The Denver Nuggets are really getting into the X-mas spirit this year.  So much so that they are rapping their own version of the classic Run D.M.C. Christmas song, “Christmas In Hollis”.  You will have to watch this train wreck to believe it.  Most surprising about this video is that the Birdman is probably not the worst rapper on the team.  Shocking, I know.  Enjoy.

If you want to see the original to compare, ask and ye shall receive after the jump.

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Go big or go home appears to be the motto for Dwight Howard and the Orlando Magic this season.  They have played 3 games so far this season, they are 2-1, and none of the games have been close.

In their two wins, they’ve won by margins of 29 and 42 points.  In their one loss, they lost by 26 points. Granted, in their two wins they’ve played the rebuilding Washington Wizards and Minnesota Timberwolves and in their one loss they got manhandled by the pre-season champion Miami Heat but which team is this Orlando squad?

Is this going to be the trend for them all season?  Feasting upon the NBA Eastern Conference bottom feeders while getting dominated by the league’s elite teams?  This team is supposed to be in contention for the championship this season and dominating these undermanned squads are exactly what title teams should do but are they really good enough to handle the Heat, Lakers and Celtics of the world?

It might take some time to find this out since their next major test isn’t until around thanksgiving when they play the Heat again, unless you count the 5-0 and much improved Atlanta Hawks as a true test…which they really shouldn’t be.

My guess is no, they Magic aren’t quite ready for the title yet. I am thinking the Magic will continue to feast upon teams that have no big man that can handle the likes of Dwight Howard and/or no defensive skills adept enough to handle the way the Magic spread the court with their 3 point field goals…which is pretty much most of the East.  While against the more talented NBA teams, this 2 trick pony of a team can and will be shut down just like we saw against the Heat and in the playoffs last season.

I mean, who actually expects Vince Carter to last an entire season at 33 years old? C’mon now, he is due.

This is Shawn Kemp immortalized giving poor generic #53 a gigantic posterizing facial on a t-shirt.  It is part of the “Play Hard” series of 4 limited edition t-shirts that a company called K1x is putting out done by artist Lil Thugs.  Interesting choice putting Shawn Kemp along side the world championship “Bad Boys” era Detroit Pistons, one of the 50 best players ever and world champion Wilt Chamberlin and all time great guy/one of the best littles in the league Muggsy Bogues.

What exactly are they celebrating with Kemp?  Sure he dunked hard but so did Dominique Wilkins and he wasn’t a giant cokehead/drunk with 85 bastard children looking around for their dad. I’m not sayin’ I didn’t like watchin the guy play for like 6 or 7 years out of his 14 year career, but if you are only making four t-shirts of people that “Play Hard”, there’s gotta be someone else’s likeness you could choose.

I mean, if you wanted to choose a badass player, make a Charles Oakley, Xavier McDaniel or Anthony Mason t-shirt. Shawn Kemp wasn’t much of a badass, in hindsight, he was just kinda pathetic.

They got Pau Gasol dammit!

From the people at 30fps.

Kwame Brown has reunited with the man that originally drafted him and subsequently emotionally stripped him, Michael Jordan, by signing a new contract with the Charlotte Bobcats. Michael Jordan is the majority owner of the ‘Cats and Kwame is now his employee. This right here is a shining beacon to formerly abusive relationships everywhere, if at first you don’t succeed, try try again.

You see, its tough to get past the whole “I abused you relentlessly” thing. Look at Chris Brown and Rhianna for example. They couldn’t get past their prior abusive relationship to give things another go in the present. Michael and Kwame though, see they know better, nay, they ARE better than mere mortals. Apparently they can get past those errors in judgment.

When Kwame first got into the league, he was a naive young boy. Jordan took him under his tutelage and made him a MAN. An emotionally crippled and useless seven footer on the court, but a man nonetheless. Jordan accomplished this by constantly tearing Kwame down to his emotional bare bones, at least that’s what Scoop Jackson said in this 2005 ESPN page 2 article.  Let us quote liberally:

Sticks and stones can paralyze the most immortal of men, but these words – they stripped Kwame Brown of ever having a chance to be or find himself as a basketball player and as a person.

***

“Flaming … ” That was the first word. One of life’s other “f” words followed. It came in succession. It came from Michael Jordan’s mouth. The words never reached Kwame Brown’s ears, they went straight to his heart.

In Jordan’s quest to build the next him while he was in charge and out of retirement in D.C., he broke Kwame Brown down to the very last compound. Emotionally and psychologically killed his spirit.

Want to know what that 2nd “F word” was that Jordan used against Kwame? Lets go back to an article by the Washington Post’s Michael Lehay from 2003 recounting Jordan’s last season with the Wizards (only accessible through the Post’s archives) and some more of the emotional abuse he laid upon Kwame.

