And they say lockouts are boring. If you're an adult, and don't mind hearing Ron Artest talking about how he became so strange (it's some combination of hallucinatory and pornographic, perhaps with some truth sprinkled in), this is really not boring.
Jonas Valanciunas in action. (Via Melcolm Ruffin) Watch when the blowout is well underway, and he basically begs to bring the ball up. His request is ignored, but he does get an alley-oop a few seconds later. And here's video analysis of how his style of play benefits his teammates. This is all good news for Raptors fans. (And everything else you need to know about the U-19 world championships.)
There are various calls for players to start their own basketball league. My standard response is that successful basketball leagues don't rent stadiums. They own. So you need owners. But economist David Berri makes a shrewd counterpoint: Cities pay for those stadiums far more than owners do: "Robert Baade and Victor Matheson have noted that since 2000, eight NBA teams have begun playing in new, or renovated, stadiums. The cost of these stadiums has exceeded $2 billion. Of this cost, $1.75 billion -- or 84.1 percent -- came from public funds." So long as taxpayers pay for the stadiums, and players do the work, why, again, do we cut owners in on the deal?
Shooting is the NBA's flavor of the month, thanks to the Mavericks. Due to be overvalued in free agency: Shooting. The league follows the champions, which makes this the ideal summer to stock up on everything else. (For instance, look at the available free agent point guards. If you're all about shooting you're due to overpay Mike Bibby, Jose Juan Barea etc.)
Not threatening to play overseas: Amare Stoudemire. Threatening: Almost everybody else, including Metta World Peace, Dwyane Wade, Austin Daye and a million others.
Kobe Bryant's dad takes over as head coach of the Sparks again (which is the Lakers' WNBA team).
Digging deeper into whether or not Yao Ming belongs in the Hall of Fame. Jeff Van Gundy makes the case he belongs.
Could the NBA have better national TV deals right now? Worth noting in any discussion of that deal: The owners keep collecting straight through a lockout. In the NBA, players sued over that, saying it's evidence the owners -- who share that revenue with players -- didn't negotiate the best possible deal.
Ray Allen says that with the amount of money they all make, it's embarrassing that players and owners are stuck haggling.
A measure by which the NBA's five best defenses were the Bulls, Bucks, Celtics, Blazers and Magic.