So these four guys will be playing another year on their rookie contracts. I can’t say I disagree with keeping any of these guys here, they’re some of the best players on the team.

It turns out a lot of people had beef over his “nba’s most overpaid” article.

I’d like to specifically call out his bias towards fat shaq and the player he formally was. it is this kind of blind bias that enables a basically inactive at-the-time Shaq to make the NBA all-star team and keeps a superior player like Eddy Curry off the all star team.

”

Shaq was brought up numerous times on the web and in my e-mails. He’s 35, he makes $20 million, he missed 66 games in two years and his team was swept in the first round of last year’s playoffs.

All true. The Heat did not get its money’s worth out of O’Neal last year. But he remains the league’s most intimidating inside force and his production, when healthy, was not terrible (17.3 points, 7.4 rebounds, 59.1 percent shooting).”

Okay, those are the “intimidating” numbers that got shaq on the all-star team. Let’s take a look at Eddy Curry’s numbers from the same season.

19.5 points, 7.0 rebounds, 57.6 percent shooting. Most importantly, Eddy Curry played and started 81 regular games this season, shaq a mere 40. Now who is the true force in the league? Apparently Shaq, D Wade and Riley all think they can coast through the regular season, taking vacations while other teams are working hard to come back in may and vie for a title. I knew then as I know now, it doesn’t work that way. If you are going to beat the best, you have to put in the hard work in the regular season, and not just rely on your “dominant” history, expecting people to hand you a trophy in June.

Like the NBA slogan of a few years ago, “the truth be told,” and this year the truth will be told about the knicks. The truth is that right now, nobody is giving the Knicks a chance this year, let’s just see what happens once the ball goes up on November 1st.

is Alan Houston to Cleavland a done deal? isn’t he just working out at this point?

Hey, if they want to take on his knee caps at his age, fine. If Cleavland doesn’t take him, I hope Boston does. Boston should sign Jerome James after we cut him as well!

Even if Allan Houston wanted to come back to play for the knicks for the league minimum, I don’t think Zeke would have it. Just too much bad history there. Ice cold style, Zeke was like “he should retire,” when Houston was still trying to play.

Zeke has made an infinite amount of enemies in the league. It must make potential trade discussions a bit uncomfortable with Michael Jordan and Larry Bird GM’s, not to mention Larry Brown advising the sixers and Popavich basically having creative control of the spurs. That 4 less teams to talk to and consequently 60 less possibilities of acquiring new players.

His only friend are Dumars and Laimbeer, and last I heard Laimbeer was coaching in the WNBA, he’s no help to Zeke from there.

Don’t think friendship matters in terms of GM’s? How’d KG end up in Boston? You all know that one.

It’s going to be exciting to play Boston this season, when is the last time we said that?

too bad youtube doesn’t have the msg version, which was better.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xd0pDgNKwNU

in my opinion, this was the game that broke NY’s spirit. they were in the playoff hunt, and on the road coming into dallas, probably the best team in the league at that point. they played as best they could, and were winning the game at times. they gave it their everything, and couldn’t come away with the win. New York didn’t recover. If they would have won that game it would have carried over into a playoff berth IMO.

the Dallas game was one of my favorites. loved the dunk by balkman on harris.

Another name you could have easily kicked around in comparison to Steph is Chauncey Billups. I don’t know what his salary is, but here are his stats side-by-side with stephon’s from last season.

Chauncey Billups
17p 7a 1.2 st 2to 42.7%fg 34.5%3pt 88%ft

Stephon Marbury
16.4p 5.4a 1.0st 2.4to 41.5%fg 35.7%3pt 77%ft

Chauncey gets all the credit in the world for being a winner (NBA title in ’04, current PG for olympic team) where as Stephon gets the reputation of being a career looser with high stats and even higher salary.

I’m just not buying it. These players don’t make up the contracts on their own, GMs do that. Much of this perception stuff is circumstantial. Billups had a great team that year they won it. that team was filled with role players, and they had just the right combination of chemistry and experience playing together. If Stephon is a looser by the media’s standards, then so is AI, so is KG, so is Paul Pierce, there are many that are paid tons of money and have not won anything. Jason Kidd hasn’t won anything and his reputation is worlds better than stephon’s. Vice Carter ring a bell?

If people still think Nash has an opportunity to win, which everybody does–including those bogus predictions by formula–then I suggest Stephon has that same opportunity currently, especially since he three full years younger than nash and a year younger than Billups.

By the way I’m glad the knicks got rid of Larry Brown. he’s a media-obsessed snake in the grass–nobody in the nba is even thinking of employing him at this moment. 23 wins. What a disgrace to the franchise and to the city of new york.

and if the knicks don’t do some damage this post-season, then there should be some more changes made. Chicago rebuilt in a shorter period of time than it is taking NY, and that is unacceptable.

A recent article by SI reports that Jermaine O’Neal wants to be traded to either the Lakers to play with Kobe, or the Nets to play with Jason Kidd.

The Nets?

Imagine an Atlantic Division where you have Chris Bosh in Toronto, Kevin Garnett in Boston, Zach Randolph in New York and Jermaine O’Neal in New Jersey, all playing each other every other night? We’re 3/4 already there. In terms of power, the East could be the new West, because those are some dominant players beating each other up on a regular basis!

And I like Zach Randolph amongst those guys, because the man is in his prime, not on the decline, not still on the rise (of the other three, make what connections you will). Randolph might not be the best defender of the bunch, but he is a top tier rebounder and probably THE BEST scorer of the bunch. The combination of his power, lateral quickness and deadly lefty jump shot make him a unique power forward in this league.

I know that both the Lakers and Nets would like to have Jemaine O’Neal, but right now, I’m doubting LA will get it done, because they foolishly think Andrew Bynum is worth more in the future than either Jermaine O’Neal or Jason Kidd is currently. If I were the Lakers, I would give up on Bynum and go after Jason Kidd to keep Kobe happy, but this guy Mitch Kupchak is proving to be an idiot of Scott Layden magnitude, so, good luck with that.