Going... Going...

I was waiting for this one. You gotta love being a Celtics fan right now

Well, apparently the Garnett to Boston it’s a done deal, I promised you something smart, and you won’t get it. Life is fill with disappointments, get used to it.

The question here is, how much damaged can the new Celtics do in the Eastern Conference. First of all, we need to be in the same page, the Eastern Conference for this year is not looking better than last year incarnation. Transactions like Rashard Lewis to Orlando, Joe Smith to the Bulls, Jamal Magliore to the Nets and Smush Parker to the Heat, are not contender making moves. The East sucks. For the last couple of years, the top of the crop have been Detroit, which has 5 straight Eastern Conference Finals, 2 NBA Finals and one championship since 2004, Miami with 2 Eastern Conference Finals appearances and the 2006 NBA Championship and the Cavs with 2 Conference Finals and one NBA Finals cameo. Nice resume for them, really, specially Detroit's.

This are the obstacles that Boston needs to overcome:

Detroit: Past their prime, they come from having and “we against the world” attitude to a “we are so cocky, we cant loose a series even if we try” attitude

Miami: They are not only old, they just don’t care anymore. Besides, I don’t know how successful Wade approach can be in the long run. Just look at Iverson

Cleveland: Lebron is too damn good. The crappy part here is that he doesn’t always “compete” as hard as we know he can and his team is too damn bad.

The second tier of “power teams” includes Chicago, Washington, New Jersey and maybe Orlando. All this teams have a big hole, or two, in some key facet of the game.

There you have it, that’s the scenario Kevin Garnet is facing, it doesn’t appear that bad and with a roster that includes a shooter/scorer and a scorer/slasher,things get a lot easier. They still don’t have a bench or a real center to pair with KG inside and that’s where the issues might arise; my real source of concern is that Danny Ainge is so bad at his job that he and only he (and maybe Kevin McHale) can screw this up. Next thing we know, there will be a press conference with a proud Danny Ainge presenting Michael Olowokandi and Jason Williams (the motorcycle riding ex Bull) as their reinforces. That’s just depressing.

Until that happens, Boston fans have reasons to joy, reasons to glow and to look up to the next season. Boston has a team with a lot of leadership, defense, passing and shooting, but all of this its coming from 3 guys. Big things are going to be expected from the likes of Rajon Rondo and Kendrick Perkins; no matter what happens with this kids , Boston will win the Atlantic Division and their playoff run will depend of Allen's and Pierce's injuries, if they can stay healthy and we don’t witness another “DWade Free Throw Parade”, they will probably reach the NBA Finals, and with the talent and the heart this team has, I think only San Antonio or a VERY, VERY hungry Phoenix team could beat them in a 7 game series.

Hallelujah

Finally, some news; everybody is reporting that a Kevin Garnet trade to Boston is on the works and very likely to happen. The asking price for the big ticket includes Al Jefferson, Theo Ratliff's contract and someone between Gerald Green, Sebastian Telfair, Rajon Rondo and Ryan G0mez. This transforms the Celtics from a old rusty Volkswagen to a brand new Camaro (I know, too much Transformers...) and gives them between year and half and two years to win the title. If KG is going to Boston, an extension will be a given. What will not be a given is Ray Allen legs in the next two years and Danny Ainge's ability to obtain any other quality player in order for them to have a bench.

So, if this happens Garnett would have put his career on the hands of Kevin McHale and Danny Ainge. This only shows the Basketball Gods’ sick sense of humor and a cold blooded despise to Garnett. When a 37 year old Kevin Garnett signs with a Billy King managed franchise, the prophecy will be completed, don’t say I didn’t' warn you.

If the trade goes through, I'll write what I think about it (yeah, I know... big deal), I promise you it will be something smart.

Something else in the wire today, after Curry (the fat guy not playing defense in the middle for the Knicks) and Antoine Walker (the fat guy sitting in the end of Pat Riley's bench) were mugged in Chicago, the Bulls are warning their players and staff:

"Don't get fat. You have been warned. By the way, this conversation never happened"

Pd: The quote is not an actual quote. Just me being a poor blogger.

Linkin Friday

I'm creating a new "thing", well; I'm not creating anything new, just using something new for me. Since we haven't had any big news, we are using this post just for links, a little bit of everything not just gambling basketball. Enjoy

Some politician likes the spotlight and doesn't like the NBA, so wants to talk to our commissioner about it... somebody has been losing money. This is a quote from the politician guy:

"Unfortunately, fairly or not, the NBA, more than any other professional sport, has been consistently dogged with allegations that league referees needlessly affect the outcomes of games by making bad calls,"

Blazerlog found a cool link to find out players that have similarities between them (Game wise and production wise). Of course, they ran the thing using the Blazers rosters, check out the results

Alltalksports is teaching young sport stars how to ruin their careers. Good stuff

Chauncey Billups' Highlights at Need4Sheed

Darryl Morey is doing a good job for Houston lately, according to NBAsians at InsideHoops. I have to disagree; i hated that Francis signing.

