Tossing Up a Few More Airballs

I should start off this post with a correction of my previous post. As has been pointed out to me by a few people, the only reason that Sasha Vujacic was starting on opening night was because some guy named Kobe something was out with an injury. Once Kobe returns, Smush Parker will be the starting PG for the Lakers. My bad on that one. Pretty dumb oversight there. Nevertheless, I'll stick with the overall point of that comment which was that Jordan Farmar is going to be stealing more minutes as the year goes on...

So, I guess the NBA means business with this new mandate that cracks down on players complaining to refs after calls. By my count, there were 20 technical fouls whistled in yesterday's action. The rule has been referred to by some as the "Rasheed Wallace" rule; and Sheed didn't disappoint, being whistled for two technicals and ejected from the game. The other players to get a T yesterday were: Maurice Taylor (2), Mike Bibby (2), Ruben Patterson, Othella Harrington, Al Harrington, Sarunas Jasikevicius, Kirk Hinrich, Kendrick Perkins, Tyson Chandler, Desmond Mason, Channing Frye, Stephon Marbury, Nate Robinson, Kevin Garnett, Kurt Thomas, and Shaun Livingston. With a few exceptions, it pretty much reads like a "who's who" of NBA head cases. I found it especially entertaining to watch Stephon Marbury every play after he received his first technical foul. You could see that it was absolutely killing him not to be able to bitch to the refs every trip down the court. It will be interesting to see if the NBA continues to call the technical fouls this closely, or if this is just one of those things that NBA refs do for the first week of the season and then phase out...kind of like calling travelling.

The other interesting observation from the Knicks/Grizz game was Mike Miller's hair. I guess he was jealous of Danny Fortson's pigtails and wanted a WNBA look of his own. So now he's sporting a headband that's been borrowed from an 80's sitcom mom. To quote Brian Kinchen, "That's kinda gay."
(By the way, the Brian Kinchen clip has been removed from YouTube for copyright infringement. Thanks Google!)

(Parenthetical comment #2: Speaking of sitcom moms, you can buy freakin' Kate and Allie on DVD (unfortunately, it's just the first two seasons which is before Ari Meyers got hot) but the studios still haven't released One Day at a Time on DVD. What's going on here?! Sometimes a guy needs a 19 year old Valerie Bertinelli fix! Ok, back to basketball..)

On opening night, the Bulls beat the defending champion Miami Heat by 40+ points. Then last night, the Orlando Magic easily handled the Bulls, winning 109-94. Since I'm fully embracing knee-jerk reactions, this makes the Orlando Magic the best team in the NBA! Ok, perhaps not. But this will be the season that casual basketball fans become aware of the dominant force that is Dwight Howard.

Watching Adam Morrison's debut last night, he sure did remind me of Larry Bird- well, if Larry Bird shied away the ball in clutch time and refused to pull the trigger on the big shot when his team needed it. But, at least he didn't cry during the Bobcats loss, so he is making progress.

If ESPN's goal was to get me to hate Lebron James, they made great strides yesterday. The primetime edition of SportsCenter was sponsored by Lebron and Nike, which meant that every commercial break was an extended version of a Lebron commercial, complete with faux behind the scenes commentary. If "Wise" Lebron was really that wise, he should have known that people will soon get sick of this overexposure. I wouldn't be surprised if next week, we see Lebron driving a Chevy Silverado through New Orleans while John Mellancamp camp sings "This is Our Country."

...and just to prove that my crappy sportsbook picks aren't limited to football, I'll share that I like Denver +3.5 at the LA Clippers tonight.