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Obama, who roots regularly for the Chicago Bulls in his adopted home town, will congratulate the Mavericks for winning the 2011 championship title. He also will recognize the team’s support for the men and women of the U.S. military forces.

Obama’s East Room tribute for the Mavericks follows a private meeting he’ll have earlier in the day with his senior advisers at the White House.

In the evening, the president will attend a campaign event in the nation’s capital.

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Jason Richardson added 16 points for the Magic – including 15 in the first half – and J.J. Redick scored 15 points off the bench.

It was the 49th career 20-rebound game for Howard, who neared his career high of 26 rebounds.

Rookie forward MarShon Brooks led the Nets with 17 points. Deron Williams missed his first six shots and finished 2 of 12 from the field with only 10 points.

New Jersey cut Orlando’s lead to seven points in the fourth quarter, but a balanced attack led by Hedo Turkoglu put the game away for the Magic. Turkoglu finished with 11 points, seven assists and six boards.

The Nets came into the game wanting to get off to a better start – and they didn’t succeed. The Magic jumped out to a double-digit lead in the first quarter thanks to a 14-2 run, and they led by as many as 20 points in the second quarter.

But the Nets fought back with a 14-3 run in the final 3:04 of the half, including eight points from Brooks, to cut the lead to six points at the break.

Richardson led the Magic with 15 points at halftime, and Howard had 11 rebounds. Brooks was the only Nets player in double figures after 24 minutes with 10 points.

Notes: Jameer Nelson left the game early in the third quarter with a neck spasm and didn’t return. . In an effort to improve their first-quarter play, the Nets adjusted their starting lineup by inserting Sundiata Gaines and Mehmet Okur in place of Anthony Morrow and Johan Petro. It didn’t help as the Magic jumped out to an early lead. “We’re still in the experimental stages,” Nets coach Avery Johnson said. . Williams, who can opt out of his contract and become an unrestricted free agent this summer, declined to comment when asked if he would consider joining the Magic in free agency. . Howard and Williams had dinner together on Thursday night. . The Nets were without Brook Lopez, who is expected to miss several weeks with a broken foot. . It was referee Dick Bavetta’s 2,500th consecutive game.

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So far, so good.

Augustin scored a team-high 19 points in the Bobcats’ 96-95 win over the Bucks in Monday night’s season opener, including a driving layup that put his team ahead for good with 36.5 seconds left.

It was a quality win for the young and rebuilding Bobcats.

But the NBA can be a grind, even in a 66-game season, and Augustin and his teammates know they’ll face a much stiffer test when LeBron James and the Miami Heat come to town on Wednesday night.

“I watched them play on Christmas and they look like they have a chip on their shoulder,” Augustin said. “We know they have a great team, so we have to come in and play hard like we did (against the Bucks).”

Added coach Paul Silas of the Heat: “They’re just so talented it’s unbelievable.”

Silas said he expects to have Augustin available for the game.

Augustin sprained his left ankle in the final minute of Monday night’s game while chasing after a loose ball near midcourt. He’s had problems with the ankle before. He didn’t practice Tuesday but Silas said, “he thinks he might be able to make it (Wednesday) night.”

But the Bobcats have to be careful.

Even with backup Kemba Walker looking like the real deal, the Bobcats need Augustin for the long run.

After a rough start as a rookie, Augustin’s turnaround as a player coincided with the arrival Silas last December.

Under former coach Larry Brown, Augustin was timid and often afraid to shoot. Then Silas arrived.

“Playing for coach Brown, I was looking over my shoulder because I didn’t want to make a mistake,” Augustin said. “He’s still a great coach and taught me a lot of fundamentals. But with coach Silas, he gives you that chance to be free and make plays.”

That was never more evident than in a game last season against Minnesota.

Augustin was having a horrible night shooting from the field, and Silas noticed he was starting to pass up open shots.

So Silas called a timeout.

When Augustin got the sideline, Silas looked him in the eyes and gave the 6-foot point guard a lesson he’s never forgotten.

“I brought him over to the bench and I said, `Son, if you ever pass up another shot I’m going to take you out of the game and I’m not going to play you at all,’” Silas said. “I told him, `Listen, every time you get the ball, I want you to shoot it.’”

Augustin did just that, making his next couple of shots.

He’s not stopped shooting since.

“The fact that I had some confidence in him just seemed to open up a whole new world for him,” Silas said.

Augustin’s average went from 12.6 points to 14.4 at the end of the season.

“Paul gave me a lot of confidence,” Augustin said. “Paul is such a positive coach, such a positive person that he makes you believe in yourself. When you walk out on the court, you feel like every shot is going in. You’re able to learn from your mistakes. You’re not going to be perfect and he knows that.”

Augustin thinks there’s something about Silas’ laid-back demeanor that meshes with his personality.

“I think it is just how he talks and speaks to you,” Augustin said. “He shows everybody that same respect. He’s so positive. If you miss a shot, he’ll tell you, `Hey, it’s OK, keep shooting.’ That makes you want to keep shooting.”

That includes in big games against the Heat.

Silas said this game will serve as a measuring stick for the Bobcats and just how far they’ve come and how far they have to go.

“I’d like to see how we do against a team like that,” Silas said. “Can we stay competitive and not get blown away? I think if we do that we will have a chance to really improve. But it’s tough to keep a team like that down.”

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Chris Paul’s Clippers debut in the nightcap against the Warriors earned a 2.3 overnight, up 77 percent over last year’s Portland-Golden State telecast. It was ESPN’s highest-rated Christmas prime-time game.

