We are Old Volume 1,034: God Shammgod's son is a rising high school basketball star. Also, England Celebrate Becoming the #1 Test Cricket Team in the World with Mase.

NY Post with the story on God Shammgod's son, Shammgod Wells, a senior (!) at LaSalle. What's next, Felipe Lopez, Jr. going as the top pick in next year's draft? When's Majestic Mapp dropping babies?

A highlight from a Wall Street Journal profile of the original G.O.D.D. back in 2007:
"Food is another constant concern. Mr. Shammgod tries to eat all of his meals at Pizza Hut or McDonald's, Taiyuan's only two Western establishments. We ate at McDonald's three times during my 24-hour visit, my first visits to a Chinese Mickey D's. When he can't make it to one of those places, he sticks with rice and fresh fruit. Even Mr. Dixon, who speaks some Chinese and is fairly well assimilated, tries to avoid local cuisine. "They eat too much weird stuff," he says, noting that he follows the lead of a Muslim teammate at team meals because he won't eat dog.
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Of interest only to the MZA, and he may not be all that interested. England whitewashed (brownwashed?) India in cricket, 4-0, to become the #1 ranked side in the world. While it's not all that impressive considering that only 10 countries play test cricket and only 4 or 5 of those play it well, the trophy is even worse. The #1 test team receives a ceremonial Mace. 

A Ma$e trophy would have been much hotter, as I present to you below. Lest you jest, both Frownie and Kanye rank Ma$e as one of the dopest rappers ever.

Armon Gilliam, Rest in P 2 1 smooth G

Peep all the Gs just in this one pic. It's like a 5% meeting.

Iman Mohamed Abdulmajid and Iman Shumpert: Is it bad when your team's draft pick shares the first name with one of the world's most beautiful supermodels?

I don't have an answer, but at least Iman Shumpert is a fun name to say.

Well, thanks for all the memories, "Teflon" Donnie Walsh. What a legacy, what a rebuilding job. By this time next year, with no draft pick in 2012 thanks to the brilliant Tracy McGrady trade, Carmelo's gonna be looking around at Amare limping around on gimpy needs, Iman Shumpert, Landry "Furds" Fields and start begging for a trade to Brooklyn.

I made this two years ago, everyone pictured is still involved with their respective team, and each team is still mediocre. Co-inky-dink?

Haters Want to Hate, Lovers Want to Love: Misinterpreting LeBron James, He's Just Saying What Tupac and Cam'ron Already Told You

Peoples are mad at LeBron because they think he made fun of poor people or was condescending or some shit when he said this after yesterday's loss:

“All the people that were rooting me on to fail, at the end of the day they have to wake up tomorrow and have the same life they had before...They have the same personal problems they had to today. I’m going to continue to live the way I want to live and continue to do the things that I want with me and my family and be happy with that...They can get a few days or a few months or whatever the case may be on being happy that not only myself, but the Miami Heat not accomplishing their goal,” James said. “But they’ll have to get back to the real world at some point.” 


But instead of being mad, peoples should be propping LeBron for speaking some stone cold truth. "The Decision" as a tv show was a shitty tv show, but to get mad at LeBron for choosing Miami or to get mad at LeBron for not being as big of a competitive asshole as Jordan or Kobe is the ultimate hypocrisy; to ask or expect something of someone else that you wouldn't ask or expect of yourself.

Why hate LeBron? For our selfish need to have a "story" when watching games that don't involve our team? That's our problem. LeBron is saying that all that hate, all that negativity directed towards him and the Heat is worthless. Live your life and let LeBron live his. If you watch basketball, watch basketball, but don't invest your emotional well-being in the acts of strangers.

No less than two Goddz are with LeBron here.
Tupac, "Don't You Trust Me?"
Question me about my whereabouts that's so trivial 
Let me live my life and you can live yours
Cam'ron, "Live My Life"
Leave me alone, let me just live my live, ah
Just leave me alone, leave me alone
Let me just live my life ah

Map of Potential UCLA Basketball Home Arenas for 2011-2012 Season

While UCLA's Pauley Pavilion is renovated next season, they could play home games as far off as Bakersfield, Ontario and San Deegz.

Happy Thanksgiving New York Sports Fans! (Who aren't fans of the Yankees)

Gobble-Gobble, Knick, Ranger, Met and Islander fans. No hope, no future.

Teflon Donnie Walsh

 Even the 8 seed may be too lofty a goal for these New York Knicks. The last season the Knicks won a playoff game was in the 2000/2001 season, a first round exit to Toronto. Since then, every other team in the league has won at least one playoff game save the Charlotte Bobcats and the Memphis Grizzlies (at least Charlotte and Memphis have made the playoffs in recent years). Read that last sentence again. yeah.

