Leather Ball Back!

Its taken a while coming, but the NBA has decided to revert to the old leather ball -- the one that has been used in past seasons. For reasons that were not explained, the NBA brought in a new composite ball this season. The new ball has been reviled for having unpredictable bounce and acting weird overall. Sorry, that was the best way to put it. Sometimes it doesn't bounce hard off the rim, flops into the basket, makes paper cuts on players' palms and is either too slippery or too sticky.

Steve Nash, LeBron James, Shaquille O'Neal and Jason Kidd are some of the bigger stars who've expresses their displeasure with the ball. The player's union decided to take legal action against the league last week , on two counts -- the new 'zero tolerance' policy and the composite ball.

Stern had to say this, about reverting to the old ball.
“Our players' response to this particular composite ball has been consistently negative and we are acting accordingly. Although testing performed by Spalding and the NBA demonstrated that the new composite basketball was more consistent than leather, and statistically there has been an improvement in shooting, scoring, and ball-related turnovers, the most important statistic is the view of our players.”

Boy, the man flat out can't admit he was wrong !

I really wonder why they've decided to switch to the old ball now, in the middle of the season. After all, the players have now got used to the new one's random behavior. Even the three point shooting has been getting better and from what I recall, the league shooting average is a few percentage points above last year's. Oh well, the players adjusted to the composite ball within a month, so they should be comfortable with the leather ball by Jan end. I hope.

I guess Stern did not want the 2007 Finals to be decided by some weird bounces. What would the refs do then?

Nash at the barber shop

I saw this funny page on azcentral's website that you guys should check out. You get to pick from a list of different hairstyles varying from the 'fro to punk and the web-barber will immediately do that on a Nash caricature.
(the Mr.Clean style makes him look like a total skinhead).

Here's the link.

Obscure facts/news

Couldn't think of a better title for this post. Couldn't think of a better way to integrate this in another post. But here goes:

-Caron Butler was Mr.Basketball in the state of Wisconsin in 1998 in high school. Who was No.2 in the voting? Dallas Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo!
Wait till Michael Irvin hears this and justifies his claim that Romo has some black ancestry.

-I had the WAS-PHI game running on ESPN when the talking heads continued yapping about the Allen Iverson issue (he's asked to be traded, if you live on the moon). The camera then moved to Jim Gray. He reported with a very straight face that earlier in the game he had discussed the details of a telephone conversation he had with AI. Apparently the person he spoke to on the phone was an AI impersonator! Some random dude had spoken to him and given him random shit that poor Gray scooped up with glee. He confessed to having been punk'd and finished with the line "I had been duped. I'm sorry". Bravo ESPN! Bravo! But why not laugh at yourselves for a fiasco like this, instead of trying to keep a straight face about the whole issue?

Classic PG duel at Meadowlands

I was lucky enough to watch the Suns-Nets game because it was on YES network here in NJ. I cannot do justice to the game if I try to do my own report on it (my way of shying away from work). So I'll direct you to a nice game report by Lang Whitaker at SLAM.

The highlights:
When the dust settled, the numbers were amazing:
• Phoenix 161, New Jersey 157
• Kidd finished with 38 points, 14 rebounds (all defensive rebounds) and 14 assists
• Nash had a career-high 42 points and 13 assists
• Shawn Marion played 49 minutes and scored 33 points
• Vince Carter had 31 points and 9 assists
• Boris Diaw had 16 points and 14 assists
• There were 34 lead changes
• The Suns hit 17 of 31 from three, and the Nets went 10 for 21
Box Score

Diaw hit both free throws, and the Suns fouled the Nets right away. Kidd hit both free throws to make it a three point game, and the Suns called their last timeout with 4.1 left. They came back to halfcourt, and after what seemed like 4.99999 seconds, Diaw threw it in to Nash, who came off a Kurt Thomas pick and drained a clutch three from the top of the key. Suns assistant Alvin Gentry hopped off the bench and screamed, “Yes sir motherf*ckers!”

And yeah, check the highlights out on nba.com. Pay attention to Vince's walk (around the 30 sec mark in the video) to the basket in the end of regulation time. OK.OK. Kurt Thomas' screen for Nash's game winning 3 ptr was not clean either...but what's more egregious -- a moving screen or a travel?

Vick's finger

Hey guys,

I've been looking for Michael Vick's bird flick to the fans who booed him. I chanced upon the video now when I was looking at something else.

Stat Line of the Week

I've been out of the blogosphere in the past week. My fantasy team franchise players went AWOL as well. Emeka was busy hosting a slumber party all this week. I traded away Sean May and DeShawn Stevenson for Chris Kaman last week, so May decided to spite me with a monster game two days back with this line : 21/17/3/5 (p/r/a/b)

Chris Paul though came up big..BIGGG tonight with a triple double! Check this ugly bloody line:
25/11/18/5 (p/r/a/s)
Thats a total of 105 fantasy points.

VERY NICE! I LIKE!!