Hooped Up

A former Warriors Dancer, Angelica Carrera my have retired one hobby and picked up another. This is what you call a win, win! Enjoy the motion.

Today, some future Charlotte Bobcat rookie, shed a tear and didn’t know why.  The reason for the tear is Larry Brown has just been named the head coach, of the Charlotte Bobcats and drinks the blood of rookies with his Metamucil.

Larry Brown has reached an agreement to return to the NBA as coach of the Charlotte Bobcats, the Observer confirmed early today. The source, a longtime NBA executive, said Brown came to a final decision Monday to succeed Sam Vincent as coach of the Bobcats.

Charlotte Observer 

For a young team with a few vets Larry Brown just seems like a bad idea.  I’m just sayin.

I really believe that Marc Jackson is the guy the Knicks need to get back to respectability.  However, if the Knicks could get one of the all-time greats in Patrick Ewing to join Marc Jacksons coaching staff that would  the icing on the cake.  Stan Van Gundy is all for Patrick Ewing taking the Knicks head coach job period.

Magic Coach Stan Van Gundy on Thursday questioned why the New York Knicks might hire an inexperienced head coach when Patrick Ewing — one of Van Gundy’s assistant coaches — is ready to do the job but apparently not a candidate. Former Knicks guard Mark Jackson is considered by many to be a front-runner for the coaching position left vacant after the firing of Isiah Thomas. Jackson has never coached and is currently working as a television analyst. Ewing is interested in becoming a head coach, but told the Orlando Sentinel recently he had not been contacted by the Knicks.

Orlando Sentinel

Deep Thoughts About Hack-a-Shaq True Hoop

Avery Johnson On The Hot Seat In Dallas The Dallas Morning News

One-and-Done Does Not Kill College Ball Ballers, Gamers and Scoundrels

Some Native American Basketball History The Black Fives

New NBA Ads! (Well, New Fake Ones) SLAM

Coach of the Year Needs a Do Over Knicker Blogger

Candace Cabrera is very distracting

Damn, this is even a worse decision than opting for the rehab instead of the surgery last year.  What is this guy doing?  I mean Star Jones? She’s in his 5?  Star Jones is fresh off a divorce from her “man” Al and Dwayne Wade has been on the market even when he was off the market.

“It’s been one whole day since news broke that Star Jones filed for divorce from Al — and already Star is being linked to Miami Heat guard Dwayne Wade. A rep for Star Jones [said] that the rumors aren’t true.”

TMZ

If the leader of the Heat is making these kind of moves somebody else might have to wear the C next year.  Even Ricky Davis must be shaking his head. Star Jones? Damn!

Sam sit  Bargnani and let Ford come off the bench.  Watching Andrea play defense is maddening, he’s too slow for most opposing small forwars and too weak for opposing centers and power forwards.  Plus he hasn’t been as productive as Kapono who has found serious rhythm shooting 66% from the field so far in the series.

For whatever reason, Mitchell insists on starting 7-footers Andrea Bargnani and Rasho Nesterovic. That’s 14 feet of lumbering Europeans that plays right into the Magic’s hands. The bad news for Orlando is Mitchell seems to have figured that out. He said the lineup will be different Thursday night, though he didn’t say what the changes would be. “I’m not going to tell you,” Mitchell said. “But you watched the game, so use some common sense.”

Orlando Sentinel

Sit Andrea and starting Jose would probably stop a sweep in this series, but we’ll see what happens tonight.

Charles Barkley talks about his first time meeting Barack Obama and why he supports the Senator.

So not only has Zeke been fired from the Knicks / reassigned as an “advisor” but, Donnie Walsh has asked him to not speak with the players.   The reasoning behind this is that Isiah might influence to players in some way about the new coach coming in.

Former New York Knicks coach Isiah Thomas has been banned from having any contact with members of the team as part of his reassignment agreement with team president Donnie Walsh, the New York Daily News reported, citing a team source.

Walsh, who replaced Thomas as the Knicks’ president, fired him as coach last week after Thomas went 56-108 leading the team, including this season’s 23-59 disaster, the franchise’s seventh straight losing season. He has been reassigned as an advisor to the team.

According to the report, there is concern that Thomas, if allowed to have any contact with the team, could either willingly or unwillingly undermine its new coach. Thomas acquired all the players on the current Knicks roster as team president.

But the agreement does not prohibit Thomas from speaking to Madison Square Garden chairman James Dolan, according to the report.

ESPN

News flash Knicks management! Isiah can even influence his team to not stink and the players stopped listening to him months and months ago!

Now that Isaiah has finally been shown the door, the next coaching canidate for the New York Knicks seems to be Marc Jackson.  That scenario seemed to inch closer with Scott Skiles taking the Milwaukee Bucks job yesterday.

Scott Skiles verbally has accepted an offer from the Bucks, erasing him as a Knicks coaching candidate, according to a league source. Skiles’ imminent hiring strengthens front-runner Mark Jackson’s candidacy, which received another boost over the weekend with Jeff Van Gundy’s endorsement.

NY Post

For a franchise that just discarded one of it’s greatest all-time players in  Patrick Ewing, it would be good to see a former Knick from the relevant days on the Knicks bench.  All I’m saying is just sign Jax already! If you are the Knicks what do you have to lose in getting a rookie coach.

Mike Bibby
Like fellow NBA star LeBron James, Bibby has been known to nervously bite and chew his nails during games. When relegated to the bench for a breather during games with the Sacramento Kings, Bibby would obsessively pick at his nails until he stumbled across a better solution: using fingernail clippers on the bench. The clippers became his superstition, and whenever Bibby came to the bench for timeouts, someone would hand him a set so he could go to work on his nails.

Caron Butler
When most of us want a glass of something heavily caffeinated that fluoresces green, we can just reach for a Mountain Dew. Sadly for Washington Wizards’ All-Star small forward Caron Butler, he can’t do the Dew whenever he wants anymore. As Butler told Dan Steinberg of the fantastic D.C. Sports Bog, he would guzzle a two-liter bottle of the sugary soda before and during every game dating back to his All-American career at the University of Connecticut. Butler would throw down half the bottle before the game, then finish it off at halftime. That is, until the Wizards clamped down and forced him to switch to a more traditional sports drink, water.

Jason Terry
Bibby and Terry, college teammates at Arizona, started another odd superstition while playing for the Wildcats. The restless pair slept in the uniform shorts the night before each Arizona game on the logic that it would make the game feel like it was starting sooner. When Terry broke into the NBA with the Atlanta Hawks, he decided to start wearing the shorts of the next day’s opponent, instead. This ritual is fairly tenuous, though, as it requires Terry to procure a pair of uniform shorts from each opposing NBA team. Although his network of connections with equipment managers and former teammates has helped him out, he had to wear Mavericks shorts before each game of the 2006 NBA Finals since he couldn’t find a pair of Heat trunks.