This week’s tempest in a spittoon deals with Anthony Davis publicly “demanding” a trade from the New Orleans Pelicans. Davis had dinner with LeBron James about a week ago and Davis and James have the same agent; connect those dots if it not too difficult. The Pelicans want the NBA to investigate “tampering” which is laughable given the short form of the situation provided above. The problem is that a player (LeBron James) and an agent (Rich Paul) are not barred from “tampering” by the CBA; owners and league officials are barred.
Anyhow, the NBA did fine Anthony Davis $50K because a player is not allowed to ask for a trade publicly. Putting that in perspective, Anthony Davis’ salary this year is $25,434,263 he was fined 0.2% of this year’s salary; he will make more next year. That fine is not a deterrent or a punishment; it is merely for show.
Michael Wilbon made an interesting point on PTI yesterday. The working assumption here is that Davis wants to go to the Lakers to play with LeBron et.al. Wilbon wondered what was going on with the NBA players of today. He pointed out that when Michael Jordan was dominating the NBA, the other superstars did not try to go and “join him”; those superstars tried to beat him. It seems today that players would rather “collude” to form “super-teams” and win championships that way. I had not thought of it that way, but Wilbon is onto something there.
This is not good news for the Pelicans as a franchise. In recent memory, they have had three top-shelf players and once Davis is gone – and he will likely be gone before the start of next season – all those top-shelf players will have gone away.
- Chris Paul to the Clippers;
- Boogie Cousins to the Warriors;
- Anthony Davis to the ???
There is another bizarre NBA-related story out there. According to an espn.com report by Brian Windhorst, the NBA set up a “Twitter platform” that allowed fans to watch an NBA game on TV and simultaneously to interact via Twitter NBA referees to discuss what everyone saw. Supposedly, they are going to do this with other games this year including playoff games.
Obviously, I am not the target audience for this “innovation”, but I do wonder what the benefit to the NBA might be. I can imagine some problems arising from such a set-up and I can imagine “mission-creep” as users want more intimate interactions via social media during games. But I don’t see the benefits to the league; so, I wonder why that are doing it to start with.
And since I mentioned Twitter and Tweeting just above, please buckle your seat belts for the next Twitter Twaddle. Just so you are fully prepared for these two Tweets, let me be sure you are aware that the author is the one and only José Canseco:
“Aliens have been trying to teach us how to time travel but first we have to change our body composition which we are not willing to do we have tried with animals and it has failed”
And 3 minutes later …
“Time travel puts 42,651 pounds of pressure on a human skeletal structure…. can you detach the brain from the body and equalize the pressure it could be done”
Socrates, Aristotle and Plato just did a three-way face-palm. If time travel worked, we’d all be able to go and witness them doing that. One question that leaps to mind – but I would not ask because Señor Canseco might try to answer it and that would not be remotely interesting – is this:
- If the aliens are trying to teach us time travel and they/we know that our body composition stands in the way, why don’t the aliens teach us how to alter our body composition? After all, if they have mastered time travel, they too must have devised ways to arrive at the proper body composition.
Whilst one is pondering the above question, please do not let anyone associated with PETA find out that we have been doing this experimentation on animals without success. Pamela Anderson would not be pleased…
As a person trained in science, I am most impressed that we know the pressure exerted on the human system to 5 significant figures. It is most difficult to know merely the weight of a human being to that level of accuracy.
And – – I will refrain from any comment about “detaching one’s brain from one’s body” and how that sort of a condition might be related to the content of these two Tweets. Remember, this is the same man who volunteered to be the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board and who said he would be willing to be the President’s Chief of Staff. The next time someone tells you that “things can’t get worse”, remind them of that pair of possibilities.
The American Gaming Association estimates that legal betting on the Super Bowl this year will dramatically increase now that eight States can offer legal betting opportunities. Based on a survey, 22.7 million Americans will have some sort of wager on the game. The total wagering – legal, illegal and Internet wagering – is estimated to be in the neighborhood of $6B. That’s a lot of cheese…
Finally, given the impact of the polar vortex on weather conditions in the Midwest and Eastern part of the US this week, a recent Tweet by Brad Dickson seems appropriate:
“Nebraska football has landed a four-star cornerback out of Hawaii. I’m going to guess he doesn’t watch the Weather Channel.”
But don’t get me wrong, I love sports………
Six billion dollars in Super Bowl bets–and all I want to know is where will the erstwhile Raiders play their home games next year. I bet on Oakland.
Tenacious P:
Oakland is the logical place. The only problem there is that when politicians get involved in “disputes”, logic is the first casualty in the dispute.