We're going to start using the new location in the next 24 hours. We have to redirect the DNS so that "yaysports.com" goes there. Comments are currently off, so we don't lose any of your geniusness. If you need to say something, go to the link below and leave it at the new joint.

Keep in mind, the new design won't be done until later this month - probably around X-mas. Formatting is a mess right now, and it's all really generic and Wordpressy looking.

Big, big, big, HUGE ups to Jason at LowPost.net for moving all of our content over there. He's one of them "cool dudes".

Goodbye, our sweet, sweet Movable Type...and farewell to LivingDot, the most expensive server company in all the land...no more bandwidth issues, he said...

THE NEW WORDPRESS LOCATION OF YAYSPORTS! NBA

Did they not understand the last post?

You have stolen an original character from us and used it for your own purposes.

There ain't no room for fan-fiction in the Orange Roundie's world, Scoop. You can write as the ball all you want, but you sure as hell can't call it "Orange Roundie". Call it "Red-Yellow Orbster" or something, okay?

Why are we fired up? You see, the Scoop Jackson column has been "fixed". Instead of "a website" it's "a website called yaysports.com".

You're making it worse, and we now have no choice but to organize. Big thanks to famed commenter "Wanna-Be Roundie Henchman", who is now a wanna-be no more.

Welcome, friends...to The League of Roundie Henchmen.

(Official logo and merchandise to come.)

All you need to do is send Scoop an email via this link, then email us a copy of it at yaysports@gmail.com. If you're a blogger, simply post your outrage and send us a link.

Our target: Scoop Jackson and ESPN.com.

Our mission: Exposure.

Our goal: The column pulled down off the site and some sort of retraction.

Our reasons: Theft of intellectual property with clear intent and complete disregard for the owner.

This is it, people. This is where the blogosphere rises up and says, "you're a poo-poo head". You can't take our commerical ideas and hard work and pawn it off as your own. You cannot do it anymore. Like Vince Carter said back when he wasn't disliked, IT'S OVAH.

JOIN NOW.

Jones on the NBA
Mavs Moneyball
RedsArmy.com
The Rising Suns
Give Me the Rock
3ManLift
The Big Lead
NBA FanHouse
HoopsAddict
DetroitBadBoys
LowPost.net
Need4Sheed
Pounding the Rock
El Friends du Nenad
World Wide Reader
SacTownRoyalty
I Heart KG
Awful Announcing
Out Of Kilter
Howie the Hype
Bullets Fever
Bench Renaldo
BlazersBlog
Your New York Knicks
ESPNBS
Celticsblog
NBA Macedonia
End of the Bench

This is much more fun than lawyers, yes? Also cheaper and likely more effective!

Looks like our plan worked - we didn't watch the Cavaliers, and apparently they played with some actual energy and got the win over the Hawks last night.

(This isn't entirely true - we flipped it on for a moment, watched Ira Newble (!) take two straight threes, assumed the worst, and went elsewhere.)

Anyway, the boycott is over, and we feel obliged to watch the game against the Rockets of Houston tonight.

By all accounts, LeBron was dominant last night, which he agrees with completely.

"When I'm in an attack mode, my team kind of vibes off that,'' James said. "We came out with a focus to get a road win and we did.''

"The fourth quarter is when I need to put my cape on,'' James said. "If I'm going to be a leader that's when I'm going to have to be at my best.''

We've long called his attack mode "Angry LeBron", which isn't all that original or creative, nor by any rights do we have hold on it - any of you guys over at Page 2 are welcome to it.

Speaking of the fiasco of the last 36 hours, the following will be our final word on it in public, beyond the obligatory series of passive-aggressive jabs. With all of your help, we think our point was made sufficiently, and the last thing we want is to go from "the site who hated the tights" to "the site with the Scoop Jackson beef".

If this isn't fun, there's no point to it. Alas:

1) We never, ever said we wanted Scoop Jackson fired or even disciplined. We like Scoop as a person. We just wanted "Orange Roundie" off the ESPN site. It's now there less, so that's something.

2) Scoop could've avoided all of this if he'd just contacted us himself instead of going through Deadspin. "Tell the guys over at YAY..."? Are we that hard to find?

Anyway - thanks again for all of your support. The person who overnighted the wedding cake went too far, but such is life.

NOTE: The server move is probably going to happen this weekend sometime, which is when everything gets UGLY for about three weeks design-wise. We may just operate out of two places - not sure how this is gonna go down yet.

