN.com has retained its most popular columnist, Bill Simmons, signing him to a multiyear contract. Simmons signed a four-year extension through 2010.

It's probably an incentive-laden contract. Like one dollar per word after the first 10,000 words in each piece.

The SportsGuy also managed to burp out a CLM in celebration...

There were some rumors that SI.com would make a run at Simmons, but Simmons said he would never consider working for that site following the publication of a March 2006 Sports Illustrated article that Simmons felt treated him unfairly.

“I would never work for them,” Simmons said.

Let's see, ESPN's probably #1, SI's probably #2, who's #3? SportingNews?

For those of you who don't work in Corporate America, CLM = career limiting move.

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Sick-ass adidas Kobe IIIs

2007-04-11T08:07:00.000-07:00

Seems we've been talking a lot about shoes lately, with Jason Kidd's new Nike ad and the reference to Phil Knight. And now that Kevin Durant is turning pro, a $40 million-or-so deal (just like Kobe Bryant's) with Nike is surely right around the corner.

So I was randomly researching stuff recently when I came across the adidas Kobe IIIs shown in the picture above, which were never released because Kobe jumped ship. Maybe you knew this already, but I had no idea how sick these are/were. And let's not forget that the now-defunct Kicksology.net raved about the performance of Kobe I. If they released the Kobe III (or whatever they'd call it), I might have to jump ship myself, being a loyal Nike wearer since the Air Force III followed by the Air Revolution followed by -- well, I could go on for days. And no, I'm not a sneakerhead. That's a little pet peeve of mine that I'll save for a longer rant on dreamblogue someday.

Here's the link to the Kobe III for close-ups and a short explanation...

http://www.kobe8bryant.net/shoes.html

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Basketball Never Ends

2007-04-10T11:59:00.000-07:00

At 72, Louie still got game.

[From NYC commish...]

A couple Sundays ago, I went on down to Chinatown – no, not to get my dollar dumplings, a 50 cent massage, or to play in a New York Rockit tournament that Denny Lee was organizing (after all, it’s been real cold if you haven’t noticed outside), but rather to watch a group of men run in their regular Sunday morning pick-ups that they’ve been doing since 1969.

?????

Okay, first, get back in your chair, cause I know you just fell out of it.

No, ’69 is not a typo. 1969. Nixon was the president. Led Zeppelin released their first album. Apollo 9 returned safely from the moon. John Lennon married Yoko Ono. The Vietnam War was just reaching its midway point. The Brady Bunch came out. UCLA wins the NCAA title...

Read the rest of the story

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Nike's J.Kidd still has commercial value

2007-04-06T04:47:00.000-07:00

Despite his well-publicized domestic problems, Nike still thinks Jason Kidd has commercial value.

How do we know this? Well, we got another casting call this week (recall the Jerry Rice and LeBron James casting calls).

Poor Man's Commish was a little too under the weather to get this out in time, but the fact remains, we got this email from a reputable casting agency earlier in the week...

"...a Nike ad featuring J.Kidd in Oakland/SF area. We're looking for other players [men, age 20-30] to be in it with him. It pays $2000.00 if selected and we'd like to interview those interested ASAP."

First guy I would've called would have been Hook Mitchell, who called last month to check in after dropping off the map for about a year. Oh, but he's like 36 by now.

Anyways, I guess J.Kidd still has some staying power? Been awhile since his original Air Zooms.

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Yao: Yi = Amare (what???)

2007-03-30T06:00:00.000-07:00

Uhhhh, no Yao, no.

[From Stephen B. Snyde...]

Two things this past week on Yi Jianlian. Before we get to the atrocious, Wang Mang of Titan Sports was quoted in the Philadelphia Daily News by Phil Jasner as saying:

"People in China think he won't be as successful as Yao. They think he doesn't seem to have [the same] desire, that he's not as hungry as Yao...But Yi is really hungry, especially this year. When we got confirmation that he will come to the NBA, he's worked so hard."

Oh good, so the Chinese people are apparently aware that there are certain shortcomings of the Chinese basketball academies.

Btw, the article also said Yi will be endorsing McDonald's coming up.

Now, the atrocious. In the same story, Yao Ming says:

"[Yi] is very close to a player who is in the NBA like I would say Amare Stoudemire."

Duuuuude. Why'd ya hafta make such a PREPOSTEROUS comment in the midst of Poor Man's Commish's impassioned defense of Yi?

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Earth to Bill: basketball never had a crossroads

2007-03-30T05:00:00.000-07:00

[From our new guest blogger, Stephen B. Snyde. Every Friday, we plan to have Stevie B. take us through the week that was in the hoop world. One blog post per thought. We'll still have our longer stories every now and then, but who wants to sit there and read 10,000 words from Bill Simmons to cap off the work week? Oh, what a coinkeydink. Stevie B.'s talking about Bill to lead off...]

ESPN.com's Bill Simmons was grossed out by O.J. Mayo's performance at the McDonald's All-America game the other night. He said that "basketball is headed for a crossroads", referencing the score-at-all-costs attitudes of today's star players, starting with Kobe Bryant's 50-point streak last week.

Hey Bill, I guess you missed that dossier called Sole Influence (Wetzel/Yaeger, Warner Books, 2000). Basketball isn't heading for a crossroads, it already had one almost 10 years ago, when adidas landed Kobe and Phil Knight vowed never again to let that happen to Nike. Only problem is, nobody had a choice of roads. Knight was so powerful, even he could not have imagined the dominoes that would later fall because of his decision. Three letters: A-A-U. It was like the Road Runner painting a fake alternate route for us Wile E. Coyotes.