Mike Tyson video before he goes insane... gotta love the music

Couple of online games, the first one it's a puzzle box thing, its really a "massively addictive game". For soccer fans this one is cool, although don't play it with sound, there's a oriental dude screaming in the background.

Some old stuff, but this is beyond funny, Triumph the insult dog at the Episode II premiere.

David Stern's still alive

David Stern addressed the media about the gambling little issue yesterday referring to it as the worst crisis in his reign. Here at the Basketball Olympus we disagree, we think the worst thing have to be either the DWade Free Throw Parade or allowing MJ to return for a second time. You may ask: Why , oh gods WHY are we allowing this things to happen and why are we leaving Stern on power. We can only tell you that we have a greater plan in motion here, be patient.

It's weird, now that we know Donaghy apparently was fixing games, people's starting to find anomalies in Donaghy's games. Go figure!

If you are not a betting person and you have a couple of extra bucks or you are tired of actually enjoying your money and buying nice things, and want to start betting on the NBA, this article may help you get a grasp of things. To understand what Donaghy might did, go here and read this

No Games no News makes Morgan go crazy

It's been like a lot of days since the betting ref thing and there's absolutely nothing new on the news front. There ain't anything new to say about the crooked zebra, and nothing I can write would be better than this writting from Bill Simmmons, be sure to chech this article too.

USA Basketball have a broadcasted scrimmage yesterday, apparently it was pretty awesome; it was filled with stars and actually everybody played at full throttle, including Lebron. Kobe and Kidd ruled the court showing all the multimillionare kids how it's done, that's not really a shocker, but I liked the "Kidd hint" thrown by Kobe and Lebron to their respective teams and their "anything but happy trigger" GM's

Lebron:

"This is a treat, I don't have that luxury on my team back in Cleveland. It's like a dream of mine."

Kobe:

"It's scary actually, what he sees on the floor. I learned a lot just playing with him and talking with him the last couple days, being that we're the two old dogs on the team -- he's actually the old dog by a long shot,"

Here's a video posted by a Kobe fan

I don't know if I feel worst for Boobie Gibson and Jason Farmar, or for Kupchak and Danny Ferry. Actually, after reading what I just wrote about Boobie Gibson and Jason Farmar... What the hell!!. I might give Boobie some slack, but if we believe the rumors; Lebron should be playing with Bibby and Kobe with Kidd himself. Why this trades didn't happen? Poor GMs? Owners Saving Money? Why people in this game doesn't just roll the dice and see what happen, maybe you get lucky and create a championship team, worst case scenario, your rich boss lost a couple of millions and you team doesn't win the championship, they never do this. EDIT: A'right, they might get fired, but it's all for the good of the sport! :D

The NBA is in the shape that it is no only due to the Artest Melee or whatever stupid act , this is happening beacuse of bad referees (and crooked referees ) and the lack of balls showed by most of the GMs in the league. Both issues are fixable, the officiating took a major hit, but it's still fixable, but it's going to be a long process. The second one, could be faster and it's running in the veins of guys like Sam Presti and John Paxton, young and smart GM's who although their bosses, whoever thery are in Presti case, may no be big spenders, we only can hope this GMs MIGHT give us some hope, so far they have been doing a more than decent job.

I think I haven't write anything about the Marbury to Venice story, I didn't gave it too much relevance, because he's STARBURY the best point guard in the game, he can play in Pluto with Kobe if he wants (SARCASM SARCASM I cannot stress how much SARCASM you must read here!), but the friends at KnicksClicks are pretty shocked by the Italians sweeping their point guard of his feet, and this post of YAYSports is one of the funniest thing I have ever seen (Hail to the YAY!)

Stupidness 1.2

Steve “Franchise” is coming back to the franchise that saw him become an All Star. Good for Francis, I’m really glad for the guy, he’s going to play in a familiar territory and he never really fit with those Knicks, maybe because sharing a backcourt with Marbury is like sharing a pie with Val Kilmer this days. My issue (among others) here is that I really don’t understand this from the Rockets point of view. They have 2 scorers and no true point guard, they decided to add another scorer, who calls himself a point guard, but he’s actually a scorer who like to shot a lot in order to score a lot,you know he being a scorer. They now have 3 scorers and the making of a huge catfight for the ball in a middle of a game. SCORER!. If the word scorer just lost the meaning to you, you probably need to score to reconnect to the sense of the word, if you know what I mean. Be a scorer. Score.

