The Oklahoma City Thunder may be a powerful No. 2 seed in the Western Conference, and they may have been the obvious favorites against the Los Angeles Lakers, but it’s still always an accomplishment for any team when it knocks off Kobe Bryant and Co. In this case, the Thunder’s 4-1 series win was so convincing that someone, somewhere decided to celebrate with their very own James Harden cake.

Sure, it’s strange and a little bit creepy, and there’s no chance that it’s better than a Cookie Puss cake, but I’ll bet it’s delicious nonetheless. However, I couldn’t help but wondering where it stacks up against some other recent athlete-inspired cakes. Let’s have a virtual cake-sampling, shall we?

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Yesterday, we shared with you comedian Jay Pharoah’s epic, pitch-perfect takedown of Stephen A. Smith during Saturday night’s Weekend Update segment on SNL. It was the kind of thing they need to do more of, in both “do good impressions of people who aren’t on CNN” and “let Jay Pharoah be on your show” interpretations of a thing.

But the fun doesn’t stop there! SportsCenter made the moment even better by filming Actual Stephen A. Smith’s reaction to the impression as he watched it, and it’s the perfect mixture of SAS brush-off and facepalming to let you know he’s a good sport, but he’s also going to sit somewhere by himself a little later and contemplate how life has brought him here.

The wonderful video is below.

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This video (courtesy of That NBA Lottery Pick) is one of the least exciting we’ve ever posted, but it’s newsworthy because LeBron James read Young Adult super-novel The Hunger Games before Sunday’s Heat-Pacers Game Four in Indianapolis, dropped 40 points and evened the series at two games apiece. It’s the best remedial reading basketball performance since Vlade Divac cried his way through Island Of The Blue Dolphins and won gold at the ’89 European Championships.

Knowing what we know about LeBron, it makes sense that nothing would pump him up like stories of children being forced to murder each other. I also hope he’s illiterate and the book is just a bunch of pictures of Jennifer Lawrence with a bow and arrow. Regardless (and as tired a point to make as it is), you can only come down so much on a popular sports role model for reading an actual book on camera. I’m gonna guess Alex Rodriguez hasn’t read printed text since he was ten.

I want LeBron to make reading cool again. I also want to see it get to the point where he’s filmed reading Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye before a game and spends the first three quarters just lying in the middle of the court.

A for effort, but it doesn't make much sense.

Dwyane Wade was pissed that the Indiana Pacers were celebrating their Game 2 win in Miami earlier this week, and he was pissed that the refs weren’t calling fouls the way he’d prefer. So when most people expected him to respond with a Dwyane Wade game in Indiana last night, he shocked everyone when he barely showed up with a Harold Miner game. Wade scored 5 whole points as the Pacers trounced the Heat 94-75, and the “haters”, I believe, are throwing a parade in every major city this morning.

It’s just one game, and unless the Heat lose the next one, I think it’s safe to say the notion of the Heat being in panic mode is a bit silly and premature. But for at least one night, the people who have begged and prayed for the Heat to lose were celebrating their butts off on Twitter. And my favorite Tweet, which I assume was meant to mock all of the people Tweeting incredibly nasty comments at Wade and the Heat, came from Wade’s girlfriend, Gabrielle Union.

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Forbes magazine today released their annual The World’s Most Powerful Celebrities, a top 100 list that ranks stars based on press coverage, social media buzz and whose agents paid Forbes the most money to put them on a list. At the top of this year’s 100: Jennifer Lopez, who was settling nicely into obscurity as that lady on Eric Cartman’s hand in an old episode of ‘South Park’ before ‘American Idol’ rocketed her back to prominence. Former American Idol winner Taylor Hicks also made the list, coming in at number 4,544,022 between Burnsy and the golden voiced homeless guy.

Tiger Woods managed to hang on as this year’s highest ranking sports celebrity, coming it at number 12. The only other sports guy in the top 25 was LeBron James at number 15, despite Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal coming it at numbers 2 and 3 in “Press Rank” behind Lady Gaga. I don’t know how much of this list is based on math and how much of it is based on people at Forbes trying to name 100 celebrities, so bear with me.

Here’s a full list of the sports personalities who ranked this year:

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I’m a big sucker for fan art – well, appropriate fan art – and that’s why I’ve been pounding my desk all morning over the news that the world’s biggest patent troll is going after Etsy’s new $40 million investment. But while soulless thieves are going after the sources of the Internet’s showcases for art and inspiration, they’ll thankfully never be able to crush the actual artists. At least not yet. I’m sure they’ll find a way eventually.

My Internet Artist of the Day of the Week goes to the guys at Double Scribble, a Tumblr site devoted to NBA fan art.

Double Scribble is the lovechild of basketball and art; two of Nick Kastner and Mike McGrath’s favorite things in the world. From the coldest, murkiest depths of Cleveland, OH (and now to some extent, some obscure part of North Carolina) Nick and Mike have forged a blog out of blood, sweat and tears in their unwavering vision to provide you, the viewer, with a never ending source of basketball related art.

And it’s pretty awesome. I’ve been shuffling back and forth through its archives since a friend emailed the link last week and there is just a ton of great artwork on this site that has really inspired me to consider re-launching my web comic series, “The Erotic Adventures of a Sports Blogger.” Spoiler alert: it’s sad and gross.

After the jump, I’ve included many of my favorite efforts of Double Scribble’s authors, but I encourage you to check out the submissions that they’ve posted from other artists as well. It’s a highly recommended worm hole to limit your productivity today.

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