Big weekend in sports with the return of the NBA playoffs, a burgeoning scandal regarding the poster boy of the forthcoming NFL draft, more HR'#### in the majors, and Lavar Arrington finally finds a home.

- LeBron James opened the playoffs in style for the Cavs, recording a triple-double in an easy win for the Cavs. What does this mean? Yes, the King has arrived and displayed his monumental talents jumping on the Wizards early and keeping the foot on the gas. But if he thinks the Wiz and Gilbert Arenas plays that bad for the rest of the series he's sadly mistaken, and the Cavs will get a wake up call against the Pistons in the Confernce Semi-finals.

- The Spurs handled the Queens in game 1. Was anyone surprised by this? Really? I didn't think so. The Kings showed their same old faces in game one and a rout was on the cards by the time the first quarter was in the books. On a talent standpoint the Kings (Bibby, Wells, Artest, 'Reef, Miller) would worry any no.1 seed, particularly one with a hobbled superstar. But the Spurs handled their business and preserved home court with Tony Parker and Nick van Exel leading the way in the beat down. The Spurs have the deepest roster in basketball, and anyone hwo thinks Rick Adelman can outcoach Pop, is out of their mind. The bad news for the Kings, Artest is supended for game 2 and things will only get worse...

- Phoenix gets acquainted with the free throw line, and made the most of it. Hitting 30 of 32 free throws was an example of how to punish a young teams over enthausiasm to make a splash in R1 against a number 2 seed. Yes, Kobe wasn't killing it on Sunday as he's prone to do against PHX, but if you send an opponent that shoots that well from the stripe to the line 32 times in one game, you deserve to lose. Watch out for Kobe to blow up in game 2 (you can tell he was agitated playing "within the offense on sunday"). Steve Nash for MVP...

- RIck Carlisle is a great coach. He really is and anyone who thinks other wise is a fool. FIrst he builds up that Detroit team to a 50win team without 'Sheed - which would have taken it all once Sheed arrived - with or without Larry Brown and his cantankerous ways, then he goes to Indiana and endures 2 of the most horrible seasons a coach can suffer through injuries and Ron Artest's insanity and still he drags the team to the playoffs through pure coaching. And now Carlisle's Pacers have pinched home court from the much fancied NJ Nets. Will they win the series? I don't think so, but Carlisle has worked miracles in Indy again, and if he can ever get a dependable All-Star performer (JO too injury-prone), and a couple of dependable veterans together.. look out.

- Anyone noticed the amount of Homers being smacked in the Majors this year in this alleged "post steroid" era. I looked it up and Homers are up over 20% on last year, mostly through the performances of the likes of Albert Pujols, Morgan Ensberg, Chris Shelton, Travis Hafner, and Jim Thome. Erm, is this supposed to happen? Didn't most people expect the no. of Homers to go down post juice? Lots of theories have been put forward - the baseballs are harder, all players (apart from Barry) are healthy at this time of year,  the pleasant hitting conditions in a mild April in the midwest, and Pujols new stomping ground is a lot more hitter friendly than the old Busch stadium. The most interesting theory is that the Pitchers were also hitting the juice hard, and have suffered a drop off this year. Interesting stuff, and a lot more pleasing to watch on TV...

- Barry finally nails 709. Woohoo! Break open the pinata. I've had all the Barry watch i can take, and now hope the hysteria around him dies down for a while. Sure he's chasing legendary figures and legendary records, but Bonds isn't worthy of the attention, there are far better players playing ball at the moment to turn you attention to, until Bonds cracks 714 and 715, and then we can all go about our lives again....

- Reggie Bush's family alledgedly were given a free lease to a home in San Diego California, allegedly putting his college eligibility in doubt. They are talking about taking away the kids greatest honor of his life so far, the heismann.  Big deal, Reggie Bush is less than 7 days away from becoming a multi-, multi- millionaire. Everyone knew this kid would be special and would always make it to the NFL and get paid a kings ransom to play.  In my opinion the NCAA rules regarding eligibility are ridiculous , and the fact that guys aren't "paid" to play football doesn't mean they're not getting dollars. You don't think Matt Leinhart's made money from his LA exploits? please. You also think Vince Young was academically eligible at UT? Please.. I'll let someone with a better handle on the college scene write a more informative blog, but while college guys shouldn't necessarily be paid for performing on saturdays, penalizing them for helping their families have a better lifestyle until they get paid for real is just wrong.

- Brett Favre - Hurry Up and take a s*hit or get off of the toilet! Your team needs to know what to do in the upcoming draft.

- Lavar Arrington should be spitting mad about his new deal with the G-men. He bought out the remaining 4.4mill on his contract so he could pursue lucrative free agency money. The result? a 5.5mill signing bonus, and a base contract averages that pays 3.7. Again the Postons show they are the most incompetent agents on the NFL market this side of Major Bud Adams, now if only they can find Ty Law a new home....

- One final point which none of you will care about,  but really got me going on Saturday concerns sportsmanship. A huge game in the English Premiership between Arsenal and Tottenham was played with the victor moving one step closer to qualifying for the lucrative European Champions league (worth approx 25mill to either team). With Arsenal needing to win and the game at 0-0, two arsenal players collided with each other and lay stricken on the pitch. Tottenham collected the ball and ignored arsenal's plea's to kick the ball out of touch so the players could receive treatment and proceded to score causing uproar amongst the arsenal fans and players. Arsenal would later rescue a 1-1 draw out of the game but still trail Tottenham in the race for European qualification. Question is, were Tottenham right to play on and score?