NOTE 2: The Players Union is suing the NBA over the Roundie and technical fouls. Strangely enough, there's no mention of this on NBA.com.

NOTE 3: None of this will stop us from getting that "League of Roundie Henchmen" stuff designed and up sometime in the future.

Between all the Scoop Jackson stuff, Kobe putting up 52 last night, Eva Longoria gaining the ability to scream "Tony Parker is my finacee!!!", and a few other things, we've barely had time to contemplate the true ramifications of our vow to boycott the Cavaliers tonight.

It's closing in on gametime, and we're truely not sure if we can go through with it.

The task is easy enough - we're not at home and the Tivo hasn't been set yet. There are also errands to run this afternoon - we could simply go about our duties and miss the whole thing.

That said, we could just as easily go home and turn it on.

Undecided - that's the best way to describe us at the moment. As such, let's rehash this morning's goings-on one more time, simply for clarity's sake:

1) We don't hate Scoop Jackson. By all accounts, he's a great guy and well liked. We think he made an error in judgement. We'd just like to see it corrected.

2) This has nothing to do with "getting linked by ESPN" (which we couldn't care less about), so the people arguing that we've been given credit (since the YAY reference was inserted into the article) are missing the point.

3) We're not trying to set ourself up as some defender of the right of all bloggers everywhere or something.

4) All we want is the character name pulled off that column. That's it. The concept he can steal all he wants - although we don't think that's cool either, it happens every day. We own "Orange Roundie" though - we have plans for "Orange Roundie". None of those plans involve anyone thinking it came from Scoop Jackson.

More troubling than all four of those bullet-points is this "should we or shouldn't we" concerning the Cavs-Hawks game.

We're 65% on "not gonna watch" right now, but we don't want to start sending bad karma Cleveland's way. What a strange day all around, but no stranger than two Thursdays from now, which we've already forseen as being "really weird".

(Pre-note: this post was written before the previous one, but we want this one on top for now.)

Sorry to keep you waiting.

Everyone knows what he did.

Hell, even he knows – perhaps dropping the phrase “Orange Roundie” right in the middle of it was his way of admitting it without admitting it. Who knows what goes on in the mind of someone like Scoop.

Frankly, if he’d left it out, nobody could really say anything – certainly two people on Earth could come up with the idea of the ball being sentient. By vaguely nodding to the source, he points out the whole deal, though.

He stole. He stole a concept, a schtick, a character.

He took it and presented it as his own.

It’s wrong, and people with integrity don’t do it. In any creative industry, it’s like the RULE. It’s the one thing you DON’T DO. He knows it, we know it, everyone else knows it.

(Side note here. We’ve never been huge fans of Scoop the writer – he knows his hoop, but his stuff is a little over-stylized and wordy for us, mainly due to our short attention span. Never did we think he was a bad guy, though. Never did we think he was a hack of this fashion.)

The worst part about this is that no matter how it shakes out, we end up looking bad. Just to be clear, we don’t want apologies, and we certainly don’t care about links or credit from ESPN.

What we want is a time machine, so that we can put the Roundie back in his box until it’s his time to come out. You’ll note the videos stopped – there’s a reason for that. We had a plan, and that plan is now compromised, lest the uninitiated think we draw our ideas from Scoop Jackson. All because he couldn’t come up with his own idea for a column.

Oh, and just to be clear with what this really is all about: we own the copyright on the name and character “Orange Roundie”. (We have no claim on the ball pattern, which is why we have our own being done.)

Do you hear and understand that, ESPN?

NOTE: Another point that’s really clawing at us is that Scoop completely misunderstood and bastardized the humor in “Orange Roundie” and the personality of same. You don’t throw that phrase out there without going back to the source and seeing it in context.

And you certainly don’t try to do a lame imitation of someone else’s character. This is like if someone wrote their own Spider-Man comic and gave him bird powers.

Since we’ve got stealing on the mind, allow us to steal from Seinfeld – this portion of the problem doesn’t offend us as the owner of “Orange Roundie”, it offends us as a comedy writer.

NOTE 2: It’s entirely possible Scoop innocently thought he was throwing the “cute lil’ blog person” a bone by doing this – he could pat us on the head like a small child, all like, “Here’s some candy! Do you like candy?” And we’d be all like, “Wow! Scoop Jackson reads the website! Ooooh!”