Crossroads? Meep-meep!!

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Is there a legit comparison to Kobe and MJ?

2007-03-28T08:00:00.000-07:00

In light of Kobe's recent history-making outburst, this would be a good time to mention the nail that writer Scoop Jackson hit squarely on the head in the latest issue of Sole Collector that was passed out for free at the Jordan Brand Experience at Vegas All-Star Weekend last month.

In an interview by Anthony Gilbert, Scoop answers the question of a legit comparison to Kobe and MJ quite effectively:

Yeah, easy...like tracing paper. Xerox machine. KINKOS. As much as the replication looks, seems and feels like the original, it's not. There's always some resolution that gets lost in the process. But that's just in basketball...they are totally different as people. And that affects the outcome of their games. Kobe is not as personable and charming as Mike. It's not in his nature, that's just not who he is. Part of MJ's greatness was his ability to be cool with everyone, teammates, and victims. Dudes that played with [MJ] would kill for him, he was able to draw that much love from others. Kobe's never been able to do that and because of that I think he hasn't been able to reach MJ's level of brilliance. He has too many people around him that will never love him...It's like, imagine how differently Barry Sanders' career would have been if his offensive line hated him?...They would not block or fight as hard as they could for them to get those yards, which in the long run affect's Barry's...greatness."

ESPN.com's Chris Broussard today writes that Kobe's starting to "get it" (Insider subscription required), that he's finally maturing...

The sad thing is that if Kobe had "gotten it" years earlier, he might have left the game with more titles than MJ.

Can the right amount of maturity ever put Kobe on MJ's level? Scoop's theory seems to be the correct one, not Broussard's.

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Jerry Rice likes dreamleaguer underdogs?

2007-03-26T15:13:00.000-07:00

[No idea how we get these and what a football great might have anything to do with our dreamleague basketball world, but who knows, maybe there's a connection? This is probably more appropriate for Bay Area dreamleaguers...]

We just got this email from Banyan Productions, which is probably most famous for its Trading Spaces TV show (a show my wife loves)...

Jerry Rice is shooting an exciting new TV show and wants to film his first episode right here in his adopted hometown of San Francisco! Jerry is looking for dreamers...those who may be a bit down on their luck but who aim high. The "dreamers" can be people, families, teams, businesses or community organizations. With his dream team and inspirational wisdom, Jerry wants to help you turn the tables, overcome the obstacles and achieve the success you once thought impossible...Does one of your teams hold a large losing streak and could they benefit from some mentoring by one of sport's greatest legends?

I guess dreamleague itself might qualify. I'm sure A-Mac's 0-11 squad this past season, a team named "What Would Wat Do?", after Wat Misaka, would qualify. We'll inquire and update you on what happens, assuming something interesting does happen...

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NBA China = NBDL affiliate?

2007-03-23T08:00:00.000-07:00

Surprisingly, no other blog or news outlet has followed up on this, but according to this week's SportsBusinessJournal (online access for subscribers only), the NBA is going to create a new "entity" based in China -- not another "office" like the three they already have -- complete with its own CEO, courting of "outside investors", and "possible creation of a league and arena development". The entity will be unveiled at the next NBA owners' meeting in New York City on April 20.

We'll have to wait another month for details and the most profound issue, the possible creation of a league, doesn't come without political complications involving the government-run existing CBA (Chinese Basketball Association). However, if you think about it, starting an NBDL-like league or affiliate in China would make a lot of sense.

This is the perfect time for the NBA to come in and partner with the CBA. My guess is that the CBA is losing money. This is all speculation, but with the NBA China Games II this October and the Beijing Olympics in August 2008, if there's ever a time of lower-than-usual political barriers and preparation for a "high tide that lifts all boats", this is it.

Btw, dreamleague will be at Beijing Olympics '08. More details coming soon...

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#1 GSW "shoulda woulda coulda"

2007-03-21T17:42:00.000-07:00

If you check out the GSOM blog today, aside from a theoretical trade involving Adonal Foyle (among others) for Kevin Garnett, you'll see this reference to a blogpost from last June, perhaps the greatest "shoulda woulda coulda" ever made: Jordan-Pippen 2.0. In other words, the Warriors could have drafted Kobe Bryant in 1996 and Tracy McGrady in 1997.

dreamblogue did the due diligence for you. Only two other teams had draft picks earlier than the GSW in either year: Vancouver (now Memphis) and Philadelphia. In theory, either of those teams could've also drafted "Jordan-Pippen 2.0" as well, but at least Vancouver got Shareef Abdur-Rahim (who was eventually traded to Atlanta for, yes, Pau Gasol) and Antonio Daniels. Philly got Allen Iverson and Keith Van Horn.

Bear in mind, though, that Vancouver had the #3 and #4 picks those years while Philly had #1 and #2 -- back in those days, no way do you spend a top-five pick on a high schooler (which actually makes the Warriors picks stink even more). We all know how far AI took Philly and Pau took Memphis, so you can't really fault either of those teams. Meanwhile, the Warriors had picks #11 and #8 and chose Todd Fuller and Foyle. Obviously, no playoff appearances, let alone consistent starting contributions.