The earlier night game on ESPN – Magic-Thunder – drew a 1.9 overnight, up 36 percent from to last year’s Denver-Oklahoma City matchup. The afternoon’s finals rematch on ABC, the Heat’s rout of the Mavericks, earned a 5.6 overnight, up 6 percent from Boston-Orlando last year.

The Celtics-Knicks game on TNT to open the day drew a 4.1 overnight. The early game on ESPN last year, Bulls-Knicks, had a 2.7 on ESPN.

Ratings represent the percentage of all homes with televisions tuned to a program. Overnight ratings measure the country’s largest markets.

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The NBA sought competitive balance. What it got was schedule imbalance.

One of the many consequences of the lockout, besides hundreds of lost games and hundreds of millions of lost dollars, was the tradition that every team plays in every NBA city at least once per season. That’s not the case this year.

While teams will visit every other team in their own conference, they will only make trips to play nine clubs from the other side of the league instead of the usual 15.

It’s one of many quirks of a 66-game schedule that, in a variety of ways, is not like any other in NBA history.

“In some cases, the team business-type might complain that they didn’t get (to host) the Heat or the Lakers,” NBA Commissioner David Stern said. “While in the background, the coach is doing cartwheels. So it’s kind of an interesting dynamic.”

There’s no shortage of those.

Reigning scoring king Kevin Durant dropped 66 points in New York earlier this year – alas, at Rucker Park, the fabled outdoor court and not Madison Square Garden. He and Oklahoma City won’t be going to play the Knicks this season.

The NBA champion Dallas Mavericks won’t be going to Charlotte, nor will Durant’s Thunder, Bryant’s Lakers or the Spurs, and that will keep ticket dollars from finding Bobcats owner Michael Jordan’s pockets.

Teams won’t be playing the same number of divisional games, so get ready for complaining should tiebreakers come into play when determining playoff seeding. And many small market teams will be miss out on some guaranteed sellouts against some elite clubs that might hurt in the standings but help with the bottom line.

“That’s what happens when you have a lockout,” Durant said.

When Magic coach Stan Van Gundy heard the league was putting together a 66-game slate instead of the usual 82-game run, he figured the breakdown was simple: Play every team in your division four times, then face every other team home and away.

That seemed easy enough.

Instead, it’s complicated.

“I’m not being critical of it,” Van Gundy said. “They’ve got a short period of time to play 66 games and there were a lot of factors they had to consider and I’m sure that they did it the best way that they could.”

True, but there is some zaniness.

Atlanta takes a trip that has the Hawks going north, then south, then north, then west, then east, then west and then home again, all in the span of nine days. Cleveland has a nine-game February homestand. San Antonio goes nearly four weeks without a home game. The Kings close the first half of their schedule with 20 of 28 away from Sacramento, daunting for a team desperate to keep fans engaged while trying to get a new arena. Denver plays nine in a row at home in one stretch, then immediately hits the road for seven straight.

But there’s no Anthony homecoming in Denver.

“Did it bother me? Not really,” said Anthony, now with the Knicks. “I mean, I would love to go back and play there. The reaction I would get, who knows? I might get some boos, I might get some claps, but it’d have been fun.”

Minnesota coach Rick Adelman was thrilled to see his club opens with six of seven at home. And then he looked who those early opponents are – the first four clubs to visit the Timberwolves are Oklahoma City, Miami, Dallas and San Antonio.

“It’s a challenge for us,” Adelman said. “If we come out and we’re ready to go, and we can knock some of these people off, it’s just going to be better for us.”

The Wolves don’t host Atlanta, Milwaukee, New Jersey, Orlando, Toronto and Washington, teams that perhaps don’t inspire the casual fan to run down on game night to check them out, but could be winnable games. They also don’t travel to Boston, Chicago, Miami or New York. From a competitive standpoint, not having to play those teams on the road is great for the Wolves. But from a player experience standpoint, the Wolves don’t sound thrilled.

“I think we don’t go to Miami and Chicago. … That’s a little sad,” eagerly anticipated guard Ricky Rubio said.

With this kind of schedule, youth might be served. Washington is expected to open the year with 10 players on the team age 25 or younger. So on those back-to-back-to-back nights, the Wizards might have a touch more spring in their collective step than some other clubs.

“It reminds me of an AAU season – playing five games in one day,” Wizards guard John Wall said. “It can be tough at times, but I think it can help us.”

In past years, playing four games in five nights would be considered the worst of the schedule grind.

It’s worse this year.

Not only will every team have at least one stretch of playing three games in three nights, but there will also be times when teams play eight games in 11 days. If a key player rolls an ankle, certainly a common issue in the NBA, at a particularly busy time in the schedule, a team could find itself without a key player for maybe 20 percent of the season. And with all those games in such a short span, this much is guaranteed: There will be nights when some teams will know the odds are stacked very, very highly against them, when they’re the weary-legged club against a team that’s had a couple of days off to freshen up.

“There will be nights when you’ll be like, `OK, well, let’s just go try and see what happens,’” Wade said. “It’s not going to be easy. For anyone.”

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Gordon and Kaman both came over in the Dec. 14 trade that sent All-Star point guard Chris Paul to the Los Angeles Clippers.

Quincy Pondexter had 14 points with 12 rebounds for New Orleans.

The Grizzlies started quickly, jumping to a 28-17 lead on 80 percent shooting, but the Hornets clamped down on defense and limited Memphis to 37.8 percent for the game.

Meanwhile, New Orleans picked up the tempo, going on an 18-3 run to take a 35-31 lead. The Hornets never trailed again.

Rudy Gay scored 20 points and Zach Randolph had 15 for Memphis.

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Warren Glover, 50, filed a lawsuit in New York State Supreme Court Thursday morning accusing senior N.B.A. security officials of creating a hostile environment and being denied promotions because of his willingness to speak out.