As always, he reserved his harshest criticisms for 21-year-old Kwame Brown, at whom, a year earlier, he had screamed, “Flaming faggot,” when Brown complained as a rookie about being fouled in an intrasquad game.

***

But Jordan and other Wizards officials were swayed by Georgia high school senior Brown’s abilities after he dominated another highly touted prep player, Tyson Chandler, during a private one-on-one competition. But now Jordan was tired of waiting for Brown to get better.

For his part, Brown said the right things: “Anyone can learn from Michael” if that “player listens.” But, privately, Brown reeled under Jordan’s and Collins’s criticism off and on for two seasons now, desperate to receive a slice of the encouragement Jordan had lavished on him during Brown’s golden days. On many nights, he had gone from wunderkind to waste. Despairing, Brown began to seek counsel from other teammates, notably Stackhouse, who could provide solace but little else, suffering beneath the weight of his own disappointments and, like Brown, having nowhere to turn.

Wow. So now things are better between them? I mean, its cool that Kwame can turn the other cheek after Jordan helped  to ruin any chance he had at meeting his potential as a number one pick and turning him into an emotional basket-case. I wonder if Jordan is going to be any better this second go around?

Who knows, maybe Jordan has changed. Sure he’s not going to be near Kwame as much as when he was a player or general manager, but they are going to have to interact with each other at various points throughout the season. No way that goes wrong, right? When has getting back together with your abuser ever gone wrong? We all know that leopards can change their spots…oh wait they can’t? Well damn. In that case, maybe this ISN’T a good thing and I am horribly wrong about this.

This $1.3 million veterans minimum contract  Kwame got is really just Jordan saying “I’m sorry baby, have a million bucks on me, it’l never happen again baby, I just lost my cool back in 2002. It’l never happen again.”

Yeah right.

The hot rumor out there today is that Chris Paul has demanded to be traded…to one of three teams of his choosing. According to the CBS Sports,

Paul’s list of preferred destinations consists of the Knicks, Magic and Lakers, and members of his inner circle already have sent word to the Hornets of his desire to be traded to one of those teams, sources say. If Paul has his way, he’s played his last game in a Hornets jersey.

So you see what he’s done there? No? Well lets look at the three teams he’s chosen and then I’ll tell you where I think he really wants to go.

The Lakers have Kobe and Gasol, the Magic have Dwight Howard and the Knicks have Amare Stoudemire to go with Mike D’Antoni’s run and gun offense where Paul would fit in perfectly. The Lakers and the Magic probably can’t afford to pull this trade off, not enough cap room and not enough players to trade away.

The Knicks, who cleared away a ton of salary in an attempt to get Lebron James or Dwayne Wade to go with Stoudemire haven’t killed their cap even with the Amare signing. They have the cap space, they have trade pieces, they have a big time city, a big time arena in Madison Square Garden, a big time media market and most of all…he’d be the star.

Stoudemire would pick up right where he left off with Steve Nash if Chris Paul was leading the offense and getting him the ball. In turn, making Stoudemire look good will only make Paul look better. He won’t be the second fiddle or a star in a small market. He will be the number one basketball player in New York City and he’ll probably turn the team into a winner immediately making him the savior of New York basketball.

If I were a betting man, and I am, I am putting my money on the New York Knicks being the place Paul really wants to go. If Paul puts up enough of a hissy fit, it actually might happen.

So, as  you all probably know by now, LeBron James going to play for the Miami Heat for the foreseeable future. You probably heard this information any one or more of these ways: live on ESPN during an hour long broadcast titled “The Decision” where LeBron sat with Jim Gray to discuss where he was going to play next year, on ESPN.com’s Lebron James web page the “LeBron Tracker”, on Twitter where currently James is trending in the top 5, in the news where according to Google he is the number 1 and 3 trending search term currently, on your local news, on the radio…basically, LeBron James is everywhere.

As a matter of fact, LeBron James news has been around so much lately that I won’t know what to do anymore without the LeBron James speculation and news. That hour long ESPN self promoting television special James did should really just be the pilot episode to the rest of LeBron’s life on televison for us all to watch.

It took a month for him to figure out where he was going and he brought us all along for the ride. Imagine how long it is going to take for him to find a house to live in down in Miami?  Can you imagine the speculation? The drama?  Somebody call TLC or HGTV because I think I found them a freaking gold mine. Who cares about Property Virgins when you can spend the next two months figuring out which tony neighborhood The King is going to move into down in Florida??  I NEED TO KNOW MORE! CHAD FORD ENLIGHTEN ME AS TO THE PROPERTY TAXES OF THE LOCALITIES IN WHICH LEBRON MIGHT POSSIBLY HAVE AN INCLINATION TO MOVE INTO!

