What David Kahn could learn from DMX

With the start of NFL free agency I couldn't help but think about the looming NFL lockout. With a guy in DeMaurice Smith who doesn't seem very keen on bending over for the owners like Gene Upshaw did, it doesn't seem like a labor solution is going to happen in time for a full or any NFL season to occur in 2011. But something no one really talks about is how a NBA lockout is looming as well. The NBA collective bargaining agreement ends after the 2010-11 season. Certain NBA insiders, like Bill Simmons, are convinced the lockout will happen. The league wants to protect itself from the countless bad contracts GMs have given out. This means limiting guaranteed contracts to 3 or 4 years.

I mean, something is clearly wrong in your league when a GM thinks a solution to using tons of cap space is to throw around $100 million in the likes of Ben Gordon or Charlie Villanueva. Or the fact Marcin Gortat was offered a 5 year $34 million dollar contract by the Mavs, ONLY FOR THE MAGIC TO MATCH IT!!! (The number of points, rebounds, assists, steals and blocks combined Gortat gets per game is less than 10) In a league where expiring contracts are highly valued, people get paid tons of money to go away and players come out of retirement and get paid millions to do nothing so a trade can go through, something is wrong.

What doesn't make sense about the entire thing is how the secret to NBA success isn't hard to figure out. You build a team around one star player (or if you are lucky, two), have a couple really good sidekicks, three or four quality role players and you should be set to be a pretty good NBA team. The problem is, in the NBA there are only seven star players. I define a star player as a player who if the best player on their team, that team can be a legit NBA title contender. Currently the only players in the league that can be considered such are LeBron, Kobe, Dwight Howard, Dwanye Wade, Kevin Durant, Dirk and Carmelo Anthony.

Let me explain my list a little more because I know there are some omissions and question. First of all, a few years ago Tim Duncan, Kevin Garnett and Steve Nash would easily be on that list while Durant and Anthony would not. So would have Chris Paul after that 2007-2008 season, but for some reason Paul and the rest of his team has greatly regressed. One might question the inclusion of Wade, how can a guy leading on a 31-31 team be considered one of the elite? The rest of the players on the Heat are laughably bad. Wade has no really good sidekick on his team and he barely has any decent role players. The second best player on that team is Michael Beasley, an undersized power forward who shoots 45 percent and averages more than one three point attempt a game despite shooting 27 percent from behind the arc. If Wade simply didn't exist the Heat would most likely have just as bad of a record as the Nets, if not worse.

Why isn't Chris Bosh on this list even though he's posed to get a max deal in free agency? Well, Bosh is kind of an unknown. It's clear he has a lot of basketball talent. At the same time the Raptors don't scare anyone. They bring in Turkoglu who proved he could be a really good sidekick in the league last year and pair him with Bosh and it really hasn't done much except put them in NBA Hell.* That's why you hear about the rumors that Bosh will team up with LeBron or Wade. Or that Chicago might be a fit for him with Derrick Rose, another superstar unknown. Perhaps if Rose and Bosh get paired together it takes their game to the next level and it's clear they can contend for a NBA title together, but it's no guarantee at this point.

Now you may ask, what about Atlanta and Boston? Atlanta has the #3 seed in the East at the moment and Boston has the big three. It's simple: neither are NBA title contenders. The Hawks are a talented and exciting team to watch. But when they run into a guy named LeBron in the playoffs, the season is going to be over. Joe Johnson isn't a star player. He's really good. So are Josh Smith and Al Hortford. Having three really good players can lead you to some playoff series wins and maybe even a conference finals appearance. It doesn't win you NBA titles. Ask the Cavs during the late 80's and early 90's if that formula worked against Jordan. These Hawks aren't going to defeat LeBron.

And anyone who thinks Boston window hasn't been shut, is probably some Irish retard listening to the Dropkick Murphys right now. The window has been shut closed and boarded over. The Celtics are old and not winning a NBA title anytime soon with the core group they have. All those hard years have taken a toll on KG and he is not a star player anymore. And Paul Pierce has proven when he has to become the star player of a team, it doesn't result in NBA championships. Ray Allen isn't even a really good player anymore. So I think I've defended the definition of a star player pretty well. It has to be clear you can win a NBA title with that player as the best player on the team.

So what's the lesson here? Well, it's obvious NBA GMs still need to be taught how to build a NBA team. After all, many of them are bad at doing it. Kenyon Martin is making $12 million a year and he also cost the Nuggets multiple first round picks to get him. Although currently the Nuggets are still in a good position as they lucked out in the lottery and got Carmelo and made a trade to get Chauncey Billups (whose Detroit Pistons are the only exception to needing a true star player to win a title in recent NBA history). Or Gilbert Arenas getting a contract worth over $100 million when he had played a total of 15 games in 2 season and it was clear his skills were diminishing. At one point he was on the cusp of being a star player as he lead the Wizards to the second round of the NBA playoffs. But after consecutive first round exits when he had good sidekicks in Caron Butler and Antwan Jamison, it was clear he wasn't one.

