Here’s a quick list of the worst things an athlete can do with his money during or after his professional career:

1. Fund an energy drink business
2. Make a mobile gaming app

“Get divorced because you can’t stop sleeping with strippers” is a solid number three. Anyway, free agent point guard Baron Davis tore is MCL and ACL in a Knicks game back in May, so he’s used a chunk of that 12-month recovery time to spearhead Getting Buckets, a … ugh, mobile gaming app that features basketball players doing basketball things, but nobody actually playing basketball. Not too late to make Getting Buckets an energy drink, Baron.

Getting Buckets is first gaming app from 5 Balloons Interactive, a collaboration between NBA basketball player and businessman Baron Davis and 15 year interactive entertainment producer, Sean O’Brien, which includes Baron, Steve Nash, Rajon Rondo, Brandon Jennings and Candace Parker. It is a 3D endless runner like you have never seen before routed in the sport and culture of basketball.

Because it’s routed in the sport and culture of basketball, Getting Buckets lets your character be a basketball player and hold a basketball while running down a city street, doing power slides under construction barriers, jumping over cars and collecting orange cans with ‘No Fear’ eyes on them forever for no reason. I thought they were cheeseburgers at first. Can I just put on a headband and play the race states in Battletoads instead?

I don’t write for Gamma Squad and have no real qualifications to talk about video games beyond “I’ve played a lot of them because I haven’t ever been cool”, but man, when did everything start looking like a shitty thing to do between rolls in Mario Party? Getting Buckets doesn’t need a junction system or class upgrades or whatever, but it’s 2012, guys. Our phones can do so much more than “Mario sliding down an incline and jumping to get coins, but non-stop until you put it down”.

And for the record, my favorite endless-runner is Wind Waker.

[h/t Sportress Of Blogitude]

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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Maybe you should try singing an answering machine message to the ‘Greatest American Hero’ theme instead. (via The Nosebleeds)

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"I hate you so much, I hope someone takes advantage of our horrific payroll so we lose you."

While ESPN’s NBA experts and their “SOURCES! WE HAVE SOURCES!” are suggesting that the New York Knicks will simply let Jeremy Lin walk to the Houston Rockets, there is still chatter that their decision has not been made. The reason that the Knicks would let Lin just go to the Houston Rockets is because they’d rather have a stable of guys in their late 30s the Rockets’ offer was designed to significantly punish the Knicks in the third year of Lin’s deal. The Knicks would end up paying more than $30 million for just Lin, thanks to the new luxury tax penalty.

Hence, Carmelo Anthony’s reaction: “It’s up to the organization to say they want to match that ridiculous contract that’s out there.”

But a lot of people took that as Anthony not liking Lin, because everyone already thinks he doesn’t like Lin. But hey you guys, that’s wrong, okay? Anthony totally wants the guy his team can’t afford back.

“I would love to see him back, honestly. I would definitely love to see him back. But knowing the business of basketball, it’s a tough situation, kind of for both of our sides. With Jeremy, I know he definitely wants to be back in New York and Dolan definitely wants him back. So it’s just a matter of figuring it out.” (Via Newsday)

I’ve read a ton of opinions on this, and everybody seems to have facts that support letting him walk – specifically this report – and/or keeping him. But this is the Knicks we’re talking about. They have paid out some stupid, STOOOOOOOOOOOOOOPID money in the past. This is smart money. And I’m not just saying that because this could effectively save the Orlando Magic’s hope of fleecing the Rockets in a Dwight Howard deal.

That has absolutely zero influence on me. *whistles innocently*

UPDATE: Jeremy Lin will apparently be a Houston Rocket.

This is a great one, if only for Carmelo Anthony operating, then bogarting the spotlight.

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