Hooped Up

Ever wonder what tracks motivate your favorite NBA stars? Well your in luck, and you’ll be surprised…in that order.  To commemorate the start of the new NBA season, Rhapsody asked this very question to a few NBA players and here are the best (and I mean worst) songs selected by the bunch. They also explain why they like the songs they have choose. This list is ugly like and Anthony Mason free-throw attempt and if you thought *NSYNC was dead, you clearly haven’t talked to Greg Oden.

Greg Oden’s Playlist - *NSYNC, “Bye Bye Bye” 
Oden just loves the boy bands! 
 ”I started listening to it one day. Then one of my boys came in the car and I forgot I had it in and it came on. Then he was like, ‘Yeah this was the joint back in the day. [Laughs.]” Read the rest of this entry »

Big Tigger’s 7th Annual Celebrity Classic brings the celebrities out, and the dancer in Caron Butler out too. 

Check out photos of this event over at DC Fab.  Oh ya, Melyssa Ford was in the house looking very Melyssa Fordish.

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.

Caron Butler went through a full practice today and if all goes well during shootaround tomorrow, he’ll be in the lineup against the Cavs. Antawn Jamison (lower back strain) and Antonio Daniels (sore left thumb) did not practice but are probable according to Coach Eddie Jordan. Translation: they are playing.

Washington Post

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Hooped Up

While Cleveland, behind a combined 50 points by LeBron James and Larry Hughes, handily defeated Washington, speculation was injured Wizards forward Caron Butler could be planning a Willis Reed-esque return to the Washington lineup, possibly as early as Saturday’s Game 3.

Butler has been out of the lineup since April 1 when he broke the second metacarpal in his right hand bending his index finger back against a backboard while challenging a shot by Milwaukee’s Ruben Patterson and is still wearing a cast to protect the injured hand.

Butler’s injury became more catostrophic when the Wizards lost point guard Gilbert Arenas a week later, leaving forward Antawn Jamison as Washington¹s sole remaining All-Star-caliber player.

Sports Illustrated