This comes from Jesse Blanchard of 48 Minutes of Hell, a San Antonio Spurs blog.
Lockout update: Owners have conference call today
NEW YORK — The owners’ labor relations committee will hold a conference call today, presumably to do one of two things, or both: Second-guess themselves on being so stingy with their offer last Thursday when one or two crumbs could have gotten them a deal; Plot their next move. It’ll likely be the latter, because none of them have the guts to call David Stern “Leona” for his actions last week at the Helmsley on 42nd Street, which caused nothing but
Lockout update: David Boies may be bluffing, too
NEW YORK — There’s a new David in town, possibly a worthy adversary of the other David, aka Commissioner Stern. This is a copy of the lawsuit filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court by David Boies, the temporary de-facto leader of what used to be the National Basketball Players Association. In court lingo, it will be called Anthony v. NBA. (Yes, Carmelo is Tom Brady 2.0) In case you missed it, I was at union (trade association?) headquarters in Harlem last night
Weijia Column: News from China, and CBA Power Rankings
BEIJING — As one CBA (collective bargaining agreement) goes down, another CBA (Chinese Basketball Association) is just getting ready to fire up. The Chinese season is scheduled to begin Nov. 19. The CBA is a little-known league for American readers, so I will provide you with a preseason power ranking. The defending champs, as always, are accorded the deserved honor of starting the new season atop any power rankings, apart from their new addition of Yi Jianlian. 1. Guangdong Southern Tigers Including Yi, the
Boies outlines NBA players’ legal strategy
NEW YORK — That picture shows the man who has been hired to take down David Stern, or at least force a settlement from the NBA commissioner. And David Boies says he’s going to try to do it by using Stern’s own words against him. In a briefing to a small group of NBA writers Tuesday, Boise outlined the strategy he will try to employ in an anti-trust lawsuit filed by NBA players in U.S. District Court in Northern California today. The
Hubbard column: David Stern needs to rediscover the magic of David Stern
In February, David Stern will – pardon the term – celebrate his 28th anniversary as NBA commissioner. It seems doubtful that he will be honored in a halftime ceremony anywhere, although the optimists among us are hoping there will in fact be multiple NBA halftimes. If that is to happen, Stern will have to venture into territory that he hasn’t visited since – well, who knows? For the sake of discussion, let’s settle on the early ’80s at a time when he
Blame game: A few more crumbs, and Stern would have had Hunter
I alluded to this in this morning’s post about nuclear winter, and I’ll expound on it in two more ways here: in print, and via audio. You can bet your bottom dollar that David Stern wanted to have a full, 82-game season, or a fallback 72-game season if it netted him an extra $800 million, which it did. And you can double that bet on the notion that he never knew it would come to this back on June 30 when
The NBA’s nuclear winter has begun
NEW YORK — The above image is the new Avatar on colleague Alan Hahn’s Twitter account — @alanhahn. Yes, nuclear winter arrived yesterday, the day before what was supposed to be the first payday for players in the 2011-12 NBA season. But today is forecast to be another 65 degree day in the city that used to be the headquarters of the National Basketball Players Association, which technically no longer exists. Sort of. Just don’t try checking their Web site for