We live in such a wacky world that it really takes something on the outer fringe to move the brain of NBAObsessed and this is such a thing. How in the world can this goofball pretend to know what Tiger Woods is going through?

Maybe even a better question to ask in these strange circumstances deals with whether Tiger Woods would desire to have Ron Artest as his ally? This is the man that ran up into the stands and beat up a fan in the malice in the palace against the Detroit Pistons. This is the same man that then refused any psychological counseling after that affair even though the NBA recommended it. This is a man that is known as a disruptive force.

Classic members of the malice at the Palace - Ron Artest and Stephen Jackson

Ron Artest as always lived by Nike’s motto to ‘Just do it!’Tiger has to be cringing at the thought of Ron Artest feeling he can empathize with him. What is next, Charles Barkley?

Artest, of course, has become famous for his questionable decisions, both on and off the court. He was suspended during the 2004-05 season for attacking a Pistons fan, and just recently told The Sporting News magazine that he sipped Hennessey during games while with the Bulls.

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Hey, don’t get me wrong, as Vegas now takes bets on which major sponsor will next drop Tiger Woods and his wife the Swedish model takes up advertising for Puma, Tiger Woods will not be cast as the good guy, but then Ron Artest is often cast as a crazed individual with some deep seated issues. Whether valid criticism or not, Tiger may be wishing it was Charles Barkley.

Puma? They still make puma shoes?

Image: Zuma Press

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It surprises me that we are even commenting on LeBron when it comes to playing Kevin Durant and the Oklahoma City Thunder. The Thunder, a rare team name without the letter “S”, has never really been a threat to beat anyone, but lo and behold they have a winning record.

The NBA is really good at marketing individuals instead of teams, a concept they started back in the Bird vs. Magic era, an era that saved the NBA. So a game with the Thunder becomes a LeBron vs. Kevin Durant game and to many fans it is nothing more than that at this stage of the season. It is hard for most fans, NBAObsessed included to get all caught up in wins and losses at this point of the season. Thunder fans are just happy at this point to be winning.

LeBron was able to put up 44 on the Thunder and you have to wonder how he does it? Not that he is not capable of exploding for 44 points at any given moment, but how does LeBron perform at such a high level for night after night? That is the reason that so many teams covet the future contract of LeBron.

LeBron James brings it every night

An example of how good LeBron James came be came in with the Cavaliers behind late in the third quarter.

The Thunder were up 75-68 with a minute and half left in the third quarter before James scored seven straight points to tie it. He answered Durant’s free throw with a 26-foot 3-pointer that gave the Cavs the lead heading into the fourth.

“It’s tough to guard a guy who’s that quick, that strong, that’s making shots that deep,” Green said. “He’s one of the top players in the NBA. He turned it on when his team needed it the most.”

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You have to wonder and NBAObsessed does, where will LeBron end up when he goes free agent? It will surely change the future prospects of the team that gets him.

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The Minnesota Timberwolves have never been very good except maybe the year they went into the playoffs with Kevin Garnett, Latrell Sprewell, and Sam Casell. How that team had enough basketballs to shoot is still a mystery to many fans, but they did go to the Western Conference finals to be eliminated by the Lakers after Casell went down with a back injury. The TWolves are banking on Kurt Rambis to bring a little of that Laker magic to Minnesota.

How about Kurt Rambis?

Rambis is doing a great job at Minnesota, but will it ever show up in the win loss column? Maybe not. He needs more experienced players that have been there. His best player is Al Jefferson, the infamous player traded from the Celtics for Kevin Garnett. Beyond that he has Jonny Flynn, Corey Brewer, Kevin Love, and Ryan Gomes. The rest of the team is just unknowns, except for recent NCAA champion Wayne Ellington who has failed to score in double figures all season.

Coach Kurt Rambis greets old pal Kobe Bryant

Still Kurt presses on coaching the Triangle offense he learned as a Laker.

Rambis, a former Lakers player who was a Jackson assistant the previous five seasons, received his 2008-09 championship ring before the game — but that’s where the Lakers’ hospitality ended.

The Lakers found themselves in a similar position as the Raptors early, clinging to a 56-54 lead at halftime. Rambis is a Jackson disciple who is trying to teach his team the triangle offense, which Jackson said has its advantages because it’s difficult to coach against. That might be true for other teams, but certainly not for Jackson, who has won 10 NBA championships utilizing the scheme.

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So how can a team be 3 – 20 and there is nothing but flattering things to say about the coach? That is not a complicated question really, because Kurt has built the TWolves in his image. They play hard, they don’t give up and they play the Triangle offense which gives teams fits if they don’t see it very often.

