how i met the rooster and upgraded my feet

that is, danilo "the rooster" gallinari, the newest of the new york knickerbockers.



suck it, isiah.

also, i'm now the proud owner of a pair of hyperdunks, the flyest and most revolutionary basketball kicks in the entire universe, only sold in this country at the niketown in las vegas, and now currently wrapping my ankles. here's my colorway:



suck it, sneakerheads.

how i hope this nba draft review makes up for my recent negligence

sorry i haven't been writing as much. getting married will definitely crimp a writing style.

here's what i think about last night's nba draft:

i think the knicks did alright. we're gonna suck next year and the year after, and we need to dump salary, so we might as well draft a kid who has a good chance to be a stud in two years or so. until we get rid of marbury, curry, randolph, crawford and richardson, this train ain't moving anywhere. and since there's probably no nba gm stutarded enough to trade for any of them (although i'm probably overestimating the lot), we might as well just ride it out.

one last time: damn you, isiah.

the nets did well, i thought. a starting five of devin harris, vince carter, yi, boone and brook lopez isn't half bad. and with ryan anderson, cdr, sean williams and some other interesting pieces off the bench (and if krstic ever comes back, all the better), they'll suck, but it'll be a promising suck - especially when they've cleared out a ton of cap space for lebronmania 2010.

and we have the warriors, who drafted 6'10" 190 lb. anthony randolph. i swear when his profile came up during the telecast, it said, "must improve: ribs". don't we already have this guy on our bench? isn't he named brandan wright? and didn't nellie not play him? and doesn't nellie have a problem playing andris biedrins, who is light years away from where this kid is and would actually be a big contributor for any other team? i think we could have used a point guard - because with this being nellie's and baron's last year, we might as well be all system's go.

and that's especially since portland's gonna win the whole damn thing for ten years straight.

so that's my review. i promise to write more, now that i have this strange item called "spare time" hanging all around me.

how knicks fans are in the middle of an elaborate dare

anybody else get the impression that the knicks fanbase is caught up in the middle of a huge elaborate dare?

isiah is daring dolan to fire him by making idiotic signings and acting less like an executive and more like a thug.

dolan is daring isiah to behave like that by paying off his sexual harassment settlement and absolving isiah of any wrongdoing.

so isiah dares dolan further by not playing the most effective players on his roster.

so then dolan sees that and dares isiah again to act even more like an idiot by making his standards for a firing to be impossible to reach.

so isiah raises the bar by daring dolan to fire him by kicking marbury off the team, learning that his team doesn't want him back and then plays him 33 minutes in a return.

what imbecilic dare will dolan do next?

the knick fandom holds their breath and gags in unison.

how i think too much about the knicks

this was posted during bill simmons' epic chat yesterday on espn.com,

Otis (Toronto, ON): how close are we to having the Knicks banished to the WNBA?

Bill Simmons: (12:29 PM ET ) That a boy, Otis! I like the idea of banishing the Knicks to the WNBA - Renaldo Balkman would be the 10th most attractive player in the league.

that got me thinking: how would the knicks do in the WNBA?

i have two different takes on this: realistically and honestly.

realistically, the WNBA champs detroit mercury couldn't even come close to matching up physically with them.

6'11" eddy curry would be guarded by 6'4" tangela smith.
6'11" zach randolph would be guarded by 6'1" penny taylor.
6'4" quentin richardson would be guarded by 6'0" diana taurasi.
6'5" jamal crawford would be guarded by 5'10" kelly miller.
6'3" stephon marbury would be guarded by 5'9" cappie pondexter.

taking the obvious advantages in strength, speed and athleticism (no offense to any of the ladies out there), but i can't fathom how they would ever stop the knicks.

physically, the mercury trots out there looking like a small high school boy's team (but better, obviously) taking on an NBA team.

and defensively? again, huge size, strength, speed and athletic advantages to the knicks. and although the knicks are dreadfully and embarrassingly terrible at help defense, they wouldn't have to leave their man. the mercury would score. it would just be very difficult.

so realistically, the knicks wouldn't lose.

honestly, they might.

you see, all isiah would have to do is force the ball down low to curry and randolph. there's nothing anyone on the mercury can do to stop them. in fact, the knicks would only be stopped by themselves.

and how? well, marbury and crawford would get pissed off at curry and randolph scoring so easily. so, at some point, the passes would stop. and marbury and crawford would start chucking it up. again, many of them would go in. but not all of them. and judging what we've seen from randolph and curry, they'd probably begin to sulk.

and by sulk, that means going from being the two worst defenders in history and eliminating any sort of effort and care.

scoring would be easier.

and isiah's already lost the team, so it's not like they'd listen to him whenever he comes up with a "solution".

so, realistically? no. but honestly?

i've already spent too much time on this.

how i long for the old knicks

i watched the knicks from 1994 (ewing, oak, smith, starks, harper with mace, blackmon and anthony coming off the bench) take on the nets (coleman, anderson but no petrovic) in a highly-spirited and well-played game three of the NBA playoffs. really good, compelling stuff. those teams would go far in the current craptastic NBA.

it was a nice little gift, courtesy of nba tv. and a nice diversion from this isiah thomas mess, which is just the latest stab into the bloody corpse of the franchise i love. thank you, james dolan, you moron.

then again, it's not like there's been anything said in court that would quantify as a surprise. i mean, of course isiah thomas doesn't care about white season ticket holders. have you seen the team he's put out there?

how i long for 1994.

how the nba used its vertical leap to jump about seven sharks

does anyone else notice that the nba is much more interesting off the court than anything that happens on the court?

you know, outside of lebron's game 5, yawn. but all the nasty off court stuff? terrible. but entertaining.

from kobe's eventual holdout, the horror stories from vegas, the hawks' embarrassing ownership issues, seattle having their team extorted out from their city, a continuous stream of player arrests, anucha browne sanders' testimony eviscerating isiah and stephon, the knicks hitting an all-time low and now, greg oden's microfracture surgery, the nba could not be any lower.

and i didn't even mention the tim donaghy ref scandal.

and the year's not even over yet. seriously, if you thought vegas was a mess, then consider that they've got the next all-star game coming up in new orleans.

the entire league - from players, refs, upper management, organizations, integrity to perceptions - is imploding before our eyes. what a horrible collapse it's been.

i can't wait for college hoops.

how i don't get isiah thomas, and because of him, i'm losing my childhood team

upon the knicks trading for zach randolph to play next to eddy curry, this was my first (and still correct) reaction:

we now have two low post scorers who can’t pass the ball out of a double team, and a roster full of players who can’t, won't or don’t know how to feed them.

it's a great deal in fantasy basketball, but the worst possible idea in constructing a team that needs to play together. it makes no sense at all.

we're getting bigger and slower in a league that's getting quicker and smaller. we're matching our center who still hasn't played a lick of defense in his career with a defensively indifferent power forward. also, he's a social malcontent who's been in and out of trouble, and we're dropping him in the biggest city in the world. and we're limiting the playing time of david lee, the one player on the roster who did everything you need to win. and we don't have an outside shooter to take the congestion out of the lane to give them room to operate.

yep.

this really isn't that difficult, isiah. in fact, it's common sense.

it really is.

duh.

because of the sucker in the luxury box, i'm questioning my love for the blue and orange.

i can't believe i just typed that.