It's a screen grab from the new Mavericks "Go Away Cam".

Dallas Mavericks forward Lamar Odom is not exactly having a good season, as the reigning NBA 6th Man is averaging just 6.8 points and 5 rebounds per game. The former Laker was of course sent to the Mavs in order for the Lakers to free up cash in case they traded for either Chris Paul or Dwight Howard, but now it just looks like they dumped him off for the sake of winning games.

To be fair, though, Odom had a hell of an offseason. Back in July, his 24-year old cousin was murdered and not even a week later he was involved in a car accident that killed a teenager. Factor in the NBA lockout and the guy might have just been a teeny weeny bit stressed out. Enough to make him want to take a year off from basketball to get his head in the right place.

Thankfully, his co-star, I mean wife, prevailed with the voice of reason.

“My wife talked me out of it.

“Cause I was asking myself: ‘Was I mentally prepared to play? If I didn’t play well, was I mentally prepared to help the team?’ I had thought, ‘Maybe I need a year.’ Because of the lockout, I thought, ‘Maybe somebody’s sending me a sign that I needed this time off.’

(Via ESPN)

That’s an incredibly fair assessment. I’m actually quite impressed with his ability to identify the needs of his personal well-being, as opposed to increasing his net worth, risking injury or being a detriment to his team.

“(But) when I told some of my friends and my family that I was thinking about steppin’ back for a minute, I think the reaction from the closest people to me kind of gave me the energy to get back at it.”

The closest people being his wife, of course, so forgive me if I now take his whole woe-is-me routine with a grain of salt. Look, I feel really bad for the guy. The death of a family member and then being involved with the death of a random stranger is just awful, and he’s also dealing with a pending lawsuit from a transgender club-goer claiming that Khloe and Lamar had someone beat her up at a nightclub a few months back. That’s a lot of stressful crap.

But his life is also staged for TV, so I see more than 50% of what he does as fake, and I’m probably being way too generous. Because he agreed to whore his life out in exchange for fake reality fame and his entire life is about making money, I refuse to believe that he was going to turn down $8.9 million for this season when he only has one more season left in his current deal. No way a team offers him this kind of money again. So good looking out, Khloe.

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Last Friday, the not-surprisingly-terrible New Jersey Nets earned their second win of the season with a 97-85 tickle fight against the slightly-less-terrible Toronto Raptors. But the scoreboard be damned, because the Raptors fans above earned the biggest victory of all as they reportedly heckled Nets forward and ex-Kardashian enabler Kris Humphries throughout the entire game with their giant cutout signs of E!’s First Family. Damn that classic Canadian wit.

The rest of the weekend and early season action has continued as expected, with the biggest surprise thus far being the 7-2 Philadelphia 76ers and their 6-game winning streak. It looks like all the City of Brotherly Love needed was a little Will Smith injection of jiggyness and some of the ugliest mascot options in sports history. Good for the 76ers and the other little engines that could, as they will inevitably be decimated by the Miami Heat.

Before we get started, though, let’s take a look at the ballsiest basketball bros you’ll see upgrade their seats this season…

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"And I'm serious about taxing that ass."

When the NBA lockout stretched into what would have been the first week of the season, I’m sure not many of the Dallas Mavericks players were concerned about whether or not they’d be able to visit the White House to celebrate their 2010-11 NBA Championship with President Barack Obama. But when the season finally began, a few reports trickled out that the Mavs – specifically owner Mark Cuban – were pretty pissed that they didn’t have a game against the Washington Wizards in D.C. so they could stop by 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. and slap a few high fives with Barry O.

Thankfully, NBA Commissioner David Stern told everyone to chillax and the Mavericks dropped by the White House yesterday to give Obama his latest personalized championship jersey. And on January 17, Obama will receive yet another jersey when the St. Louis Cardinals will visit him to celebrate their World Series victory. Sadly, Albert Pujols will not be making the trip, presumably because Glenn Beck told him that Obama will take all of his new money (I’m so excited that I can finally make these jokes!).

