- Sounds like there's still a decent chance the leather ball won't last forever. Mark Madsen says the league is forming a committee of players to address ball issues of the future. Looks like Kevin Garnett will be part of it.
- Good insight from Darren Rovell about how Spalding plans to handle the new ball fiasco from a business perspective. In short: they're offering to take bake the once "new" balls from retailers, and encourage stores to put up signs making clear they're not the official NBA deal anymore.
- The Suns are very pleased with the improved performance of
Amare Stoudemiretheir new road jerseys. - Someone lit a fire under the Nets, and I think it might have been Dave D'Alessandro who previewed the entire squad's obituary yesterday: "The one questions that need to be answered at this point are these: Do these guys really care anymore? Is winning really important to them? Do they even get insulted when someone poses such a question any more? Because it's beginning to look as though they're ready to pack it in. It's a shame, but it happens to the best of them. As everyone knows, this team has had a very good run -- nearly a great one -- and sometimes after you run into the wall long enough you say, 'Hell with it.' Maybe the effort it takes to get to the next level is too great for all of them, so they won't even try."
- Speaking of team obituaries, Toronto gets an early one too.
- And the Clippers, according to Kevin from ClipperBlog, might not be going straight to hell, but it'll take something special to get them out of purgatory: "There's game tape to be examined and tea leaves to be read, but the apparent --- if reductive --- truth is that the Clippers are an average basketball team. They have considerable, if underwhelming, assets [good matchup defenders, rebounding] that are counterbalanced by equally measurable failings [shooting the ball from beyond 16 feet]. When you get a game in which the weaknesses are in plain view without the accompaniment of the strengths, then you're screwed."
- Zach Randolph is so dangerous on the move this year. Makes him so dangerous. Watch as Randolph takes the ball off the dribble from the three-point line to win last night's game in Philadelphia. Has a post-microfracture power forward ever been so nimble and coordinated? Also worth noting from the same play: Andre Iguodala's "ole!" help defense on the same play.
- Don't count out the Kings in the Iverson sweepstakes. My bet is it'll be Boston, Sacramento, Charlotte, or maybe Orlando as a dark-horse.
- Is the new-ball-gate David Stern's "jump the shark" moment? A view from a dude who resents David Stern's title.
- Dwyane Wade's about to miss a game to get his wisdom teeth out.
- You know how Mark Cuban's blog has those long, rambling business lectures about intellectual property rights, YouTube, or naked shorts? Today his lecture is about the business of running the Mavericks.
- Are there still any Jazz doubters out there? And consider the slug-fest that will be this year's western conference playoffs. San Antonio, Dallas, Phoenix, Utah, the Lakers (Steve Kerr calls them the best team in the league), Houston... the way it looks now, even the first round will include title contender vs. title contender.
- A lot of what's great about sports but isn't obvious.
- Do NBA players know anything about the NHL teams they share space with? Umm, no. Not really.
- Study: Stadiums are loud enough to damage your hearing. Can that please be the end of piped in crowd noise?
- UPDATE: Randolph Morris won't be a high draft pick, because he has already been through the draft process (when he wasn't nearly as good and went undrafted) and is an NBA free agent who could legally be signed by any team at any time. Crazy, huh?
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