A quick glance at both drafts suggests that as a GM, you are best off drafting for basketball skill, not size. But then again stating the obvious is beyond the scope of dreamblogue. "Jordan-Pippen 2.0" is the best shoulda-woulda-coulda I've ever heard.

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Letter from Mozambique: Hoop Dreams and Real Life

2007-03-19T12:57:00.000-07:00

[Editor’s Note: In September 2006, Dream Leaguer Marshall Cho moved out to Africa, shortly after tying the knot. In the first of what hopefully will be a semi-regular feature here on the Dream League website, Cho shares the adventures he’s had in basketball, relationships, and life in general. Be careful, there’s some knowledge headed your way.]

...Let me start back with last September when we [Marshall and his wife] came out this way after getting married in August. Before coming out, I had contacted the folks at the NBA about volunteering for the Basketball Without Borders camp. I was fortunate to have a FIBA contact who referred me to the right person at the NBA and ended up working as a "junior" coach alongside Dikembe Mutombo and Manute Bol. The camp consisted of the top 100 prospects in Africa who were invited to participate in the week-long camp...

Read the rest of the story

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Lessons of colon cancer:Life = Love + Care + Knowledge

2007-03-12T12:19:00.000-07:00

Last week our NYC commish announced that he would participate in the 4-mile New York Colon Cancer Challenge, which occurred yesterday. He would be running in support of his best friend Ben Kim who, at the tender of age of 33 and otherwise healthy with no symptoms of anything, had been diagnosed with Stage II (very beatable) colon cancer only several weeks before.

These things always put life in perspective. All of a sudden, all the problems our NYC commish had on his plate seemed so trivial in comparison to what his buddy had to deal with. Appreciation for the gifts of our lives, the relationships we have, the very earth we walk on, became more apparent.

When an obstacle so ominous as cancer gets in the way, sometimes it's like Life is all about Love, Care, and Knowledge. Here are some starting points to Life -- be they through the doorway of Love, Care, or Knowledge -- with a heavy hoop flavor...

Read the rest of the story

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Watch racial stereotypes run rampant when Yi Jianlian gets drafted

2007-03-08T13:45:00.000-08:00

I guess I'm kind of glad this happened, even though it knocked out a whole day's list of other to-do's. This stuff opens your eyes. It makes you wiser, stronger, more appreciative of each person's individuality. I'm glad I spent a whole day thinking about it.

Today, our otherwise-revered TrueHoop, written by Henry Abbott, made the following bullet-point post:

Footage of Yi Jianlian making a bunch of dunks that look to me like they would likely be blocked, or stolen on the way up, in the NBA.

For the 100+ teams and players of those teams currently playing in our SF Bay Area and New York Asian American leagues, you know the feeling already.

It's kind of like the hoops blogger (Bill Simmons? Chad Ford? Henry Abbott himself? Honestly, I can't remember where I read it) who said in response to the major uproar following the Vegas All-Star Weekend in which arrests and violence were referenced strongly with the African American and hip-hop community:

[Reminder: I'm paraphrasing by memory here.] "I couldn't tell you if an African American, with corn rows and baggy pants, approaching me on the street is really a gangsta or a student at UPenn..."

Read the rest of the story

UPDATED: See comments
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Rod Benson's still fillin' it up

2007-03-08T11:36:00.000-08:00

Unlike last time when we compared Rod Benson's prose to that of Kevin Durant's hoop skills, we now have located a Yahoo Image of Rod.

[Aside: dreamleague now has its own Average Joe rendition of the trouble with public restrooms, courtesty of New Yorker Mike Owh.]

He is more than deserving of his own celebrity photo. His "blog shooting percentage" is incredible. That is to say, I haven't found another hoops blog in which the number of worthwhile posts is so high. TrueHoop led me to Benson, but Benson ranks higher than even TrueHoop.

Btw, TrueHoop recently got bought out by ESPN. I wouldn't be surprised if Benson was next. His stuff is that good.

Here are some more great tidbits off his last couple blogs, which curiously are not easily found on www.toomuchrodbenson.com and must be painfully dug up every now and then on his DraftExpress.com URL...

"Other than that it was a pretty uneventful evening aside from officially meeting one of the cooler guys in the league, Mateen Cleaves. I take back what I said about his head being big, with a hat on it looks proportional."
"A pretty good-looking girl I know has an away message that says 'So I met the owners of the Palms, they invited us to their party, where we met D-Wade and his crew who invited us to THEIR party!' I’m sitting there thinking 'Great. Now D-Wade has her in his ‘5’, I’m blown out of the water…I don’t even have T-Mobile.'"
"I tell 'Q' this story and he kind of nods and laughs a little. I'm thinking how can he not be more impressed? Then he pulls out a cigar that I guess costs more than a Playstation 3 and tells the story of how he got it. Dammit, it was wwayyy better than my stupid story."
"If Berkeley were really an ocean I’d be like Sebastian from 'The Little Mermaid' whereas if I was in Vegas I’d be closer to Nemo from 'Finding Nemo'."

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The forfeit factor of dumb-light savings time

2007-03-07T12:38:00.000-08:00

The chances of your team forfeiting on Sunday have gone up exponentially this week.

Daylight savings time is lurking around the corner, this Sunday at 2:00am, to be exact. And yes, it's "spring forward", not "fall back", which means we all lose an hour of sleep. Sorry for those of you with a 10:00am tipoff.