My point is that NBA GMs could learn how to build a NBA team from reflecting on recent hip hop history. I'm serious. Trust me, this will make sense. In the late 90's and early 2000's the rap game was filled with rappers starting their own labels and starting their own rap posse. These days rap posses are virtually non existent, at least not to the same degree they existed 10 years ago. I figure it's because star rappers lost money investing in albums of artists that didn't sell.

But the way to build a rap posse in those days had a simple formula. You had the star rapper, one that was capable of dropping platinum album each time. He had one, maybe two close friends he trusted to maintain the sidekick role. The sidekick was someone that was capable of dropping a gold album maybe even a platinum at the height of his career. Rarely did the sidekick evolve into a star rapper. The rest of the label or posse was filled out with minor rappers that couldn't even go gold or maybe a decent hip hop group that would equate into the role players in the NBA. And maybe the posse had a token female rapper, which in NBA terms would be the token white person. In this case the token female could be decent like Eve/David Lee or never be relevant like Amil/Robert Swift. Ironically, after Eminem's commercial success some labels started pushing out token white rappers, which in NBA terms would be... I don't know some sort of fucked up combination of Larry Hughes, Tim Thomas and Adam Morrison.

The problem with the NBA is GMs pay players out of scale. When Zach Randolph was signing a 6 year $84 million deal what made John Nash decide Zach Randolph was going to be a star player? One decent season! The equivalent would have been Interscope giving Beanie Sigel $5 million dollars to leave Roc-A-Fella because he and a decent album. Beanie is a good rapper, but it's clear he'll never be a star rapper to the point 40 year old white people know who he is. Like NBA superstars, there are only a short supply of true rap stars. Rarely does a superstar come out of nowhere. After a few years in the NBA, you know if a player will be a star. Just like after an album or two you know if a rapper will be a star. There are some exceptions of course, the NBA has had some late bloomers like Steve Nash and Dirk. The rap game has Lil Wayne, who went from being the youngest member of the Hot Boys to having the most significant career out of all of them and it took a few years of obscurity and underground hype before Eminem got a major label deal.

The point is though, you can identify star talent pretty easily. Just because a NBA player has one good season doesn't mean shit. Especially if that one good season came on a 30 win team. Just like any rapper can have a hit single and that doesn't mean shit either. I'm pretty sure Soulja Boy's career has peaked, any record label that would be willing to spend top dollar for him would be like a NBA team trying to pay Brian Cardinal $7 million a year... oh wait. So next time John Paxson is thinking about paying someone like Luol Deng $72 million over 6 years, he should call Busta Rhymes and ask him if he would've given up a $1 million of his own money to sign anyone that was Flipmode Squad.

ESPN: Running A Tighter Ship Than The Third Reich

Tony Kornheiser was given a two week suspension from PTI for comments he made about the outfits Hannah Storm wears on Sportscenter. The linked Deadspin post also infers that part of his punishment might be because he took a swipe at Berman (possibly one of the most awful things in all of sports). He made these comments not on any ESPN airwaves, but his local Washington D.C. talk show. Another odd and bizzare move by ESPN to silence it's media personalities when they have any sort of thought or opinion about something and is ultimately harmless.

This Is What Happens In Cities Where They Are Subject To JaMarcus Russell

Oakland FTL

The South. Racist.

Not much posting lately, I know. But even with the Winter Olympics, this period is basically the dead period of sports every year.

But here's a story about as surprising as a WNBA coming out of the closet: there are racists in the south. DeMarcus Cousins has apparently been getting racist calls and text messages from fans of rival SEC schools. But hey, college basketball is so pure!!! And not as gangsta!!! More white guys shooting 3's!!!

Jim Gray Post Game

Found the Jim Gray audio. Enjoy. After all he thinks all the people that died or got fucked by Katrina are now all saved because the Saints won the Super Bowl!!!

http://www.gabcast.com/casts/33743/episodes/1265736203.wav

Jim Gray Thinks New Orleans Will Be Alright After All

Some post Super Bowl thoughts:

1) The Tebow ad didn't end up converting everyone to Jesus apparently.

2) The commercials sucked. The advertising industry is full of morons. Only the retarded would laugh out loud at those commercials.

3) Manning's legacy isn't damaged. Yes, he hasn't played as well as he should in the playoffs. But at the same time he still has a ring and how two Super Bowl appearances.

4) Jim Gray had a postgame wrap up at the end of the Westwood One radio coverage of the game. I can't find the audio clip anywhere, I'll try and find it but to recap he basically said, "It's as if all is forgotten from Katrina because the Saints won the Super Bowl." He also called Brees the savior of New Orleans like the CBS pregame show did and also mentioned the "Breesus" nickname and called it "Drew Orleans". Pete Rose should've punched this guy when he had the chance.