I got more records than the KGB

The Suns
10 questions about this Suns' season: Arizona Republic, East Valley Tribune

Insight into Porter's playbook (now with muddled metaphors!)
“I’ve never been a big believer in having 10,000 plays and then wind up only running five of them,” he said. “I’m more of a believer in having just a few, making sure those plays have a lot of wrinkles and options.”
The Suns spent an hour ironing out the wrinkles on one such play in Wednesday’s morning session.
So are wrinkles good? Or bad?

Also from that article:
When the Suns broke the huddle under former coach Mike D’Antoni, they chanted "Suns!" Under Porter, that mantra has changed to "Defense!"
I'm cautiously excited about seeing how they do with this defense oriented approach.

More on Porter's defense and how players are adapting to it.

Nash is in favor of fewer minutes, but not fewer games.
"If I could miss 10 or 12 games and go to the Bahamas, that sounds good," Nash said. "If I have to stay here, I might as well play. But to shift the minutes around a little more and change our style just a little bit to preserve guys' legs ... I think that's possible."

I'm just ridiculously in favor of there being backups for Nash that might let Barbosa return to his natural position. The man just doesn't see the floor well, and that's ok. You'd never ask Nash to post-up, or Shaq to start jacking up threes, so why is it a problem if LB is a (really good) undersized shooting guard?

Speaking of Barbosa, he left training camp to be with his very ill mother in Brazil. My thoughts are with them.

Also in that article:
The players [ran] gassers for every missed free throw.... "I have to change that around because they didn’t run that many," [Porter] said. "There were too many free throws made."

Diaw poked STAT in the eye and now Amare may wear goggles for the rest of his career. It isn't serious, but he's just a cautious guy.

Also in that article: Barbosa hasn't set a date to come back from Brazil yet. The Suns do not expect him back before next week, at the earliest.

A fairly nay-saying look at the upcoming season. Some positive bits, but also featuring many phrases in the vein of as if his feet are nailed to the floor and collection of dinosaurs.


Other NBA
Photo from the Plain Dealer
Information about Anderson Varejao, his off season, and his ankle injury.
The injury also prevented Varejao from playing for Brazil in an Olympic qualifier. Surprisingly, he received criticism in his own country for sitting out the qualifier and rehabbing his ankle.
How is this surprising?

"What was tougher for me is the media in Brazil didn’t know what was going on," Varejao said. "I didn’t know why. Everybody started talking like I didn’t want to play for the national team. That was tough. Brazil is a soccer country. Basketball is not that big, so they didn’t really know what was going on."
No, really, I think that even if they had known why he didn't play for Brazil, they would have been disappointed. Especially b/c he played in the playoffs even with the sprain. And claiming that basketball fans around the world don't know about it when their favorite player is injured? Is shortsighted in the age of the internet.

Varejao said the ankle is still swelled a little, but not as bad as it was.
Which, aside from some questionable grammar, is both good and bad. Obviously.

The Spurs count their blessings and come up with three.

Lawrence Pedowitz's review of the NBA's referees has been completed. He found that Donaghy was the only ref who acted illegally. But, as Donaghy's attorney, John Lauro, points out: "If this had been an independent investigation we would have gladly cooperated," Lauro told ESPN.com's Mike Fish. "But we knew this was going to be a PR effort. ... It is a way that David Stern can say, 'I put nice little ribbon on this whole case and the only person that has ever done anything incorrect is Tim Donaghy.' That really was the whole purpose of the report."
I gotta say, I agree. I'm on the fence about if there are other refs who were fixing games or doing things that were worse than favoritism, but I don't trust Stern at all.

The Warriors' mascot is named Thunder. The new OKC team is the Thunder. Conflict!
"For the sake of not making things confusing, we're going to do something. We just have to figure out a good exit strategy."
He just might have one -- leave Thunder in China during the team's upcoming trip to Asia.
"He might get lost in the crowd over in China," Rowell said. "There are 1.3 billion people there."


General WNBA
Lauren Jackson will be a free agent and the Storm are bound and determined to keep her. Also, no matter what the title of the article says, she doesn't want to think about the issue yet.


WNBA Finals
You may be able to stop Nolan, but the Shock have more options than that. For instance, they have Taj McWilliams-Franklin. And other veterans like Katie Smith. Also, the awesomeness of Bill Laimbeer. But mostly, they have Taj.

Doris Burke's diatribes about how the Mystics are eeeeevil for trading Taj to a contender have been bothering me a lot during ESPN's coverage of the Playoffs. I'm glad that someone else put it into words. If I had tried, it might have come out as *keyboardsmash*

I would also add that the Mystics picking up a 8.3ppg/3.7rpg 22 year-old rookie center (in Humphrey) is a lot better for rebuilding than the Grizzlies picking up a 4.8ppg/4.9rpg 26 year-old center who has been playing professionally for 7 years (in Kwame Brown). So please don't even begin to compare this to the Gasol trade, Ms. Burke. Thank you.