 
Roll on the NFL draft on the weekend, here's hoping your team drafts who you want! Out....

Greetings from a springtime London. OK, so after drinking wine all last night with the lady, and drinking beers in the pub all afternoon with the boyz, here are some sports related things that have crossed my mind recently.

1. Can the NFL not ban Drew Rosenhaus? He may be a power agent, but he's more importantly a major pain in the #### and causes nothing but trouble for NFL franchises, while in-turn giving all of his clients god complexes.

2. Why do NFL teams who finish with the lowest regular season record automatically have the first draft pick? Surely it would be better if the team could evaluate the draft talent and then pick what number they want to select a player. Its not the case this year, but surely the 49ers would rather not have put 50mill into Alex Smith pockets last year but they were unable to find suitable value for a trade out.

3. Why are NBA deals guaranteed? This really gets on my end. If you suck at your job, and your boss doesn't think you are worth paying - he gets rid of you. In the NBA you sign a big deal at around 30, when you are well past your prime and you often end up making massive cash either sitting on the bench and playing a few minutes a night, or sitting at home (whats up Penny Hardaway?). Don't you think some teams would love to just cut half there roster but can't as the money they've signed on for is guaranteed? Bet your #### if they were like NFL deals, some players would be playing harder to ensure their house looks fly on the next episode of cribs.

4. Why isn't the NFL season longer? Yeah, i know its fast, furious and causes injuries but do teams really need 7/8 months of the year playing pitch and catch, working out, and learning playbooks, and then playing the boring pre-season (the biggest cause of irritating injuries). So NFL, please extend the season to either 18 or 20 regular season games - if your looking for a reason to do this  - money... !!!

5. Why do Universities try and cover up the issue of academic eligibility?  Look, there are 3 kinds of people in this world. The academically gifted, the physically gifted and the rare breed of person who is brilliant at everything (i hate them..!). Most athletes (mainly talking about football players here) aren't going to have astounding careers as scientists, writers, nobel prize winners etc. but in the current world of athletes earning more in a year than most working people earn in 40years - why is that important? So why do colleges say that their star athletes (who bring in huge revenue for them) are academically eligible, when they put their players on courses a 7yr old could pass - and invariably "assist" them through the course so they can continue partying, scoring with hot girls and using their god given gifts to star for them on saturday afternoons. I have no problem with Vince Young attending a good academic institution like UT, even if he couldn't tell a fork from a spoon. The guy was a great football player for them and did so much more for the longhorns than any math student could, but i do have  problem with people like Mack Brown coming out and saying how intelligent Vince and all his other players are. Hey Mack, scoring a 7 on the Wonderlic doesn't really say he's that bright does it? But he'll earn more money than any of us will ever see, and good luck to the kid - he deserves it.

6. There are too many NBA regular season games. Why play 82 reg season games. Why? Why 82? Its called diluting the product in advertising terms and when you have 3/4 games a week, it doesn't really make each game that special, does it? I'd rather they played around 60 each season,  making each game more meaningful and competitive and giving players more time to get and stray healthy.

7. The NFL salary cap is too complicated for normal fans. Teams have "cap guys" employed to work round this, so how can regular fans be expected to understand its inner workings? They should simplify it to saying "Every NFL team may have total salaries of up to 150million a year on a 53man roster, and they may spend it how they wish". Then, we can actually see where the money is going, and which players are value for money and more importantly who isn't.

8. Television adverts are the worst things for sports fans. Ever. A big game, a touchdown, 4mins left in the 4th quarter, game all square. 3 minute advert. Kickoff. 5 minute advert. WHY-OH-WHY are we subjected to this?? I'd rather the network showed back-2-back adverts for the entire halftime than ruining the atmosphere in my TV room /bar i'm in when i'm watching a big game in the closing moments. The same goes for basketball where the last 2 minutes takes 15 minutes to play. Sure take a timout, but it should only be allowed to be a 20seconds.

9. They don't show enough cheerleaders on TV coverage. Totally sexist, but something i feel very strongly aobut. If you are watching a completely suck #### game (eg.  ATL Hawks v NY Knicks, San Fran 49ers v Houston Texans - pre Reggie Bush) in the age of interactive television, shouldn't you be able to press a button on your remote and watch the game which just so happens to incorporate a nice view of the cheerleaders. I mean, its a win-win situation - we get to look at beautiful women (and its not even porn), and these girls get more exposure in the hope they can go on to bigger things such as Stacy Kiebler.

10. Will anyone is the US watch the FIFA World Cup in Germany this summer? I know, "soccer" isn't a big deal over there, but this is the biggest sporting event in the World (more TV viewers than the olympics!) and your boys are supposedly the 5th best team in the world. I don't care if MLS gets 3 men and a dog to watch games over there, but if the US public followed the world cup half as passionately as any other major sport over there - the world cup would get even better (even if thats possible..). But then again, do the US even care about national team success in any sport?

I'm off to get some aspirin.... Comments appreciated.