Hey Scoop – we’re a professional screenwriter, buddy. We get paid to write, too. You assume too much, especially if you think we're "wowed" by celebrity of any kind.

NOTE 3: We welcome others to chime in as they please. Send us your links – we’re collecting them. Were not going to war with ESPN…yet. That said, we’ve had it with them – you like our style and material so much (and clearly you do), pay us to do it for you.

(For the newly arriving, click on that Orange Roundie category link up there to see the real history of the actual Orange Roundie.)

UPDATE: Scoop has responded via Deadspin:

"I actually thought I was giving them some love, even though ESPN edited out the part about them being the ball's favorite site. Just trying to have some fun. Hope you enjoyed the piece; tell YAY I thought their overall ball coverage was brilliant. The ball, on the other hand, had a few issues."

We appreciate the compliment, Scoop, and that's exactly what we figured you'd say. "Aww, thanks lil' blog guy. I'm gonna take your idea and run with it on my own in bog boy land."

Look, we have the copyright on the "Orange Roundie". This isn't about "respect for blogs" or "wahh wahh recognize us", it's about a character that we own and commercial plans for, which you have taken and used without permission.

Again, you have every right to have the NBA ball speak in the first person (as questionable as that is to do), but you cannot call it the "Orange Roundie".

We're going to hold to our current opinion that this was done out of ignorance and not because you're a bad person. We imagine we'd get along quite well with you, actually.

These were the Atlantic Division standings as of day the last.

If you haven't guessed, this was something we were gonna get into yesterday afternoon, but didn't. We've slyly transported the picture into an all-new post, and that's the experience you're having now.

Alas, the Atlantic Division is worse than ever, but after last night's Nets victory over the Celtics, New Jersey has at least taken sole control of the group.

As they say, that's all we have to say about that, although you might go read Bill Simmons' latest for a full breakdown of the sadness that is the Eastern Conference.

Moving on to one other NBA-specific note before we go forward with the YAY-centric notes...

After the uninspired Cavaliers lost to the Knicks at home last night, we're doing something we haven't done since LeBron arrived on the scene: we're voluntarily boycotting the game against the Hawks Friday night.

We refuse to watch Malaise LeBron and his merry band of Whatever Men play down to another team they should slaughter.

LeBron - we love ya, but if you don't care, we don't, either. Losing is fine, and we can deal with it. What we can't deal with is losing because you didn't try. You guys are making us sick - it might be Mike Brown, but it's also you, LBJ. You're the King - act like it.

F'ING TRY - even Damon Jones, of all people, got in your face about (repeatedly) not closing out on Quentin Richardson last night.

Okay, moving on, which is a sick transition. UNGH!

We're switching server companies, so we no longer get raped on bandwidth costs, and also so we can transfer everything over to Wordpress blogging software. (From Movable Type.)

What that means is thus - our content output this month is going to be down - there's no way around it.

This isn't really a change from the last three months actually, but between switching over to WP, doing a complete and total redesign of the site (possibly with a different name), finishing up work on WSM?, travelling to see family in various places, some other non-blog professional things that have developed, and our vast charity works, we're swamped.

Of course, if we're forced to completely boycott the Cavs altogether, this frees some time up, yes?

Anyway, this starts soon - don't be surprised if the whole deal looks different one day, and it'll probably start on a generic design and stay there for several weeks. We don't think we can even get to the new graphics and such until we're home with Mom and Dad in mid-December. (Who beat us!)

Thanks for your patience - things will get back to somewhat normal in January - promise.

We submit the accompanied picture of Clippers guard Cuttino Mobley without comment, except for the following:

Professional basketball player consistently tagged with certain rumors: CHECK

Scarf: CHECK

No shirt: CHECK

Strangely over-exposed underwear: CHECK

Possibly wearing make-up: CHECK

A bunch of you awkwardly going "Umm...yeah. Thought so.": CHECK

(Thanks to Leave the Man Alone for the pic.)

Everything which was new but old is now old and no longer new, yet the same, once again.

For the first time!

The Clippers lost to the Kings last night, and the most unstoried franchise in Los Angeles is on a journey back to its true destiny. Step one is complete, as they're now below .500.

How did this all come to pass? Were the Clips of last year just a fluke? Some say Elton Brand is playing on tired, Olympic Teamish legs. Others blame the lack of players named Shaun Livingston who aren't busts. Still others will tell you center Chris Kaman is relaxing on his $50M extention.

