LOS ANGELES. A look at the box score to Tuesday night's game 3 of the NBA finals was as revealing as the clipboard at the end of a hospital patient's bed, according to Dr. Wu Yi Lee, a physician at Massachusetts General Hospital a court-length pass away from the TD Banknorth Garden. "Big Ticket has Ralph Sampson's Disease," Lee said. "He need to take it to hole."
The right way
Ralph Sampson was a number one draft pick out of the University of Virginia who was expected to transform the game when he was paired with Hakeem Olajuwon in the Houston Rockets' "Twin Towers" offense. The 7' 4" inch Sampson opted for mid-range jump shots over low-post moves, however, and never realized his potential, causing college basketball scouts to apply the name "Ralph Sampson's Disease" to a big man's phobia of driving to the basket.
World's Largest Point Guard
Garnett was fouled only twice in Game 3, four times in Game 2 and 6 times in Game 1, causing Celtics trainer Ed Lacerte to call for help from high-powered basketball pathologists at Mass General, a hospital that has treated other NBA greats for ailments such as Iverson's Rock-Retentive Syndrome, colloquially known as "Ball Hog's Disease".
Dr. Lee: "Take two Dance Team members and call me in the morning."
Garnett's long-term prognosis is good, but he is day-to-day in terms of his ability to overcome the limitations of the disease, says Lee. "He is one very lucky man," Lee said. "Medical conditions named after athletes can be fatal, like Lou Gehrig's disease, although Sampson ended up in the Spanish League with Unicaja Ronda, which merely sounds like it could kill you."
HOUSTON. When the Houston Rockets looked in the mirror the morning after a 100-88 loss to the Philadelphia 76ers last night, they probably didn't like what they saw. They're in fourth place in the Southwest Division of the Western Conference, and Tracy McGrady left the game in the second half with a sprained right ankle.
Afterwards Yao Ming challenged McGrady to step up his game or step down as team leader. Yao's complaint? "T-Mac has no liver," the Chinese center told reporters, speaking without a translator.
"What's he talking about?" was McGrady's reaction. "If I didn't have a liver how the hell could I convert glucose into glycogen?"
The liver, without onions.
Asked to elaborate, Yao explained that the Chinese consider the liver--not the heart--to be the seat of human emotions and the source of inner strength. "For 4,000 years Chinese know that emotions go as liver goes. T-Mac should suck it up--that is all I am saying."
Heart = Liver
Yao substantiated his claim by showing reporters a pirated Chinese CD of the mid-70's girl group "Heart". The rock band's name was translated as "Liver".
Battier: "No, seriously--you can have one of my livers."
The charges are sure to divide a team desperately in need of unity. Shane Battier came to McGrady's defense and pledged to donate one of his livers to the Rocket's leading scorer. When informed that the human body contains only one such organ, Battier rescinded his offer. "I thought they were like kidneys--you know, everybody starts out with a pair."
Coach Rick Adelman suggested that McGrady take time off to deal with his personal issues, and Yao seconded that notion. "He should go to China where harvested body parts are plentiful. He could get a liver for the price of Peking duck at a good restaurant."
DENVER. Tempers flared in the Denver Nuggets' huddle during Saturday night's game against the Houston Rockets after Kenyon Martin learned the meaning of Chinese characters tattooed on Allen Iverson's neck.
"I'm shopping at Target from now on!"
"I saw Yao Ming laughing in the lay-up line during warm-ups and I asked him what was so funny," Martin said. "He told me Allen's tattoo means 'Power Forward Stinky Pants'."
Iverson denied the allegation, noting that Chinese ideographs often have multiple meanings. "Everybody knows that the symbol for 'crisis' is the same as 'opportunity'," The Answer responded to questions from reporters. "Everybody but K-Mart. That's why I shop at Target."
"My pants do not stink."
Yao acknowledged that his translation might have been too literal. "If the tattoo appeared on his bicep the more likely translation would be 'Strong Muscle, Smelly Pits'," the Houston center said through an interpreter. "Mr. Iverson should have consulted with a knowledgeable interpreter before paying for a permanent mark on such a visible part of his body."
"No, seriously. It means 'Pork Fried Rice'."
The flap has raised the possibility that other Nuggets' players may be sending coded messages to their teammates through tattoos as well. Team officials said they would send center Marcus Camby to a Sino-American language expert for a translation of Chinese characters on his upper arms. Camby has long maintained that his markings were copied from a take-out menu and mean "Free Delivery For Order Over Ten Dollar."
