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There are many sayings about excuses. I can't use the one I'm thinking about here, but it turns out that Larry Brown, head coach of the 2004 Olympic team and current coach of the Charlotte Bobcats, has one too.

Understandable, under normal circumstances. After all, there has to be an actual reason for why the US didn't win gold. Of course, what makes his excuse slightly less understandable is when he tries to scapegoat terrorism.

According to former Team USA coach Larry Brown, it comes down to one word: Commitment.

"The thing is they got guys that are willing to make a three-year commitment, which I think is tremendous," Brown said of this current Team USA. "We had guys that committed (for 2004) and then all of a sudden 9/11 happened, and then there were injuries."

LB, buddy. Come on. Have you lost your freaking mind, man? There are lots of things for which 9/11 is to "blame" -- as much as you can blame a tragedy for anything: TSA agents, terrorism color coding, four extra years of Dubya, and, most importantly and seriously, senseless death.

Via Sports Biz Blog by way of BallHype, the Sports Business Journal reports the NBA is working on plans to stream live NBA games online for local fans. No word on the associated fees ... though we all know nothing in life is free. In what will surely be good news for Magic fans in central Florida and Hornets fans in some sections of southern Louisiana, the league plans to have this in place by the start of the season.

The plan would allow viewers to watch live games online within their local market for the first time. That could mean Chicago Bulls fans could watch live action on Bulls.com or on the team's local RSN Web site, in this case, Chicago.ComcastSportsNet.com. Whether the online offering is free or not is still to be determined.

The NBA will use geo-blocking technology to ensure that people outside of a team's territory will not be able to access its games online to comply with the league's local marketing rules.

So while it won't be a League Pass replacement, one can only imagine the underground peer-to-peer streaming games will get easier for the technologically advanced. The biggest deal, again, is for those fans who otherwise can't watch their local team. Rights battles between two cable networks in Florida kept certain Magic fans from witnessing the team's best season in a decade. Hornets fans from the North Shore in New Orleans went without cable access to the games for most of what was the best N.O. season ever.

This would fix that ... for fans who have broadband. There's also the question of defining a market -- will exurb fans get to watch? Will Seattle get to dial up Blazer games online? Will everyone in NYC get the watch both the Nets and Knicks online, or will the burroughs get split? (Dibs on Queens, calls Dolan!)

Channing Frye is constantly expanding his repertoire (one could say "faster than Kevin Pritchard is picking up new weapons," but I think that's immeasurable). First he becomes a class-A blogger. Then he decides that he is going to be an outside shooter for a Portland team that might have 43 viable starters. Witness. Frye.



Not too shabby, no? And it makes a lot of sense; big men that can shoot the ball from the outside and spread the defense are highly valuable weapons. And that's just what the Blazers need. More weapons.

I'm not sure where exactly Cris Collinsworth was trying to go in this interview with Kobe Bryant, but thankfully it's a place that Bryant wouldn't allow Collinsworth to take him. Listen to the way Collinsworth asks Kobe if he thinks it's "cool" to say he loves his country, because to me, it seems like Collinsworth is expecting a much different answer than the one Kobe responds with.



Note to Collinsworth: it's the Olympics, dude. Athletes are representing their country against athletes from other countries around the world. Of course it's cool to be patriotic and say what an honor it is. I don't know if Collinsworth meant the question to be a legitimate one in the context of our country's current political climate, or if he was just looking to catch Kobe saying something controversial. But either way, Kobe's answer left Collinsworth looking like an unpatriotic, self-loathing American. Probably not the qualities that NBC was looking for from one of its Olympic broadcasters.

[via Awful Announcing]

Some pretty stout not-actually-allegations stemming from John Amaechi recently, via the Rocky Mountain News, via Marcel at SLAM, whereby he accuses Kobe Bryant and a bunch of other somewhat anonymous USA basketball types of homophobia. Or, if you want to take it further than that, some sort of sexist-profiling.

"It's been tense to say the least,'' Amaechi said when I ran into him in a lunch line about what it's been like being seeing some Team USA players and coaches.

Amaechi said players have turned away from him, and there remains a "lot of tension." He mentioned seeing Lakers star Kobe Bryant.

"I ran into Kobe, and he was surprised to see me,'' Amaechi said. "It didn't go well."

[...]"I had passed some of the coaches in the MPC (Main Press Center) the day before, catching only the trailing end a statement of the coach who saw me, '... isn't that Amaechi? What the hell is he doing (here),'" Amaechi writes in his blog. "I was a little irritated. I couldn't help but wonder if that was the way they would have reacted to another former NBA player they recognized passing shoulder to shoulder a world away. Even an average one."

Hmmm. Personally, I'm a bit skeptical of Amaechi's publicity manuvers given the heavy handed ESPN noise surrounding the release of his book. And I'm also a little skeptical of his abilities at person to person perception if he has yet to figure out why there might be tension between he and other members of the NBA.

Skeets at Ball Don't Lie took FOXSports to task for its absolutely absurd "Top 5 Overrated NBA Players" slideshow, which is attributed to no writer but is mentioned as being supplied by Yardbarker. Dwyane Wade checks in at #5 and Yao Ming places #3. Those are ridiculous enough to not warrant dispute. Anyone who watches basketball will know to ignore those assertions.

