Drew Gooden was neither waived nor traded this week. Therefore, for all that fuss about his ‘novel’ contract, nothing actually happened with it. Now, he’s just a plain old expiring. – Curtis Borchardt Borchardt left Spain for the French league this summer, but he did so because the team he joined – ASVEL Villeurbanne – are a EuroLeague team this season. Unfortunately, the inevitable happened; after only one EuroLeague game and four French league games, Borchardt got injured. He broke his hand and will miss the remainder of the regular season. In the one EuroLeague game, Borchardt totalled 20 points, 7 rebounds, 2 assists and 2 blocks. That’s good. But he also gets injured every year without fail. And that’s not good. – Ruben Boumtje Boumtje Boumtje Boumtje Boumtje Boumtje is also a EuroLeague centre this year, playing his second consecutive season with EWE Baskets Oldenburg. In the German league he’s averaging 6.6 points, 5.1 rebounds, 2.6 fouls and 1.4 blocks in 21 minutes per game, but he’s struggling in the higher standard EuroLeague, averaging only 4.6 points, 3.4 rebounds and 3.0 fouls in 17 minutes per game. Since EWE Oldenburg are a Bundesliga team, let’s play Count The Germans. Oldenburg employ a nine-man rotation, and, as is often the case, there’s only one German in it; backup swingman Daniel Hain. The rest is made of Boom Boom, four Americans, two Serbians and a Croatian. This is pretty much the case for the whole league. I am increasingly convinced that the Germans should tighten up their import regulations somewhat. – Giannis Bourousis Bourousis averages 10.3 points, 5.9 rebounds, 1.4 assists, 0.6 blocks and 0.8 steals per game in 20 minutes per game in the Greek league, alongside 9.6 points, 4.6 rebounds, 0.8 assists, 0.6 blocks and 0.7 […]
The 2003 NBA All-Star Game was an embarrassment. If you watched it, you cucked Michael Jordan. You are guilty by association. By watching it, I too cucked Michael Jordan. And I didn’t enjoy it one bit. The whole event was a prolonged Michael Jordan love-in. As it was to be Jordan’s last ever All-Star game, in his final season before his third and only retirement, we were treated to the sight of his balls being polished mercilessly by everyone in the game, around the game, and Mariah Carey. Everything Michael did throughout history – excluding the previous 18 months of course – was to be glorified and indulged one more time to such a lavish and excessive degree that, if any of us had forgotten how scarily good and frighteningly popular he was, we would never do so again. They had documentaries, they had interviews, they had montages, they had songs, they had a dress represented two of his uniforms on….they had everything. And, you know, fine. He’s the legend and it’s his final year, for real this time. Unfortunately, there was a slight problem. Jordan wasn’t voted in as a starter by the fans. And it’s hard to be the most important player on the floor when five other people get there first. Never mind, though. Into the confusion stepped Allen Iverson. Voted in as one of the starting guards ahead of Jordan, Iverson magnanimously volunteered to give up his starting spot for Jordan, so that he may start the game and take the first 40 shots or so. Tracy McGrady, one of the starting forwards, made an identical gesture a few days later, once again showing sympathy-inducing deference to an older man’s inferior play. However, the other starting guard, Vince Carter, did not make the same offer, even […]
