Delonte makes a sweet pass.
From Brian Windhorst:
After the final horn, Mo Williams wrapped his arms around West on the floor and spoke into his ear. Mo wouldn’t reveal what he told him, but said his message was the team was glad to have him back and then he stressed that he wanted him to stay and do the things that will enable him to stay. It is one thing for a team to say they have a family atmosphere and it is another to prove it and with this, the Cavs did.
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Cavs announcers Fred McLeod and Austin Carr told a good Delonte story last night. They said that one time during a time out Mike Brown told Delonte he’d have to stay in the game a little bit longer to give LeBron some rest. Delonte was looking at his arms like something was wrong. Mike Brown said to Delonte, “Is something wrong w/ your arms?” And Delonte said, “Coach, I’m not even sweating.”
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Rody Cooney of Sport Story Magazine has a really good sport story for us circa 1931:
We were having a pretty hard game of it, with plenty of roughing, tricking, and everything else that passed in the game. It was part of the daily task, and we had to do our work well, or the other fellow would come out ahead. Well, as was natural, a fight developed, and two of the players staged a word battle that turned into a furious fistfight before we could step between them. Things were going pretty hot, so everyone was carefully warned to cool down before a riot was started. We cooled off – but the fight wasn’t over. A hurried exit by both teams after the game averted a fan scramble, and we were just beginning to breathe easy down in our locker room, when a man with a drawn gun rushed through the door. He went directly to the player who had fought with the man on the other side, stuck the gun in his stomach, and demanded an apology for the language he used in the scrap. As we stood, dumbfounded, players from the other team rushed in and forced the man out of the room. That man was the brother of the other man in the fight, and he was there to avenge the quarrel with a gun. Yes, we had that kind of fan in those days!
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There was this from the Associated Press (via ESPN):
Associated Press
EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. — For $25,000, you can watch the New Jersey Nets from courtside — and have a player stop by your son’s birthday party.
In a tough economy, it’s the Nets’ latest marketing effort to sell its pricey courtside seats. It’s called ‘Your Ticket to a Player.’
For $25,000, the Nets are offering four courtside tickets for 10 games, parking, access to a private lounge at the Izod Center with free food and beverages and something more — a one-hour appearance by a Nets player of your choice at your home, office, school or party.
“It will be interesting to have an NBA player come to your birthday party or come to your Bar Mitzvah or even just coming to your house for dinner for an hour when your friends are over,” Nets chief executive Brett Yormark said. “That’s a terrific thing and it’s tough to put a price tag on it.”
The package offers a discount: Purchased individually, Nets courtside seats sell for $750 each and 40 would cost $30,000.
Yormark said the idea for the courtside plan developed because he had an inventory of courtside seats that he wanted to sell and he frequently gets calls from season-ticket holders and fans about having a player attend an event.
Players will not be compensated for the one-hour visits, the Nets said.
“It helps everybody to have more fans at our games, so if the players can make a difference by meeting with ticket buyers at their homes or offices, we are happy to participate,” Nets All-Star guard Devin Harris said.
While Harris is the most popular Nets player, Yormark said not everyone will get their top choice of players for an appearance.
The Nets hope to sell 20 plans, which would raise $500,000.
Yormark said teams have to find different ways to sell tickets in a recession. He believes the Nets are the first NBA team to package tickets sales with a player appearance.
“I tell people if you are doing business the same way you did a year ago, you have to stop it because that’s not the world we live in today,” Yormark said. “A lot of people say it, but it’s really true in the world we live in today. You have to do things differently. Things have to be more special and different than before and that’s our goal.”
Two months ago, the Nets unveiled a special 10-game “Match-Up” ticket plan under which fans got a collection of reversible jerseys with the uniforms of LeBron James, Kobe Bryant, Kevin Garnett, Dwyane Wade and Dwight Howard on one side and the jersey of the Nets’ player on the other side.
“It’s been the best partial-plan seller since I’ve been here,” Yormark said. “Fans love it. Kids are loving the jerseys. It’s something that is going to live all season for us. It’s going to be an anchor to our ticket sales effort.”
How would you use your hour with a New Jersey Net? I think I would make Brook Lopez read a book of contemporary poetry to me, or try and figure out what makes Josh Boone so sad.
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Recently I’ve been thinking about liquids. I’ve been thinking about how different liquids serve different purposes, entirely unlike solid foods, and this is funny to me. For example, coffee, soup, tea, and alcohol all have distinct effects and are ‘used’ in various ways. What if liquids played basketball?
Point Guard – Alcohol
Alcohol has been a cornerstone of society dating back to the first time some guy got drunk in a cave. It is a fundamental component of any social gathering and can be discussed using the same gerunds as would befit a point guard’s duties: facilitating, masking weaknesses, generally making things easier for everybody, etc.
Chauncey Billups is a bottle of Merlot.
Likewise, the point guard is the cornerstone of his team. However, this relationship can easily become ‘combustible.’ When the point guard tries to do too much, or becomes the focal point of the team, the integrity of his role is generally compromised, like a night of drinking for drinking’s sake from which you wake up covered in blood and lacking any memory of the night before.
Goldschlagger
The exception here are teams like the Chris Paul-led Hornets and Allen Iverson’s Sixers circa 2001. These teams I see as ‘necessary benders’ like when your girlfriend breaks up with you, or Memorial Day.
Shooting Guard – Water
Both are pretty much unexceptional in their ubiquity, though important for ‘success.’ Someone has to score the basketball. You have to drink water. However, truly great, legendary shooting guards seem to transcend the category ‘shooting guard’ and become great basketball players, just as in times of great thirst, water ceases to be a mere liquid and becomes some sort of greater life-affirming substance.
MJ was the Thirstiest of All Time
Small Forward – Tea
The role of a small forward is vast, it contains multitudes, as does the tea section at Whole Foods.
Can someone please tell me what a small forward is supposed to do?
Center – Soup
Teams sometimes try to do without a center, but it never seems like a great idea. You can do without soup, but a lot of times it helps if you have some. Both centers and soups can be good, even great, but are usually just ok and rarely live up to their potential.
This soup has enormous upside. Needs to improve its footwork and weak-side rotation, though. This should come with time.
Power Forward – Coffee
I can’t really come up with a great justification for this decision, though I’m drawn to Maurice Lucas here as some sort of intuitive explanation for why this makes sense:
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Marvin A. Riley, a referee in the early professional days, shares a story:
In one game I recall, ‘Sandy’ Shields of the New Yorks – one of the game’s greatest exponents – was coming down on Trenton’s basket like a cyclone. Sandy had a lot of weight, too, and enough speed to qualify for the sprints. Chris (Stinger of Trenton, ‘built like a wood-shed’) stepped on the accelerator for all the speed there was in the Stinger motor. Sandy did not put on the brakes, neither did Chris; consequently, they met and it was Sandy who went backwards to a squat on the floor. Chris picked up the ball, passed it up the floor and then calmly went back to his guard position to wait for the next attack. He took Charlie Bossert, of Camden, the same way one night in Camden. I was behind the whistle. Bossert got up and came after me demanding to know why I had not called a foul.
‘Did he trip you?’ I asked.‘No,’ replied Bossert.
‘Did he hold you?’
‘No.’
‘Did he slug you?’
‘No.’
‘What did he do?’
‘You saw him – he sat on my back.’
‘Well,’ I said, ‘you big truck horse, if you let him do that, don’t come crying to me. Get in there and play ball.’
(From “Cages to Jump Shots”)
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