Some people never learn. D.J. Mbenga may be one of them.
Now, D.J. is a good guy and he makes a decent living as the backup center for world champion Los Angeles Lakers, but there's a reason he's a backup center. Besides a talent deficiency, Mbenga is not quick and therefore slow to rotate on help defense and recover on pick-and-rolls.
This often puts him in an awkward position, that position being Mbenga on a poster on his keister.
Such was the case again Friday when Nuggets rookie Ty Lawson went medieval on Mbenga.
(The pair of pliers and the blowtorch after the jump.)
Not much except that, with the per diem paid over the table in NBA instead of under it in college, they need to get the donuts before practice, carry their teammates' bags and stay out of the way of the veterans.
Oh, about that last part? The Nets' Terrence Williams, rookie out of Louisville, may need to work on it a bit.
When Allen Iverson signed a contract with the Memphis Grizzlies this offseason, you just had a feeling it wouldn't end well.
If most reports from Saturday night are true, you were right.
On Saturday, the Memphis Grizzlies granted the one-time league MVP his leave from the team for personal reasons. Yahoo's Marc Spears and ESPN.com's Chad Ford have both reported that Iverson's leave is indefinite and no timetable has been set for his return.
Cleveland Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert's second-worst nightmare is about to come true.
The first, of course, would be LeBron James signing with the New York Knicks (or soon-to-be Brooklyn Nets) on Thursday, July 8, 2010 with Jay-Z's and Alicia Keys' "Empire State of Mind" blasting as LeBron puts pen to paper in a lavish Madison Square Garden ceremony.
The second may come to fruition Friday as the Cavs are in New York to take on the Knicks. That day, LeBron's favorite little-ballclub-that-could, those spunky New York Yankees, will be taking a ride through the Canyon of Heroes to thousands of adoring fans and thousands of pounds of ticker-tape and assorted paper products.
Looking back at the first week of the 2009-10 NBA season, someone missed a golden opportunity for a Halloween costume.
Wouldn't it have been great if two Lakers fans had gone as Shannon Brown and Josh Powell with the fan who was Brown holding onto a rim (a Nerf rim would have been fine) and sitting on Powell's shoulders?
When it comes to protecting yourself from rabies, it seems as if hand sanitizer won't cut it.
San Antonio Spurs guard Manu Ginobili -- three-time NBA champ, Olympic gold medalist, NBA All-Star, exterminator extraordinaire and scourge of PETA -- has been required to get shots for rabies, the San Antonio Express-News reports, because of his quick reflexes and a chance encounter with a bat on Saturday night:
Ginobili took four shots Monday in the hip and arm, and he is scheduled for four more such sessions over the next month. "It was pretty funny at the time," Ginobili told the San Antonio Express-News. "Now it's not. I got like a million shots for rabies."
There's some sad news in the NBA universe today as two former NBA players have died in the past three days.
Alan Ogg, who played for the Miami Heat, Milwaukee Bucks and Washington Bullets, died at the age of 42 on Sunday. Ira Winderman of the South Florida Sun-Sentinelreported that the Heat had a moment of silence before Sunday's home game against the Chicago Bulls. The 7-foot-2 center was 42 years old.
In Seattle, Phil Lumpkin, who played for Portland and Phoenix in the mid-70s, was found dead on Monday morning by O'Dea High School administrators after Lumpkin didn't arrive at the school where he coached and didn't answer the phone.
Some people won't think it's so horrible. As a matter of fact, some will cheer the announcement that because of back injury that was so bad he couldn't sit for long stretches, Bill Walton has announced he will give up announcing.
Walton, in a statement today: "As I return after a grueling multi-year, life-threatening, life-changing ordeal with back problems, it is time to dedicate the rest of my life to service. ... Thanks everybody -- for everything."
For many, Walton was a polarizing play-by-play man. Never one to withhold an opinion, you thought Walton either delivered verbal bon mots filled with liquid genius or that he was "theeeeeeeee worst announcer in the history of the NBA. No, not the NBA, the worrrrrrrrrrrld."
For the Houston Rockets, the word rocketship took on a whole new meaning on Wednesday.
Thanks (or no thanks) to a broken cable that has closed the Bay Bridge, the Rockets were faced with two choices to get from their hotel in San Francisco to Oracle Arena in Oakland to play the Warriors.
They could either take a different bridge, which would have made it a three-hour bus ride or, they could go by ferry.
Knowing that most NBA players like to arrive on the second (i.e. last) of two buses that take teams to games, guess what mode of transport they chose?
t's rare that we have back-to-back Stinkface. As a matter of fact, 
Rookies. What do they know?
When Allen Iverson signed a contract with the Memphis Grizzlies this offseason, you just had a feeling it wouldn't end well.
Cleveland 
Looking back at the first week of the 2009-10 
When it comes to protecting yourself from rabies, it seems as if hand sanitizer won't cut it.
Some people won't think it's so horrible. As a matter of fact, some will cheer the announcement that because of back injury that was so bad he couldn't sit for long stretches, Bill Walton has announced he will give up announcing.
For the Houston Rockets, the word rocketship took on a whole new meaning on Wednesday.
