And now for the untold story of what happened and what may happen to the New York Knicks. It appears that the New York Knicks in their infinite wisdom, oops, make that finite wisdom, passed on Brandon Jennings after several workouts, even though they could see the obvious talent of a young point guard that could shoot from the outside.

Recently NBAObsessed wrote about the 55 point effort by Brandon Jennings.

The Knicks wasted their pick on Jordan Hill, who in spite of the Jordan in his name, is spending most of his time on the bench instead of playing on the court.

These are the same Knicks that have tried to get rid of every player on their team in order to clear salary cap for the great LeBron sweepstakes. Now personally NBAObsessed would love to see LeBron playing for the Knicks, because then he would not be torturing the division where my favorite team, the Detroit Pistons, happen to reside.

What has happened to the once proud New York Knicks franchise? You would think the Garden would be a fabulous place to show off the talents of LeBron James and maybe, just maybe, having a young hot guard like Brandon Jennings would have went a long ways in getting James.

Allen Iverson courted by the Knicks

Allen Iverson

So what are the Knicks attempting to do? They are going to plan B or more like plan D or E and attempting to pick up Allen Iverson. But he is a Grizzlie you say?

Now the Knicks are considering signing Allen Iverson after he cleared waivers on Thursday. It’s the surest sign of desperation in the NBA. There’s nothing left with Iverson, just fading hype and a sure-bet soap opera to come.

Yet, that’s what Donnie Walsh’s front office has become – potentially picking through the Memphis Grizzlies’ scrap heap in search of a pulse of excitement to fool the fans.

So this is how you show LeBron you’re a viable destination? This is how you demonstrate you have the shrewd basketball minds capable of building a winner around him?

Contemplating Allen Iverson?

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NBAObsessed recently wrote about the troubles of Allen Iverson.

New York “the city” and New York “the team that has such importance to the NBA” has so many intangibles to be used to recruit LeBron James, but New York “the team” seems to be working to drive LeBron away.
Image: Zuma Press

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Now it is time to play who makes more in the NBA as provided by Hoopsworld. The answers will be at the bottom of the blog.

Are you ready?

A) Who makes more Boston Celtics… Ray Allen, Paul Pierce, or Kevin Garnett?

B) Who makes more Cleveland Cavaliers… LeBron James, Shaquille O’Neil, or Mo Williams?

C) Who makes more Denver Nuggets… Carmelo Anthony, Chauncey Billups, or Kenyon Martin?

D) Who makes more Los Angeles Lakers… Kobe Bryant, Pau Gasol, or Ron Artest?

E) Who makes more New Orleans Hornets… Chris Paul, Emeka Okafor, or Peja Stojakovic?

F) Who makes more San Antonio Spurs… Tim Duncan, Tony Parker, or Richard Jefferson?

G) Who makes more Dallas Mavericks… Jason Kidd, Josh Howard, or Dirk Nowitzki?

H) Who makes more Orlando Magic… Dwight Howard, Rashard Lewis, or Vince Carter?

I) Who makes more Miami Heat… Dwyane Wade, Michael Beasley, or Jermaine O’Neal?

J) Who makes more Detroit Pistons… Ben Gordon, Charlie Villenueva, or Rip Hamilton?

Tim Duncan makes a lot of cash!

Answers from Hoopsworld:
A) Paul Pierce $19,795,712.
B) Shaquille O’Neal $21,000,000.
C) Kenyon Martin $15,613,636.
D) Kobe Bryant $23,034,375.
E) Peja Stojakovic $13,392,000.
F) Tim Duncan $22,183,220.
G) Dirk Nowitzki $19,795,714.
H) Rashard Lewis $18,010,791.
I) Jermaine O’Neal $23,016,000.
J) Rip Hamilton $11,625,000.

Photo source Newscom

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This is it for all the marbles, the opener for Boston and Cleveland and a matchup that may well decide the Eastern Conference Championship. Not that this particular game will settle anything except, the losing team will not go undefeated. Still the NBA, in its usual sharp marketing way, decided to match the two super powers up right away.

Many NBA fans do not even pay attention until the NFL has reached playoff time in January making it difficult if not impossible to pull in a full contingent of fans this soon in the season, let alone to get those same fans to even care to any degree.