I want to see how long it takes him to decide what he is going to eat for breakfast. I want the cameras there documenting his every move from waking up to brushing his teeth to putting on goddamned deodorant until we all finally know whether or not it will be Captain Crunch or Coco Puffs for cereal this morning. The whole time, I want, nay, i NEED Michael Wilbon commentating that he thinks that Frankenberry might have an outside chance to pull off an upset at being in his bowl today. THIS INFORMATION WILL MAKE ME WHOLE AS A HUMAN BEING!!!

If ESPN can devote an hour of its valuable news broadcasting time to “The Chosen One” then why not just give us a whole channel of it? OBVIOUSLY this is what the fans of the NBA want and need. After the World Cup ESPN 3 won’t be used online anymore, just like it was never used when it was ESPN 360, so why not just make it ESPN-LeBron and give us what we deserve. ALL LEBRON ALL THE TIME! This just makes sense.

We have a hole in our lives now and only LeBron can fill it.

Its the 16th championship title for the LA Lakers as they beat the Boston Celtics in Game 7 of the NBA Finals by the score of 83-79. Shockingly, their Wheaties box is already set to go out to your local grocery store. Check your store shelves in a month or so for it if you want it. Personally, as a Washington sports fan I had no horse in this race but in the interests of not being a sore loser I wish the Lakers and their fans congratulations for an excellent season.

Even though it would’ve been a heck of a lot cooler to see Phil Jackson lose one of these things for once.  That guy is friggin bullet-proof. Also, can people put the rest the whole Kobe is as good as MJ now b/c he won almost as many titles?  Kobe wasn’t even the best player on the team for the ones he won with Shaq. He was the Jimmy Olson to Shaq’s Superman. Kobe is an excellent player, but he is no Michael Jordan.

If you don’t believe me, look up the stats on Basketball-Reference.com and you’ll see, its not even close. As a matter of fact, Lebron and Dwayne Wade are probably closer to his skills than Kobe is.

Nevertheless, congrats Lakers. John Wall is now gonna be gunning for you. TO BE THE BEST YOU GOTTA BEAT THE BEST!

The Lakers better not go on a losing streak otherwise Ron Artest might go back to the Henny and skunk with a bit of Brand Nubian-style beatin’ down punks on the side. The drama and quote machine is back in the spotlight after an interview which will appear in the Sporting News magazine on December 7th. All topics were covered from St. John’s to the infamous fight at the Palace.

The interview also touched on Artest’s partying ways. It’s a good thing Tiger decided that there was sex in the champagne room otherwise more people would have noticed Charlie Weis crying in a bathtub full of mac and cheese. They’d also be making noise about Artest’s admission that he used to drink during halftime when he played for the Bulls.

“I used to drink Hennessy … at halftime,” Artest says in the interview, which hits newsstands this week. “I (kept it) in my locker. I’d just walk to the liquor store (near the stadium) and get it.”

Anyone who has been to the United Center knows there might as well be scalpers selling Hennessy and Courvoisier along with pints of Gordon’s Gin outside the arena. Artest probably cashed his paychecks at the same place he bought the hen-rock.

Artest admitted that he partied every day and night while playing for St. John’s. His drinking kept up when he reached the NBA.

“When I was a 19-year-old father, whew. I was a single pimp! I was wild. A lot of marijuana and alcohol—even before (that age). … I (still) party and I have fun, but not like I used to. I used to drink every night and party every night.”

Who knew being a single pimp father was the key to getting your party on? Shawn Kemp and Jason Caffey must have stories for days. They sure have kids for months. If there’s anyone that should be drinking every day, it’s a New Jersey Net. At least it’ll give him an excuse for sucking so much.

We didn’t even get to the part of the interview where he discusses how he still wants to fight Ben Wallace. Oh, he’s willing to get his suspension on again.

Our boy, ‘Toine Walker finally got a plan together to pay back the various casinos that he owes over $770k because he failed to pay back a bunch of casino markers. With fines and restitution added, Walker has to pay up to the tune of just over $900,000. Ouch! That’s gotta be tough for a man with no job. He must pony up about $13,000 a month minimum at first and if he ever gets a basketball gig in the NBA or Europe he must pay a minimum of just over $21,000 a month. Double ouch! To use Antoine’s words:

“I’ve made some mistakes with some finances,

With the luck that Iverson has had finding a job this year, I’m sure that ‘Toine will have no problem getting a job. Everyone wants a me first, shoot first, out of shape, 33 year old forward on their roster. Well, maybe not here, but Europe might be calling, I mean he averaged 8.5 ppg last year in the NBA, that is like at least 13ppg there in Europe easy.

He’d better get a job quick because the judge in this case, Melanie Andress-Tobiasson (right), apparently has no tolerance for any sort of shenanigans with his payments:

“I can tell you at the point he stops making payments, I will bind him up so fast it’ll make your head spin,”

Or, maybe she’s just kinky like that?

From the Providence Journal