On most dreamleaguers' list of priorities in life, simply making it to your Sunday weekend warrior basketball game probably ranks very high. The reasons for not having daylight savings time, or at least the two disturbances during the year when we have to deal with it, are too long for this post. So, suffice it to say that dreamleaguers don't need dumb American policies to mess up the hoop routine we live by.

Patrick May of the SJ Merc summed it up beautifully today:

Go ahead. Explain daylight-saving time. We dare you. Um, time springs forward, so it's lighter earlier. No, wait. It's lighter later. So if you normally get up in the dark, it'll be even darker? Or lighter? Exactly.

One On One With Jeremy Lin

2007-03-01T13:53:00.000-08:00

[From dreamleague NYC commish Brian Yang]

This Saturday, right here in New York City, a historical event is set to take place. Where will you be? All kinds of history is made in the Big Apple, but there has never been history of this kind. On Saturday at 7pm, at the Levien Gym on West 119th and Broadway, the Harvard Crimson will tip off against the Columbia Lions and the game will be the first time NYC (and possibly the 2nd time ever in the United States) sees two players of Asian descent square off against one another in a Division 1 college game.

KJ Matsui of Columbia and Jeremy Lin of Harvard will meet again for the second time in both team’s season finale. The first time they met? When these two faced each other earlier this season up in Cambridge (a Columbia 90-70 win). It was historic then too. But this is NYC folks, they’re on the main stage now.

Read the rest of the story

UPDATED: See comments (scroll down)

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All-Star violence and Tommy Davidson

2007-02-27T11:26:00.000-08:00

There's a rather hot debate in the NBA blogosphere right now, summed up best by TrueHoop, that doesn't paint a beautiful picture for the Average Joe (or Poor Man Commish) to attend All-Star Weekend. It also reaches into the problems of violence in American society, with which we've previously compared to Iraq.

Interestingly, in this month's issue of Black Enterprise (which has a terrible archive search section where I couldn't find a link to the article), comedian Tommy Davidson was profiled by Kenneth Meeks. Davidson disclosed his very profound beliefs and passion in life to try and fix these very ills...

Read the rest of the story

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Behind the scenes at Vegas All-Star

2007-02-23T11:21:00.000-08:00

Hottest tickets in town, Celine Dion be damned. (All photos courtesy of D. Ho.)

[From Seoul Shibuya...]

On my way back from Cali, I swung over in LV and caught up with our very own Danny Ho, Moe’s Tavern power forward and employee of the National Basketball Association, and got to ask him what it’s like being him. Over 10 plates of food at the Wynn buffet, here’s how it went...

Read the rest of the story

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dreamleaguer needs your vote for Haagen Dazs Top 3

2007-02-19T16:59:00.000-08:00

Our very own Ken Wan, who has helped in many ways to get dreamleague Bay Area on its feet now to the tune of 75 teams, somehow made it to the Top Ten in the Haagen Dazs Flavor Search contest.

Click here to vote, then follow these instructions:

Scroll all the way to right (Ken's entry is hard to find).
Click and hold the long brown page slider on the right until you can see Ken's flavor: Coco y Cacao.
Click on PLAY and watch the short video. (Note to Ken: you shoulda kept your mohawk!)
Ken needs a 5-star vote. Be sure to click on the maximum number of stars as you vote. You might want to have your cursor approach from the right to make sure of this.

Your vote only accounts for 20% of the final judging, but Ken needs all the help he can get.

If Ken got a vote for all the times he has lended a hand to dreamleague, which boils down to making your league better each and every season, he would have won already. But it doesn't work that way, so please donate a couple clicks of your time for Ken!

Rod Benson is the Kevin Durant of pro hoop bloggers

2007-02-07T17:23:00.000-08:00

All you Cal alums will love this. Yeah, we know the pic is of Kevin Durant, but we couldn't find enough of Rod Benson's...

TrueHoop recently directed us to a funny inside look at 6'10" NBDL player and ex-Cal star Rod Benson and his encounter with a 300-lb. woman at a club.

A few clicks later, we found Rod's rant on his blog www.toomuchrodbenson.com, where he complains about The Trouble With Being Tall:

...The urinals are only half of the story. The stalls happen to pose an even bigger problem. The idea with stalls is that they are designed to limit the visibility of two people in neighboring toilets. All your really supposed to see is the boxer-pants-shoes pile that covers the ankles of the person next to you. The average person can basically do whatever they want once they close that stall door because they essentially disappear. I, on the other hand, am visible the whole time until I sit down. It never feels comfortable staring at some guy washing his hands as im getting situated in the stall. What if its a hot day and I want to take my shirt off? What if I smell the place up real bad and I want to kind of escape without being seen? Impossible. My whole head and shoulders are above the stall level...In this photo, taken at my eye level, I see right over the stall with ease...

With due respect to the many praises of the blogs of Gilbert Arenas and Mark Madsen, if Paul Shirley was heretofore the Greg Oden of hoop bloggers who are or were playing professionally somewhere, then Benson is the Kevin Durant of the hoop blogosphere.

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Adversity, not fundamentals

2007-02-07T01:25:00.000-08:00

In this week's ESPN The Mag, Oakley Brooks uncovered a little tidbit about a certain group of 37 teenagers (5 of them over 7-feet, including Yi Jianlian) from China, spotted at a Rockets-Blazers game and currently training at the U.S. Basketball Academy in Oregon:

"From a skills perspective, they don't have to apologize to anyone," says Cameron Hill, a former assistant at Kentucky who's overseeing the Chinese ballers' six-month stay...Still, [they] lack fundamentals, particularly when it comes to lifting weights and running a standard half-court spread. That's why Chinese officials sent their best to the West.