LeBron is on a roll with 4 minutes to go he already has 31 points. Shaq is checking in with 10 points and 7 boards, but it is not enough as the 3 amigos are all in double figures for scoring and Boston leads 83 – 79.

The key for Boston this year may well be the play of rabbit fast Rajon Rondo and how well he can direct the team and still provide scoring when any of the big 3 has an off night.

Rajon Rondo is one of the Celtic keys

The key to Cleveland winning may well be how well Shaq meshes into the offensive schemes of Cleveland and whether he can draw double teams to take any pressure off of LeBron.

Two minutes left Boston 87 – 82.

The game is being played in Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland, although lately they have not been making a lot of loans.

Final 95 – 89

LeBron 38 points 8 assists 4 rebounds. Shaq 10 and 10. Pierce 23 and 11. Rondo 16 points.
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Just looking up at the title of this post cracks me up, because my life is immersed in acronyms and that title is nothing by acronyms. How did we survive without acronyms?

Would you like the title to say Most Valuable Player for the National Basketball Association picked by the Entertainment and Sports Programming Network? No, you like acronyms, just like NBAObsessed. By the way, while looking up what the P stood for, did you realize that ESPN is owned by ABC, which in turn is owned by Walt Disney and partially by the Hearst Corporation? Oh, and ESPN stands for ESPN now, it was officially changed.

We are getting way off the track, not that NBAObsessed has any difficulty getting back on track. Where were we…?
Oh, yeah, ESPN put together their top 20 analysts and picked their favorite for the MVP award for the coming season. The winner of that poll is not a big surprise. It is, of course, LeBron James, although NBAObsessed is worried about the Shaq clogging up the middle for James preventing him an easy lane to the hoop.

Where is Kobe in the MVP voting?

The big surprise in the poll was that Kobe only had 2 votes. Two lousy stinking votes was only 1 more than ‘Never Play D’ Carmelo Anthony. You would think the vote would be a lot closer. LeBron had 12 votes and even Dwight Howard had 3 votes.

Look for Kobe Bryant to take this as a personal challenge!
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Stephon Marbury, the man that had the Starbury shoes, has decided to take off the shoes for one year and just sit. Well, he is going to do more than sit, because he plans to build up his empire even more. So as a business decision, he will not take the 1.2 million to go back and play for the Boston Celtics.

Business decision as in no other team really wanted a selfish old point guard.

Hey, you are picking on one of my all time favorite players, ranking right up there with Adrian Dantley, not only in talent, but in court selfishness. Stephon once said in an article in Sports Illustrated, back when we all read magazines, that he only played for the money. That is the guy for my team all right.

Adrian Dantley often would take the rock and ask you to just watch as he went 1 on 5 and scored or got fouled. It was amazing, but after a while all your team could do was stand around.

Stephon Marbury is always good for a quote or two and had this to say about the Knicks, where bad blood still exists.

“I’m just talking as a fan and New Yorker who grew up loving the Knicks: Why would I give you my money to watch them?” Marbury said, according to the Post. “This is atrocious. Guys coming down court, just raising up 3-pointers from anywhere. The coaching is horrible. What kind of coaching is this?”

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LeBron James will not sign with the Knicks

Oh, and the LeBron opinion had to do with the Knicks as well. Stephon claims that there is no way that LeBron is going to sign with the Knicks. They are in a rebuilding phase, so why would he sign with them?

Photo source Newscom

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Hey, how about LeBron James and Braylon Edwards? LeBron claims that Braylon hit a friend of his that weighed about 130 pounds.

Edwards punched entertainment promoter Edward Givens about 2:30 a.m. outside the View Ultralounge & Nightclub on Prospect Avenue, witnesses said.

James learned about the incident at 7 a.m. and later criticized Edwards’ actions. The Cavs superstar called Givens his friend and said it is unfortunate the incident occurred.

