As we head into the 4th quarter of the NBA season, the Chicago Bulls are the first and only team to have clinched a playoff spot so far, which wouldn’t seem like much of an accomplishment, except that Derrick Rose has missed 17 games this season. Meanwhile, the Miami Heat have entered that “we know we can kill anyone but we’re saving it for the playoffs” phase of their season, which doesn’t mean much, because they’ll still finish in the No. 2 spot – if they don’t gain ground and upend the Bulls, that is – because the Orlando Magic and Philadelphia 76ers most likely aren’t going to catch them.

In the West, the Oklahoma City Thunder showed they’re ready to start the playoffs now, with a 103-87 thrashing of the Heat on Sunday. San Antonio, though, has flown under the radar while becoming the second best team in the conference, and those cranky, grizzled veterans are probably the biggest threat to the Thunder’s Finals run. Well, except maybe the Lakers or the Mavericks. Or anyone.

This season has been strange.

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After getting a one-game suspension for trying to stomp Chris Paul's gonads, Spurs hitman Bruce Bowen has once again been forced to defend himself from accusations that he's a dirty player and constantly bitching about foul calls against him.

"When people think of me, all they think about is, 'He's dirty,'" Bowen said… "I'm a Christian… Sometimes when we feel like we're wrongfully accused, you have to look at it as people we try to emulate our lives after were wrongfully accused. It's about how you handle that, more than anything else."

Oooh, I can only hope Bowen's trying to emulate holy men like Girolamo Savonarola!  He was hung from a cross by a chain and burned in public.

[T]he burning took several hours, and… the remains were several times broken apart and mixed with brushwood so that not the slightest piece could be later recovered.

And Bowen even plays in Texas!  That's the only state in the Union that still allows public burning. 

[FanHaus] 

Year in and year out, the Spurs are the ugliest good team in the NBA, and while a lot of that stems from Tim Duncan's Sampras-like excellence, Manu Ginobili's flopping, and Tony Parker's stupid French face and bitch wife, it would be impossible to understate just how big of a cocksucker Bruce Bowen is.  And I don't mean cocksucker in the good way, like he's neat and dresses well.  I mean he deserves to be tied with barbed wire to a fence post in the wilds of west Texas in the dead of summer.

Here's Bowen cheap-shotting Chris Paul — only the most talented point guard in the league, and by most accounts one of the smartest and nicest players as well — with a knee to the face.  Why?  Possibly because the Hornets were kicking the Spurs' asses (they won 100-75).  But more likely because he's a cocksucker. 

Oh, and the refs called the foul on Paul, of course.  The NBA: where bullshit happens.

[Odenized via Fan IQ] 

Since everything on the Internet is true, it's either 2001 or Bruce Bowen got traded back to the Heat, as this screen shot from the Heat's official home page implies (thanks to hunky reader Bruce — not Bowen). 

Oh man I hope it's 2001.  Because that means I can still do twenty dead-hang pull-ups and my girlfriend is curious about anal.  Oh and I guess someone can stop 9/11.  But seriously, I think a couple glasses of champagne is all it will take to convince her.

According to just about everybody, Bruce Bowen has a habit of sticking his foot under jump-shooting opponents in order to injure them when they land. Classy, right? And, in what seems like a rather unnecessary measure, he's going after Knicks. After injuring Steve Francis last Monday (Francis has missed the last three games), Bowen allegedly pulled the same stunt with Jamal Crawford, and Thomas went batshit on Bowen. (Both received technicals.) A day earlier, Thomas shared what he would do if he were still playing.

"I'd beat the shit out of somebody. Really, I would fucking murder them… There's certain things you don't do."

(I had to guess about the swears, because the pussy reporters took them out.) Spurs coach Gregg Popovich — who, in a nice little brewing feud, testified for Larry Brown in his case against the Knicks — fired back, "That's kind of a Mike Tyson comment."

Now see, that's over the line. Anyone knows Tyson would have better judgment as a basketball executive.