I humbly submit that the missing ingredient is not the fundamentals as described. It is good old-fashioned adversity.

The mental aspect of the game is very complex, but it all starts with adversity, overcoming a challenge that you as a balla take personally. In the NBA, sometimes it's the difficulties of growing up in the inner-city that propels one's desire to succeed. Everyone has to find their own fuel, not matter what level you're at.

For me, it was simply being demoted from starting floor general to 3rd-string point guard in 9th grade -- this was before I sprouted 9 inches to 5'11" one year later -- after being yelled at as an idiot in front of the entire gym by my coach in preseason for forgetting the defensive switch from zone to man, crushing my confidence for years. I then slowly climbed my way back to starting small forward as a senior. With local playground ball still part of my staple, even as I left town for college I still vowed to become better than any of the starters that had been ahead of me or go-to guys throughout all those years, just in case I ever saw one of my old alums on the blacktop.

In the game of basketball, everyone has to find their own fuel. I'm not sure the Chinese basketball academies realize that.

On a side note, here's the illustration from Frank Stockton that accompanied the article. It's not particularly helpful in breaking down the stereotypes of Chinese/Asian ballas: http://www.frankstockton.com/espn.html

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The casualties of (Civil) War

2007-01-31T05:25:00.000-08:00

Some disconcerting news over the past week or so. It's funny how these stories pile up over the course of one week. I was only going to report on one of them, then one became two, which became three, then four...

Mark Cuban reported on Genarlow Wilson. After you read the gripping and infuriating ESPN article on Genarlow, written passionately by Wright Thompson, you'll definitely want to go sign the online petition. Sign one for each of all your family members, please.

We've written about James Love, Allen Iverson and Kevin Johnson, and the "Iraq at home" before, and Genarlow's hometown seems to similarly have a high crime index when compared to a big city like SF.

Things don't get any brighter with Richmond High hoops star Eli Holman forced to move away from the "Iraq at home" so he can attend Indiana University next year in one piece, in a story told by SF Chronicle's Chip Johnson.

And speaking of Iraq, guess what suffers from the zero-sum game of war financing, "a casualty of other wars" (from Josh Meyer of the Los Angeles Times)? Yep, the very war on drugs, of which our kids who love to hoop just like us are trying to avoid becoming innocent bystander victims.

In the SportsBusiness Journal this week Femi Shote reports that William C. Rhoden's book, Forty Million Dollar Slaves, whose title is a reference to a fan who heckled former UNLV and NBA star Larry Johnson as "nothing but a $40 million slave", is basically on point:

Rhoden demonstrates how reintegration [of the modern black athlete into white ownership structures and institutions] resembles a reckless mining operation when precious raw materials are extracted, leaving the environment, the cultures and the people of the area laid to waste. Reintegration extracts the labor of black athletes but leaves black institutions in ruin.

As an observer who is neither white or black, at first you wonder if the term "slave" attached to a $40 million NBA contract isn't disrespectful to those ancestors who were truly slaves, just as you wonder after watching the movie The Pianist if "ghetto" is an appropriate term for the modern-day "projects", but then you consider some of the environments that young blacks and perhaps other people stuck in similar class structures must grow up in, the James Loves, the Genarlow Wilsons, the Kevin Johnsons, the Eli Holmans...and you start to see their point of view.

It's as if there's an invisible Civil War going on.

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I dunno, Colangelo, I just don't know

2007-01-24T08:00:00.000-08:00

Jemele Hill of ESPN Page 2 just interviewed Jerry Colangelo. Here's some bread-and-butter of what he said about Team USA:

"When that game ended against Greece, in the locker room, I know how they all felt. We don't ever want to feel that way again as long as we're together. I think that's going to bond us even more...It had nothing to do with the player-personnel (or)...having the right talent. We did a poor job in preparation in defending the pick-and-roll against Greece. It's as simple as that. And a team beat us that shouldn't have. They deserved to win because we didn't get the job done. If we played them 10 times, we'd win nine out of 10."

Sounds a lot like our Dream League All-Star squad, which coming off a heartbreaking championship loss to the L.A. Tigers Blue in 2005, went down to Vegas for the 14th Annual LVI this past September 2006 and promptly got slapped in the face by Arizona Desert Jade. Two consecutive weeks of open gym run/practice (heh, it'd be a crime to call them practices!) for our guys leading up to the tournament proved to be a non-factor.

Read the rest of the story

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Chris Mullin, way beyond "wet"

2007-01-23T10:38:00.000-08:00

Something that dreamleaguers on both coasts (SF = Warriors, NYC = St. John's) can appreciate...

Published last Friday, John Crumpacker of the SF Chronicle interviewed Warriors equipment manager Eric Housen, who recalled the following about Chris Mullin:

"I saw him make 33 NBA threes in a row with a big ball at his brother's camp in Philadelphia," the equipment manager said. "It's double the size of a basketball. You can only make it with a perfect shot."

The other performance came a few years ago in a middle school gym in San Ramon late at night. With Housen counting ("I always count"), he said Mullin sank 397 consecutive free throws with something less than steely concentration. Mullin was there to enroll his son Christopher in the school and people came and went while engaging the sharpshooter in conversation as he took aim. Drat that 398th.