“I’ve never crossed paths with Braylon before but it seems like there is a little jealously going on with Braylon and me and my friends,” James said. “I have no idea why. I’ve never said anything to Braylon at all. For him to do that I think is very childish. My friend is 130 pounds. Seriously, it is like hitting one of my kids or something like that. It doesn’t make sense, but the right people will take care of it.”
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LeBron and Shaq

Will they become one of the all time sports duos? Shaq, unfortunately, is getting up in years, so he won’t present the vintage Shaq of the Shaq and Kobe days.

Part of me wants to dismiss the whole Shaq with LeBron leads to a NBA title thing, because Shaq is old or Shaq will plug the middle or Shaq will this or that, but the other part of me has to wonder about how close Shaq has come to winning it all without any players around him at all.

The Celtics have a super team this year and will be hard to get past, unless Kevin Garnett gets hurt again. The Lakers or Spurs will be waiting in the finals and both teams have the size to compete with Shaq, especially and old Shaq.

Check out this video of Shaq and LeBron clowning around.

Have you heard about the corn maze with a LeBron dunking carved out of the field?

The farming powers that be in Milford Center, Ohio, at the LIttle Darby Creek farm in the middle of the state, about 30 minutes from Columbus, have outdone themselves with their depiction of James dunking a basketball. It’s all in the cutting edges of a cornfield on a family’s 125-acre farm.
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Where is my corn maze carving?

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In case you have been living in a cave all week, the richest man in Russia just dumped 700 million dollars into the New Jersey Nets. His name is Mikhail Prokhorov and he stands at the same eye level as LeBron James only he is much much richer.

For those of you that root for LeBron to stay in Cleveland, it is time to wake up and smell the money. This guy likes to party and thinks nothing of jetting all over the world to have a good time and surrounds himself with beautiful women.

There are now 9.5 billion reasons for LeBron to consider playing for the New Jersey Nets and they are all good ones. This guy likes to win and is not afraid to spend tons of dough to get it done. In Russia, he always hired the best coach and had the highest payroll, sometimes even competing in size with NBA teams.

LeBron James may soon be jetting all over the world

Will LeBron consider playing for him? All you have to do is meet him and see the charisma he shows to realize he knows what he is doing.

Whatever happens, Prokhorov won’t be running the Nets like Mavericks owner Mark Cuban. Prokhorov likes to hang with the players, but not so much in the locker room and huddles. He likes it in a social way, and so do they. It’s like running with James Bond, jets on a moment’s notice to the most exotic locations in the world. That’s how he lives, and that’s how they’ll roll. He can offer a superstar lifestyle that few would dare try in the public eye.

The fact there are whispers about him would give him street cred with a lot of players. Mostly, players see owners as dopes to be stroked, but invading Brooklyn with the Russian boss and a stocked, bloated payroll could be a blast.
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The whole deal seems like a slap in the face to other owners, but the amount of money is so great that the league will put up with it and other owners will now start their search for rich foreign basketball owners.

Oh, and when the team moves to Brooklyn, what do we call them? The Brooklyn Nets?

Photo source Newscom

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In our earlier post the discussion was about who would win the West and it was the obvious choice, the Lakers and Kobe Bryant. Now it is time to speak about the East.

So, who did ESPN vote to win the East?

In a surprise vote, but maybe not a huge surprise, the ESPN voters went with Cleveland. They felt the Shaqland LeBrons would win the East, because they looked so good last year and then they added Shaq. It will not be that easy. There are already a lot of ingredients to mix into this soup.

Looming over it all will be the question LeBron James won’t answer: What will he do when he can become a free agent in 2010? His freedom to walk next year has raised the stakes in Cleveland to a level seldom seen in the NBA, and could contribute to tensions along the way unless LeBron, Shaq and the Cavs can successfully merge their games and their goals: LeBron’s first title, Shaq’s fifth (putting him ahead of Kobe Bryant and Tim Duncan) and Cleveland’s hope of pleasing and keeping LeBron. And with the Cavs having added three rotation players to a 66-win team and probably demoting stalwart Zydrunas Ilgauskas in favor of The Big Disruption, it’s not clear how chemically balanced they will be.

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How they could pass on the Boston Celtics is a true mystery. The Celtics bring back a healthy Kevin Garnett and added Rasheed Wallace and Marquis Daniels to the fold. They are dripping with talent.

Will Rasheed Wallace help Boston overtake LeBron James and the Cav's?