In one instance, Glover said a senior security official made sexual advances toward a female colleague, then demeaned her publicly when she rejected his advances. In another, a different security official proposed using sexually inappropriate material as part of a presentation to N.B.A. players.

Read more at the New York Times.

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The Hornets traded Paul to the Clippers for guard Eric Gordon, forward Al-Farouq Aminu, center Chris Kaman and a first-round draft choice.

The deal required the approval of NBA Commissioner David Stern because the Hornets are owned by the league.

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For Paul, Wednesday night’s trade means no more lame-duck practices — or ducking questions — in New Orleans.

It also ended a tortured week in which the Hornets’ season sat in limbo, while the NBA took a public relations beating over everything from potential conflicts of interest to hampering the team’s pursuit of free agents to disrespecting the New Orleans fan base.

“I knew we were doing the best thing for New Orleans and that was my job,” Stern said. “You have to stick with what you think was right. I must confess it wasn’t a lot of fun, but I don’t get paid to have fun.”

Stern said he never allowed other owners’ opinions or considerations of large and small markets to determine where Paul, one of the NBA’s biggest stars, would end up. He said his only focus was on getting the best deal for the Hornets.

That may take time to determine. But for now, the Hornets at last have a measure of certainty about the roster they’ll have when the regular season begins in less than two weeks.

Paul, already a star with international appeal, gets to play in one of the NBA’s biggest markets, even if his new team plays in the shadow of the Lakers. That’s the club Paul was almost traded to last week, only to have Stern nix the deal and unleash a torrent of bad publicity on his league just as it was trying to generate good will following a nearly five-month labor dispute that has already caused a shortening of the season.

Then again, maybe there is no such thing as bad publicity — or as Stern called it, “a frenzy.” Even with the NFL’s Saints on a five-game winning streak and wrapping up a playoff spot, the Hornets-and-Paul saga was the talk of New Orleans for a change.

“Our sole focus was and will remain, until we sell this team, hopefully which will be in the first half of 2012, how best to maintain the Hornets, make them as attractive and as competitive as we can and ensure we have a buyer who can keep them in New Orleans,” Stern said.

Stern said the team is in negotiations with several potential ownership groups, who, if all goes to plan, will have to accept a new long-term lease in the state-owned New Orleans Arena in order to buy the team.

“The future of the Hornets in New Orleans is brighter than it’s ever been,” Stern said.

Meanwhile, the Clippers have plenty of reason for optimism themselves.

The 26-year-old Paul is a four-time All-Star who averaged 18.7 points and 9.8 assists last season, his sixth in the NBA. His move to the Clippers means he’ll now be able to lob alley-oop passes to one of the best finishers in the game — one who’s famous for dunking over a car. That would be forward Blake Griffin, who averaged 22.5 points and 12.1 rebounds last season, his first as a pro.

Paul will earn $16.4 million this year and has a player option for the 2012-13 season — in which he is due $17.8 million.

The Hornets get a prolific young shooting guard in Gordon, who turns 23 on Christmas Day and averaged 22.3 points last season. Gordon would be a restricted free agent after this season unless he signs an extension with New Orleans. Hornets general manager Dell Demps said those talks haven’t yet started.

The 6-foot-9 Aminu is a second-year pro who averaged 5.6 points and 3.3 rebounds as a rookie.

The 7-foot Kaman, 29, is an eight-year veteran who averaged 12.4 points and seven rebounds last season, but played in only 32 games because of a left ankle injury. He’s in the last year of his contract, which will pay him $12.2 million this season.

“With this trade, we now have three additional players who were among the top eight draft picks in their respective drafts as well as our own first-round pick and (another) first-round pick,” Demps said. “Aminu is a young talent with a bright future, Gordon is a big-time scorer and one of the best (shooting) guards in the league and Kaman is a proven center and former All-Star.”

ESPN, citing anonymous sources, first reported the trade, which also involves New Orleans sending two 2015 second-round draft picks to the Clippers.

“We wanted to make sure that we got the best possible deal for a player of Chris’ caliber, and we feel great about the outcome,” said Jac Sperling, who Stern appointed as the Hornets’ governor after the league bought the team in December 2010.

The Hornets can only hope the deal will sit well with fans and area businesspeople, who bought more than 10,000 season tickets despite the lockout in an effort to show the NBA that their community could make the franchise viable for whatever ownership group eventually buys the club.

Paul, whom the Hornets drafted fourth overall in 2005, told New Orleans earlier this month that he was not going to sign an extension, and Demps had been trying to trade him since to avoid losing him in free agency with no compensation after this season.

Demps came close to making a three-team deal last Thursday that would have sent Paul to the Lakers. The Lakers would have sent Lamar Odom to the Hornets and Pau Gasol to Houston, while the Rockets would have sent Luis Scola, Kevin Martin, Goran Dragic, and a first-round draft choice to New Orleans.

Stern, however, told Demps to take that deal off the table because he thought the Hornets could do better, both in terms of personnel and salary obligations.

While the move caused speculation that Stern was acting against Demps’ better judgment, Demps said he and Stern were acting “hand in hand,” while Stern said people who anonymously leaked details of the proposed Lakers trade did so because they “were trying to force him to make that deal.”

Paul showed up for Hornets training camp last Friday but has not spoken to reporters since. He was excused from a normally mandatory media event on Wednesday, hours before the trade went through, in which players pose for photos in uniform and talk about the upcoming season.

For the Hornets, the urgency to make a deal appeared to be growing, though Demps insisted earlier Wednesday that the Hornets had no timeline and would not be rushed into a “rash decision.”

