That's what it must seem like to Kevin Garnett. 

Pierce 5-15,  Kendricks 1-4,  Allen 3-8,  Rondo  1-4,  Davis 2-8,  Posey 0-2  and so it went. Shades of Minny nights.

Hard enough to overcome but toss in the refs who are doing their best to protect Lebron being humiliated and you have Lebron shooting 15 free throws against the entire Celtic team shooting 13. Yes that's 13, count them 13 free throws as a team for the ENTIRE game compared to Lebron shooting 15 himself . Ridiclous.

Many have said that David Stern wants Celtics vs Lakers. Bull. It now appears that the refs and the NBA wants Kobe vs Lebron. The NBA has far too much time and effort into Lebron James to allow him to lose.

The only problem is is that Lebron is so overrated ( 9-23 tonight yet again) that he probably won't be able to rise to the occasion in Boston and his teammates are so terrible they won't be able to save him. Maybe the refs will save him again.

The easy answer is yes bloggers affect fans since bloggers are fans and internet blogging allows bloggers to have a much larger audience than sitting in McDonalds chatting up a friend about a favorite team.

This would seem to be the conventional wisdom but if so the conventional wisdom is wrong. If you go to a blog getting a lot of hits on a Fox Sports blog it's unsual to get over 50 or so hits and many of them are the blogger themself responding and multiple posts by a single person. Even the paid writers who allow a response follwing their article do not get thousands of responses. Again you will find several, perhaps a dozen people who engage in slow motion chat and generally are insulting each other more than discussing the merits of the subject written about.

My feeling is that those who attempt to write about sports are not the problem. Most are people who constantly ask for restraint, common decency and mature discussion.

Where I do feel the problem lies is in the fringe element of blogging. Those whose only goal appears to be the insulting of others. These people seldom, if ever, write their own blogs and prowl the blogs insulting, accusing and creating undesirable turmoil. A few examples.

One person spammed my blog over 200 times calling me someone I am not and claiming I am a man. The end result of this was that others of his/her mentality took up the cause and the harassment of myself was not about what I wrote, what team I follow or what I was saying on  my blog. It was nothing more than simple childish harassment.

What the internet has done is allow bullying without accountability. Reporting these people will result in them being blocked from posting under the screen name they're using to bully others but serves only as a temporay solution as these bullies simply make up another screen name and begin anew.

Another example is the "know it alls". If you don't subscribe to their "self proclaimed knowledge and leadership" they will constantly insult you and correct every single thing you try to talk to.  If you delete them they post the same statement over and over and over again. Their need to be recognized far outdistances any value the subject at hand may have had and once again the harassment starts.

A third example is the racial polarization on the blogs, particularly among blacks and whites. Recently when I stated that I felt OJ Mayo was and is an adult in the scandals involving him, one person stated that I was a racist who would "grow up to be a Repulican Senator". He then added on that I was the sort of racist that would get a gun and start shooting black athletes. My crime? I said Mayo should be held responsible for illegal acts right along with the University/Coach/Recruiter and Agent(s) involved. This person refused to acknowledge that my outrage over yet another sports scandal was all inclusive of all races involved and chose to make the entire situation a "racist attack on all black people".

This sort of hatred goes on throughout the blogs constantly and no one side is without their own people making wild absurd accusations against the other  concerning race.

Fox Sports in one of the giants of the internet yet I feel they are doing less than what they could to make sports blogging all that it could be. A few suggestions how this could take place and make the impact of blogging more positive among the blogs and sports society at large.

1.) Concering the posting of comments after a professional writers comments. Fox should monitor these comments and do something about those who are there only to make personal insults against those who are posting in direct response to the article.

2.) When someone is reported and found to be so wrong as to be blocked by screen name, after the second time they are found to be harassing a particular person the harasser should be IP banned through the hotmail account we all use. Granted they could get another server company however this would, hopefully, get their attention eventually.

3.) Racial attacks come from all races. When some is making racial attacks as the person did to me they should be warned once then IP banned if they do it a second time. Race is an issue in society and sports alike, however discussion of the race issue is not the same as racial attacks and racial attacks are not productive to sports blogging.

In conclusion, it is my feeling that if companies like Fox would take the responsibility to hire, train and enforce the fair and equitable monitoring of their own site, that the influence of the fringe bloggers would not continue to impact the behavior of the sports fan in an every increasing downward spiral as it seems to be doing today.  I see the possibility that the creep who covers his eye trying to harass Derek Fisher is likely the kind of guy who would spend his time on a sports blog harassing Derek Fisher/Laker fans.

What does this mean? I'm being inconsistent when I say that sports bloggers have little negative impact on sports fans today and then proceed to give examples that they do and suggestions how to improve that impact? Not at all. Sports bloggers are an assest to the game. The fringe element that seldom if ever write a blog, but only roam the internet harassing, hating, spamming and generally staining the reputation of the true sports blogger are the problem. Bullies are a problem throughout society with 36 states now having enacted anti bully laws and the federal government considering anti bullying internet laws. These are not sports fans. They are bullies that may well be doing the same thing on blogs other than sports. They're not about sports they are about bullying.

Writers and SC fans are making all kinds of excuses for OJ Mayo.  They want to blame the sports agency for "luring" the young man. This is a guy who was reported to have scored under 100 on a SAT his first try. Probably couldn't spell his own name.  God knows who USC got to take the passing test. . A guy who went to a different high school for 4 straight years.

This is a guy who flattened a referee for calling a technical on him.

This is a guy whose mother said no to signing a letter of intent and USC sneaked around and got his drunk criminal father to sign. Real honorable that.

This is a guy who had a flat screen TV in his dorm room and nobody from the USC basketball program knew? Nobody cared is the case. They had to know.

This is a guy whose arrogance is so great that he saw nothing wrong in taking expensive seats to pro sports events for free.

Everyone wants to blame "others". I knew when I was 10 that prostituting one's self was wrong. I knew at 14 and at 18. I know now at 22.

USC went to major trouble to recruit and sign him for one year knowing he was a cancer.

I say ban all new basketball scholarships for USC for the next 5 years and ban OJ Mayo from the NBA for 5 years. We don't need garbage like OJ Mayo in the NBA. and we don't need garbage like USC in NCAA basketball. While you're at it ban any sports agent found giving money to a high school/college kid for LIFE from doing business with the NBA. That should solve the problem pretty quickly.