Kurt will most likely never be real successful at Minnesota due to the fact they have a history of not getting enough quality players, but he will be a successful coach somewhere before his basketball career is over.

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The Los Angeles Lakers continue to dominate the Western Conference and stretched their winning record to an unbelievable 18 – 3 putting them a full 3 games ahead of the global cooling Phoenix Suns. The latest victim for the Lakers is coached by Laker Alum and new coach Kurt Rambis. Kurt is remembered by Laker fans for his hustle and dirty work to put the glue in the old Lakers. Still it would take more than hustle and glue for the Minnesota Timberwolves to take down the Lakers.

Los Angeles Lakers 104 Minnesota Timberwolves 92

And now for some game stats.

Kobe Bryant led the Lakers with 20 points despite playing the final three quarters with a fractured right index finger. He made 8 of 18 shots and also had five rebounds and five assists in 33 minutes, guiding the Lakers to their 18th victory in 21 games.

Pau Gasol had 17 points and 20 rebounds, and Ron Artest added 16 points.

Al Jefferson led Minnesota with 24 points and 13 rebounds. Kevin Love, a former UCLA standout, added seven points and a team-leading 19 rebounds as the Timberwolves lost for the 20th time in Rambis’ first 23 games as their new coach.

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Kobe Bryant with broken finger

In typical Kobe Bryant fashion, he shrugged off the broken finger and made 3 out of 8 shots after the finger was splinted and wrapped. Seem too easy, you try and just hold onto a drink of water after breaking your finger. Not so easy, is it?

Kobe Bryant can play through injuries

The Lakers start on an extended road trip now and should be thoroughly tested along the way. Luckily for them it starts out kind of easy with games at Utah, Chicago, Milwaukee, New Jersey, Detroit, and Oklahoma City. The Utah game should be tough, but after that the Lakers should be favored in the rest of the games.

Photo source Newscom

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Time to look at the Central Division of the NBA and see what we can divine for the future prospects of teams and players.

LeBron James

Might as well start with LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers. Shaq is the 4th leading rebounder and 3 leading scorer in the Cavaliers and not playing a heck of a lot of minutes. Of course, Shaq will quietly tell you that he is saving himself for the playoffs. Cleveland does lead the Central Division, but there is not much competition in the Division and you would have to favor Orlando or Boston in the Eastern Conference right now.

Milwaukee lives in second place and the fans are consumed with the legend in the making of Brandon Jennings the smoking hot rookie. The problem with that is that rookies don’t win you titles, unless they go by the name of Magic Johnson.

Get this Milwaukee has lost 8 out of their last 10 games. The Detroit Pistons have lost 7 out of their last 10 games. The Chicago Bulls have lost 8 out of their last 10 games. Not to be out done the Indiana Pacers have lost 9 out of their last 10 games.

You could either say the Bucks are a balanced team or they are so bad that you could not tell me which players are their starting 5 and which players are the backup 5.

The Pistons are depending on a new lineup of youth tied together with oldsters Ben Wallace and Chucky Atkins.

Derrick Rose is a bright spot on an otherwise lusterless roster for the Chicago Bulls.

In spite of an unknown superstar called Danny Granger, we don’t even want to discuss the Pacers and their victory total of 6.

Can Shaq be saving himself for the playoffs?

So that leaves us only with the Cavaliers. Can Shaq help LeBron win a NBA title?

If you took one look at O’Neal’s stats without having seen the Cavs play, it would seem like he’s not having a good season. In 14 games — he missed six games with a shoulder strain — O’Neal is averaging a career-low 10.9 points on career-low 52 percent shooting, a career-low 6.6 rebounds in a career-low 23.4 minutes.

Shaquille O’Neal has been limited by injury and the Cavaliers’ depth at the center position. But his performance against Orlando’s Dwight Howard in an early-season victory in Florida indicates that his biggest contributions are likely to come in the postseason.

Several different publications have quoted scouts or executives saying that O’Neal clogs the lane and prevents penetrators like Mo Williams and James from getting to the basket and makes it impossible to space the floor properly. The other criticism is O’Neal is a defensive liability.
All of these statements, frankly, have proven not to be true so far.

O’Neal does help clog the lane, for the opposition. With O’Neal, the Cavs have three different center options with Anderson Varejao and Zydrunas Ilgauskas. This allows for a crisp rotation depending on the opponent and makes sure the Cavs have size in the game at all times.
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Josh Howard has been struggling with a bad ankle for a long time and after a brief attempt at a comeback earlier in the year, decided to sit out until it just felt right and that healing time made all the difference in a big victory by the Dallas Mavericks over the cooling Suns.