Still, Demps acknowledged it was hard for the Hornets to pursue free agents and further build their roster while Paul’s status was in limbo. If trade talks had dragged on much longer, the Hornets could have gone into Friday night’s preseason opener at Memphis with little idea of what their roster would look like in their first regular-season game at Phoenix on Dec. 26.

Other than Paul, the Hornets had only five returning veterans under contract: center Emeka Okafor, forward Trevor Ariza, point guard Jarrett Jack, second-year swingman Quincy Pondexter and shooting guard Marco Belinelli.

The additions of Gordon, Aminu and Kaman give New Orleans desperately needed depth, while opening the way for the franchise to further strengthen its roster through free agency.

Meanwhile, the Hornets also could look forward to an additional first-round draft choice next summer. The pick originally belonged to Minnesota, meaning it will be tied to where the Timberwolves finish in the standings this season.

“For the long-term future of the New Orleans Hornets, this is the best deal,” Demps said.

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Jordan says he opposed the Chris Paul trade to the Los Angeles Lakers because “as a small market (owner) I’m very supportive of being able to keep your star player.”

Still, Jordan says he would be interested in signing the New Orleans guard if Paul becomes a free agent next year.

The Bobcats owner believes the new CBA will help level the playing field because of increased luxury tax implications for big-market teams that go over the salary cap to sign free agents.

Jordan says the new deal is “good for our market,” but adds, it is “not where we ultimately want it to be.”

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Oakland County Circuit Court Judge Shalina Kumar also sentenced Wallace to fines, court costs and 30 hours of community service.

“We want to treat Mr. Wallace as if his name is Ben Smith,” assistant prosecutor Robert Novy told Kumar. “We’re not asking for jail time, but give Mr. Wallace a period of probation with a period of community service.”

Novy said having Wallace hold basketball clinics at an area Boys and Girls Club would suffice. Kumar agreed.

“You have all the resources in the world. This should not happen again,” she told Wallace, who is allowed to travel out of state and out of the country for work-related reasons while on probation.

Wallace did not speak Tuesday with reporters.

“I compliment both the prosecutor’s office and Judge Kumar for treating Ben Wallace exactly the same way they would have treated him had he not been a basketball player,” defense attorney Steve Fishman said.

Wallace was arrested at about 3 a.m. on Sept. 24 in Bloomfield Township after officers spotted him driving a Cadillac Escalade erratically. An unloaded pistol was in a backpack.

A breath test put Wallace’s blood-alcohol content at 0.14 percent, which is well above Michigan’s legal limit of 0.08 percent.

He pleaded guilty Nov. 1 to misdemeanor charges of drunken driving and possessing a firearm while under the influence of alcohol. The maximum penalty would have been 93 days in jail.

Wallace had no prior record and was cooperative with authorities.

“Plea bargains and sentences are supposed to be based on the facts of the case and the background of the individual defendant,” Fishman said. “To everyone’s credit that is exactly what happened in this case.”

Wallace helped the Pistons win the 2004 NBA title and has played for five NBA teams since 1996.

He fared better in court than former NBA player and University of Michigan star Jalen Rose who spent 16 days in jail this summer on a drunken driving charge.

Rose rolled over his sport utility vehicle in March on a snowy West Bloomfield Township road. He pleaded guilty in May to driving while intoxicated and apologized for his actions.

But 48th District Court Judge Kimberly Small, who is known for being tough on drunken drivers, lectured Rose for 15 minutes before delivering her sentence. She told him that jail time was the “right punishment” in his case.

Rose’s attorney, James Burdick, has said his client shouldn’t have been sent to jail.

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Former Boston forward Glen Davis and guard Von Wafer practiced for the first time Tuesday after coming over in a trade for Brandon Bass. They were joined by guard Jason Richardson, who officially re-signed with the Magic on Monday and also suited up for the first time.

Orlando opens the preseason at Miami on Sunday.

Coach Stan Van Gundy said that he didn’t use Richardson like he wanted to last season and said he thinks Davis’ addition will add toughness to the Magic’s lineup.

Van Gundy said when Davis isn’t playing alongside Howard, he is comfortable with him at center with Ryan Anderson at power forward.

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The NBA asked that The Clippers include leading scorer, Eric Gordon to a package that already included former All-Star center Chris Kaman, Al-Farouq Aminu and Eric Bledsoe and a first round draft pick, but the Clippers were not ready to give up Gordon.

ESPN reports:

The Clippers found the demands “too steep,” according to one source close to the process, even after Paul told the Clippers he would invoke the 2012-13 option in his contract as part of the trade, ensuring that L.A. would have him next to Blake Griffin for at least two seasons.

If the deal isn’t revisited, the Clippers could try to sign Gordon to an extension and pursue other moves to build around Griffin.

Read More At ESPN

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ESPN reports:

The New Orleans Hornets and Los Angeles Clippers have submitted a multiplayer blockbuster deal to the NBA that would send All-Star point guard Chris Paul to Los Angeles, a source with knowledge of the discussions said Monday.

But the trade as presented has at least one stumbling block: The league, which owns the Hornets, wants the Clippers to add Eric Bledsoe to a package that already includes guard Eric Gordon, center Chris Kaman, forward Al-Farouq Aminu and Minnesota’s unprotected 2012 first-round pick.

Read More At ESPN

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According to sources, the three-team deal that also involved the Houston Rockets was vetoed by Stern, who has the authority since the league purchased the Hornets from former owner George Shinn in 2010.

The league did not immediately explain the decision, other than to issue a terse statement through a spokesman, saying, “League office declined to make the trade for basketball reasons.”

Read more at the New York Times.

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A new collective bargaining agreement, saving owners more than $1 billion in player salary costs?

Definitely.

An expanded revenue sharing plan that would perhaps quadruple the money shared by teams?