I think it was my college roommate Kelly Fong, who incidentally played high school ball with Lamond Murray, who recalled seeing Mully hit like 99 college treys in a row at some random gym.

Wonder what the kids on the playground who these days describe the hot hand as "wet" would call Mully? Anybody else remember any stories like this?

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Hey Cubes, EVERY WEEKEND is already Basketball Day!

2007-01-22T16:08:00.000-08:00

Basketball Day, Mark? C'mon now.

Via TrueHoop via AOL's NBA Fanhouse via Eddie Sefko of the Dallas Morning News, late last week we got wind that Mark Cuban thinks having a "Basketball Day" would be a cool idea:

"It would have to be a weekend, but we could have NBA, college and high school games all day long and market the heck out of it," Cuban said.

Yo, Cubes. In basketball, Mutombos do fall in the paint when you happen to not be there. Trust me, while Superman is saving Earth, Bizarro is surely dooming Htrae.

Translation: every Sunday, the Asian American community alone is running about 35 games here in the Bay Area within a 20-mile radius, which by its sheer size results in some perhaps made-for-TV happenings, such as Ryan Mateo's 48 points (details below) yesterday in only 36 minutes of dreamleague running-clock format. More notably, Mateo outscored his opponent's entire team total.

In the post-Wilt Chamberlain era, the only thing that comes close to this Bizarro world wonder is Kobe Bryant's 62 points in three quarters against Dallas on 12/20/2005, outscoring them 62-61 (no, Kobe's 81 on 46 attempts in 42 minutes played most certainly does NOT compare to this, and we will discuss this in detail below).

Read the rest of the story

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Texas Western (Extra)-Lite

2007-01-19T09:41:00.000-08:00

[Thanks to Briflys for this...]

Excerpted from yesterday's San Jose Mercury in an article by David Kiefer:

On the wall above the main entrance is a mural, maybe 25 years old judging from the short shorts, of a long-haired blond boy competing in uniforms of various Matadors sports teams.

But the Monta Vista team that took the floor looked nothing like the caricature on the wall. In fact, Monta Vista is a rarity in boys high school basketball, a team with an all-Asian-American starting lineup.

Read the rest of the story

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Charles Barkley opens the door to the Iraq at home

2007-01-17T04:13:00.000-08:00

Thanks to TrueHoop (and no thanks to TNT.tv or NBA.com which gave no indication there were NBA telecasts on Monday), Poor Man's Commish saw this...

Charles Barkley from TNT last night: “If (Dr. King) were still alive today, as a person who preached non-violence, would he be disturbed at all the violence we have going on in the black community? It does a great disservice to Dr. King with all this black on black crime going on in our communities.”

Remember, I wrote back in the first dreamBlogue entry that I would delve into the scariness of the numbers that our very own James Love fell victim to.

I've been waiting to find the right time to bring this up and thanks to Chuckie, now is the right time...

Read the rest of the story

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Wat the Ute, not Yuta!!!

2007-01-16T01:33:00.000-08:00

While looking for some blogs about whether or not people think the Golden State Warriors are, at this rate, going to get into the NBA playoffs (I personally don't think so -- to finish, say, 4 games above .500 and if they keep going barely above the Mendoza line on the road at .250 or so, they would have to finish 16-3 in their final 19 home games and there are at least 4 elite teams left to play at home), I ran across this post at The City blog:

"Notable players on [Warriors draft pick Patrick O'Bryant's NBDL Bakersfield Jam team] are Syracuse PG Gerry McNamara and Yuta Tabuse — the first Japanese player to play in the NBA."

Well, we know from A-Mac's history lesson about Wataru "Wat" Misaka, former Utah Ute national champion and New York Knickerbocker, that that's not true!...

Read the rest of the story

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Walt "Clyde" Frazier, my new hero

2007-01-15T10:16:00.000-08:00

The SportsBusiness Journal (subscription needed) came out with a great interview with Walt "Clyde" Frazier today, with respect to his new book "Game Within The Game". He's pretty much on point with everything and the timing of this interview is impeccable given our blog entry on Saturday about the European vs. American system.

Here are some of the more profound excerpts and notes from which a lot of us can learn...

First off, he was the first player to sign a sneaker deal (with Puma in 1971) -- much respect, let us "ballaz" and "sneakerheads" alike tip our hat and listen to what he has to say...

Read the rest of the story

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European vs American system

2007-01-13T14:53:00.000-08:00

Sarunas Jasikevicius took an increasingly more common (better?) route to the NBA.

Among other blog entries and articles we've wanted to share with dreamleaguers, here's an interesting look at differences in the basketball "systems" between America and the rest of the world...

Three Basketball Powers (Russia, Serbia and Lithuania's relationship with basketball and how its most talented children get to the sport's biggest stage) by Michael Lee, Washington Post. Lee and fellow Post writers have some really good articles about the U.S. system as well, but you'll have to do a search on the Washington Post website to find them, as we can't quite recall all of them (blame it on the pet peeve apprehension to using browser bookmarks).

Can the U.S. sustain its present path?

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Wat's in a Name?

2007-01-12T11:54:00.000-08:00

A little history lesson from A-Mac...

