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As I was running errands this afternoon, I was listening to Bob Valvano's talk show.  He has an afternoon talk show on the local ESPN affiliate and does an overnight show for ESPN radio on the weekends.  If you don't know Bob, he also does color commentary for ESPN during basketball season, and the occassional football game, as well as the local (Big East Network, for now) broadcast of Louisville games.  He's Jimmy V's brother and a former college head coach.


All that is by way of introduction since I want to Bob the credit for this idea.  He proposed today that, assuming the NBA ever solves its labor problem, and more about that at a later time, it should seize this opportunity to change its calendar and start games in December and run through July, instead of the normal October through June.  Why, because on the front end there is too much competition (NFL, college football, NASCAR Chase, World Series)  and no one pays attention to the relative meaningless early season and when the playoff start, there is still competition: March Madness, the Stanley Cup, the opening of baseball season, the Triple Crown, the Masters and some others. 

However, once the middle of June hits, there's nothing.  Baseball is in the middle of the season and it doesn't demand the interest of the casual fan and what else is there?  From roughly mid-June to the beginning or middle of August, there is a relative sports desert.  All we have is baseball, regular season MLS, golf, tennis and regular season NASCAR, if you will. Even horse racing takes most of July and early August off without more than a couple of major races.  The NBA would have the field to itself.  I think the networks would love it as it would give them some high demand television in traditionally slow months.  It all makes a great deal of sense to me, which of course is why they won't do it.

The early games in the first round of the NBA playoffs have had a little something for everyone.  You've had underdogs winning on the road, close games all around and the return of the Knicks to the playoffs.  The result has been record television ratings for TNT and ESPN/ABC.

When the farm team of the Dallas Mavericks was in a start-up this past year, co-owner Donnie Nelson was looking for ways to stand out in the Dallas/Frisco Texas market.  The Texas Legends began play in the NBDL this season in Frisco, a suburb of Dallas, about 30 miles north and previously known primarily as the home of the MLS Cup runner-up FC Dallas.

So, as Nelson was building his team he was also looking for ways to differentiate the Legends.  What better way to do that than hire a woman as your coach?  Who better to be that woman than a legend in the game and a woman who has never backed down from any basketball challenge, including playing with and against men, both in organized ball and, even more impressively, on the New York playgrounds?  Enter Nancy Lieberman,  Lieberman, a member of the Hall of Fame had a spectacular playing career, winning two national championships at Old Dominion, a silver medal at the Olympics and a professional championship. Playing with men?  Throughout the 80s she played on the Lakers'  and Jazz's summer league teams, played two years in the long defunct USBL and even toured with the Globetrotters for a time, playing on the Washington Generals and reliving in some ways her childhood at Harlem's Rucker Park.


When the WNBA rolled around, she played and coached in it.  Then, she went to work for ESPN, but when Donnie Nelson offered her a job coaching the Legends the lure was too strong to resist.  She took the job and by all accounts has been accepted for what she is - the coach of a team in the D League, albeit one who hugs her players and tells them that she loves them.

Here's an interview with Cheryl Miller where Nancy discusses coaching the Legends:




Cross-posted to SportsYids.

The NBA is buying the New Orleans Hornets from George Shinn and Gary Chouest, as Shinn was unable to complete a deal with minority owner Chouest.  It's likely that the combination of financing difficulties and the uncertainties surrounding the Hornets lease at the New Orleans Arena made the deal untenable for Chouest.

You didn't think the NBA was going to let the NHL have the entire comics stand to itself did you?  Of course not.  The NBA, in conjunction with broadcast and digital partner ESPN and its corporate parent Disney, which now owns Marvel, has brought to the basketball and comics fans in all of us the Marvel inspired variant covers for each NBA team for its NBA preview edition of ESPN The Magazine.  Check it out here.


It's not exactly the same thing as creating superheroes for each city and building cartoons and comics around them as Marvel will be doing for the NHL, but, hey, everybody has to start somewhere.

The NBA has long banned performance enhancing drugs and now it has, for the first time in league history, banned a performance enhancing shoe.  The new Concept 1 shoe by Athletic Propulsion Labs, a $300 basketball shoe containing a spring-based system said to enhance a wearer's vertical leap by as much as 31/2 inches.  The NBA said in a statement: "Under league rules, players may not wear any shoe during a game that creates an undue competitive advantage."

Can there be a better marketing hook for a basketball shoe than "Banned by the NBA"?  Athletic Propulsion Labs certainly doesn't think so.  A visit to their home page greets you with the image of stamp with that label covering most of the home page.  It's perhaps the ultimate slogan for a basketball shoe and despite the $300 price tag I expect these shoes will fly out of APL's warehouse.