The New York Post ran a poll Tuesday asking who is to blame for all this. Shockingly, "Teflon" Donnie Walsh only got 5% of the vote! What does he have to do to get raked over the coals for presiding over yet another underachieving team with no future? D'Antoni may indeed be a buffoon whose next coaching stop will be coaching A.I. in the Turkish League, but he didn't assemble this roster. Honestly, the only hope is that the Nets land 'Melo, finally move to Bucktown and usurp the 'Bockers.  Let em fade into Bolivia. 

In What Universe Do the Knicks Have the Assets to Get Carmelo Anthony?; Also, unappealing Spam commercial; and Dreary Looking Public Plaza for Brooklyn Nets' Barclays Center

Take a look at the Knick present and future. Exciting, eh? I think they've got that 8th seed ON LOCK.

Peter Vescey keeps regulating shop with his blistering column on Melo's future in Tuesday's Post.

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The Knicks simply don't have the required assets. The nerve of those Nuggets (and other concerned parties) to exact something of value in return!
"If the Knicks had their first-round draft picks, Carmelo already would be at camp scrimmaging with them," a rival team executive said.

Donnie Walsh's reckless decision last February to turn over the team's 2012 prime real estate (protected 1-5 through 2015; if not conveyed by then to the Rockets, it translates into two seconds) optimistically to amass enough cap space to entice two mega free agents unexpectedly has come back to haunt the Knicks before the team president could finish his first term of office. What was the rush? Rod Thorn waited until late June to accrue more space for the Nets -- the dumping of Yi Jianlian, for instance.
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 This proposed plaza in front of the future Barclays Center in Brooklyn looks like a lovely spot in which to contemplate life's meaningless and nothingness. But hey, as long as it gets built and opens.
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No doubt, Spam's a hard product to advertise, at the very least this commercial shies away from unappealing close-ups. Spam Up!

Stay Classy, Don Sterling, Also The Clippers Just Took Some Ecstasy (Aint no tellin what the side effects will be); Morever, Michael Cage is a Handsome Man; Finally Darius Miles proves Motorhead right in that the Chase is Better Than the Catch.

Not the same ecstasy that Dr. Dre took. Ecstasy is defined as fighting for the 9 place in the crowded west. The Lake Show, the Spurs, the Dunn-der, the Utah Mountain People, The Nuggs, the Blazzze, the Mav-Nots, the Dunns, plus the Hornets, the Rockets and the Grizzz, where exactly to the Clips fit into this picture?

Better view of the new Clippers unis, why is the wordmark so low on the jersey??

 Just let your soul. glow.

The NBA should have created a three-on-three halfcourt league for players like Darius Miles who clearly had skillz that needed to be seen and showcased, just not skillz that worked in the NBA

The Los Angeles Clippers: A Tradition of Excellence (Not!)

I'm no simile sexpert but I don't think of dunks as "fast." As in, man, that Shawn Kemp sure dunked the ball swiftly! Monstrous, sure. Barbaric, yes. Yamtastic, indeed. And please, please, please watch this Shawn Kemp Reebok commercial. I imagine Clippers tix are moving as swiftly as Tree Rollins defending Kemp in this clip.Also, has Griffy-Griff even dunked the ball for the Paper Clips in a game yet?

Don Sterling comes off seeming surprising funny in this surprisingly decent L.A. Times column by hack T.J. Simers. Good reading. We can only dream of having the kind of lucci that let's us pay a men like Ryan Gomes and Randy Foye millions and then say, ""If I really called the shots we wouldn't have signed Gomes and what's the other guy's name?"

And the new Clippers road uni and logo. Still biting the Lakers with that logo, and the usual extraneous modern-NBA piping on the sides.

Deja Boo for Knicks as Isiah Returns

 Amar'e sprained his wrist after holding up his jersey in this photo. 

 Is the move all that terrible? I'm an Isiah apologist, I know. But Isiah's talents have always been in scouting and finding talent, so if his consultancy role is limited to that, then so what?
Still, the move is indicative of a franchise going nowhere as long as Jimmy "Double Shot" Dolan's still in charge. It's like Frownie sez, it all starts at the top. The rot seeps down to the rest of the franchise. Dolan says Isiah was instrumental in recruiting Amar'e Stoudemire. Over whom? Is there any documentation that Amar'e had any other serious offers? Yet another example of a New York franchise bidding against itself for a past his prime player. But wait! Isiah is one of Chris Paul's idols!

Pleez, if it don't make dollars it don't make sense, and romance without finance is a damn nuisance. Big Daddy Kane would do better in charge.

Any news on the 'Gers?

