Remember when Donald Trump decided that being born in Hawaii didn’t make you a U.S. citizen and spent months trying to get Barack Obama to show everybody his birth certificate? Remember how stupid that made everybody feel about everything? Obama finally shows everybody a birth certificate, but it isn’t authentic enough. So it gets authenticated, but it isn’t printed on nice enough paper, and then the paper is nice enough but it was bought at an Office Max outside of Washington D.C. and that is unpatriotic, and it just keeps going and going because nobody really cares where Obama was born, they just don’t like him and have to have a sh*t-talking point.

Yeah, that’s exactly what basketball needed.

“He wasn’t born and raised in L.A,” [Milwaukee Bucks guard Brandon] Jennings told ESPN the Magazine’s Chris Palmer regarding [Kobe] Bryant, who attended Lower Merion near Philadelphia. “You gotta be from L.A. for Drew. Show me a birth certificate.”

Brandon Jennings hates Kobe Bryant. Nobody is really sure why, or if he’s just kidding or what. If Kobe Bryant agrees to play in the Drew League-Goodman League rematch, thousands of people from L.A. will show up to see him, and everyone from Commissioner Oris “Dino” Smiley all the way down to the Chinese kid who is secretly Kobe’s nephew will love it. Everyone except Jennings, of course, who is the type of guy to post passive-aggressive pictures of himself wearing novelty t-shirts (like the one pictured right) on the Internet. And yeah, Kobe is from Philadelphia, but he’s been synonymous with Los Angeles since 1996. He’s 33 years old and has spent the last 16 in L.A. How long do you have to live somewhere and how much do you have to contribute before you’re “from” there?

And while you’re contemplating whether or not letting a resident of nearly two decades in compromises the integrity of a glorified rec league, consider what Jennings used to say when someone brought up Kobe.

“The [Lakers] got the best player in the game right now, Kobe Bryant, hands down,” Jennings said. “The guys has five rings and won two of them without Shaq. The man is the best player in the league.”

I think the most important question is this: how can we use this to call the Miami Heat the Tea Party?

[h/t Los Angeles Times]

NBA journeyman Armen Gilliam died on Wednesday at the age of 47. He had a heart attack while playing a pick-up game of basketball at his local LA Fitness in Collier Township, probably the least “LA” place in the United States. They rushed him to a hospital, where they declared him dead.

Stat recaps are never a fun thing to do when someone dies too young, but they’re a heart-in-the-right-place way of lining up a man’s public accomplishments and saying “hey, this is what he did, and you can remember him for it”. He was a former No. 2 overall pick of the Phoenix Suns in 1987 and played for nearly everyone at one point or another, the Charlotte Hornets, Philadelphia 76ers, New Jersey Nets, Milwaukee Bucks and Utah Jazz. His first name used to be “Armon”, but he changed it. He retired in 2000 after 13 seasons of being “The Hammer”, a nickname given to him for his powerful, physical style of play and because it was a great pun.

He was never a superstar, so we’re allowed to let the people who knew him best make their own eulogies.

“I’m all shook up,” former UNLV coach Jerry Tarkanian told the Las Vegas Sun today. “He was such a great person. He would take the shirt of his back for you.”

I think that’s the kind of legacy I’d like to leave.

DERP

That exasperated look you see above belongs to Jon Brockman of the Milwaukee Bucks, who was the unfortunate victim of not one, but two humiliating plays by the same player, DeAndre Jordan of the Los Angeles Clippers. Click below to see Brockman as the receiving end of an absolutely brutal dunk, then get called for an offensive foul right after you’ve already been wiped on the hardwood. All he can do is smile and try not to go crazy.
Read the rest of this entry »

This video, after the jump, has been everywhere today, and in the cartel that has become sports blogging, that means that we should probably post it, too. It’s “Bango,” the curiously-named mascot for the Milwaukee Bucks, climbing a ladder and then, I guess, executing a dunk. I mean, it’s not like you can tell. For some reason the only footage of this “amazing stunt” was shot from Green Bay.

And never mind that, because of the ladder and the backboard in the arena, only about 40 percent of the people in the arena could “see” this. Don’t tell me this wouldn’t have been a better video if Bango had just done an Owen Hart right off the ladder. Maybe next year, Milwaukee. Maybe next year. Read the rest of this entry »

Milwaukee Bucks big man Andrew Bogut is scheduled to have surgery today after this horrific injury to his right arm. I guess dude went up for a dunk and got his fingers caught in the net and then fell-down-went-boom. It’s just a nasty, nasty chain of events to suffer through, even for a guy that played at Utah.

ASYLUM POLL: Is Bogut’s arm injury the most gruesome ever?

At least one writer is blaming this on some sort of jinx that befalls players selected first overall in the annual drafts; Bogut was taken with said pick in 2005. Of course, I’m tempted to blame this on the officiating. I’m not exactly sure how this is their fault, but I just know it is. Video of the injury is after the jump. Get ready to lose your muffin top. Read the rest of this entry »

Looks like $7,500 is the magic number for Milwaukee Bucks guard Brandon Jennings.  Because he blew his load too soon and posted a celebratory tweet following last weekend’s double-OT victory over Portland, the NBA is bending Jennings over their knee for being a very, very naughty boy (rawr). Their policy is

Players cannot tweet during game time, defined as beginning 45 minutes before the game starts and ending after players have finished talking to the media following the game.–Foxsports.com

The NFL has a similar policy, and the rookie guard isn’t the first athlete to get a spanking over his 140-character musings.  Former Milwaukee Buck Charlie Villanueva, San Diego Charger Antonio Cromartie, and the infamous Chad Ocho Cinco of the Cincinatti Bengals have all come under fire for frivolously fingering their phones during game time.  Most notable is Larry Johnson’s gay slur tweet costing him a whopping $213K.

But the real travesty here isn’t that Jennings is being punished for being happy about a big W; nor is it that he has a big tattoo across his back that says “Young Money” (okay, that’s pretty tragic);  it’s that it “Looks like no Gucci and Louie for Xmas” for him.  Sadface!