Before he perfected the sport of "Basket Ball", James Naismith experimented with several other indoor games, including "Hylo Ball" and "Scruggy Ball". Associated Press.
AL MICHAELS: Good afternoon everybody and welcome to Game One of the National Scruggy Ball Association Finals. I'm Al Michaels and with me today is former NSBA coaching great Hubie Brown.
Michaels: Played scruggy ball in high school.
HUBIE BROWN: Great to be here, Al.
MICHAELS: You know, these two teams have reached the ultimate stage in professional scruggy ball by very different routes.
Brown: Two-time NSBA Coach of the Year.
BROWN: That's right, Al. The San Antonio Armadillos will snuff out your offense with a smothering defense that uses fire extinguishers on the wings, forcing you to take low-percentage shots or drive the lane where they can defend better using O'Cedar mops and brooms.
MICHAELS: And how about the Detroit Lakers?
BROWN: They play a very up-tempo game, using the sideline catapult and those Super Soaker water guns to beat you on the transition.
Super Soaker: Do not use with a half-court offense.
MICHAELS: Let's hope San Antonio can slow them down so we can stay dry. Any individual match-ups we should focus on?
"With their first pick, the Boston Shamrocks select Chauncey Billups from the University of Colorado, the best available niblick."
BROWN: Well, at the point niblick for Detroit you've got Chauncey Billups, who was Mr. High School Scruggy Ball in Colorado. When San Antonio is in a man-to-man you'll see Bruce Bowen, a defensive specialist for the Armadillos, all over him like a wet tee-shirt.
Bowen: "Just try and scrunge past me, sucker!"
MICHAELS: But Billups has a lot of NSBA Finals experience . . .
BROWN: That's right--plus in scruggy ball you should never bet against a guy with a name like a British chauffeur.
NEW YORK. The first week of May brought bad news for NBA officials. As the second round of postseason play began, the league learned that it trailed NASCAR, professional wrestling and even SpongeBob SquarePants in the number of viewers who tuned in to watch first round games featuring rising stars like LeBron James.
"Wrestling I can understand," said commissioner David Stern. "But 'SpongeBob'? Please. He can't go to his left, and he can't create off the dribble."
Caught in a squeeze between rising player salaries and declining TV ad rvenues, Stern says the league has adopted a long-term strategy to head off a looming financial crisis: sell billionaire Mark Cuban's future fines to investors.
"When you look at the NBA's business model, there's not a lot of headroom," noted investment banker Bayard Minot III of Warton Brothers. "You can only raise ticket prices so much before your average whiney fan complains he can't afford to take his kids to see tattooed thugs beat up on each other in the low post any more."
Cuban has been fined eight times for more than $1 million since acquiring the Dallas Mavericks, including a $500,000 penalty for saying he wouldn't hire the NBA's head of officials "to manage a Dairy Queen." That outburst brought howls of protests from local owners of the popular ice-cream and fast food franchise. "What'd he have to go and say that for?" asked Earl Lee Buckholz of Amarillo. "I got enough problems with my self-esteem slopping chili on hot dogs all day long."
The financial product that Wall Street wizards have created gives investors a stake in Cuban's future fines. "He just got tagged for $200,000 in one day, so you know the revenue stream is robust," Minot notes. "And given the guy's history, it's about as safe as a Christmas Club account at your local bank."
Warton Brothers believes it can raise $100 million by creating an exchange-traded fund that will purchase the NBA's future revenues from Cuban's fines. As with other exotic Wall Street products such as SPiDRs (S&P 500 funds) and LYONs (Liquidity yield option notes), financiers have named the new investment vehicle after an animal--MAVERICKs, for "Mouthy, Annoying, Voluble, Erratic, Retired Internet CracKpot."
BIRMINGHAM, Alabama. Charles Barkley's revelation that he's lost $10 million gambling over the years has led to an outpouring of support in his hometown, where locals point to the good he's done for numerous charities.
"He's one of our biggest supporters," says Children's Hospital CEO Mack Doolin, M.D. "We're going to stick with him until he licks this thing. He just needs to learn how to set limits," says Doolin, who has counseled others with addictions.
And so Doolin is at Barkley's side as he enters Leeds Elementary School to participate in "Spring Fling", a fund-raiser for its PTO. "It's a baby step," says Barkley, "but I've got to start out small."