In Case You Wanted the World To Know That Delonte West Had Sex With Lebron James' Mom via a T-Shirt

By KissMyAssLeBron, via the always excellent 64 and Counting.

Will Anyone Diss the Knicks in Print?

As a Met, Knick and St. John's fan, much of my sports media consumption is to find well-written expressions of my miserable fan experience. Yet, throughout the disastrous Donnie Walsh-Mike D'Antoni era, nary a peep of criticism has been heard. (Save the ever-excellent Peter Vecsey, simply the best basketball writer in the biz, bar none).

Everyone, from Vaccarro through Serbz through Lupica through national voices like Bill Simmons, preached patience as the Knicks cleared cap room for a run at LeG.O.D.D.

Yet no one would dare speak of a Plan B. Because there was no Plan B.

Walsh played the role of hero, ridding the team of albatross contracts. But this clearance came at the expense of draft picks, with Walsh's most disastrous trade being the one for Tracy McGrady. T-Mac cost us our 2009 lottery pick, our 2012 pick and Houston can swap their pick for ours in 2011. Three first-round picks for two months of creaky knees and outside shots!!!! Walsh should have been smeared across the front page for that move alone. 

Instead, it's Lebron's fault! He turned down our glitz, our glamour! That jackass chose competing for a title over Cindy Adams!! It sure seems like Cleveland is handling LeBron's decision better than New York, based on newsprint alone.

What a jackass! LeBron can go live it up in South Beach, make his cash, compete for a title, and swoop into NYC on a private jet whenever he feels like partying without paying NY taxes and without playing for a shitty team, just like every other baller in the world does. What a moron!

Finally, however, some are daring to diss the Knicks. Chris Sheridan of ESPN nails the Knick mess hard in a column released over the weekend. Everything in it is the absolute sad truth. Every NY baskets writer should plagiarize this piece over and over, beating us over the head with the futility of the Knicks' future until thousands gather en masse outside the Sbarro's across from the Garden, clutching their Posts, with the tears streaming down their faces only making their $4 slices soggier.

Here's Sheridan's projected Knick roster for this fall:
PG: Toney Douglas, TBD.
SG: Wilson Chandler, Azubuike, Rautins.
SF: Gallinari, Bill Walker, Landry Fields.
PF: Stoudemire, Randolph.
C: Turiaf, Curry, Jerome Jordan.

The Knick ceiling for this season is, what, the 7th seed? Boston, Orlando, Miami, Chicago and Atlanta are locks to finish above them. Charlotte and Milwaukee are better, I say. Leaving us to duke it out with the improved Wizz, the Sixers, the Raptors and Nets for the 8th seed. This is the payoff for two years of nothingness? This, in a league where it is laughably easy to make the playoffs. Did we need Walsh to get us in position for the 8th seed? Yahoo auto-draft the past 2 years could have assembled an 8th seed roster.

Walsh, now out to save his neck, literally, talks about all the cap space available in 2011 and 2012. Why stop there?? How much can we clear for the big free-agent class of 2022? Who's in it? Who cares! We'll have cap room! The Knicks don't have the luxury of just throwing money at players. As LeBron has shown, and as Kobe showed in his free agent year, the best of the best want the money AND a chance to win. 1 out of 2 won't cut it.

Name one NBA Champ that did not have a home-drafted star. No NBA champ is built on free agents alone. The Heat were only able to sign LeBron and Bosh because they had Wade, who they drafted. The Celtics drafted Rondo and Pierce and were able to trade for KG because they had drafted a player, Al Jefferson, whom other teams wanted. The Spurs drafted Duncan, Manu, Tony Longoria and David Robinson. The Pistons drafted Tayshaun and made savvy trades for Rip, Ben Wallace and Rashweed. The Lakers made a draft-day trade for Kobe, traded for Gasol and wisely turned their one big free agent signing into Lamar.

Bar a few blips like Mark "The Helicopter" Jackson and Rod "Smoofy Suave" Strickland, the Knicks have had a mediocre draft record since the "gift" of Patrick Ewing. They've never done what every other team has done to get to the top. Bottom out completely and rebuild through the draft. The C's did it. The Spurs did it. The Heat did it. The 'Stones did it. The Cavs did it. The Magic did it. The Bulls did it. Everyone's doing it, so why can't we?

From day one, Donnie Walsh's plan should have been to trade for as many draft picks as possible while fielding a young team that would grow but also finish amongst the bottom to angle for a top-3 pick. Instead we get the same free-agent farce that will restrict the Knicks for well into the next decade. 'Sheep with cell phones," where are you when we need you Mark Kriegel?