Newly extended (4 mo' years!) Head Coach Mike Dunleavy...weighs in.

"They've been tough on us," said Dunleavy, 0-13 against the Kings as Clippers coach, before the game.

"Last year they weren't in the playoffs and I made the comment, 'If I could drop two teams out, one in the East and one in the West, I would drop out this team and Miami.'

"As far as anybody else was concerned, I felt pretty good about us having a chance to beat those teams. I mean, we'll give all those teams a real good series."

Well, there you have it - the Clips' problems are all because the Heat and the Kings are still in the NBA.

We'd say their problem is as follows:

1) Elton Brand is tired.
2) They don't have any players named Shaun Livingston who aren't busts.
3) Chris Kaman loves money and girls.

Ah. It seems all the other people we mentioned above were correct, leaving us sitting here, completely irrelevant, once again.

NOTE: The LA Times has a new Clippers blog, if you're into Clippers blogs that are associated with the LA Times.

NOTE 2: Ron Artest!

The drama of Ben Wallace's headwear continues tonight in Chicago, as the Bulls return home to play the Knicks.

Ben himself hasn't spoken as of yet, and nobody knows what he'll do/wear tonight, but yesterday GM John Paxson got his say in on the matter.

He's obviously taking the Skiles side of things, which isn't a huge surprise - word is there may be a fine coming.

When a coach comes out and makes an important declaration like "no headbands", people listen.

"We have to address this now, and we've started that process," Paxson said. "Our relationship is fairly new. But Ben doesn't strike me as a guy that wants to disrupt what a team is all about. He's been a part of too many good teams that have played together.

"We have to be a little careful in terms of changing something for one player at this time. If I knew this was going to be an issue a month or two ago and Ben had expressed that to us, that might've been a way to handle it. Right now, we're in a tough position. We have the rule for the right reasons."

"He's still a guy that we are totally counting on. We want him to get acclimated and comfortable and playing at a high level. Obviously, we still think he can do that."

That last few sentences implies that at some point, the Bulls might not think Ben can still do that.

But what happens then? With what's happened, the way he's played, and that contract, it's gonna be hard to move him, unless maybe DET wants him back.

Speaking of the Pistons, Ben's first trip back to the Palace isn't until January. Should be interesting to see what happens - we expect lots of boos and even more signs about grass being greener, etc.

Of course, by then Ben could be playing in Europe or permanently suspended, or even playing in South America. Japan has a basketball league, and he could play there. Or in the National Madagascar Basketball Thing.

Wherever he ends up, he's sure to not be getting rebounds.

NOTE: Amazing - the lack of any emphasis (from us) on the Stabury-Zeke thing, who NYC writers are calling pointless.

NOTE 2: CHI home crowd will not know how to react to anything regarding this, and thus...complete zero decibel silence.

While the Mavs were winning their tenth straight last night, we were busy concentrating on the biggest game on the schedule.

Yep, it was the matchup of "teams who were everyone's darkhorses to be pretty good but in actuality have the best records in their respective conferences."

Utah v Orlando. Jazz v Magic. Dwight v Carlos. Nelson v Williams. Darko v Memet. Hill/Hill v Sloan/AK47. Mickey Mouse v Mormons.

However you want to put it, it was a large game, and the Orlando Magic came out ahead, winning on the road. Jameer Nelson is...self-assured.

"We know what type of team we are. We're no fluke," point guard Jameer Nelson said. "We've showed we have matured. Last year we might have kicked it away."

True statement, and Jameer has really turned himself into quite the solid little point guard, just the kind that the Cavaliers could use and could've easily had, just like we wanted to have happen.

(This is an unverifiable but true part of our pre-blog life story.)

Anyway, interesting matchup - the Magic are on one of them West Coast road swigie deals, so we'll see what they kick away and don't kick away in the five games they have left on it. We're cautiously optimistic for them.

That said, let's go back to our first statement, wherein we said we were "concentrating" on this game.

What we actually meant is we were watching Heroes (on NBC!) and didn't even know these teams were playing until this morning when we went to that hot new website NBA.com.

We blame our lack of NBA-centric attentions on, of course, the ongoing server issues that plague us day and night.

NOTE: Nothing!

NOTE 2: Anyone else totally, 100% sure that's JJ Redick's nailed-to-the-bench hand?