But thinking about these two visits, I eventually started to wonder when this tradition of championship teams visiting the White House began, and thankfully CBS News reporter Mark Knoller already did the dirty work and determined that Calvin Coolidge was the first POTUS to honor champions, specifically the 1924 Washington Senators. But screw Coolidge, because George W. Bush and Obama perfected the art of honoring champions. In fact, Bush had annual events to honor every NCAA sport champion for both the spring and fall, and as his first term comes to a close, Obama has welcomed more than 20 championship teams to the White House.

Maybe eventually a president will welcome a champion blogger. A boy can dream.

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Welcome to our mostly weekly video competition feature, Friday Face-Off, in which we pit two or more videos against each other for the purpose of determining which is the greatest video on the entire Internet that week. Most of the time they’ll involve animals or violence, which are both awesome. Feel free to submit videos to BurnsyWL@gmail.com and if your video wins, you’ll get a With Leather t-shirt like the one that Derrick Bateman wore on WWE NXT.

I’m going to start this week’s Friday Face-Off with a little open message to marketing teams for pro sports franchises: I know that it’s a very common practice – and generally just easy – to take popular viral videos and create team promotional materials out of them. For instance, if a ref makes a bad call, cue the Dramatic Chipmunk, or offer fans free t-shirts if they show up and put on a preseason pep rally flash mob. And that’s fine, because you don’t get paid much and people are easily amused, so it benefits everyone. Just keep stuff timely…

… Which segues nicely into the first video of today – Dallas Mavericks star Dirk Nowitzki giving a dramatic reading of the Britney Spears hit, “Oops, I did it again.” It’s not the timeliest idea, but I’ll give the Mavs some credit – it’s still pretty damn funny. But does it stand up against some of the Internet’s greatest celebrity dramatic readings? You decide after the jump.

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When the Los Angeles Lakers traded Lamar Odom to the Dallas Mavericks for a trade exemption, three thoughts crossed my mind:

A) This is obviously a move to clear cap space for the Lakers to bring in Chris Paul and/or Dwight Howard.
2) The Kardashian family and the E! Network must be going absolutely ape sh*t over this news. After all, having Odom and Khloe Kardashian living and playing in L.A. made “Khloe & Lamar” all the more convenient.
III) You know who must love this? Mark Cuban.

That third point is the most important, because, after all, Cuban is a fame whore unlike any other, rivaled in the NBA owners circle only by the Miami Heat’s Mickey Arison, who #humblebrags on Twitter about driving around with Jimmy Buffett on New Year’s Eve and boasts about his latest vacations despite reportedly losing $1.3 billion last year.

Cuban obviously doesn’t love that his defending champions look slow and overwhelmed to start the season 3-4, and he especially can’t love watching Odom struggling to find his role on the team. But he must sure as hell love Kim Kardashian showing up to games to pick out her next $18 million man, like she did last night when her and Khloe feigned delight in signing things for their fans as they watched the Mavs beat the Phoenix Suns, 98-89.

Now, it’s not a certainty that the former Mrs. Humphries was shopping for man meat, but if she was, I’d actually sign off on a relationship with Shawn Marion, because that just seems like the perfect recipe for batsh*t crazy.

I really believed that the NBA lockout and subsequent shortened season were going to do serious damage to the relationship between the league and the fans, but it seems that the fans were just content to get their basketball back. The ratings have been solid and games have been sold out, even in cities that lack star power, recently lost their stars or are inevitably going to lose their stars.

Most analysts and experts are already crowning the Miami Heat, which as I already pointed out is probably the easiest prediction a person could make this year, and while the Los Angeles Clippers and Oklahoma City Thunder look like the teams to beat in the West, it’s panic:30 on most Lakers clocks with their surprising 0-2 start.

The New York Knicks are playing like they’re just having a lot of fun, which could be scary for the Heat and Chicago Bulls down the road, so it’s way too early to be making predictions like the Heat winning 60 games in this 66 game season. I’m not saying that it’s out of the question, I just hate when Jason Whitlock dickishly boasts “You heard it here first” when he’s just the sports world’s IRL troll. But I digress. I figured now was a better time than any to roll out our new feature, ROFLMNBAO, and take a look at the opening weekend’s NBA action in pictures with some fun commentary.

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