UPDATE: There's a video, too.

Image via LA Weekly

NBA: Discipline Team Owner for Housing Discrimination [Tenants Together]

In January 2006 in New York, the patient of a well-known psychiatrist draws the face of this man that has been repeatedly appearing in her dreams. In more than one occasion that man has given her advice on her private life. The woman swears she has never watched Kazaam in her life.

So begins the descent into madness that is "Ever Dream This Man?," a bizarre web site that claims to tackle the issue of why thousands of people the world over see Shaq Diesel in their dreams each night.

There are theories ("According to this theory this man is the image of the Creator, I believe this theory to be true."), descriptions of the dreams ("I have never had homosexual relationships or even fantasies. But I dream about having sexing with this man all the time. I must admit he has a lot of imagination and he pleases me. Sometimes when I wake up I discover I too have a wig on."), and, of course, a CafePress shop.

So, is this a harmless prank? Or are we dealing with forces far beyond human understanding? If you've dreamt of Shaquille O'Neal, please relate it in the comments.

UPDATE: As pointed out, it's a Shaqcentric parody of this web site. This still raises more questions than it answers.

The settlement is said to be the largest of its kind. Dan Wetzel rightly wonders why more people aren't talking about Sterling. Maybe it's because there's just so much to talk about that no one knows where to begin:

• In 2003, 19 tenants and the Housing Rights Center filed a housing discrimination lawsuit against Sterling, one of the biggest landowners in Los Angeles. (That case, too, was settled.) According to depositions given by one of Sterling's property supervisors and obtained by ESPN The Magazine's Peter Keating, Sterling didn't like renting to black people ("they smell"), Mexican-Americans ("just sit around and smoke and drink all day") and people with children ("brats"), though he did like Koreans because "they will take whatever conditions I give them and still pay the rent." (The property supervisor, Sumner Davenport, sued Sterling for sexual harassment. She lost.)

• When a tenant asked to be compensated for water damage in her flooded apartment, Sterling allegedly told Davenport, "Just evict the bitch."

• According to former general manger Elgin Baylor, Sterling envisioned a "Southern Plantation type structure" for the Clippers, one in which, as he allegedly put it to Baylor, "poor black boys from the South" played for a white head coach.

• Sterling bought the Clippers in 1981 for $13 million. The franchise is now valued at $300 million. On his watch, the Clippers have lost 50 games in a season 20 times. Long ago, Sterling realized — correctly — that an owner could turn a tidy and effortless profit under the NBA's revenue-sharing system merely by losing cheaply and relying on the league's ever-fattening coffers.

• The NBA once fined Sterling $10,000 for suggesting the Clippers tank to help their draft position.

• As reported here, Sterling's scorekeepers in the late 1990s routinely and dramatically undercounted the Clippers' assist totals. Deliberate or not, the effect was to depress the value of the team's own players.

• According to Franz Lidz in Sports Illustrated, Sterling would refuse to add players even after injuries left the roster at the league minimum of eight. "The Clippers came close to forfeiting a game after forward Michael Brooks had oral surgery," Lidz wrote. "Brooks had to suit up, and he actually played, though his jaw was as swollen as Sterling's ego."

• Sterling once welshed on a $1,000 prize for a free-throw shooting contest, forcing the winner, a lawyer and season ticketholder named Michael Spilger, to sue. More than a year later, according to Lidz, Spilger got his money.

• During his first season as owner, according to Sports Illustrated, Sterling reportedly wanted to save money by jettisoning the team trainer. He asked coach Paul Silas if he would mind taping up players before games.

• According to Sports Illustrated: "Sterling is also said to have proposed to trim the team budget for his second season by slashing training-camp expenses from more than $50,000 to about $100, scouting from more than $20,000 to about $1,000, advertising from more than $200,000 to less than $9,000 and medical expenses from about $10,000 to $100."

• Sterling would solicit "hostesses" for private parties and Clippers events, one of whom told ESPN The Magazine: "Working for Donald Sterling was the most demoralizing, dehumanizing experience of my life. He asked me for seminude photos and made it clear he wanted more."

• A former employee sued Sterling for sexual harassment in 1996. According to testimony obtained by ESPN The Magazine, Sterling would order her to find massage therapists, saying, "I want someone who will, you know, let me put it in or who [will] suck on it." The case was settled.

• In 2003, Sterling acknowledged paying a woman named Alexandra Castro $500 every time "she provided sex." He testified: "It was purely sex for money, money for sex, sex for money, money for sex." He would call her honey, but for decidedly unromantic reasons. "I'm a very flowery man," he said. "If you are having sex with a woman you are paying for, you always call her honey because you can't remember her name."