After a scary few weeks wherein it looked like this entire season may be played in some kind of upside-down parallel universe, things are starting to settle down and get back to normal.

Case in point, the PHX Suns have gone 6-1 in their last seven, and are now above .500 after their win over Portland last night.

Suns are winning, Trailblazers losing. All is right with the world.

Key in the win were both Amare Stoudemire, who we're not a fan of at all, and Raja Bell, who we're a fan of in a way in the same fashion we're fans of things like this Peter Cetera video.

Raja first - he put in 30 on 7-12 from three-three land. Break it down, Face.

"That's definitely a byproduct of the way we played as a team for four quarters," he said.

Great analysis - play as team = win. Give us something more, will you? Is this why your ESPN diaries have dried up?

As for Amare...it may surprise you that we're not fans, since he's allegedly one of the most dynamic young players around, despite the microfracture surgery.

Thing is, the surgery is a problem for us. There have been way too many tales of lax rehab habits and a sour atttude. These are the things that bother us - it means his comeback (20/11 last night) is a byproduct (yeah!) of luck and natural gifts rather than hard work.

Screw that - we love hard work, which is why we're probably gonna use the impending server move as a reason to take like a week off, even though it'll probably only take a couple hours.

See, we can make up all kinds of great stories about "server problems" and "technical difficulties", while sitting back and wondering how everyone is falling for it. We'll write like eight posts per day going on and on about the server problems - it'll be a well-non-deserved break, and we can't wait.

NOTE: Also back to normal is, of course, Raja's Bell's non-website, which for the 8th time has reset it's launch timer.

NOTE 2: Darius Miles!

This whole thing where Ben Wallace signed with the Bulls has been pretty nice for us so far.

First of all, it obviously hurt the Pistons, although they've nicely recovered from their questionable start.

Secondly, CHI itself is a bonafide mess, even after their blowout victory over the NYK last night.

Here's your scenario: Ben Wallace wears a headband and rebounds basketballs. Head Coach Scott Skiles wants Ben to do the rebounding basketballs thing, but has a rule against the wearing headbands thing.

And thus was born the funnest addition to the most disastrous free agent signing of 2006.

One night after Wallace played a season-low 19 minutes, 38 seconds, Skiles removed Wallace just 2:02 after tipoff for breaking the team rule [of headband wearing].

Is Skiles' worried Wallace' insubordination will become an issue? "No," he said after the game. "I don't know why. I'm just not."

Asked if he understood why he was benched, Wallace looked downward. "Ask [Skiles]," he said. "Coach makes the decisions. I just play."

Actually...you don't, Ben.

You're averaging like 5 points and nine boards. The game before this game, you put up zeroes across the board in 19 minutes. That sucks, and it's certainly not worth the max contract you're sitting on. (Not that we really need to say that.)

Who's in the wrong here, though? The overbearing coach or the disgruntled PF/C?

We'll go with...you guys are both retarded. Ben, does it really matter if you've got a headband on or not? Scott, same question.

Our big regret here is that "Stephon Marbury gets benched for entire second half, scores 0 points on 0-0 shooting" isn't even all that interesting anymore. Has Knicks Turmoil been overshadowed by Bulls Turmoil? Do the Lakers ever have their own Turmoil anymore?

What's happened to the NBA? Is Chris Webber still really good? That wouldn't change, right?

NOTE: If we were Ben, we'd do an Al Harrington mohawk. Surely not outlawed by Skiles, yet surely makes him angrier than the headband.

NOTE 2: We wore a headband once for [an unnnamed movie about a snake] and it was uncomfortable as hell. Best described as "squeezy", it gave us that feeling you get when you sleep on one side of your face too long and you start to worry you've caused your head to get all mis-shapen. You all get like that, right?

Oh, man...we love Mark Cuban.

We're keeping this short and sweet. He posted an ode to Tim Duncan on his blog just a bit ago. It was nice, friendly, and complimentary to the game and the player.

To conclude his piece, Mark shows you a video of Tim that he himself has uploaded to YouTube.

By pure coincidence, David Stern has ordered all NBA videos to be taken off the video sharing site this very week.

Gee, wonder where Mark stands on that issue...we're watching the work of pure, wily genius.

Love it. Love it.

That may not be entirely accurate, but if we ran the Cavaliers, that's exactly where he'd be.