Does this propel Houston pass their Texas buddies? Hell no! But it will be interesting when China calls Houston to said that they are not helping Yao achieve the exultation of capturing glory and that they must kill Francis. Houston will probably be ok with this as long as the murdered Francis' contract doesn't count against the cap.

In another bonehead move, the Suns are trading their (only) best post defender and only player who’s not afraid of the boogeyman to the Sonics for a second round pick and a $8 million trade exception. If Phoenix don’t get KG or Jermainel O’neal, I’m officially getting of the Steve Kerr’s bandwagon and proclaiming that the Suns just wasted the last couple of good years on Steve Nash “rebirth”. Really, Kerr appears to be a good guy, he went through a lot of bad shit before hitting the NBA, he was a great color commentator, a great shooter, but I don’t see how a team in the position the Phoenix is can rely in a rookie GM, they are piece or two (three now) away from really contending, they’re in a crappy CAP position, they need somebody who knows what he or she’s doing, I’m not saying Steve’s doesn’t, but if he’s going to show growing pains handling this team and make a mistake here or there, it would be a great opportunity missed for them do to something special and signing it’s ticket to the basketball Olympus.

Let’s just hope this is step one; I’m not the only one thinking it

Stupidness 1.1

Easy money is so hard to say no to. It doesn’t matter who you are or where you come from, when the opportunity comes you have (wherever you like it or not) to think about. People with a little common sense can say “thanks, but no thanks”, but you have to think about it. Drug dealing, extortions, gambling, they all are easy money. Specially gambling, if you are outside of the US probably is not an illegal activity, and you have an ego to feed, you want to probe how much sports knowledge the old rooftop is holding. Ì worked in the gambling industry and I’ve had a couple of bucks riding the result of some nearly impossible to predict parlay, it feels damn good when you got it right, but it doesn’t feel that bad when you got it wrong, after all it was nearly impossible to predict

The New Times reported yesterday that NBA referee Tim Donaghy, a 13-year veteran is being investigated for his involvement in gambling activities, apparently he has been fixing some games and that’s a no, no. This is bad, this is really, really bad for the league, as I’ve written in previous posts the league is not in that good of a shape to be able to sustain a scandal like this. But they will have to, it’s a reality, even though if something magical happen and the FBI comes out and said “Ups, wrong league”, now people is thinking about it, people had always thought about it, but know we have federal probes. Every time there's a no call or a controversial call we are thinking about it, and now things like the DWade Free Throw Parade (the NBA calls it NBA Finals 2006) are really going to be in the minds of fans (specially Mavs fans )

So, what’s going to happen here, I don’t know, Mark Cuban has some thoughts, he’s probably right being a millionaire and CEO and me being jealous of him. I do think we can trust David Stern, he’s a quite good commissioner, he’s had his miscues, but in general he’s been very solid. The one thing I’m sure of, Donaghy has called his last game and that’s apparently a good thing.

China is mad

Somewhere, Jack Bauer is saying "I told u so", I really don't want to be the kind of person who says (or writes ) "this damn chinese are craazy", so, I'm saying (or writing ) this people from China are insane. We are receiving some bad impressions from China's "official spokespersons" lately. I haven't said or write anything about the Yi thing, because I know where's going to end. This is why, Chinese Basketball Program, "regimen" is more of a appropriate word here, recruit kids with potential before they hit puberty and invest on them with one goal and one goal only, to develop a superarmy of basketball players that take control of the basketball Olympus.

They want their supersoldeirs to develop their arms and tactics in the fieriest battle camps, but don't be fooled, they don't have the control of their own fates, they must be grateful and dedicate their lives to the greater good... their country. When chinese players get to the NBA, China expects his superplayers to have significant playing time, you know, in order to develop their arms and control our Olympus. Also, once they are there, the should became a global icon (whatchout Lebron!) and all the money that comes along (I don't know if that money goes to the superplayer or the supercountry, if anybody knows, please let me know).

Once the season ends, their asses must get back to China, we have seen how Yao offseason revolves around the Chinese basketball program, the kid doesn't get any rest, unless China says so. The Wan Zhizhi history is another perfect example of this, he refused to go back and fight with his nation's basketball troop and was labeled as a "immature ingrate" and was banned from the China national team for 5 years, and this is not a good thing, neither for him nor for his family.

Said that, who controls Yi is China and China alone, the NBA rights belong to the Bucks, but the human being belongs to China, there's no debate here who has the upper hand, if they can't force a trade Yi would not play a NBA game for a long time. What's the solution here, you ask?. It could be:

1. The Bucks trade Yi to Golden State and everybody is happy
2. Take some 10 million of Chinese people, move them to Wisconsin, gave them high acquisitive power and Bucks' season tickets

Right now, I don't know which one is more unlikely.