But Shane Battier at #1, with the following justification, that really chafes my soul:

Battier is as consistent as winter rain in the Northwest - if by consistent you mean consistently mediocre. Despite playing nearly 37 minutes per game, he averaged only nine points and five rebounds last season.

You can tell a ton of research was involved here. I mean, citing both points per game and minutes per game? Heavy, heady stuff. Battier's role is not as a scorer or rebounder, of course. He's a defender, and a role-playing shooter. Houston happened to be the second best defensive team in the NBA, as it was in Battier's first year with the Rockets. Memphis, when Battier played there, also regularly ranked high on defense consistently. Battier has been his team's predominant "stopper" since he entered the league. Hmm...

FOX also mentions his shooting percentages, which on first glance look poor. This is why we take more than one glance! Battier is #99 all-time in career True Shooting percentage, a figure that accounts for threes and free throws in adjusting raw field goal percentage. Only 98 players in the history of the NBA and ABA have shot more efficiently than Battier. As for consistency: Battier has missed 14 of a potential 572 regular season games in his NBA career. He's among the most durable wings in the game.

He has never made so much as an All-Star team, and has been voted onto the All-Defense second team once despite a reputation among those who know as an elite stopper. Who exactly is overrating him? Back to the drawing board, fellas.

People, in the heat of clamoring for more money, say crazy things all the time. Ben Gordon for instance, recently demanded $100 billion* for his future services as a Bull and even threatened to head towards Europe.

Now he's been quoted in USA Today as preferring a root canal to his contract negotiations with the Bulls.

"Right now, I think it's contract negotiations." -- Chicago Bulls guard Ben Gordon when asked by USA TODAY's Jim Halley which was more painful, a recent root canal or battling with Bulls management to work out a new contract. Gordon is currently trying to raise $950,000 for his high school in Mount Vernon, N.Y., where sports budgets have been slashed.

Benjamin, sir, my advice to you: try some, any or all couth when talking with the Bulls. Not that I think Gordon swearing up and down and being a total priss about this whole thing, but, well, actually he kind of is.

I might think I'm the smartest person at my office. And maybe I am (reality: I am not). But that doesn't mean I can walk into my boss' office and say, "You know what, screw 'most talented' and 'best future' or 'budget' ... I make with the funny at the water cooler all day, so either you pay me the most money of any employee here or I'm going to work in Europe."

Result = me fired. Gordon's field is a little more specialized but that doesn't make him, as Ziller noted previously, any less delusional -- the Bulls, and most everyone else, know that's he's a one dimensional scorer and not the best player on his team. Of course, maybe Gordon knows that too.

*May not be the actual number he requested.

I'm a frequent abuser of hyperbole, but I think I can legitimately qualify Dan Steinberg's interview with Craig Sager, posted this morning at the Bog, as the best thing the internet will see this month. I would go with "today" but that's just obvious and I don't want to insult Dan and I'd go "4eva" but the internet is a fickle beast. Much like Craig Sager.

There's so much to choose from that I'm tempted to blockquote the entire thing -- he talks about being a college mascot, trampoline dunking, Hooters, hot blondes, his incredibly hot and young wife, getting hammered -- but the following exchange, re: Sager's thong, probably sums it up the best. (Yes, I meant to type "Sager's thong"; they're discussing how hard it is for him to simplify his wardrobe in Beijing).

There's no way to accent it at all?

The only thing I can do is have this [belt] and have a matching thong. That's about the only thing I can do.

Do you have a matching thong? [laughing]

Yeah! I'm not going to show it to you though.

You really do? [staring]

Yeah, but I'm not going to show it to you.

Remember a couple of months ago, during the NBA Finals, when we longed for the days of the good ol' NBA on NBC theme music? Sure you do. Well, with NBC televising the Olympics, someone made the excellent decision to dust off the classic John Tesh tune, entitled "Roundball Rock" for the uninitiated. Awful Announcing had the clip, but it looks like Daily Motion is unwilling to host videos with unofficial NBC content. Cowards! Anyway, here's a sampling of the tune, just picture Kobe and LeBron warming up to roll China with this playing in the background.



Even watching on freaking tape delay here on the West Coast, I was pumped.

Chris Chase of Fourth-Place Medal eloquently asserted the silliness of NBC's decision to tape-delay some major Olympic events for Rocky Mountain and West Coast digestion after forcing the IOC into moving prime events into odd Beijing times for maximum American consumption (like Michael Phelps' 10 a.m. gold medal race). Those very moves make perfect sense ... because tape delay sucks! It sucked in 2000, and it's even worse in the current megatechnic age, where scores scrawl across the TV, the phone, Times Square, the internet browser.

The Western tape delay is mystifying. This morning, NBC held the massive Team USA-China men's basketball game -- evidently witnessed by one billion people -- off for three hours in the Pacific time zone. Here in California, the telecast began an hour after the game ended.

Broadband customers had the ability to watch the game live online ... if you received cable service from an approved partner, like Comcast. If, like me, you get your cable from a small local company, you couldn't get live Olympic video without lying about your location and cable provider. It shouldn't be this difficult for the West Coast's 15 million residents to see a damn basketball game at 7 a.m. when everyone else in the world gets it live. We're adults, we can handle waking up early.

I'd venture to say NBC lost more Western viewers to the web (which isn't making the Peacock much money) than it would have with the earlier broadcast time. Hopefully, they figure it out and rework the Western broadcast schedule. I'm not holding my breath, though.