Of course.

A trade that would send Chris Paul from the league-owned, small-market Hornets to the Los Angeles Lakers?

Absolutely not.

Stern announced the ratification of the deal that ends the lockout, but shortly afterward the league had to deny reports that he was pressured by owners into rejecting a previously agreed upon trade that would have put Paul in the same backcourt as Kobe Bryant.

“It’s not true that the owners killed the deal, the deal was never discussed at the Board of Governors meeting and the league office declined to make the trade for basketball reasons,” league spokesman Mike Bass said.

So Paul stays in New Orleans – for now – but that does little to calm fans in small markets such as New Orleans and Orlando who worry about losing their superstars. In time, Stern said, the “tortured journey” of this 161-day lockout will have been worth it.

“We think it’s a very good deal, and it’s going to withstand the test of time,” he said.

Thus ends the lockout, with training camps and free agency to open Friday. But not before one more chaotic day in this wacky offseason that guarantees the status quo remains for now.

Besides an expanded revenue sharing program, Stern said teams and fans will see an improved league in coming years.

“It’s a new beginning in a way,” he said. “It’s going to take a couple of years to work its way out, but we’re very excited about its prospects.”

The 10-year deal promises owners savings of perhaps a quarter billion dollars a year in player compensation, but largely leaves intact the soft salary cap system that the players fought hard to maintain.

Stern and Deputy Commissioner Adam Silver announced the deal during a news conference, putting an end to nearly two years of difficult negotiations that resulted in the second shortened season in NBA history. A 66-game schedule will begin on Christmas and run through April 26, forcing every team to play on three straight nights at least once.

Owners approved the deal, which allows either side to opt out after six years, by a 25-5 vote. The players’ association said 86 percent of the more than 200 players who voted electronically approved the deal.

Union executive director Billy Hunter did not attend the news conference and no union officials were quoted in their statement, issued just as Stern began speaking.

Owners also agreed to an expanded revenue sharing plan, and Stern called both agreements “a watershed moment” for the league. The plan, which will begin in 2013-14, more than quadruples the revenue currently shared by teams, with Stern saying some could now receive more than $20 million and at least six teams could pay $50 million into the plan.

Stern said the current net transfer among teams of about $40 million annually would exceed $160 million. But that’s of little help now to a team such as the NBA-owned Hornets, the latest small-market club to face a future without its franchise player.

The framework was in place Thursday on a three-team deal that also involved Houston and would have sent Paul to the Lakers to join Kobe Bryant in the backcourt of the league’s biggest revenue team, people with knowledge of the deal told The Associated Press. But the deal fell through amid reports owners pressured Stern to stop it.

Yet even if Paul bolts, or Dwight Howard leaves Orlando this summer, Stern said the new labor deal can’t be judged by that, or anything else that may happen right away.

“I believe in free agency,” he said. “We have a deal where a player who has completed his time at a team under a contract has a right to go someplace else. And then there are potential judgments to be made by teams about whether there’s a time when they want to consider getting something more for that player in the event he will leave than if he stays. So nothing has changed about that. That dynamic is the same. But, yes, this is going to be a more competitive league over time.”

Saying they lost hundreds of millions a year under the old collective bargaining agreement that owners believed favored large-market teams, the league sought significant changes in these negotiations. Owners refused an option to let the CBA run another year and opened negotiations in January 2010 with a proposal that called for a hard cap, the elimination of guaranteed contracts, rollbacks of current salaries and a massive reduction in the players’ share of basketball-related income.

After locking out players on July 1, the two sides reached a tentative deal around 3 a.m. Nov. 26, heading off the potential disaster of a canceled season and avoiding a possibly costly and lengthy court battle had players proceeded with an antitrust lawsuit.

The remaining issues finally were agreed to late Thursday morning, after players already had begun voting electronically.

Though owners insisted they wanted competitive balance just as much as a chance for profit, there’s no proof yet they achieved it. Stern knows the owners, particularly in the small markets, didn’t get everything they wanted after watching the big-spending Celtics, Lakers and Mavericks claim the last four championships.

“While it’s not perfect, the deal addresses significant issues on both sides in a very productive way, we believe,” he said.

Player salaries were reduced by 12 percent, and Stern emphasized new provisions such as the amnesty clause will allow teams to more easily escape difficult contracts and become competitive more quickly.

But with the revenue split and system issues taking so much time, there was little opportunity to change the non-economic issues. The draft age limit will remain 19 years at least through the 2012 draft – the league would have liked to go to 20, the players would like to abolish it entirely – and blood testing for human growth hormone won’t be implemented this season.

Stern and the owners have been criticized for taking so long to come to an agreement, with no noticeable proof that the small-market teams who so badly needed relief are getting it. And the lockout comes with damage to the legacy of the 69-year-old Stern in his last CBA negotiations.

But he dismissed fears of that, believing he did what’s best for his owners and league.

“I think most importantly we’re back to basketball,” Silver said. “I think legacies aside, it would have been terrible for the players, for the teams, our fans, concessionaires, everyone involved if we had lost more games than we had, so I think that’s what’s most important.”

Training camps will open at 2 p.m. Friday, with the salary cap staying at $58 million. Having free agency the same day will be a challenge, but Stern said everyone was ready to go.

“We considered it, but on balance, our teams, our players and our fans were just saying let’s get it on,” he said. “So even though you could make a logical argument that we could have gained a day one place or the other, it was the overwhelming sentiment that we should just get going and we decided to do that.”

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While speculation of the deal sounds great for New York sports fans, the Daily News says it is not the likely since the Knicks would have to trade either Amar’e Stoudemire or Carmelo Anthony to secure Paul.

