Earlier this month, I enlisted the help of you, the With Leather readers (still unofficially known as “Leatherheads”), to help me choose a new NBA team to follow/love/write about. I’d had a tumultuous life of stop-and-go basketball fandom, but now that I’m settled in central Texas and running a sports blog, it’s important to move forward and actually watch the sports about which I’m tasked to write jokes. You hear the one about LeBron James? *does soft shoe routine*

Anyway, the results are in, and With Leather has made me a fan of the Houston Rockets.

You guys made some convincing arguments, and I didn’t let my previous opinion of the team (which is, in total, “they used to have Hakeem Olajuwon”) stop me from making good on my word. The Rockets brought in a whopping 55.98% of the vote, beating the second-place vote getter (“Other, Please Specify”) by almost 40%. For the record, Other Please Specify was mostly people going LIKE MY TEAM, WHO CARES IF YOU LIVE IN TEXAS.

To celebrate this momentous occasion, here’s my favorite shot from last night’s game:

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Next up on ESPN's Broke 2...

Even before the Oklahoma City Thunder shocked its fans by trading James Harden to the Houston Rockets, the sensational young 6th man had proven that he was ready to step up his off-the-court game as one of the NBA’s premiere ballers. After he helped Team USA win a gold medal at the 2012 Summer Olympics, Harden invited his closest NBA friends and some of the most notorious female groupies on board a yacht for his 23rd birthday party. I’m pretty sure that for my 23rd birthday party, I passed out in an Applebee’s bathroom, so good for him.

But even as Thunder fans burned the Bearded One’s shirseys in the streets after he turned down the team’s questionable offer, Harden is apparently adapting to life in Houston just fine. According to a random picture that has been quietly making the rounds, a young woman named Jasmine Taylor claims that she had a “Lonngg but great night” and that it was great because Harden threw some stacks at her.

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It’s NBA season, and I desperately need to stop dicking around and pick a team to follow.

Here’s a brief history of my basketball fandom. When I was a kid growing up in southern Virginia, I loved the Charlotte Hornets. They were the closest team to me, purple and teal were in because The 1990s and Larry Johnson was helping Eddie Winslow win basketball games on ‘Family Matters’. For whatever reason (Alonzo Mourning in big, flashing letters) I drifted away from the Hornets and had a brief love for the Golden State Warriors before moving on and going to college and not caring about sports for a few years.

Eventually I moved to Cleveland, and you know how that story goes. OH WOW, THE CAVALIERS! LEBRON JAMES IS GREAT HE WILL BE WITH US FOR shit, my heart. I was prepared to give up basketball forever, but now I’m the editor-in-chief of a comedy sports blog, so I can’t. I loved basketball before, and I can love it again.

Right now I’m living in central Texas. That means I’ve got three NBA teams within a reasonable driving distance, four if you count New Orleans, and actually seeing the team play occasionally is important to me. This is where you come in. After the jump I’ve provided a handy poll, and I’d like for you to choose a team for me to love, drop down into the comments section and explain why you chose them. Next Friday I will consult the results of the poll and the comments section arguments and reveal which team I’ve chosen to love, then cover them incessantly for the rest of the season. Sound good? Good.

Choose wisely!

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In a SPOOKTACULAR moment reminiscent of the time McKinley High School made their football team put on zombie make-up and do ‘Thriller’ mash-ups at halftime, the Detroit Pistons and Houston Rockets opened their season with a fog machine malfunction with a minute left in the half and couldn’t restart play until someone got it under control. You haven’t lived until you’ve seen two teams of athletes and an arena full of technicians and professionals at the mercy of a fog machine.

It needs a Vincent Price “terrorize y’alls neighborhood” monologue over it, but you can check out video of the mishap after the jump. BUT BEWARE, ghouls and goblins etc.

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Okay, Oklahoma City Thunder fans, step back from the lighter fluid. Seriously, you’re acting a little foolish. Look, as a fan of a team that just traded its star player away, I certainly understand that you’re pretty broken up over the Thunder trading away Kevin Durant yesterday. Wait no, not Durant. My bad, I meant Russell Westbrook. Wait, no. It wasn’t Westbrook either. It was James Harden, the team’s 6th man. But hey, he does have a pretty sweet beard.

In case you were too focused on your fantasy football teams yesterday, the Thunder traded free-agent-to-be James Harden (and some other dudes) to the Houston Rockets for Kevin Martin, Jeremy Lamb and picks. According to the above picture that someone emailed me of Harden shirseys being torched, OKC fans are apparently mad at Harden for not accepting the Thunder’s reported offer of 4 years, $55 million. Instead, Harden opted to seek a max deal (5 years, $80 million) with another team. Oh, and there’s another teeny weenie little itsy bitsy reason that Harden wanted out.

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If you’re like me, you’re absolutely tired of the drama and the all around piss poor PR mess created by both the Orlando Magic and Dwight Howard over the past 9 or 10 months. If you’re unfamiliar with this mess that I speak of, allow me to give you a rundown:

• Dwight Howard told the Orlando Magic that they either needed to surround him with players he had a part in selecting or he would ask to be traded.
• The Magic tried and failed because nobody wanted their crappy contracts.
• Dwight Howard asked to be traded.
• The Magic asked Dwight what it would take to keep him, he said, “Fire Stan Van Gundy.” (They later did.)
• Dwight denied ever saying that.
• Before the trade deadline, Dwight insisted that the Magic trade him, preferably to the New Jersey Nets.
• The Magic reportedly told him he’d be going to the Lakers.
• Dwight waived his opt-out option to remain with the Magic.
• The season ended.
• Everyone in the media made a whole bunch of sh*t up.

We know that the Magic have entertained multiple trade offers for Howard from teams like the Lakers, Houston Rockets, and Brooklyn Nets, among others, but nobody seems to know what players were actually involved, which teams were taking which bad contracts, and what draft picks were going where. Unless you ask Nets GM Billy King, who will probably say that the Magic are a bunch of doodie heads for not taking his awesome pupu platter that led the Nets to 21 wins last year.

Basically, everything that has been “reported” has come through the magical “sources” of ESPN beacons of integrity like Chris Broussard, local Orlando media hacks, and people just regurgitating what Howard’s friends are telling them. So take it with another huge grain of salt when Broussard “reports” today that “sources” are telling him something new.

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