Dallas Mavericks 102 Phoenix Suns 101

You can tell the Suns are cooling due to a 5 – 5 record in the last 10 games. Dallas is barely better at 6 – 4, but the Mavs do not have the Lakers to contend with in their Division like the Suns do. The Mavs and Suns are both a respectable 15 – 7 on the year, but the Suns trail the 16 – 3 Lakers in the Pacific Division. The Mavs lead the much easier Southwest Division which is populated with the under achieving Rockets, Spurs, and Hornets, as well as the almost worthless but now minus Allen Iverson Grizzlies.

The Phoenix Suns may in the end be much luckier because after the Lakers the Pacific division is populated with the bottom dwellers of the Kings, Clippers, and Warriors. Not much competition there.

Dirk Nowitzki celebrated Josh Howard's return with 33 points

So just what did Josh Howard do to help the Mavericks?

Howard was greeted with a lively ovation when he went into the game midway through the first quarter. It took a while to get his feet under him, but he scored 16 points in 15 second-half minutes when the rest of the Mavericks were struggling.

That set up Terry to make four clutch free throws in the last 12.3 seconds, then miss one intentionally, to offset Steve Nash’s remarkable 3-point shooting down the stretch and save the win.

It was Howard’s return that had the locker room buzzing afterward. He hit six of 11 shots in the second half and looked much better than he did a month ago, when his first try at a return was aborted after three games.

“It’s night and day,” said Jason Kidd. “He looks a lot more comfortable and relaxed. To be away that long, then to come back and play like this, it’s pretty impressive.”
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Dallas plans to be careful with Josh’s ankle and he may miss a few of the upcoming games if it remains tender.

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The lights were dim and the crowd was wild. It was a fantastic NBA moment and a fantastic time to be a Philadelphia 76er fan. In spite of losing and having no future, for just one small moment, you had it all. Allen Iverson’s name went over the loudspeaker and the fans roared their approval.

Ahh, it reminds me of my Detroit Lions on draft day. All things are possible, but few things are probable.

Can Allen Iverson lead the 76ers to victory in the NBA? Not tonight and most likely not on many nights. We are still waiting to see if the tank is full or half empty. Age is always a factor in sports, well, except for Brett Favre, but didn’t he retire?

Allen felt at home and seemed for a while to bring out the best in a star free lineup, until they eventually wore down and lost to that all time great team the Bobcats.

Philadelphia 76ers 83 Charlotte Bobcats 93

The NBA is thankful as one of its former proud franchises now has a legitimate fan draw. How powerful a celebrity is Allen Iverson?

Donovan McNabb, Brian Westbrook, Leonard Weaver, LeSean McCoy, and Todd Herremans were courtside. So was boxer Bernard Hopkins. Reporters from Italy, Japan, China, and Yahoo overflowed the press tables.

A day after watching Atlanta make its peace with fallen hero Michael Vick, it was just plain cool to witness Iverson running out to midcourt and kissing the Sixers logo after being introduced. Say this about him: Iverson knows how to create an unforgettable moment.

“It was a million percent the best,” Iverson said. “I had chill bumps running all through my body the whole game. It just felt good to be back. . . . I feel like the fans here appreciate me. They appreciate my effort and how I come to play every night. That’s all you want as a basketball player. That was the best part of the night, hearing these people’s voices all over again. It’s kind of bittersweet, because I wanted to win so bad regardless of whether I played well or not.”
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Ok, so his math is not so good. The 76ers certainly do not pay Allen Iverson to do mathematics. What do the 76ers pay him for anyway? The Electricity!

Allen Iverson showed his loyalty to the Pistons by doing one hand pushups while dribbling a basketball

NBAObsessed will always be an Allen Iverson fan come heck or high water, even though he put the final nails in my Pistons coffin last year, it did not matter, because it was Allen Iverson the little guy that always plays big.

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Greg Oden is down and out for the rest of the season, a season in which Greg Oden had seemingly found himself and was playing the best of his NBA career. Greg Oden has been cursed by injuries since entering the NBA and once again the curse strikes.

It appears as if the whole Blazer organization is feeling the effects of the curse right now. Coach Nate McMillan has ruptured his Achilles tendon, which is minor when compared to the fact that his assistant Coach, Maurice Lucas, has a return of his bladder cancer, which is on par with the fact that owner Paul Allen of Microsoft fame has told everyone that he is involved with a fight with cancer.

NBAObsessed is a little bit sensitive to the cancer battles having recently fought off Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma.

The entire Blazers organization is concerned about Greg’s welfare.

