Let it be known that no one shall ever be issued the number 8 jersey for Beşiktaş, in tribute to the weeks and weeks of service of one Deron Williams. Hailed as a conquering hero when he arrived this summer, the end of the NBA lockout forced Williams to bid farewell to his Turkish team. He remains the biggest name…
In this video produced by Glen Davis's marketing company (and via TBJ) we get a look at how Big Baby spent his time off. Knitting, popsicle stick construction, model kits and the like. It's clever, but we're more taken with the rubber-faced Davis's reaction shots. He has a future in silent movies.
The NBA lockout is nearing the end of its fifth month, and there is no end in sight. This sucks for players, who will miss paychecks; it sucks for fans, who will be forced to find other ways to occupy their winter nights; it really, really sucks for TV networks that carry local NBA games and now have to account for…
Two separate groups representing NBA players filed antitrust lawsuits against the NBA yesterday—one, filed by the trade association's carefully selected legal team in California, has five plaintiffs including Carmelo Anthony and Kevin Durant; the other names players Ben Gordon, Anthony Tolliver, Derrick Williams and…
Today was payday. November 15th was to see players receive 1/12th of their 2011-2012 contracts, but with nuclear winter coming on, they're out the equivalent of a month's salary—$220,000 on average. Actually losing money for the first time is hard on some players, like Samardo Samuels.
Of course, it's not representative of a real computer error; just a human failure to make a labor agreement that would provide professional basketball to a fan base that is growing more and more impatient and resigned to the fact that we may, very well, be without a season this year. Thus:
Billy Hunter says the players have rejected the league's latest offer, which he called "extremely unfair," and says the association is "prepared to file antitrust action against the NBA." They're also beginning the process of disbanding the union. From Yahoo's Adrian Wojnarowski [sic'd]: "The chances of losing the…
Not everything that happens during the NBA lockout is bad: Delonte West makes his job applications public, Delonte West makes his broken-down Ford Bronco public, Chris Paul goes on Family Feud, and—provided that they cover up the Adidas logo on their shirts—Carmelo Anthony and Amar'e Stoudemire get to hang out with…
Elsewhere in the vast world of sports this evening, the NBA lockout negotiations once again came to a slow, painful halt after close to 12 hours of meetings. Once union president Derek Fisher got his microphone working, he had this to say:
LeBron played in Rudy Gay's charity all-star game just outside of Memphis last night. He scored 43 points and, as he tends to do, made no new friends at the DeSoto Civic Center in Southaven, Miss. There might be a lockout underway, but worry not, heathens: Together, we will still find ways to mock LeBron James on…
Let's take a brief respite from Penn State-related news to check in on the second-most miserable topic in today's sports coverage: the NBA lockout! If you've been following even from afar lately, you probably know that Bobcats owner Michael Jordan ruffled some feathers last week when he emerged as an outspoken…
What is ESPN prattling on about right now? We condense your morning SportsCenter to its essence.
Over at SB Nation, Tom Ziller has compiled some of Michael Jordan's contradictory views on the NBA lockout. In a meeting during the '98 lockout, for example, Jordan the player told Wizards owner Abe Pollin, "If you can't make it work economically, you should sell the team." Ziller points out that in this lockout,…
Kevin Durant's dominating performance at an intramural flag football game at Oklahoma State earlier this week has a lot of people asking "What if?" All of those people work for the Panini Group, the Italian collectibles giant that makes trading cards and bought Donruss two years ago. What if Durant actually played…
What happened last night at Oklahoma State is a spiritual cousin to Nyjer Morgan being told on Twitter to go fly a kite, then doing it. Only less mentally imbalanced.
The Philippines is a nation crazy about basketball. Sick of always losing to China in the FIBA Asia Championships, which act as qualifiers for the Olympics and World Championships, the country has taken advantage of some lax laws on citizenship to stock their team with talent from around the world. It doesn't matter…
DATELINE—TWITTERSPACE After this afternoon's collapse in negotiations, commissioner David Stern is planning to announce more cancellations beyond the first two weeks of the season. Opening night was to be Tuesday; now there won't be November basketball. We're told that low-level team employees with email access are…
DATELINE—A NICE HOTEL Negotiations between the players and the league broke off without an agreement this afternoon. Neither side is willing to budge on the BRI split: the players are firm at 52 percent, the owners at 50. No talks are scheduled, though both sides hope to meet again this weekend. We are awaiting…
After four months, the NBA lockout is in its dying throes, according to multiple team employees who have been informed by the league that business as usual will resume as early as Monday.
NBA.com has published an interview with Kevin Murphy, the noted genius and economist who's been working with the Players' Assocation since June. This is the first time the University of Chicago professor has talked publicly since the lockout began. Go read it to gain some bonafide intellectual capital about this mess.…