And that's just a partial list. Remember Sterling the next time someone projects his private demographic terrors on all the "thugs" in the NBA. In his time as the Clippers' owner, he has behaved far more repulsively than any wayward player ever suspended by David Stern; if Sterling were a small forward, he'd be looking for a run in Minsk right about now. But he's an owner and a wealthy real-estate magnate, and for those reasons and no other, a league so concerned about its public image that it tells its players how to dress will happily overlook the fact that Donald T. Sterling is a cheap, whoring bigot.

L.A. Clippers' Sterling Settles Housing Bias Lawsuit [Bloomberg]
Uncontested: The life of Donald Sterling [ESPN The Magazine]
Up And Down In Beverly Hills [Sports Illustrated]

Ronald Jones was pulled over after he was spotted driving erratically in the Dallas suburb of Richardson. He failed a field sobriety test, but "declined" to take a breathalyzer....

And then according to police, it got ugly.

"When the officers went to place the handcuffs on Mr. Jones he did resist by moving his hand forward instead of behind his back. They were forced to take him to the ground to get better control of him and he did sustain some injuries to his face," Wakefield said.

Did you hear that? He moved his hand! Glad to see the officers keep the dangerous tasers in the holster and handle things the old fashioned way. Jones was charged with driving while intoxicated, but not with resisting arrest since that one has already been taken care of.

Ronald Popeye Jones Charged with DWI [My Fox DFW]

Shabtai Kalmanovich, one of Prokhorov's partners in post-Soviet billionaire sports owner crime, was murdered on Monday. Kalmanovich is the owner of the Spartak Moscow women's basketball team that is famous for shelling out big bucks to sign WNBA stars like Lauren Jackson, Sue Bird, and Diana Taurasi. He was also gunned down on the streets of Moscow when another car pulled up alongside his and opened fire. Yeah, not exactly a random act of violence.

Police say they believe that the murder could be linked to Kalmanovich's business activities, and maybe even "his prominent role in Russian basketball." So that must make people like Prokhorov feel really safe and secure. The NBA too. It sure won't make David Stern comfortable imagining one of his owners getting blown away outside the Meadowlands. (Of course, if it happened at the Meadowlands there's a chance no one would notice.) Maybe he's trying to buy the Nets not to bring NBA "technology" to his homeland, but so he can get the hell out of dodge.

Personally, I'm shocked to learn that running a business in the former Soviet Republics could be so dangerous! Or ... here's another theory. Kalmanovich is also a former KGB spy who spent time in an Israeli prison for espionage. I'm not an expert on the post-Cold War politics of Eastern European spy networks, but I'm going to go out on a limb and say his brazen gangland murder might be related to that.

Spartak Moscow owner Shabtai Kalmanovitch assassinated [Women Talk Sports]
Ex-Shin Bet, KGB double agent shot dead in Moscow [Haaretz]
Ex-spy Kalmanovich to be buried in Israel [YnetNews]
Russian spy-turned-tycoon gunned down [The Age]

The group doesn't have a name yet — Redick mentioned "Sub-Par," "Afterthought," and "No-Profits" as possibilities — but they have their first single. Or most of it, anyway.

The chorus has been written and the first verse and the direction we're heading on the song has to deal with ‘waste management,'" Redick elaborated.

The song is called, of course, "Waste Management," and he hopes to release it by the end of the year, with an album to follow. May I suggest some potential titles?

•Dukiestyle
•Get Benched Or Die Tryin'
•Please Redick Don't Miss 'em
•Fear Of A White Two-Guard
•Suckonia
•Life After Duke
•It's Dark And Orlando Is Hot

Orlando Magic's JJ Redick Releasing Rap Album [AllHipHop.com]

The once and future Knicks albatross showed up for New York's home opener followed through on a promise made on his bizarre Ustream. He plopped down in a courtside seat, whipped out his camera and started filming the game. That's when the person who actually bought that seat showed up.

Security told Marbury to move to his real seat, but rather then act like a normal human being and move, he up and left the arena.

I paid a lot of money for this seat, I don't want to leave," Marbury told one Garden security official during the confrontation. "But it's OK. I'll go."

So while he missed everything after the first quarter, it would have been familiar to Marbury: a furious Knicks rally brought them close, but they shit the bed when it counted.

Bizarre-Bury: Stephon Marbury Bolts Madison Square Garden In Seat Tiff [NY Daily News]

Either someone released a live bat into the AT&T center for Halloween, or Dracula has Spurs season tickets. Either way, Manu Ginobili took care of things, swatting down the bloodsucker in cold-blooded horror murder.

I can't wait to see Malcolm Gladwell write a 10,000 word piece equating professional basketball with brutal animal slaughter.

Bats Everywhere Quiver in Fear of Manu [FanHouse]