At last Sunday's game, one of the refs looked at my jersey and asked me about the gold lettering emblazoned upon the back that reads "What Would Wat Do?" I figure that was the sign for me to roll out an explanation of my team's name for my next blog entry. In essence, the name is a tribute to the first Asian American to play in the NBA, Wataru "Wat" Misaka.

Read the rest of the story (UPDATED 1/16/2007 AND 1/15/2007)

Also, check out the online oral history project about Japanese American basketball leagues in Chicago during the 1940s and 50s.

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Greg Oden = Bill Russell and NBA TV fantasy funny

2007-01-11T23:45:00.000-08:00

Oden: a young/old Bill Russell?

Here's some hoops-only funny stuff from a recent Bill Simmons chat:

Nate (New York): Is it just me, or does Greg Oden look like an old Bill Russell? What are the chances this kid is actually only 18 years old?

And for those in the know, doesn't Oden's quiet emotionless demeanor totally remind you of former dreamleague Bay Area and current dreamleague NYC big man, Brian Liang?!

Bizarro world Bill Russell tidbits:

Many dreamleaguers in the Bay Area still go up to the Sacramento Barons tournament, which is almost always held at Russell's alma mater, Elk Grove High School. There's a mural of him inside the gym.
NYC dreamleaguer Shawn Liao works with Russell through Liao's Shanghai Sharks ties.

Here's the other funny part from the chat transcript:

Mike (Clifton Park, N.Y.): Ever watch NBA TV's fantasy show at 1 in the morning? Where do they find these guys for that show? And shouldn't they add a second guy to it, I feel bad for the lone dude who has to kill 30 minutes of fantasy talk by himself.

Bill Simmons: I thought I was the only one who watched that show! Sometimes I want to call in just to throw him a bone for two minutes … I always feel like he's going to assume nobody is watching and just start saying crazy things into the camera like, "Guess what I did today? I touched my own poop. And it felt good. Anyway, back to the Grizzlies …"

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Wonder-trail of MJ DKYs Part III of IV

2007-01-11T05:12:00.000-08:00

He could have owned TWO dynasties!

Continued from Part II...

Then if you Google "jonathan kovler bulls", you'll find courtesy of the NY Times that George Steinbrenner (of all people) once owned 10% of the Bulls, but his share was bought out by Jerry Reinsdorf in '85, prior to the Bulls' championship runs. Based on 2003 estimates in Rovell's article, Reinsdorf parlayed his $9.2 million investment twenty-fold into $184 million! When Steinbrenner sold, the Bulls were only worth a little over $16 million. Ten percent of that is only $1.6 million, so my guess is, Georgie's original investment was probably around $500,000 (maybe less). Had he held onto his share, theoretically he could have turned $500k into about $33 million!

Btw, according to 60 Minutes, MJ was worth $4 million (annually?), mostly in endorsements. He was worth a quarter of the Bulls value! Assuming that's a per-year basis, not even LeBron comes close to that (Nike: $90 mil over 7 years, Cavs: $80 mil over 5 years).

More to follow in Part IV someday in the near future.

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Wonder-trail of MJ DKYs Part II of III

2007-01-11T04:01:00.000-08:00

As you'll recall from Part I, our brief TrueHoop-YouTube-Google excursion of Michael Jordan Did You Know's began with the 1986 60 Minutes interview where we read the fine print and saw that MJ's "love of the game" clause was addressed to one "Jonathan". If it was addressed to "Jerry", as in Reinsdorf or Krause, we would not have pressed forward.

A Google search on "jonathan bulls owner" reveals an ESPN article from 2003 called "Cashing in on the ultimate cash cow" by Darren Rovell describing how MJ impacted the wealth of other people, with Reinsdorf at the top of the list. Curiously absent from the list: William Wesley, the most important NBA insider no one's heard of, as unearthed by TrueHoop's Henry Abbott.

More in Part III to follow.

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A-Mac gets a taste of Bizarro world

2007-01-04T11:05:00.000-08:00

Welcome to my world, A-Mac!

[From Alec MacDonald ("A-Mac") in the Bay Area...]

I wanted to make sure I had a blog entry ready to go to start the new year, but I've been sort of light on ideas because it's been a while since my team [WWWD? in the Bay Area AAA-P division] last saw action. So I figured I'd turn to the pros and check out their blogs, since what they're writing about might relate to our experience as humble dreamleaguers. Turns out we're closer to the NBA than you thought — here's what I found...

Read the rest of the story

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Ticketmaster.com: just another skills competition that boils down to one judge

2006-12-27T12:54:00.000-08:00

I know how you feel, Iggy.

I just had the worst experience this morning trying to get tickets to the 2007 NBA All-Star Practice at the upcoming Vegas All-Star Weekend. I'll give you the short version and the long version. The long version only exists because I decided to cap off my waste of two hours in cyberspace with a four-page letter to the NBA, which you can read in detail further in this blog entry.

Here's the short version. Trying to get tickets to the All-Star Practice, which I estimate sold out in two minutes, was like a veritable skills competition on the keyboard. Only thing is, even if you were like Andre Iguodala and you thought you did everything right, a little computer program could be that final judge that keeps you from attaining glory.

It might as well have been a lottery.

Read the rest of the story

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LeBron's global strategy now hinges on playing 1-on-1 with Chinese kid (from Chicago?!)

2006-12-20T01:03:00.000-08:00

Our beloved beacon of basketball brouhaha, TrueHoop.com, reported earlier on Tuesday in a line item that LeBron James just "announced" a promotional deal with Microsoft, so I had no choice but to drop everything and embark on a writeup which I was hoping could wait until the holidays.

