Interested in learning more about Kobe Bryant’s injury and its impact on the Los Angeles Lakers? Then turn to the only people who matter in sports reporting, Taiwan’s Next Media Animation. They gave everybody big heads, have Kobe sobbing in a wheelchair and even managed to cram in a Jeremy Lin reference. Note: Jeremy Lin has a regular sized head. Because Taiwan? (h/t to Josh Mendoza)

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Links

Here’s Your Summer Reading List: 10 Books, Graphic Novels, And Plays Being Turned Into Movies |UPROXX|

‘Breaking Bad’ Has Set A Return Date For The Final Eight Episodes |Warming Glow|

The Great Gatsby is Spring Breakers (This Week in Posters) |Film Drunk|

The Milwaukee Brewers Also Honored Boston By Playing The Cheers Theme |With Leather|

Why Politicans Are Blaming Video Games For Violence More Than Ever |Gamma Squad|

10 Eric B. & Rakim Songs Everyone Should Know |Smoking Section|

Better Know A Draft Pick: Matt Barkley |Kissing Suzy Kolber|

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Disclaimer: This has nothing to do with Kate Upton.

It is not an easy task to put together a list, such as the Greatest Sports Moments of 2012, specifically because so many things happen in any given year that it’s all but impossible to universally gauge which one event or person is greater than another. But since we’re just a couple dudes who like to make fun of stuff and almost always ignore actual sports news, it’s really quite easy.

With that said, here’s a quick breakdown of how our team of fact checkers and sports analyst number crunchers determine which people, places and things were the most important and influential in 2012…

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Back in November, I tasked the With Leather readers with choosing an NBA team for me to support, and the unanimous decision was the Houston Rockets. I’ve done my best to be a Rockets fan, weathering a James Harden sprained ankle and every Jeremy Lin game that wasn’t his one good one, but this clip of the team singing the Hanukkah classic, ‘I Have A Little Dreidel,’ may be a bridge too far. Is there a way to classify this anti-Semitic?

Seriously though, I know it’s all in good fun, but I think the holiday updates are getting to me. At least you guys didn’t try to make me a Mavericks fan. Here are those poor guys trying to sing ‘Sleigh Ride.’

“Trying” is the key word, here.

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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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I’m not sure what my favorite part of the Jeremy Lin free agency drama has been. Perhaps it’s that the previously unheard of Harvard grad, who was sleeping on his brother’s couch before getting a second chance last season, has parlayed his brief success into a huge contract. Nah, that’s boring. Maybe it’s that the team that gave up on him before even giving him a chance had to eat crow and give him that huge payday. Nope, that’s boring, too. What about how much Knicks writer Frank Isola is kissing Knicks owner James Dolan’s ass by assaulting Lin’s character and integrity in the press? That’s fun, but it’s not my favorite part.

Is it that Carmelo Anthony broke an unwritten law within the fraternity NBA players by commenting on another player’s contract? Getting warm. Could it be that Anthony’s remarks have led to hilarious opinion pieces, such as one GQ writer calling him racist against Asians? Getting warmer. Or is it simply that, throughout this all, Anthony just doesn’t give a crap about Lin or what people say? Bingo.

And all of this was evidenced when a reporter asked Anthony his feelings about Lin’s new deal yesterday.

“Congratulations. He finally got it done. He sent me a text the other day. He finally got it done.”

BOOM, that’s BFF if I’ve ever seen it. In the video after the jump, you can see just how incredibly earnest Anthony’s response was by the way he immediately stopped smiling as he turned away from the reporters to go talk about anything else on this planet.

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"A-one, a-two, a-one, two, three, four terrible contracts!"

As I updated in yesterday’s post about Carmelo Anthony hoping the New York Knicks would keep Jeremy Lin – presumably while making a dismissive wanking motion – the Knicks did not match the offer sheet that Lin signed with the Houston Rockets and he is, in fact, heading back to the same team that booted him last year. Of course, this time the Rockets will be paying him just a few dollars more.

To gauge a reaction of Knicks fans and NBA fans in general, all you have to do is search Jeremy Lin on Twitter and you’ll run the gauntlet from euphoric Rockets fans to angry Knicks fans to lazy racism to the same media that adored Lin now tearing him to shreds. Hell, some Knicks fans are even openly jumping ship to the Brooklyn Nets bandwagon, which was expected anyway. (Seriously, if your team sucks this season, the most fun thing to monitor will be New York fans in general. I predict that they’ll collectively be back and forth between the Knicks and Nets as both teams duke it out. It will be awesome and horrible at the same time.)

But perhaps the best response so far is the hit that Knicks owner James Dolan’s band’s Wikipedia page took. Known as JD and the Straight Shot, Dolan’s two-man band is beloved by someone, I guess. At least enough that it warranted a Wikipedia page in the first place. And last night someone edited that page to reflect some delightful new song titles.

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