Let's said China officials are not that bad, they are just taking care of their "investment", but then another story comes along, apparently Yao was having too much fun getting married, living his life and immature and ingrate stuff like that, hurting China in the process:

"No matter how lofty public welfare activities are, they can't be allowed to take first place in a player's life,'' the China Sports Daily, a federation-owned newspaper, said in an article appearing Tuesday. "No matter how sweet personal life is, it can't be compared to the exultation of capturing glory for one's nation,'

First of all, I love the phrase "the exultation of capturing glory", it will become my new personal battle cry when going clubbing.

You might think that "it's really sick how this guys are being treated, they are not free, the have not decision power over his personal life..etc..etc." But they do have the option, just ask the Zhizhi dude, but in that culture they live their lives following an honor code and being "immature ingrate" it's way worst for them than for any of us, it's like punching your sweet caring grandma; the option is there and the opportunity might arise, but nobody is going to do it... I hope...

Bad Old Times

Yesterday I was watching in NBA TV game 7 of the 2000 western conference finals between the LA Lakers and the Blazers. That was bad... really bad, I was rooting for the Blazers, but this was specially painfull for me because Scottie Pippen as always been one of my favorite players, second I hated those Lakers, from Kobe actitud to Rick Fox mere prescense . Dont get me wrong (if you yell it to somebody that doesnt give a hoot, u have been Steven A. Smith for a second...sweet!) Shaq had a great season, Phil Jackson did a great job getting that kind of season out of Shaq, and getting more than jeers from guys like Harper, Fox and Shaw, everybody was doing what they were supposed to do,thats a weird thing to say about the Lakeras nowadays, but well, I disgrees...I'm very good at it... The point it's I had always blame the collapse of the Blazers in the fourth quater to Scottie and coach Mike Dunleavy, they were the leaders of the pack after all. But (yeah..that's a big but, I like big buts and I can not lie...but I disgress..) after watching again I realized I have to blame everything on Portland going totally cold for like 7 minutes and on LA D which was getting tighter and tighter after each Portland missed shot, LA wasn't that hot either but Portland cold streak was ridiculous. S0, I was a little more "content" because it wasn't Scottie's fault, he did run the ofense, was a presence defensively, he took the shots LA D gave him, the blazers just couldn't buy a shot, at one point they missed 13 straight, granted most of them were jump shots and no drives to the basket. It wasnt coach Dunleavy fault either, the plays to post up sheed and bonzi were there, the shooters were there, the shots just didn't go in! Sheed missed like 5 straight shots, no easy shots but it weren't impossibles neither, at least for him. Oh well, it was a good game after all.

Nothing new in the news today, we could use this slow day to learn something about the soon to be rookies ,things like Al Hortford is showing some skills as well as the philly kids. Kevin Durant might start to get the hang of it, just might! The good old Nellie and the Warriors found the next JRich, good for them!

Bad Timing

A'right, I know this a very very bad moment to start an NBA blog, because well... NBA sucks right now! We are coming from an horrible NBA season in which among others thing,we were fortunate to saw:

1.Pat Riley getting off basketball Olympus when he decided to have surgery when Shaq and Wade were in the shell, aka "when his team needed him the most."
2. Spurs games where the highlights were Eva Longoria's cheers
3. Lebron James giving a Gooden's ass about the first half of the season
4. Danny Ainge running a basketball team and Doc Rivers coaching it
5. Dirk Nowitzki smiling at his MVP trophy presentation.
6. Kevin Mchale ruining a basketball career. Actually this is more of a continuation of the last 8 to 9 seasons

I'm sure I forgot some other forgettable golden moments. After the "Nessie Revenge" and the "Big Body Check Rob" in the playoffs, the finals worked as a great debate stage about who's better: Oden or Durant. And then, at some point in game 2, about the Spurs' place in history. After that the draft came and gone with a lot of noise and "rumors", pretty much nothing worth reading about really happened. Next step, the offseason, wich featured two former 19 year old rookies getting heavily overpaid.

So, here we are, what I'm going to write about it's anybody guess, it will probably be a lot of complains and bitching and more complaining.

Howdy, neighbors!

When you are writing a letter you are suppose to introduce yourself, name your business, go to the point and politely sign off... or something formal like that. For a blog, well, I don't know what's the rule, so let's see what happens. I'm Morgan, I writing a blog about the NBA and perhaps some other stuff, come back regularly, see ya. Wow... or that was very easy or I'm that good! Only time will tell I guess

Now, I have and want to give credit where credit is due. The original photograph of the header, was taken by Bernd Nies, an truly unbelievable photograh, pay a visit to his website and check out some of his cool work. (Yeah! Mr Nies, that's a bold and nasty credit! :D)