After building a big lead in the first half, Cleveland scored a massive total of nine points in the third quarter and ended up losing by like eleven or something at Indiana.

(No, we can't be bothered to check the exact numbers - it's too disturbing to have to relive in any such detailed form.)

Same old story - lack of motivation and energy. This has to be the worst 8-5 start in NBA history - the team can play absolutely great when they want to, and they've done that for a complete 48-minute game exactly once this season.

We refuse to even look at the recap and yank a quote - instead, let's go to ABJ columnist Terry Pluto, who wrote yesterday morning (before last night's game obviously) all about the problems this team is having.

(He's been asking and answering questions of himself for years btw- we quite enjoy it.)

Q: Doesn't Brown usually mention a lack of defense when the team loses?

A: Yes, there are breakdowns. But the Cavs are allowing only 93 points per game, third lowest in the NBA. The real trouble spot is offense, which ranks 21st at 96 per game. That's low for a team with LeBron James and some other scorers. They have a bigger problem on offense.

Q: Why say that?

A: In the past three games, in the fourth quarter they scored 12 points against the Raptors, 17 against the Grizzlies and 41 points in the second half against the Wizards. In Toronto, they went 0-for-10 on 3-pointers in the fourth quarter, but didn't shoot a single free throw. They just heaved up long jumpers. It was the same against the Grizzlies.

Again, we can't check the numbers, but it was the same thing last night, in addition to a pathetic effort (in the second half).

And what does Brown do? Stand there with his hands in his pockets doing that thing with his lip. (It's like a half lick/half bite.)

Honestly, he looks like he can't wait to get off the court and into the office to watch film so he can "work". Our conclusion is thus:

* Great x-and-o guy. When they're doing things right, it's smooth as hell on both ends. The "when they're doing things right" part is where the red flags start going up all over our house. Why can't they do things right like at least 80% of the time?
* Great friend to the players - he's undoubtedly a nice man and treats everyone with respect.
* Horrible, terrible, awful motivator. This might work two years from now when LeBron will fully embrace the leadership position, but right now this team needs someone to lay into them, "execute or sit next to me on the bench while I seethe" style.

What we've described above? Those three qualities? It's a perfect description for...an assistant coach. Sorry, Dan (Gilbert). We love ya, but Mike doesn't have it. When he was like this last year, we chalked it up to being a rookie head coach.

That's no longer valid, and we aren't in possession of the "he's a second year head coach" card.

Not with this team, with this talent, in this conference, with that Lebron James.

NOTE: We love Daniel Gibson. Sure, he makes mistakes, but dude can score and has no fear. The next time we see the David Wesley/Eric Snow backcourt we may become a cutter.

NOTE 2: We keep saying this and nobody else has picked up on because apparently the national media is only able to fixate on box scores. His head is officially elsewhere: THERE IS SOMETHING WRONG WITH LEBRON.

(Comments are temporarily off - we're getting spammed like nuts the past 48 hours.)

Well, as has been the way of things so far, the Cavaliers lost to a crap team (the Raptors) last night.

They've got four losses on the year - all against losing teams; two of which are arguably the worst in the entire NBA.

Sorry to have our sole Thanksgiving post be somewhat of an angry rant, but enough is enough. They didn't show up for four quarters (again) last night, and we pin it on Head Coach Mike Brown.

Credit him for playing rookie Daniel Gibson decent minutes - as we suspected, the kid can play, and he was very active in getting the Cavaliers back in during a second quarter rally.

Execution down the stretch was pitiful - no fourth quarter free throws. Zero. Just a bunch of three-point attempts and the allowance of greasy foreign guards to get layups.

Coach Brown weighs in.

"[As a coaching staff] we just have to present the facts because I don't have a magic potion," said Brown. "We have to watch tape and see what we did on tape and see if we gave it our all on both ends of the floor and go from there."

Umm...yes and no.

Your job is to present the facts, and then to pair the application of those facts alongside motivation.

That means that when they're doing the thing where they come out flat and not trying, and go down by 18 to the freaking Raptors in the first quarter, you yank your starters.

It also means that when they're doing that thing where they're taking endless 3-pointers for no reason, you call a time-out and say something like, "The next one of you a-holes who takes a three-pointer is sitting down for the rest of the game!!" and then you follow through on that.

It means you take LeBron, sit him down, and figure out why the hell he's been so distracted all season. Hard to argue with his stats, but anyone who's watched him enough to know when he's "there" and "not there" can tell you he's been on the latter setting for 11 out of the 12 games so far.