Is there any team in the NBA, other than possibly the Knicks, that faced a tougher marketing issue heading into this season than the Washington Wizards.  Last season was a disaster with their star player lost to a 50 game suspension and then the balance of the season in a halfway house for pulling a gun in the locker room.  The team had built its entire marketing plan around Gilbert Arenas and Agent Zero really proved to be less than zero when it came to his effect on marketing the club as it did all it could to recover from the hit it took from his bone-headed action; this on the team whose owner changed its name from Bullets because of the implications of that nickname on the youth of DC.

The New York Daily News is reporting that Carmelo Anthony has signed off on a deal that will send him to the New Jersey/Brooklyn Nets in the latest of the string of off-season deals reshaping the NBA landscape.  The deal is said to involve four teams and will send Derrick Favors to the Nuggets with Andrei Kirilenko from Utah along with draft picks.  Devin Harris would go to Charlotte with Boris Diaw going from Charlotte to Utah.  Got all that?  There may be some other role players or draft picks involved. The Daily News says the deal may be announced as early as Saturday. 

Should this deal come to pass it will certainly be a good back-up shot for the Nets having failed to land LeBron earlier this summer.  Landing Melo will give the Nets not only a go-to scorer to build a team around but a star to market the team as it moves into its new Brooklyn home in 2012.   The only people more unhappy with this deal than Nuggets fans are the management of the Knicks, who now must face marketing the train wreck that masquerades as a NBA team playing in the Garden against a real, bonafide, Redeem Team star just across the bridge in Brooklyn.  Good luck with that.

I thought I would put up a few links to articles I had been reading lately since it's been a bit hectic around here these last couple of days. Hope you enjoy:

Origin of NFL nicknames (CNN), 
Remember last year's AFL throwback uniforms, you know, the Bronco's vertical stripe brown socks, well here's the story on where they came from (Mental Floss),
Reggie Bush returns Heisman Trophy, now what (LATimes)
Taxpayers still on hook after stadiums abandoned (NYT)
It's matches like last week's Spain v. Argentina that fuels clubs anger with FIFA over calendar (NYT)
NFL's highest paid players: inappropriately skewed towards rookies and unproven players (Forbes)
Did you know that Coach K and Team USA won the World Basketball Championship with the Redeem Team left at home? (SI)

The oft troubled Derrick Caracter, formerly of the University of Louisville and most recently a post player from the University of Texas El Paso, showed enough promise in the NBA Summer League the champion Lakers gave their second round pick a two year contract, with  at least the first year, or a portion of it, guaranteed. While not typical for second round pick (only first round draft picks are assured guaranteed contracts) it is certainly not unheard of and Caracter is certainly not the only second round pick to earn a roster spot this summer. 

What makes his contract different is how the Lakers baked in an incentive for him to commit to handle the one area that caused the club the most concern.  Going into the draft, the knock on Caracter was his work ethic, desire and commitment to conditioning, all of which combined to get him shipped out of Louisville by Rick Pitino.  The Lakers signed Caracter to a $473,000 contract for this year, but if he weighs 275 pounds or less on September 10, the whole contract becomes guaranteed.  If Derrick is not willing to do the work and get in shape for the money, no amount of coaching magic by the Zen master will do the trick.  Here's hoping Derrick's been using Nutrisystem; he was always a fan favorite in the Derby City and deserves to have some good things happen for him.  HT.: JSK

The rumors of the death of the career of Stephon Marbury and with it the demise of his Starbury shoes have proven to be just a bit premature.  Last season found Marbury a free agent searching in vain for a NBA team willing to sign him to even a one year contract at anything approaching what he thought he was worth, or as the season went on, to what the teams thought he might be worth.  As a result, last January he packed his bags and headed off to China to play for to join Shanxi Zhongyu of the Chinese Basketball Association.  A rather surprising move since salaries for foreign players in the CBA are capped at $60,000 per month.

I've heard plenty of reasons, and no doubt you've thought of few yourself, as to why Russian billionaires have taken to buying professional sports franchises in western sports leagues, i.e. Roman Abramovich's Chelsea and Mikhail Prokhorov's Newark/Brooklyn Nets.  One of the more interesting reasons I've seen is in this post from the Business Insider, in which Henry Blodgett suggests the purchases are basically protection against a hit from the Kremlin in the event the oligarch loses favor with Putin.  It's a plausible reason given what's being happening in Russia lately and, of course, one we'll never be able to know for sure.  I wouldn't be surprised to see it in the next Daniel Silva novel.