The New york Daily News reports:

Hornets general manager Dell Demps, a former Knicks scout, wants to meet with Paul to gauge whether he wants to be traded, Yahoo! Sports said.

Read more at the New York Daily News.

Hazzard’s family said he had been recuperating for a long time from complications following heart surgery. The school said Hazzard died at UCLA Ronald Reagan Medical Center.

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He had a stroke in March 1996 and made a strong recovery, but became less publicly active. He made occasional appearances at UCLA games in recent years.

Hazzard was co-captain of the 1964 national title team that went 30-0 under coach John Wooden. He averaged a career-high 18.6 points as a senior playmaking guard. He was chosen college basketball’s player of the year, having averaged 19.8 points in the NCAA tournament, where he was selected as the most valuable player.

As a junior, Hazzard led the Bruins with a 16.3 scoring average and they won 20 games for the first time since 1957. In his sophomore season, he averaged 13.2 points and the Bruins reached the Final Four for the first time in school history, losing by two points to eventual national champion Cincinnati in the semifinals.

Hazzard transferred to UCLA after spending one season at Santa Monica College.

In 1996, UCLA retired his No. 42 jersey.

“Walt was one of the pillars of UCLA’s first championship team in men’s basketball,” current coach Ben Howland said. “He was a great player and an outstanding coach at UCLA. He is a huge part of the Bruin legacy, and he left life-long memories for the Bruin faithful.”

Hazzard helped the U.S. win a gold medal at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics and played 10 years in the NBA, including a stint with the Los Angeles Lakers, who made him the No. 1 overall pick.

Hazzard averaged 12.6 points and 4.9 assists during his career with the Lakers, Seattle, Atlanta, Buffalo and Golden State. He ranked among the league’s top 10 in assists during six of his seasons. In 1968, he averaged 23.9 points and 6.2 assists, culminating in an appearance in the All-Star game.

During his four years as UCLA coach, the Bruins had a 77-47 record. In 1985, he led them to the school’s first NIT championship. In 1987, UCLA won the Pac-10 title and the league’s first postseason tournament with future NBA star Reggie Miller in the lineup. They finished with a 25-7 mark, losing in the second round of the NCAA tournament, with Hazzard selected league coach of the year.

“Thoughts and prayers go out to the Hazzard family on your loss,” Miller tweeted Friday night. “Coach Hazzard was not only a STUD point guard at UCLA under Coach Wooden…But a great Coach as well. He helped shaped me into the ball player I was, thanks so much Coach..”

The Bruins slumped to a 16-14 record the following year, and Hazzard was replaced by Jim Harrick for the 1988-89 season.

“This is a sad day for the UCLA basketball family,” Bruins athletic director Dan Guerrero said.

“Walt was the catalyst for Coach John Wooden’s first championship team and played the game with a style that excited Bruin basketball fans everywhere. He contributed to his alma mater in numerous ways, including as a student-athlete, coach and honored alum, and he will be greatly missed by all of us knew him.”

Before taking over at his alma mater, Hazzard coached two seasons each at Compton College near Los Angeles and Chapman College in Orange County.

In 1994, Hazzard re-joined the Lakers as a West Coast advance scout. After his stroke, he served as a special consultant to the team for another 15 years.

Lakers owner Jerry Buss said, “Walt was a man of extremely high character.”

Lakers general manager Mitch Kupchak said, “Not only was Walt an outstanding player, but his knowledge of the game was extremely valuable to our front office as well over the past 17 years. In the years since his stroke, he has been an inspiration to many of us with his perseverance and his passion for the game.”

Hazzard, a native of Wilmington, Del., starred at Philadelphia’s Overbrook High, where Wilt Chamberlain had played years earlier. During his three-year varsity basketball career, Hazzard led the school to an 89-3 record and two city titles. He also played baseball and ran track, and was student body president.

Hazzard is survived by wife Jaleesa, a Bruins song girl during the 1964 NCAA title season, and sons Yakub, Jalal, Khalil and Rasheed. During his NBA career, Hazzard converted to Islam and changed his name to Mahdi Abdul-Rahman. He felt the change was poorly received and cost him professional opportunities so he returned to using his given name professionally while remaining a devout Muslim.

While NBA players rarely fight when they do, it is usually entertaining due to their lack of coordination and size.

Check out the 5 greatest NBA fights of all-time.

5. Robert Parish Vs. Bill Laimbeer.

Bill Laimbeer was the Detroit Pistons ultimate agitiator, angering and frustrating his opponents. Laimbeer would anger the wrong man when he fouled Boston Celtics center, Robert Parish, who proceeded to give him two tomahawk chops to the head.

4. Shaquille O’Neal vs Charles Barkley

Shaquille O’Neal will join Charles Barkley as a host on TNT’s “Inside The NBA” as soon as the season starts. But when Barkley was playing with the Rockets, he got into a big fight with Shaq that included ball throwing and tackling.

3. Heat vs Knicks

After Alonzo mourning began brawling with Larry Johnson, both teams joined in and it ended up with Knicks coach, Jeff Van Gundy, grabbing Alonzo’s leg and being dragged around.

2. Kobe Bryant Vs. Chris Childs.

Kobe Bryant will go down as one of the best basketball players of all time and Chris Childs will go down in history as the player who punched one the best basketball players of all time in the face.

1. Ron Artest Vs. Pistons Fans

Ron Artest showed a lot of restraint by not retaliating for a hard foul and just laying down on a table. But when a fan threw a beer on him he went into the stands looking for a fight. After that chaos erupted with several Pacer players fighting Piston fans.

Johnson was responding to comments made by attorney Jeffrey Kessler, representing the NBA players’ association, who told the Washington Post that owners are treating players like “plantation workers” during the ongoing lockout.