Yeah, they're 8-4, but they could and possibly should be 11-1. The good thing is they have yet to lose to an actual good team - they seem to execute against them.

NOTE: Andrea Bargnani looks like he'll be a player one day for sure, but the double chin has gotta go. Unacceptable.

HOLIDAY NOTE: We love nearly 87% of you and thank you for continuing to read. JOY to thee!

In our last post, we talked about the lengths we went to in order to impress upon someone else just how masculine we are.

We remind you of this not to plant the seeds of anything particular into your brains, but because the NBA is going to send us free shit if we talk about these Jay-Z promos they're doing in conjuction with the release of his new album.

Here he talks about what happens when you become famous. No mention of the point at which you start wearing loose fitting suits.

VIDEO REMOVED BECAUSE IT PLAYS AUTOMATICALLY NO MATTER WHAT.

"Let the Truth Be Told", as they say. The truth is, you may have noticed in the right sidebar the little thing telling you to send us free stuff. Recently we've had a wave of this for some reason - perhaps it's our status as "masculine NBA blogger."

Another possibility is that we're a total sell-out. You send us your product, we'll talk it up in a positive light - yep, even if we hate it!

Send to:

YAYsports!
P.O. Box 1367
Los Angeles, CA 90028

Our favorite thing (and what inspired this movement) is the free Sprint phone and the six months of free service. Yes, photoshopping pictures of Nate Robinson riding a horse is finally paying off.

The Orlando Magic, at 7-4, are having a nice season so far, and are supplementing it by reaching out to their fans...calling out to them...saying, "Hey...we yearn for you."

One of the best ways to do so is obviously online, where even someone like us can do things like garner thousands of readers and get free cell phone service.

Alas, the Magic are in - they now have a myspace page of their very own.

You can learn all about the whys and whats and other inquisitive natured things in the Orlando Sentinel.

"We want to show them that the Magic are cool," said Matt Gardner, the team's Internet Marketing Specialist who created the MySpace page.

Well, you had us until that, Matt. [Young people!! The kids!! Hippity-hop!!!]

We think you can still recover - here's the one surefire way you can regroup and maximize your myspace experience.

You must make the Magic an entity unto itself. You must have it talk as if it's alive. You must hire us to do it, and failing that, you must let us do it for free.

We'd love to send messages all around the myspaceland saying things like this:

Hi!! I was just wondering if you wanted to instant message with me?! I like those pictures where you are showing your boobs. I want to kiss you. Write back soon!!!

Your pal,
Orlandy

PS I won the game last night! Choo-choo!

This really can't fail, and that's basically the end of this post.

We figured there was more mileage in this, but the most interesting thing about the Magic's myspace page is that they're encouraging people to vote Hedo Turkoglu into the All-Star Game.

NOTE: Go over there and look at who their second friend is in the first row. Amanda loves the Magic, and the Magic love family entertainment.

NOTE 2: Right next to her is the sole person on Earth who owns a JJ Redick Magic jersey. (We assume that's a safe assumption.)

One of the tiny little overlooked deals of the offseason was the shuttling of JR Smith from the Hornets to the Bulls, who immediately reshuttled him to the shooting guard starved Denver Nuggets for a second round pick or something.

The two teams met up to play a basketball game last night, and JR, who's assumed the role of "starter" for DEN, let the Bulls know a thing or two about what happens when you rashly shuttle someone around like that.

Yep, he put up 36 points and served the Bulls their 5th straight loss.

Denver coach George Karl can't help but be complimentary and insulting to the young player he got essentially for free.

''Sixty percent pretty happy, 40 percent drives me crazy,'' Karl said. ''That's pretty good for me. Usually, I'm 90-10. J.R.'s been very good for us. He's shot the three well and has had some good defensive games. Then he's had some nights where you don't know he's in the building.''

Common knowledge says there was no spot in CHI's rotation for JR, but he (or Ben Gordon) sure would be a nice piece of trade bait right now. Plenty of teams are on the lookout for inconsistantly explosive shooting guards.

Anyway, the thrust here is not that game - no, we must now turn to the Central Division as a whole. (Current NBA standing are here.)

Largely assumed to be the strongest in the NBA before the season started, thanks to the Bulls hot start, the Central now plays host to two separate 3-8 teams - CHI being one, the Milwaukee Bucks being the second.

