Know when to walk away and know when to run

I've been planning a post about Yi Jianlian, but now I'm not even really thinking about it. (Mostly I think this isn't an issue about him or even about the Bucks, but instead about the idiotic Chinese Basketball Association and Yi's management. They're trying to get more money and attention for their player at this point. Yay power plays. The end.)

I was also going to talk about the Mystics, but too bad if you wanted to read about that for now. I swear that I'll be trying to actually address them this summer, but for right now I'm a little distracted.

Because of Donaghy. There's not a lot that hasn't already been written about by people who are much smarter and some of them even y'know--get paid to write this stuff. But I wanted to link to some articles and blogs here.

First, Kevin Hench explains how I'm feeling as a Suns fan with amazing clarity. This paragraph, in particular, really resonated with me: If Donaghy is convicted of fixing any games over the last two seasons — during which the FBI was monitoring his games — how will Stern, who must have precious little credibility in Phoenix, ever convince Suns fans that they weren't the victims of a fix? I mean, besides the one he himself sanctioned after Game 4. (And if it turns out Donaghy did conspire to fix Game 3, how happy will Suns fans be with the FBI for allowing their team to be an unwitting victim in a two-year-old sting operation?)

I was not someone who was calling fix. I said that if Duncan and Bowen walked on that court following the Elson and Jones incident, they should have been suspended too. That's actually a call that I haven't seen talked about in the context of the Donaghy story, but plenty about Game 3 is.

This blog has a couple insights about Game 3, but is mostly interesting for the really depressing yet amazing youtube video that Brett Edwards centered his post around. It's a breakdown of some of the most notable terrible calls made in Game 3 (interestingly some were not made by Donaghy).

Fox Sports compiled some very interesting stats on Donaghy. Unless this turns out to be a widespread problem (and if that's the case I really hope Bavetta isn't involved), I am not someone who thinks that the NBA should have necessarily known what was going on. However, these stats are still really interesting to me.

Most of the players who have talked about this have been very careful about their words. Chris Sheridan asked Team USA about it, and the most riled up they got was LeBron James who said as a competitor, as hard as I play, it is disappointing, definitely.

Marc Stein at espn.com had a blog about more players' reactions (including Raja Bell and Steve Nash). They were asked about the whole situation (and were, again, toeing the party line) at The Steve Nash Foundation Charity Classic, which involved Barbosa. (Meaning that he seems to be recovering from his elbow surgery nicely. This is my considered opinion as a not-quite-doctor at all, but I'm being stupidly optimistic. I need to be in the face of all of this Donaghy crap.)

On a different note, as I was reading things about this whole mess, I read something else of note. At the bottom of his article about Team USA's reaction Chris Sheridan writes, I was able to glean one small piece of information regarding the trade the Phoenix Suns made with Seattle earlier Friday, sending Kurt Thomas and two future No. 1 picks to the Sonics in exchange for the second-round pick the Sonics acquired last week from Orlando in the Rashard Lewis sign-and-trade deal.

Turns out neither of the No. 1 picks the Suns surrendered has any lottery protection, which could make the 2010 draft pick especially valuable if the Suns' fortunes take a precipitous fall by then. The scuttlebutt around the league was that Phoenix GM Steve Kerr made the deal as the precursor to another deal, which he will make using the $8.092 million trade exception he acquired from the Sonics.

At that I literally shook my computer screen at disbelief. No lottery protection? That seems stupid. They had better have something pretty cool up their sleeves on this. I mean, yay dealing with some of the luxury tax, but seriously this seems like a really skewed trade. And not in our favor.

I bet Paul Coro is enjoying his vacation.

I just realized that Ray Allen is going to Boston, where there is no WNBA team for his daughter and him to support! And here I was all excited for him to be on a team with Allan Ray. Basically for no other reason than the symmetric silliness.

But I guess that he has more than enough money to go down to Connecticut (or anywhere else he wants to go) for a game. So that's something.

In international basketball news, I'm going to go to an entire day's games of the FIBA Americas! I get to see Brazil, USA, Argentina, Canada, Virgin Islands, Uruguay, Puerto Rico, and Mexico. It was affordable too.

Brazil has almost all of the major players accounted for. Nene has decided to stop being an ass about Team Brazil, and should be playing this summer. Tiago Splitter isn't yet playing for Popovich (who has a reputation for convincing his players not to play for their national teams), so he'll be there. Anderson Varejao is his usual excited self, and seems to be completely committed to the team.

Barbosa is a different story. He seems committed to the team, but I'm not sure if he'll be able to act on that commitment this summer. I was angry about how he was playing in the Spurs series, but as it turns out he was injured and in need of surgery. So I guess I owe him an apology.

The recuperation might interfere with the tournament, and also he has problems with insurance. I love the fact that he's made this a public issue in the press. Now granted, that article came out almost three weeks ago, but I haven't heard anything new on this subject. (Although FIBA is terrible at all things internet-related and it's not like the American press cares about international teams, so anything is possible.)

This all means that if insurance gets dealt with and he recuperates well, I could be seeing Leandrinho in August. Which, y'know, is all that really matters. Right?

(Also interesting, at least as a footnote, is his work with the college basketball system in Brazil. This is in huge contrast with Nene, who basically said, "fix it yourself.")