At Rebound, Oden still had his mind on the game. Blazers general manager Kevin Pritchard, who was with Oden throughout the ordeal, said Oden continually urged Pritchard to check the score of the game on his Blackberry. Tests confirmed the worst by halftime and Oden returned to the locker room to be with his teammates, urging them to “keep fighting.”

Pritchard said the injury was like a “punch to the gut.”

“The challenging part for me is sometimes life’s not fair, you know?” Pritchard said. “I’ve seen this kid work his tail off. He’s put in the work. He’s done absolutely everything we’ve ever asked him to do and more. And he’s going to go through that again, and I know that’s challenging for him.”

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Greg Oden finds himself in an all too familiar position

Greg Oden missed his rookie season with the dreaded micro fracture surgery. In his sophomore NBA season Oden missed 15 games after the All Star break with a chip in his knee cap. Now this year after getting off to a great start he is once again out for the year.

NBAObsessed talked about Greg’s improvement before.
—–Greg Oden – Blazer Kiddy Corp part I—-

The scary part is that a writer from ESPN wrote how Greg Oden’s gate is all wrong and reminded him of other centers that never could get past the injury bug. Could that be what is happening or is it just the Curse of the Blazers?
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Just when we all thought it was impossible, the New Jersey Nets gave us a big surprise and found a team in the NBA, well, barely in the NBA, that they could beat and they went out and beat them.

New Jersey Nets 97 Charlotte Bobcats 91

No, this is not a lie, it actually happened in real time. Kiki Vandeweghe applied some personal philosophy and the Nets took it to an extreme.

Adhering to interim coach Kiki Vandeweghe’s call to relax, have fun and block thoughts of the 0-18 worst start in NBA history, the Nets looked like a team enjoying a fresh start as they hustled, dove, defended, responded after taking some gut punches and, above all, won.

They turned the Charlotte Bobcats into that squad with a team-oriented 97-91 victory that featured spectacular individual efforts by Courtney Lee, Brook Lopez and Devin Harris to make Vandeweghe a winner in his coaching debut.

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Kiki Vandeweghe now stands undefeated as the Nets coach, although he had better not get used to that feeling because he will feel a whole lot of the opposite.

The key comment came from Josh Boone who said, “It is about time”. That about sums it up for one of the worst franchises in the NBA in years. Kiki Vandeweghe has his hands full. Some of your stars are everyday names like Brook Lopez and Courtney Lee and …what, those aren’t everyday names in the NBA? My bad.

Devin Harris learned some secret moves from Shaolin priests

There was lots of talk about playing with emotion and playing together and all that other stuff that seems to work when you win and means very little when you lose.

The silver lining in all of this, if one is needed when you break an eighteen game losing streak, is that fact that the 5 – 15 Knicks are the Nets next opponents. Look out Knicks, the Nets are streaking!

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Does Kobe Bryant live under a lucky star? Well, that is not my theory or at least not all of my theory, but we will get to that in a moment.

Is this a case of good things happen to good people? One thinks not, but that might be a part of it anyway.

Los Angeles Lakers 108 Miami Heat 107

So what happened anyway? The Lakers were behind the Heat in a Kobe vs. Dwyane Wade duel and the score was 107 – 105, when Kobe got the ball and slipped and had to throw up the last second shot. He started double teamed on one side of the court and wound his way towards the middle to take a twisting fading high arcing jumper over his defender. That defender was Dwyane Wade.

“When I released the ball, I thought, ‘No (bleeping) way,’” Bryant said. “I didn’t think the ball was going in. It felt good, but I didn’t think I was going to make that shot. – I liked my chances if I had squared up. I wanted to, but I slipped, I was doubled and all I could do what shoot a runner. I just couldn’t believe that ball might go in.”

Bryant scored 17 points in the fourth quarter, besting Wade, who had 12.

“To win that ballgame you have to be lucky, and we were tonight,” Lakers coach Phil Jackson said after the team improved its league-leading record to 15-3.

“I thought he had really good balance and he was setting up really well. What do you want me to say about it?” Jackson joked when asked about Bryant’s winning shot, the last of his team-leading 33 points on 12-for-25 shooting.

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You can see the shot more than once in this YouTube video. Warning, the sound is kind of muffled.

If you are Kobe, it isn’t just good luck it is good probabilities when he puts up a shot late in the game with the game on the line. That shot has been practiced over and over in practice and attempted many times in other games. Maybe the shot was not exactly like this one, but it was the same enough to allow his mind to calmly put the shot together and release it. Now the fact that it banked in was a bit of luck, but there have been others that did not go in that were great shots but just a little bit off.

Good things for good people, not exactly, but more like good things for prepared people that keep persisting in their efforts and have great talent.

The Lakers win again and Kobe Bryant is the star again, even if he was a bit lucky.

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