Barkley draws a crowd of excited fans as he steps up to the Wheel O' Fun, where fifty cents entitles a player to a spin for a toy or stuffed animal. "Fifty thousand on the red," Barkley says before Doolin can intervene. "One ticket at a time, Charles," he says, and the man known as "The Round Mound of Rebound" during his playing days with the Sixers, Suns and Rockets agrees.
"Okay," Barkley says sheepishly, before laying down two quarters and winning a noisemaker that makes an annoying "clackety-clack" sound. "I'm gonna shake this sucker in Trey Wingo's face next time he asks me an embarassing question on SportsCenter," Barkley says with a mischievous grin.
He moves on to the Action Figure Fishin' Hole, where children drop a pole behind a bed sheet and the school's fourth grade class officers attach a plastic superhero to the hook. "I want one of them Ninja Turtles," Barkley says. Behind the sheet, Nancy Rouchka, class president, giggles as she picks Kimberly, the Pink Power Ranger, from a cardboard box and puts it on the line. When Barkley sees his girlish prize he explodes at Rouchka, causing Assistant Principal Morris Byrum to come running across the cafeteria.
"What's going on here?" Byrum asks in an excited tone as the class president sobs loudly. "What kinda clip joint are you running here?" Barkley yells at the hapless administrator, before picking him up and tossing him onto the conveyor belt that takes dirty plates back to the dishwasher.
Barkley moves on to the Pez Dispenser Ring Toss, where he decides to try for the Popeye model. "I like that dude 'cause he's like me--I am what I am." Barkley plunks down ten dollars for twenty rings, but he soon needs to buy more as he collects Batman, Spiderman and Snoopy--but no Popeye.
A half hour later Barkely is down $50 when Doolin intervenes. "C'mon, Charles--just walk away--okay?" he says as he takes a roll of quarters from the former Dream Team member and leads him out of the building.
Even though he always said he wasn't a role model, the kids are sad to see him go. "I wanna be as good as him when I grow up," says third-grader Tyrone Williams. "Not everybody makes it to the NBA," his dad cautions him.
"Not at basketball," Tyrone says. "Texas Hold 'Em!"
GREENSBORO, North Carolina. NCAA officials today smoothed Duke University's road to the Final Four by awarding the Blue Devils the overall no. 1 seed shortly before tipoff in its ACC tournament final against Boston College. Duke was also given first, second and third round byes in an effort to ensure that they reach the finals of "March Madness".
Myles Brand, NCAA President, said the decision was made to maximize television ratings of the national championship game, which have lagged in recently years with the Monday night success of The WB's "7th Heaven" and TNT's "Wanted". "There's just something about Duke in the Final Four," Brand explained. "If they're not in it, I probably wouldn't watch myself."
Other schools have complained about favoritism towards Duke in the past. "Shane [Battier] got all the calls," said Gilbert Arenas, who played for Arizona in the 2001 championship game against Duke. "One of the refs asked for his autograph, and another asked me to take his picture" with the Duke star.
Duke haters have created web sites such as TruthaboutDuke.com, and conspiracy theorists blame the school, founded on tobacco wealth, for the spread of lung cancer and the clubbing of baby seals.
Under the package offered by the NCAA, each Duke player will receive a Rolex watch if the team wins its Elite Eight matchup, and a Cadillac Escalade if they advance to the finals. Various other prizes, including the Nobel Prize in medicine and the Pulitzer Prize for outstanding musical composition, would be divvied up among the players if they are crowned national champions.
Head coach Mike Krzyzewski was offered $40 million to switch to the NBA's Los Angeles Lakers in 2004 but decided to stick with the school where he has won three national titles. "I was told that Kobe Bryant swears in the huddle," he said at the time. "As a coach of impressionable young men, that's my job."
Krzyzewski, known for his sideline temper, is affectionately referred to as "Coach K" on Duke's web site because the school's sports information department is afraid of misspelling his last name.
Con Chapman is the author of "The Year of the Gerbil: How the Yankees Won (and the Red Sox Lost) the Greatest Pennant Race Ever," a history of the 1978 AL East pennant race, and "CannaCorn", a novel about minor league baseball to be published by Joshua Tree Publishing in 2009. He has written a number of plays, including "Number One Hockey Mom," "Please, Pope," and "What Mickey Belle Isle Told You," a trilogy about hockey (JAC Publishing). His articles and humor have appeared in newspapers and magazines including The Boston Globe, The Boston Herald, and The Atlantic Monthly, among others.