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That was similar to the comments Bryant Gumbel made last month on his HBO show, when he said Stern “always seemed eager to be viewed as some kind of modern plantation overseer treating NBA men as if they were his boys.”

But Johnson said Stern has always done right by players, noting the number of blacks such himself, Michael Jordan and Isiah Thomas who have followed their Hall of Fame playing careers by going into management or ownership positions.

“This league is more diverse than any other league and has more minorities in powerful positions than any other league,” Johnson said during a phone interview. “That’s all about David Stern and his vision and what he wanted to do. He make sure minorities had high-ranking positions from the league office all the way down to coaches and front office people.”

Stern did not comment, though told the Washington Post that Kessler’s conduct “is routinely despicable.”

However, players such as Johnson and Bill Russell called the league office to support Stern, who is leading owners in a bitter dispute with the players but who has not lost their support, according to Johnson.

“It was David Stern who took this league worldwide. And so those guys know it was because of David Stern and what he was able to do,” Johnson said.

Johnson recalled it was Stern who offered him a place in the 1992 NBA All-Star game, even over some players’ wishes after he had retired the previous November because of HIV. And it was Stern who included Johnson that summer on the Dream Team that won the Olympic gold medal.

And it was Stern, he said, who called him after Johnson’s comments about Thomas in his book ignited a public feud between the longtime friends, urging Johnson to work it out.

“He has always done what’s right for both the players and owners. I’m going to have to say this personally, David, he didn’t have to do that. That’s the type of commissioner he is.

“He always is looking out for the players and what’s best for the league and I disagree with anybody who says he’s trying to be a plantation owner. It’s ridiculous we’re even talking about it.”

Stern, 69, is likely nearing his final years on the job after becoming commissioner on Feb. 1, 1984, just as Johnson and Larry Bird were renewing the longtime rivalry between the Lakers and Boston Celtics. Johnson said he’s “tired of people taking shots” at Stern, especially because so many of them have jobs connected to the NBA that Stern created.

So Johnson urged those criticizing Stern during the lockout to “not go to the gutter.”

“We should be saluting him, he shouldn’t be torn down, especially something that he’s not,” Johnson said.

“He’s a tough business man and a smart business man. That’s what he’s supposed to be.”

The original start date to the NBA season arrived Tuesday with progress still stalled in the negotiations to end the lockout. No further talks have been scheduled, a person familiar with the situation told The Associated Press.

Players and owners made progress on a number of issues related to the salary cap system over two days last week. But the negotiations fell apart again on the third day, when the sides decided to revisit the revenue sharing split.

Owners are insistent on a 50-50 split, while players have proposed reducing their guarantee from 57 percent down to 52.5, which they say would transfer more than $1.5 billion to owners over six years.

Three games had been scheduled for Tuesday. The Mavericks would have opened the defense of their first NBA title at home against Derrick Rose and the Chicago Bulls. Houston was at Utah, with Kevin Durant’s Thunder at Kobe Bryant’s Lakers. Most of league would have started Wednesday.

Instead, TNT was airing a “Bones” marathon Tuesday night.

Commissioner David Stern canceled games through the end of November on Friday. The first two weeks of the season already had been lost to the lockout, which began after the old collective bargaining agreement expired June 30.

With no NBA games to play, Durant was still finding ways to compete and challenge fellow hoops stars.

Durant tweeted Monday he was interested in playing flag football. When fans at Oklahoma State University offered an invitation, he showed up in Stillwater that night to play. He tweeted later that he threw four touchdown passes and had three interceptions in a victory.

Then on Tuesday, LeBron James sent a tweet to the Thunder star that he was interested in setting up a flag football showdown between Durant’s team and his own squad in Akron, Ohio. Durant answered that his team was ready and James should set it up.

Lloyd is remembered for being a trail-blazer for African-Americans in the NBA. What other contributions did he give to the world?

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Here’s a list of things you may not have known about Earl Loyd:

1. Not Exactly First?

Lloyd considers himself the second Black player in the NBA, given that Chuck Cooper had been drafted in the second round while he had been picked in the ninth. His status as the first Black player on the court, he said, was only due to a “scheduling quirk” that meant his team played before the others. [BleacherReport.com]

2. College All-Star

Lloyd was a two-time All-American selection at West Virginia State where he helped lead his school to an undefeated 30-0 season in 1947-48, a conference championship and an unofficial “national champions” status as voted by several Black newspapers. [HoopHall.com]

3. Benched By Racism

Lloyd said he was rarely allowed to go into restaurants or hotels with his white teammates. While playing for Syracuse during the 1952-53 season, he wasn’t allowed to play at a preseason game at Wofford College in Spartanburg, South Carolina, because he was Black. The Nationals still played the game, and to this day it pains Lloyd that none of his teammates showed any remorse. [NYTimes.com]

4.  Player-Turned-Coach

In 1968, Lloyd became the NBA’s first Black assistant coach with Detroit. [NYTimes.com]

5. Army Man

After seven games with the Capitols, Lloyd was drafted into the military and sent to Korea for two years. When he returned to the United States, the Capitols had gone out of business, and so he went to play for the Syracuse Nationals (who later became the Philadelphia 76ers).

George Cohen, director of the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, announced Wednesday that he will oversee negotiations between the NBA and the NBA Players Association. Those meetings will start next Tuesday in New York.

Cohen said he already has been in contact with representatives of both sides “for a number of months.”

“I have participated in separate, informal, off-the-record discussions with the principals representing the NBA and the NBPA concerning the status of their collective bargaining negotiations,” Cohen said in a statement issued by the Washington-based FMCS.