The 40/40 Club is Soulless and Hollow Just Like Jay-Z; Why LeBron Should Not Come to New York

 The above ad was from Monday's Daily News (not to be confused with L.A.'s own sominex-on-wax which somehow snatched the dailynews.com web handle away from Morty Zucks).

I didn't realize International Hov took his interior design inspiration from Bounce Deuce. The ESPNZone is dead, long live the ESPNZone!

Does this picture evoke the glamour that LeG.O.D.D. is supposed to experience by coming to the Knicks or Nets? Do they not have a B.J.'s Pizza in Bath?

Frownie's already been all over Stupid Time and made the more-than-convincing case for Cleveland while eviscerating all the media junk out there. Frownie's most convincing argument is that a LeBron title won right for E.199 and Eternal would be monumentally more meaningful than one won for Madison Avenue.

Not all titles are created equal. Wade's won one in Miami which will be remembered for shady foul calls and not much else. Those short-suffering Miami fans celebrated and quickly reverted their attention back to Techno Music, cuban coffee and Tha U (can you blame them, tho?)

Years ago, driving back to Manhattan after some sticks, I stopped at the Mobil station that's on the Grand Central Parkway. Ron Artest was filling up his giant Escalade at the pump two over from me. I yelled out, "You gotta come to the Knicks!" He replied with a wry, knowing smile, "I know man, I know."

Ron-Ron yearned to go home and play for his team. Most players never get that chance to do that AND make the most money. Then again, imagine how fucking cool it would be to hang at the 40/40??

Lakers Celtics A Photographic Journey Through Forgotten Awesomeness

Ron Artest Makes Craig Saeger Rep for Q Boro Mad Thoro

 From a bricked three to the game-winning put-back after an athletic sunning of Jason "My Jersey Number is As Uninspired as My Nickname" Richardson, Ron "The Hardest" Artest is E-Z to love.

After the game Craig Saeger tried getting all serious downer talk about RonRon's failed three with a full 24 to dribble out.

Artest: "Say Queensbridge."
Saeger (sheepishly): "Queensbridge."

Artest out.

Up there with Manny receiving his 2004 World Series MVP.
“I love you, I love you."

Also, "Thunder" Dan Majerle is a Dunns assistant coach.

Knicks Beat Celtics to Temporarily Avoid Third Straight 50-Loss Season; and More Gross Lawyer Vanity Plates

 Entertaining game at the Garden last nite, as the Knicks showed a some fluidity and some force in dropping the Celts 104-101. At 28-49, yet another Knick season finishes in abject ruins. WFAN.com put together a nice "lost decade" team, your starting five is Starbury, Allan "Smiles" Houston, Q, D-Lee and Eddy "Touch it" Curry. This past season may top them all for worthlessness. No draft pick to look forward too. The only player to take his game to a high level was David Lee, who may well leave this summer. The disastrous trade for Tracy McGrady, now publicly proclaiming that LeG.O.D.D. will not be coming to New York. Thanks for the memories Tracy, and thanks for costing us another draft pick that we can't afford to lose. And of course, Mike D'Antoni's surreal rotation policy. Dumps Nate Robinson, only to discover that Toney Douglas is the exact same player but not as good. Proclaims Bill Walker as the second coming. Says Eddy Curry is back and ready to ball. Proclaims Sergio Rodriguez as the Third Coming. Buries Jordan Hill. Proclaims Eddie House as the Fourth Coming. But man, is he good answering questions from the press! And really, that's the only diff-diff between the Walsh/D'Antonz regime and the Isiah and Layden regimes that proceeded them. Good P.R.
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California is full of shitty vanity plates. The budget could be balanced on increased fees for asshole vanity plates. Here's one I spotted in Playa Vista. A shitty Benzo SUV, what a winner. I guess "Negoshi8" was taken.

Nets Defeat Spurs to Avoid Tying All-Time NBA Loss Record Set by the Sixers

13,000 (announced) maniacs sat in the IZOD Center and watched the Nets down the Spurs for their 10th win of the year with which the team avoided becoming the losingest team in NBA history. What a proper year it's been for the Nets, no better way to say goodbye to the Brendan Byrne/Continental Airlines/Izod Arena/Center.

Long will Coups, Biz, Boomz, and myself remember traffic-clogged treks through the Lincoln Tunnel, frigid sprints through the parking lot, tyrannical ushers enforcing rules of decorum in a half-filled arena, Sir-Slam-A-Lot, One Horse Open Tamar Slay, the very-well designed (sincerely) concourse and seating bowl (one stair case goes up and one stair case goes down versus the MSG 12 escalator Mt. Everest climb and claustrophobic hallways that seem to narrow and shorten in height, reminiscent of the ones Springfield builds for Ned Flanders).

And of course, the retired banners for Bruce Springsteen and Beppo the Clown.