Is your game MVP like Steve Nash?

Another disappointing game on Saturday night. They need to pick it up. If they're only 2.5 games in front of the 8th ranked Warriors, it's entirely conceivable that they might not even make the playoffs. Sad, but true. Really sad.

The Suns aren't just interested in adding Gordan Giricek, they're are also interested in Tyronn Lue. Also, apparently Shaq's been practicing a lot lately and D'Antoni says that we shouldn't hold our breath to see Skinner on the floor anytime soon.

Butler will not be having surgery for his hip injury, but he's not going to be playing for awhile either. Here's a lot more information on that.

Two men plead not guilty in the Donaghy betting case. Donaghy himself gets sentenced on April 18th, and these two men go to trial on April 28th.

In keeping up with the major signings in the WNBA free agency period, I need to note that the Detroit Shock resigned Plenette Pierson.

Is he strong? Listen, bud.

First things first: LEANDRO BARBOSA HAS A BLOG. *ahem* Ok, now for the rest.

This is almost a week old, but I wanted to put it in here in case I wanted to find it later. Nash really really wanted to play with Shaq.

Yesterday I talked to someone who kept insisting that I had to hear what Shaq was saying about Bill Walton. But I couldn't find it anywhere. Tonight I found it, and it was worth the anticipation.

Any little crack in the armor can cause disruption. I don't want to be the crack in the armor. I want to be the extra coat on the metal. Boy, Shaq sure likes his extended metaphors.

The pluses and minuses of playing with Shaq and without Marion.

I have been (clearly) having the "can Shaq still play?" conversation with a lot of people lately. One thing that I keep bringing up is the amazing training staff at the US Airways Arena. I'm glad that this finally got addressed in the media with regard to Shaq. Now I feel less crazy. About that, anyway.

There's not a very good chance that Shaq will play tonight against the Warriors. He might play tomorrow against the Mavericks (though I doubt it). Most likely is that they would wait until after the All Star Break and have him play in the game against the Lakers. As an aside to this, I'm kind of pissed that he would find it funny to put down Erick Dampier by comparing his play to the WNBA. What is he, seven? "Hey, Dampier! Shaq says you play like a girl." WTF?

I'm so nervous about tonight's game. Apparently I'm not the only one. Facing the Warriors all depleted? Ugh.

While I'm not a Wizards fan, I do have an appreciation for them. I hope that Arenas coming back helps them, but I'm more eager to see Caron come back.

This is crazy. I wonder what he thinks of Donaghy. It's probably not safe for work or small children. Just a guess.

All Star Weekend from a WNBA perspective. Yay for Nikki Teasley being involved!

An interesting article on how women's college coaching is changing because of the WNBA.

A few videos:

Jeff Green misses a dunk in the Sonics @ Suns game on 2/8



Wally Szczerbiak calls a time out when his team doesn't have one, making the Suns glad that that rule has been changed since 1976.



A WNBA/The L Word fanvid that has a song that keeps getting stuck in my head (stupid Gwen Stefani). It's mostly up here to show my sister, but I think it's fun--so there.

Mystics and Donaghy

Well, I missed my last Mystics game of the year. That's the only bad news of this part of the season right now. Detroit and Phoenix (and their fantastic Westhead offense) are at the top of their respective conferences, and all signs are pointing to DC making the final playoff spot in the East.

The Mystics have been really impressing me this year. I believe that I was among those who said that they'd never reach the playoffs. And yet, here they are at the brink. It's especially amazing considering the WNBA's very short season. Of course, the smallness of the league helps. I just wish that (if they make it) they wouldn't have to play the Shock in the first round. But that's a pretty much impossible wish.

I was getting frustrated with the lack of Tim Donaghy news that had been coming out lately. A coworker and I were making up stories as to what happened. "Maybe the mob had him killed!" "Maybe Stern is keeping it quiet so we can forget about it and pay more attention to the problems in baseball and football," etc. A couple days ago, I found this article confirming that he is alive, and has a decidedly (if justifiably) grumpy wife.

But then! I found this article last night. It seems that he's probably going to turn himself in today. Which is good.

I just have major problems with how the league (and to a lesser extent, the media) has been dealing with this down time. Obviously there have been many closed meetings at NBA HQ about this whole ordeal. If Stern is serious about his proposed transparency, then he should be letting us know general information about how the league is dealing with this. Nothing specific, but just bare bones. To help us, as fans, know that they're serious about this never happening again--and more to the point to reassure us. This is (obviously) a very big deal, and the silence has been deafening for more than three weeks.

On the 24th of July, in his press conference about this scandal, Stern said, "And we will continue to both not only keep you advised, but I think it's my obligation as commissioner to retain the best outside experts in these matters and consultants to advise the NBA on what we can do better to assure our fans that our games are being decided on their merits. I think that's the obligation that every sports league has." It is my feeling that he has not met that obligation as of right now.

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.