This strikes me as a pretty appropriate With Leather story to come out of WrestleMania weekend.

Sweaterpunch alerts us to the fact that LeBron James and Dwyane Wade met up with Rey Mysterio over the weekend. Ignoring for a moment the completely stilted and uncomfortable exchange between the three men, the visual hilarity of Rey Rey getting a picture taken with these two massive basketball players, and Mysterio’s weird piece-of-gristle-caught-in-a-garbage-disposal voice that no one ever seems to know how to react to, LeBron is wearing a very interesting Nike shirt.

See for yourself:

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The sports world is abuzz with the news that a Magic-Johnson fronted group broke the dang old bank in order to purchase the Dodgers for over $2 billion, which is a figure so absurd that it may as well be written like a comic strip character says cuss words.

“Yes  Mr. McCourt, and our counter-offer is #!%*& dollars.”

Anyway, it’s no secret by now that Magic Johnson, while not a billionaire himself, is a mega-entrepreneur and philanthropist. Already in 2012, he’s bought a baseball team and announced he’s launching a television network. What’s next, a chain of restaurants that are like Applebee’s, but with edible food? A series of Wal*Mart-style superstores? It’s almost like he’s some kind of business wizard. Almost like he’s … gathering spectacular assets.

Wait a minute. Wizard … gathering … Magic … I think we may be on to something here, ladies and gentlemen. In the spirit of Magic Johnson’s spectacular purchase, I am pleased to present the nerdiest sequence of jokes to ever appear on With Leather. It is my pleasure to present to you a very special type of card game: a collectible one.

Faithful readers, I proudly present Magic Johnson: The Gathering.
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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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Are you an NBA fan who hates watching his favorite player play basketball, but loves reading what he has to say about his day-to-day minutia and hashtag causes on the Internet? Then you’ll love the NBA Store‘s new ‘Has Handle’ t-shirts, the shirsey that replaces the ‘Lin’ on your back to ‘@JLIN7′. Oh, and they had a # to the immediately left of your team logo. To the left of the ‘Los’ if you’re buying the racist Spanish one.

NBA Store has six of these bad boys ready to go, and the only upside I can see to them is how much more awkward it makes me going into a team store to ask for an awful player’s merchandise and having to say his username outloud. “Uh, excuse me, you guys got any at-sign ianmahinmi shirseys?”

Take a look at the six they’ve got up now and try to figure out which one you’d like to order least. I agree with Andrew Sharp of SB Nation that an ‘@KingJames’ across your back would make you the absolute worst.

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He’s back, in pog Asian variety show form!

There isn’t a lot of available information about this video, courtesy of Outside The Boxscore, but all you really need to know is that it’s a guy dressed like Jeremy Lin on an Asian dance contest/’X Country’s Got Talent’ show.

My theory is that it’s an illustration of how sports writers saw Jeremy Lin all along, a look deep into the recesses of their brains, and that the casual racist tweets have evolved into this video of Lin speaking Chinese, pop-and-locking for the enjoyment of Asians and missing jumpshots. It also may or may not have been created by Next Media Animation.

Worst case scenario, this is the first video on the New York Post’s YouTube channel. I like it, though, and as I always say, “Lin-mitation is the Lin-cerest form of flatt-emy”.

Apparently people were surprised on Wednesday when New York Knicks coach Mike D’Antoni suddenly resigned, but something was obviously going to happen. The Knicks were 18-24, barely hanging on to a tie for the 8th playoff spot in the Eastern Conference despite last season’s huge trade for Carmelo Anthony and the addition of Tyson Chandler. Also, there’s that Jeremy Lin kid who was playing pretty damn fantastic for a while. Factor in Anthony openly talking about his displeasure with D’Antoni and nobody should be surprised.

What was surprising, though, was the team’s response on Wednesday, when the Knicks completely pummeled the Portland Trail Blazers 121-79 under the direction of new coach Mike Woodson. And that was just the first cannon fire of Woodson’s new campaign. The second? Putting D’Antoni’s Harvard boy in the backseat.

On Thursday things got tougher: Woodson ran his first practice and began to make it clear to his players that this is now his team, at least for the rest of the season, and not Mike D’Antoni’s.

That almost certainly means it will be a Knicks team that will slow things down on offense and run an isolation-heavy system more suited to Carmelo Anthony’s ball-dominating inclinations.

“It’s everybody’s ball club,” Woodson said after practice Thursday, when he was asked if the Knicks were once again Anthony’s team, as they were before Jeremy Lin briefly took over. “I want everybody to feel comfortable. When I put a guy in the game, if he’s got a shot, I want him to feel comfortable about making that shot.”

(Via the NY Times)

Well I suppose this makes a lot more sense now…

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