Lagging in third place is the Conference Champion Orland Magic. Some think they overachieved last year and worry that the chemistry will be different without Hedo Turkoglu. Others think the offensive talents of Vince Carter will make Dwight Howard even more valuable.
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If you have seen the movie Ice Age and the sequels Ice Age II and III, then you know there is a squirrel in the movie that really has nothing to do with the movie, but is obsessed with a giant acorn. Each movie shows clip after clip of the squirrel named Scrat chasing after this giant acorn.

Dwight Howard feels he is Scrat and the NBA Title is his giant acorn and he is obsessed with getting the acorn.

Another not so gentle giant named Shrek or would that be Shaq, has recently moved to Cleveland in search of another NBA Title for himself and a good friend named LeBron.

Will Shaq slow down Dwight Howard?

Now all the talk is on what will happen when the two giants face off against each other. Shaq has prepped the way with some not so kind words degrading Dwight Howard and his offensive moves.

“I haven’t spoken with him,” Howard said. “I’ve seen a lot of the comments that he has said on TV and read a lot of the comments that he’s made. I would say it hurt my feelings, a little bit, just to hear him say some of the things he said.”

Looking back on last season’s Eastern Conference finals, it’s easy to understand why Cleveland wanted O’Neal so badly to counter Howard. The Cavs had no defensive answer for the Magic’s All-Star center, so they took a gamble that O’Neal is still enough of a force at age 37 to stand up to him.

“Everybody has said, ‘Cleveland got Shaq for you. Cleveland got Shaq to win a championship,’ ” Howard said.

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Everyone seems to think it is a foregone conclusion that Shaq can handle Dwight Howard enough for LeBron James to deliver Cleveland to the finals, but your intrepid author has watched age sneak up on Shaq and he may find the fast improving Superman is a lot more than he bargained for.

The bigger worry might be how the Magic maintain their team chemistry without Hedo Turkoglu and with the addition of Vince Carter. Those team changes will more likely determine the fate of the Magic.

And if the Magic don’t make it, you can always go watch Ice Age III. It was a great movie!

Photo source Newscom

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What determines the fates of NBA teams the most? Well, of course, you can get lucky and sign Michael Jordan or someone close to that stature, like Kobe Bryant or LeBron James, but the real answer is ticket revenue. Hoopsworld did a breakdown of ticket revenue and guess what teams came out at the top?

L.A. Lakers, New York Knicks, Boston Celtics, Phoenix Suns, Chicago Bulls.

Now guess what teams came out at the top for pricing power?

Knicks, Lakers, Bulls, Houston Rockets, Sacramento Kings.

Now you really have to have some screwed up management to escape being good if you are in either group. Oh yeah, the Knicks are in both groups.

Other than that check out these teams. The Lakers win all the time. The Celtics, Suns, and Bulls when most of the time. The Rockets and Kings, well they kind of fall into the Knicks dilemma. So they are sporadically good.

Now how about the top teams with tickets sold?

Detroit Pistons, Utah Jazz, Portland Trail Blazers, Cleveland Cavaliers, Celtics.

The Pistons just finished an amazing run of victory years and the Jazz have been right up there. The Blazers? Hmm, internal problems abound. The Cavaliers are winning now on LeBron James.

Kobe Bryant will get his Laker bucks for the long term

The Lakers have a tremendous advantage with their superior ticket revenue and pricing power and they took advantage of it.

The Lakers were already over the luxury tax, so they could only re-sign their own free agents and use two exceptions – the Mid-Level Exception (MLE) and the Bi-Annual Exception (BAE); they did all of that. When it became clear the Trevor Ariza negotiation were going to be more work than they were worth, they spent the full MLE on Ron Artest. They used the BAE on Shannon Brown, a point guard who played well for them down the stretch and to whom they owned no version of Bird Rights. The used Bird Rights to re-sign Lamar Odom, and are also likely to start working out an extension with Kobe Bryant. Other than keeping Ariza AND using the MLE there was no way for the Lakers to spend more money this summer. That’s also why their 2009-10 payroll is north of $90 million with a luxury tax payment of about $20 million tacked onto that.
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The rest of the league will just have to find richer owners.

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