Friday, July 28th, 2006 at 2:25 pm  |  13 responses

Iverson, Sam Cassell and…Keith Van Horn?

News and notes from around the NBA…

by Lang Whitaker

Fri-day! Yes!

For the first time in about two weeks, my plate is cleared and I have nothing else to do except, or course, about 200 things for the website. Yes, we’re still tweaking the site and making adjustments, and there are still changes in the works.

Anyway, let’s hit The Links…

THE LINKS…
• I’ll occasionally link to stories by John Canzano up in Portland, who consistently has news or rumors or something worth reading. Even though it has little to do with basketball, this story is one of the best things he’s done in a long time — moving, real stuff. Go read the story now. Go ahead, click on it and read it.

Back? Good, because there’s a nice postscript: the response from the people of Portland.

• The latest person endorsing vitaminwater is Allen Iverson, as seen on billboards along I-95 and on the back of the poster in SLAM 101, where he’s pictured with a bottle of Dragonfruit-flavored water. And I’m not being paid to do this, but I’ll also give my full endorsement to vitaminwater, which I drink like, er, water. Come on, vitaminwater, let’s crank out some Links-flavored juice!

• Hornets owner George Shinn says he doesn’t mind giving out big contracts to franchise players. But if we believe this picture and caption in today’s Oklahoman…

…George Shinn looks an awful lot like Bobby Jackson, which might explain why he’s giving out such lucrative deals to guys like, well, Bobby Jackson.

• Ripping the ABA in the LA Times…can’t wait until Alex Wolff fires back in his SI.com ABA articles — beef!

• The court case in Toronto involving Jason Caffey, Sam Cassell and Gary Payton continues to drag on — remember, this all started back in 2003 when they were all playing for the Bucks. Anyway, Sam-I-Am took the stand yesterday and testified that GP called the stripped either “my ho” or “my whore,” depending which paper you prefer, Sam also allegedly called the stripper’s boyfriend — a male stripper who is white — the n-word. I’m thinking everyone involved in this wishes it was over.

• Keith Van Horn, come on down! The Denver Nuggets want to give you some free money. The funniest part about this is that Van Horn’s agent can’t get him to commit to anything because he’s on “a lengthy fishing trip in Alaska.”

• The Raptors have signed Uros Slokar, who — surprise! — used to play for Benneton Treviso in Italy. From now on we’re calling them the Treviso Raptors.

• Is Portland interested in trading for Jamaal Magloire?

• The Cavs are trying to lowball Drew Gooden, and his people don’t seem to be having it.

• When you’re described as “elaborately tattooed” before anything else, that’s probably not a good thing.

• The Suns have signed Sean Marks, who will perform The Haka at midcourt before every game.

• Will Devin Brown be the best player the Warriors add this summer?

• The Nets have replaced the injured Josh Boone by trading with Seattle for veteran snake-handler Mikki Moore. Any coincidence that the Sonics saw their season-ticket sales go up?

  • Add a Comment
  • Share
  • RSS

  • Marcus Posted: Jul.28 at 3:08 pm
    Lang, Great story on “JT” and his family. With their everlasting hope, that makes them better off than a lot of other families. After reading the update, it’s good to hear that there are still caring people in this country that will go out of their way to help a family in need. I wish the Taylor family luck in the future.

  • Richard Martha Posted: Jul.28 at 3:29 pm
    Hey Lang What a beautiful Canzano story. The powers of journalism cannot be displayed in a better way. Thanks for sharing this. Peace Rich

  • Michael NZ Posted: Jul.28 at 7:50 pm
    Go Sean Marks! Go Kiwi. Big man can (and will) shoot.

  • Sonics-206 Posted: Jul.28 at 8:07 pm
    Thanks for linking that JT story Lang, that was great.

  • gc Posted: Jul.28 at 9:07 pm
    “Links-flavored juice” yikes.

  • Jeremy Posted: Jul.29 at 12:29 pm
    Been a Links reader for almost 6 years…I almost gave up reading the links because I really dislike the new format, but after I read the JT story I’m glad I haven’t left!!That was an awesome link!!

  • trinibai Posted: Jul.30 at 7:55 pm
    how about those raptors that team is getting deep, do you think they can make some noise in the 06’07 season and what would you rank them in there divison

  • MArio Posted: Jul.31 at 12:14 pm
    Good ideas on trades
    iverson and webber should go to portland for randolph and maglore and a point gaurd sam cassel should go to lakers and gary should go to toranto drew gooden will do good on the hornets and keith should take his offer stephen jackson fro pacers should find home in dallas-it would be good

  • naw.. Posted: Jul.31 at 12:47 pm
    good for the hornets
    they got alot of good trades this summer they should try to get a good power forward and shooting guard so it can be paul-pg
    bobby-sg(need a better starter)
    peja-sf
    jackson-pf(need a better starter)
    chandler-c

  • Drew Posted: Aug.1 at 9:36 am
    Wow, just wow, John Canzano’s article and follow up article about JT and his family is so touching.
    I felt such joy at reading how the people have responded with their kindness and giving attitude.
    Possibly the best link ever Lang.

  • Stevo Posted: Aug.1 at 1:27 pm
    Wonder if the raps sign more international euro players will the league place a limit on the numbers of international players? seriously..

  • Cakro Posted: Aug.1 at 5:33 pm
    This is the projected lineup of the hornets next season.
    chandler-c/f
    west-f/c
    bobby-f
    peja-g
    paul-g

  • SLAM ONLINE | » Link-based Thursday Hypotheticals Posted: Jan.10 at 4:31 pm
    [...] C’mon, you know you have one. Let’s say George is a second-round draft pick in 2009 and hangs around the league for five years as a project, culling about $5 million in the process. Is $5 million enough to make up for a lifetime of public scrutiny and a loss of five years as a cartoonist/candygram deliverer/roofer-to-the-stars/whatever the hell you want to be? The bidding starts at $400,000, canIgetabidderforyoursoul? Set-up: Portland resident Tim Bush’s Make-A-Wish a couple of years ago was to meet the Trailblazers that he’s been cheering for since childhood. Turns out these were the Jailblazer-era Blazers and most, especially Rasheed Wallace, treated Tim like filth. Local Portland columnist hears this, sticks it in the back-end of a well-written column, and the team secretly introduces him to the new, fan-friendly Blazers without even informing the media. Question: Seriously, how big of a d-bag is Rasheed Wallace? Yeah, I know, this isn’t really a hypothetical. And sure, the question should be, “how long do you stick with a franchise before abandoning it entirely?” or even, “How ’bout them Blazers? What a nice organization, huh?” But, really, can’t anyone put their tough guy image aside for five seconds to sign a damn basketball? Sheesh. All this really happened, as described by John Canzano in an otherwise-positive piece. Lang showed us to the wonders of the Canzanoian feature last year, when the Blazers were the definition of strife and struggle, but it’s the sign of a good columnist when he can write just as well when the team turns it around. [...]

Comments




The comments section is a place to further discuss the topics in this post. Commenters who seek to accomplish any of the following may be banned: - Personally attack other commenters. - Make derogatory comments regarding race, ethnicity, language, gender, sexual orientation or religion. - Troll, or comment with the intention of creating problems. Trolling includes, but isn't limited to, baiting people to flame at you, encouraging people to leave the site, spamming and using alternate IDs.