So, this happened:

The Denver Nuggets prevailed over the OKC Thunder in a hard-fought, overtime thriller. The biggest beef of the game, however, was between Russell Westbrook and Nuggets mascot Rocky. Russ trolled the fans in Denver by goaltending two of his halfcourt attempts. Per the Denver Post: “Fans now have a villain,’ Ty Lawson said.

I’m not sure whose side I’m on. Regular readers know that I’m a sports mascot enthusiast, so I usually take their side, and my first reaction to Goaltending A Lion-Gate was the headline. After reading about it, the half-court shots were an attempt to win Q’Doba queso for the arena … if Rocky makes any of those shots, everyone gets a coupon for a bowl of cheese.

So do I side with the anthropomorphic lion because goaltending is an assy move, or do I side with Westbrook for preventing a few thousand people from downing a styrofoam bowl of hot cheese they wouldn’t have wanted or eaten unless it was free?

You make the call. Video is below.

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I really hate moments like these. I’ve been complaining all season that Thursday Night Football had been terrible each week, and I even spread the gospel of the Thursday Night Football Curse, as we watched the league’s best quarterbacks put up Sanchez-esque numbers on a weekly basis. And now? No Thursday Night Football at all. Instead, we get a Saturday night game and 11 1 PM games on Sunday.

The NFL hates us, people. We may have noon and 3:30 PM bowl games on Saturday, and I can understand the reasoning behind not wanting to dick step those kids in what is the last time some of them will ever play football. But we could fit two games in on Saturday evening. We’ve done it with Monday nights before.

Stupid jerk, NFL jerkface jerks.

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Wade Boggs is no stranger to being awesome on television … this is the guy who got punched out by Barney Gumble for arguing Pitt The Elder against Lord Palmerston and shilled the hitting prowess of former WWF Intercontinental Champion Mr. Perfect. Here, we see the Hall of Fame third baseman dancing at an Oklahoma City Thunder game, because a camera is on him, and because Wade Boggs is the best.

I try not to be super “Internet” when I share these videos and just type “check out wade bocks dancign click here …” and hit publish, but … yeah, that’s it, it’s Wade Boggs dancing.

Or it could be TV’s Richard Karn. As they get older, it gets harder to tell the difference.

[h/t to Hall Of Very Good]

I haven’t been the most devout NBA fan yet in this young season, so I was a little surprised to see that more than a month later, Oklahoma City Thunder fans are still mad at James Harden. In case you forgot – or simply don’t care, because it’s so damn trivial – Harden turned down a contract extension from the Thunder because it was reportedly lower than the max deal that he was seeking. So the Thunder traded Harden to the Houston Rockets in a move that Harden admitted left him baffled and hurt, and he eventually signed his new max deal with the Rockets.

I mean, unless I’m completely missing something, Harden wanted what was best for him – what he has since proven he deserves – and that didn’t match what the Thunder offered, so the team traded him. He didn’t leave. He didn’t demand to be traded. He was just traded. A business decision, as the kids at the playground call it. Yet here we are, staring at a t-shirt that paints Harden into some sort of Dwight Howard villain. The shirt’s not even cool.

Oh well, I’m sure Harden is losing sleep over it.

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I don’t know what it is about NBA players that makes them so much more fun to criticize and make fun of than other pro sports stars. Maybe it’s the holier than thou mentality or the rock star “swag” and godlike baller image, but people just tend to either love or hate NBA stars more than other athletes, and that’s typically fine because they seem to like it. And even though a lot of the league’s stars are as transparent as invisible glass, we’re still pretty big suckers for when they break character and the villain becomes the good guy or the good guy becomes the great guy by helping a good cause.

Before heading to Los Angeles for tonight’s game against the Clippers, the Oklahoma City Thunder, which you could argue is a team of good guys and Kendrick Perkins, hit up the City Rescue Mission in downtown OKC to serve food to more than 400 homeless people on Monday. Even if you absolutely loathe the Thunder, you have to admit that this was rather swell of them.

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Next up on ESPN's Broke 2...

Even before the Oklahoma City Thunder shocked its fans by trading James Harden to the Houston Rockets, the sensational young 6th man had proven that he was ready to step up his off-the-court game as one of the NBA’s premiere ballers. After he helped Team USA win a gold medal at the 2012 Summer Olympics, Harden invited his closest NBA friends and some of the most notorious female groupies on board a yacht for his 23rd birthday party. I’m pretty sure that for my 23rd birthday party, I passed out in an Applebee’s bathroom, so good for him.

But even as Thunder fans burned the Bearded One’s shirseys in the streets after he turned down the team’s questionable offer, Harden is apparently adapting to life in Houston just fine. According to a random picture that has been quietly making the rounds, a young woman named Jasmine Taylor claims that she had a “Lonngg but great night” and that it was great because Harden threw some stacks at her.

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