I put "announced" in quotation marks because this is actually pretty old news. Microsoft has sponsored LBJ's Bike-A-Thon in the past and there's even an insightful transcription (scroll to the middle of the page) of LeBron's budding relationship with Microsoft, through a dialogue between Maverick Carter and a Microsoft executive at an advertising conference not too long ago in late September.

In fact, as you might remember from our dreamleague-wide posts (before we had this blog) on Nov. 27 entitled Chinese Youth with Skillz for LeBron Commercial (scroll almost all the way down), LeBron has been scouring the country for a male Chinese kid age 10-14 with good basketball skills to go one-on-one in his forthcoming commercial with Microsoft...

Read the rest of the story (UPDATED 1/15/2007)

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Wonder-trail of MJ DYK?'sPart I of III: The so-called "Love of the game clause"

2006-12-13T17:43:00.000-08:00

It's amazing how interesting a particular strain of TrueHoop, YouTube, and Google can turn into. So let's surf this nice little wave that is the Internet, the first of a series of Did You Know ("DYK?" for ESPN watchers) nuggets I found on the O.G. Michael Jordan...

It all started when last week, TrueHoop.com came across an old 60 Minutes interview with Michael Jordan from 1986, posted on YouTube. I couldn't help but press the pause button when they flashed MJ's so-called "love of the game clause" up on the screen -- a camera shot of the actual document!

For those of you who grew up in the Magic/Bird/Jordan era, this is like finding the Rosetta Stone or a copy of the Declaration of Independence in your attic -- okay, terrible metaphors, but I think you feel me...

Rest the rest of the story

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dreamleaguer breaks finger playing with NBA ball

2006-12-11T23:13:00.000-08:00

The previous Sunday 12/3, due to another one of those rich youth basketball leagues that pushed us out of the usual nice main gym, and as the league of the Poor Man's Commish, naturally, we were forced to play in a high school's "auxiliary" (read: "abandoned") gym.

Here, we found out that "auxiliary" really meant the older, dusty building across the way that looked like it could have been used as a set of the movie Hoosiers. The one that got overlooked by the district for earthquake retrofitting. The one even the janitor doesn't have the keys for.

Not surprisingly, we found a ton of dead spots on the floor.

Meanwhile, I had brought one of dreamleague's two new Spalding NBA balls with me...

Read the rest of the story

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A bunch of Allen Iversons play in dreamleague

2006-12-08T13:52:00.000-08:00

Over the Thanksgiving holiday (Fri Nov 17 to be exact), I was watching the Philly vs Phoenix game on ESPN when Jim Gray reported that Allen Iverson was paying for the funeral of Kevin Johnson, a kid who got shot refusing to give up the AI jersey he was wearing...

Read the rest of the story

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dreamleaguer coincidentally adds web hoops fixes/recommendations

2006-12-07T19:53:00.000-08:00

By pure coincidence, our new Bay Area dreamleague beat writer, Alec MacDonald, chimed in late Wednesday night with his weekly report. His timing was impeccable, as we were right in the midst of launching Poor Man's Commish's dreambLogue (which was an all-nighter up thru Thursday morning!). Here's his take on the hoops blogosphere, with a few comments of my own...

Read the rest of the story

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First story dedicated to James Love

2006-12-07T08:32:00.000-08:00

Back about one week before the Warriors' Nov 16 game against Sacramento, we got another yearly donation of 25 tickets from Abusheri Ohwofasa from Warriors Community Relations. I sent out the usual Evite to all the dreamleaguers who have helped us, encouraging them once again to bring out the kids they work with.

I hadn't used the Evite since last season and noticed that James's sister Inez was still on the list, the only one in the Love family with whom I had an email address. That prompted me to call Ibyn, but his phone number had since changed...

Read the rest of the story

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TrueHoop.com

2006-12-07T08:02:00.000-08:00

Earlier this year, I stumbled upon TrueHoop.com, which is written by accomplished sportswriter Henry Abbott. TrueHoop is widely viewed as the best NBA-related blog out there, and I whole-heartedly agree. Here's why:

It basically summarizes all of the latest topics around the Association for you...

Read the rest of the story

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Goals and "Ground Rules"

2006-12-07T08:01:00.000-08:00

In case you didn't know, we're in the midst of a website revamp here at www.dreamleague.org. Things are going rather smoothly, but when our web guru Big Monkey T said he didn't think we'd launch until March, I just had to scratch the blog itch. After all, I had been commenting on TrueHoop.com with the moniker "DRMLG" for quite some time now...

Read the rest of the story

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What's a Poor Man's Commish?

2006-12-07T08:00:00.001-08:00

We are the anti-thesis of David Stern.

He oversees one league of thirty-plus teams consisting of elite, privileged, wealthy athletes who play basketball for a living. We oversee dozens of leagues spanning hundreds of teams consisting of Average Joes -- and Janes -- who wish they could play basketball for a living.

His yearly salary is a reported $25 million. Ours is roughly $1/25-millionth (i.e., zero).

We all know what life is like for Superman, but don't you ever wonder what a day in the life is like for Bizarro?

The basketball world through the eyes of Bizarro Stern, in which we might be considered indulgent, placable and undemanding, or even friendly or genial.

Strangely, sometimes we're more alike than we are different.

That's what the Poor Man's Commish is all about.