In the meantime, the play-to-the-level-of-your-opponent Cavaliers have managed to come up 8-3, two games ahead of the Pistons and Pacers, who are one game above .500 each. We imagine they stay around there for the duration. Thus, we cannot call this the strongest division at this time.

No, that would be either the Pacific, where the Warriors sit at 7-4.

WAIT.

When the crap did that happen??? Shit ain't right, yo. Seven and four? Five plus two and three plus one? Six times one plus one and negative seven plus eleven?

Impossible - either the NBA is messing with us just missed this behind the blinding glare of the 10-1 Jazz. At least the Atlantic still blows as bad as ever - all we ask for is a little consistency...and things being the same on a continual basis.

NOTE: At least the stats are straight this year so far. It's not like Leandro Barbosa is leading the PHX Suns in scoring or something.

NOTE 2: Ben Wallace!

Sorry about the low output yesterday, but we're hosting 26.5 people for Thanksgiving and are trying to figure out how best to present the canned tuna and carrot shavings we'll be serving.

While that might not sound all that exciting, you must remember we're in Los Angeles, where yesterday the city was a bit excited for the first Lakers-Clippers game of the year - first place in the Pacific was at stake.

The thing didn't disappoint, although it could've been closer. Lakers win, and the big story was the possible full-strengthitude of the surgically repaired Kobe Bryant.

He put 20 point in during the first quarter, and had by far his best game of the season. He also managed to do it within the structure of the team. Coach Phil Jackson's thoughts?

"The thing that I looked at was that he had one turnover tonight and he's been having six and seven," Lakers coach Phil Jackson said of Bryant. "I think the decisiveness is evident in that. He's doing some things a little bit quicker, making his moves a little bit quicker without as much hesitation and that changes that considerably."

Yeah, that was nice to see - Kobe is actually leading the NBA in turnovers at this time, so cutting back on those will help everyone out, including the people who count themselves as "turnover enthusiasts".

We have no idea what that means. Let's move on to the question everyone is asking: are the Lakers for real?

Our vote would have to be a definitive "it sure looks that way, but we're not committing because we don't want to look foolish later."

Andrew Bynum is a legit post guy in a league without any, Kwame Brown is like a poor man's Horace Grant, Kobe is coming around, and Lamar seems to hve finally found his way. Luke Walton is solid.

If the team has one weakness it's their fans, one of whom insisted to us this morning that LA could trade Chris Mihm (who hasn't played in like a year and is out for the next 8 months) for Andre Miller.

We called him a fool, and then did barbell curls with a ton of extra weight to show him we were stronger and 19% more masculine than him. Mission accomplished.

Granted, this isn't true quite yet, but it's gotta be coming.

We say that not just because we feel it's justified, but because Knicks coach Isiah Thomas yanked starting point guard Stephon Marbury a minute or so into the second half against Houston last night.

New York lost, but that's hardly the story here.

No, this is all about the fall and subsequent further fall of the one known as Starbury. If you thought last year's Larry Brown inspired meltdown was bad, we see this year's being worse.

Isiah was like the one guy on his side. The seeds, starting with his reaction to being pulled so quickly:

"No, I didn't understand that," said Marbury, who was visibly upset. "We were in the game for two minutes."

"The message is loud and clear. I'm not going to go on the court and play like that anymore. I got a turnover. I'm going to be more conscious about not getting a turnover."

"If we're out there playing the way he thinks we should be playing, our leash should be a little longer. I only took two shots," he said. "When you are pressing, usually you are just trying to score. I am doing what is being asked of me. That's all."

Now, this isn't yet the gold that birthed flexing juice cards, but this is exactly how it started with Larry, too.

Little comments here and there...questioning the coach's moves directly...general sarcasm and surlyness...it's all beginning.

Next up should be the complete sabotage of plays during the game - going out of his way to "play the right way", etc. Then comes the benching, and maybe even a buyout? Certainly not a trade - nobody's taking him at this point.

What's really great about the past week is that we've finally found the level at which we want the Knicks. Huge wins followed by huge losses. Margins should be 15+ each way. We want this every night - it'll just be complete and total chaos.

NOTE: Yeah, Nate Robinson is good. He of the 5-9 frame also swatted one of Yao's shots last night. That's where this was going, but whatever.

NOTE 2: Patrick Ewing appears to be enjoying retirement.