Tuesday night's NBA TV show, hosted by Ahmad Rashad and featuring Chris Webber and Gary Payton, wasn't as good as the TNT version with Ernie Johnson, Kenny Smith, and Charles Barkley in terms of pure basketball analysis. But in terms of pure comedy, that Tuesday show was solid gold.
And now, it's over.
Kevin McHale has been hired to replace Gary Payton in the studio, and while I think McHale will do just fine as an analyst, there's no way he'll have the same chemistry with Webber that Payton did. With the show obviously looking to get a little more serious, here's a reminder of some of the antics that made it so much fun to watch.
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For the past nine years the Harold Pump Foundation, created by David and Dana Pump (known as the gurus of high school and college basketball) has raised over $3.5 million dollars to fight cancer. The foundation's efforts have not gone unnoticed. Major stars such as Magic Johnson, Paul Pierce, Sugar Ray Leonard, Pete Sampras and Denzel Washington have all joined the Pump brothers. In this report we also hear from young NBA stars like Kevin Love, Brandon Jennings, and Blake Griffin.
That was a great series. Boston-Chicago had everything you wanted and then some.
The full seven games ... overtimes and close finishes ... star player stepping up ... role players emerging. You name it. Yes, it was truly a great series. But the best first-round series of all time? Let's not go that far.
I'll still take the Warriors' "We Believe" upset over the Dallas Mavericks two years ago and even the Denver Nuggets knocking off the Seattle SuperSonics back in 1994 over this one.
In this clip from TNT's Overtime, Kenny, Charles, and C-Webb discuss the firing of Raptors' coach Sam Mitchell. While debating whether the team's sub-.500 record was Smitch's fault, they also discuss the personnel of the team, and after Charles makes some kind of Playboy bunny analogy, he mentions to Kenny that he might be confusing Jose Calderon with another Jose he has a fondness for.
I love the fact that it's like 2AM when they're filming these segments, so pretty much anything goes. The NBATV show that features Webber and Gary Payton together is quickly gaining on the TNT crew in terms of entertainment value, but still, nothing beats some classic analysis from Charles Barkley.
NBA Essentials ranks our six favorite stories of the day.
1. Basketbawful. A poignant consideration for anyone who considers un-fans of the WNBA to be sexist. 2. Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Gary Payton makes it clear that he wants nothing to do with the Oklahoma City Thunder. 3. Dime. Gilbert Arenas on the state of NBA punditry: "Reporters in today's game, they don't have no personality to themselves. If one person says something, they all run to the same story." 4. Fear the Beard. An impassioned Warriors fan lashes out at Golden State president Robert Rowell for basically ruining the team.
"I sure don't want to get my jersey retired in Oklahoma City," he said. "I don't think that would work for me. That ain't where I played. Oklahoma City fans didn't get to really, really see me. They saw me on TV, but that was it.
"My fans are here in Seattle. It would be nice for me to come back and raise my jersey in Seattle here and let everybody appreciate it and my family can appreciate it."
Payton may still get to see his No. 20 raised to the KeyArena rafters -- the legal battle between the Sonics and the city of Seattle won't be resolved until some point this summer, meaning (for better or worse) the city will get at least one more season with the team.
But assuming the Sonics do eventually move, should Payton's No. 20 stay retired in Oklahoma City? Or should Clay Bennett be forced to forfeit his claims to Seattle's basketball history, much like Art Modell did when his old Cleveland Browns became the new Baltimore Ravens?
I hope it's the latter. Even if David Stern is serious about not putting another team in Seattle, it's preposterous to think the citizens of OKC have any emotional attachment to the likes of Payton or other legends like Gus Williams, Jack Sikma or Shawn Kemp.
The "Gary Payton to the Warriors" rumor first surfaced a couple of weeks ago, but since then it's more or less been dormant. That doesn't mean that it died on the vine, though, as Golden State of Mind points out how his name has been connected with the team at least two more times in recent days.
Baron Davis continues to say that he would welcome the free-agent addition of Gary Payton if Warriors coach Don Nelson eventually decides he wants a more seasoned backup at the point.
"Absolutely," says Davis. "Him being an Oakland native, his mentality and leadership, he'd fit in great with us."
There's no doubt that Payton's mentality and attitude would fit in, but would his legs? The Warriors play at a frantic pace (third in the league behind Denver and Indiana) and I'm not sure a 39-year-old point guard who's been sitting for half the season could keep up. This might be one of those things that looks good on paper but not in the real world.
That's Antawn Jamison, understandably giddy about leading the Wizards over the Celtics for the second time in two games. The suddenly fallible Celtics, in fact, have dropped three of their last four ever since affirming their stance as the league's top dog with a win in Detroit earlier this month.
But before we try diagnosing what ails the Celtics, first let's give a nod of respect to the Wizards. They've long been derided as a high-scoring team that doesn't play a lick of defense, but that label clearly no longer fits: they actually rank 11th in the league by allowing just 96.9 points per game. Add in the fact that the Wiz can still keep up with anybody (Jamison and Caron Butler are the highest-scoring tandem of forwards in the league) and it's not as surprising as it might initially seem to see this team handle the Celtics in consecutive games.
So why are the Celtics in their current funk? The easy answer is their lack of depth; Rajon Rondo is banged up (he didn't play at all in the first game against the Wiz and just 21 minutes last night), and the team doesn't have another legitimate point guard on the roster (Eddie House is a shoot-first guy and Gabe Pruitt doesn't even dress). Can somebody get Gary Payton on the phone?
Celtics fans can take solace in the fact that the team's 30-6 record is still pacing the league by a wide margin, but still: if this team can go into a tailspin when a guy like Rondo gets banged up, what will happen if/when one of the Big Three go down?
Tuesday night's NBA TV show, hosted by Ahmad Rashad and featuring Chris Webber and Gary Payton, wasn't as good as the TNT version with Ernie Johnson, Kenny Smith, and Charles Barkley in terms of pure basketball analysis. But in terms of pure comedy, that Tuesday show was solid gold. 
For the past nine years the Harold Pump Foundation, created by David and Dana Pump (known as the gurus of high school and college basketball) has raised over $3.5 million dollars to fight cancer. The foundation's efforts have not gone unnoticed. Major stars such as Magic Johnson, Paul Pierce, Sugar Ray Leonard, Pete Sampras and Denzel Washington have all joined the Pump brothers. In this report we also hear from young NBA stars like Kevin Love, Brandon Jennings, and Blake Griffin. 
That was a great series. Boston-Chicago had everything you wanted and then some.
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