“It is evident that the ongoing dispute will result in a serious impact, not only upon the parties directly involved, but also, of major concern, on interstate commerce — i.e., the employers and working men and women who provide services related to the basketball games, and, more generally, on the economy of every city in which those games are scheduled to be played.”

Cohen was present for talks between NFL owners and players for 16 days in February and March but couldn’t bring them to agreement. When that mediation broke off March 11, the union disbanded, players sued owners in federal court, and the league locked out players.

After negotiations resumed later — including with a different, court-appointed mediator — a new NFL collective bargaining agreement was completed and signed in August.

The NBA’s labor talks stalled Monday, and the league announced it was calling off the first two weeks of its regular season, which was supposed to begin on Nov. 1.

The preseason was wiped out earlier.

Cohen was appointed director of the FMCS, an independent U.S. government agency, by President Barack Obama in 2009. The next year, Cohen helped broker a deal between Major League Soccer and its players just before the season was scheduled to begin, earning kudos from both the commissioner and players’ union.

As a labor lawyer, Cohen played a key role in ending the most notorious professional sports work stoppage in U.S. history, the baseball strike that wiped out the 1994 World Series. In 1995, as lead lawyer for the baseball players’ union, he helped win an injunction against the sport’s owners from U.S. District Court Judge Sonia Sotomayor — who is now a Supreme Court justice — ending the 7½-month strike.

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Russell alleges that NCAA and Electronic Arts have improperly used his images in the NCAA video game.

Russell’s complaint may be combined with other athletes’ court cases charging that the NCAA and video-game giant Electronic Arts have improperly used their images in “Tournament of Legends,” a feature in the NCAA basketball video game.

Read more at YourBlackWorld.com

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If it’s not in the next few days, they can forget about playing 82 games.

Without an agreement by Monday, the beginning of the regular season will be canceled, and both sides will lose millions of dollars and perhaps countless fans.

“We’re ready to meet and discuss any subject anyone wants to talk about,” Commissioner David Stern said. “We’d like not to lose the first two weeks of the season, but it doesn’t look good.”

Though the financial gap closed slightly, once the players’ association said it wouldn’t entertain the idea of a 50-50 revenue split, the league canceled the remainder of the preseason Tuesday and will wipe out the first two weeks of the regular season if there is no labor agreement by Monday.

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“We were not able to make the progress that we hoped we could make and we were not able to continue the negotiations,” Stern said after nearly four hours of talks between owners and players ended without gaining ground on a new deal.

No further meetings are scheduled – union executive director Billy Hunter said it could be a month or two until the next one – making it even more likely the league will lose games to a work stoppage for the first time since 1998-99, when the season was reduced to 50 games.

Stern and Deputy Commissioner Adam Silver said owners offered players a 50-50 split of basketball-related income. That’s still well below the 57 percent that players were guaranteed under the previous collective bargaining agreement, but more than the 47 percent union officials said was formally proposed to them.

The only numbers that matter now, however, are the millions that stand to be lost when arenas go dark.

“The damage will be enormous,” Silver said.

Players had offered to reduce their BRI guarantee to 53 percent, which they said would have given owners back more than $1 billion over six years. They say they won’t cut it further, at least for now.

And they insist the 50-50 concept wasn’t an even split, because it would have come after the league had already deducted $350 million off the top.

“Today was not the day for us to get this done,” players’ association president Derek Fisher said. “We were not able to get close enough to close the gap.”

With superstars like Kobe Bryant, Paul Pierce and Kevin Garnett standing behind him, Hunter said the players’ proposal would have made up at least $200 million per season – a sizable chunk of the $300 million owners said they lost last season.

“Our guys have indicated a willingness to lose games,” Hunter said.

The sides are also still divided on the salary-cap structure.

Training camps were postponed and 43 preseason games scheduled for Oct. 9-15 were canceled on Sept. 24. Both sides said they felt pressure to work toward a deal with deadlines looming before more cancellations would be necessary.

Stern said the owners had removed their demand for a hard salary cap, were no longer insisting on salary rollbacks, and would have given players the right to opt out of a 10-year agreement after seven years. But the money split was always going to be the biggest hurdle in these negotiations, with owners insistent on the ability to turn a profit after the league said 22 of its 30 teams lost money last season.

“We want to and have been willing to negotiate, but we find ourselves at a point today where we in some ways anticipated or expected to be, faced with a lockout that may jeopardize portions if not all of our season,” Fisher said.

After hardly budging off their original proposal for 1 1/2 years, owners finally increased their offer to players from 46 to 47 percent of BRI. It was then that the top negotiators discussed the 50-50 concept, and while Stern sounded disappointed that it didn’t work, Silver was more frustrated.

“I am not going to get a good night sleep,” he said. “After this afternoon’s session, I would say I’m personally very disappointed. I thought that we should have continued negotiating today and I thought that there was potentially common ground on a 50-50 deal. I think it makes sense, it sounds like a partnership. There still would have been a lot of negotiating to do on the system elements, but I’m personally very disappointed.”

On what both sides stressed was an important day, the owners’ entire 11-man labor relations committee came to New York to meet with 11 players. They could still work something out before Monday’s deadline, but neither side sounded optimistic.

“Right now, we had our committees, we gave it a really good run, and it didn’t work,” Stern said.

Hunter said the union would hold regional meetings with its players, set up workout centers and help in other ways. And many players – including Bryant, who has been in talks with an Italian team – will have to decide if they want to explore playing overseas.

And without a deal, the battle could go to the courts. Hunter said the union would have to consider decertification, and on Tuesday a federal court judge scheduled a hearing for Nov. 2 to hear arguments in the league’s lawsuit against the players seeking a declaration that the lockout doesn’t violate antitrust laws.

All things both sides hoped to avoid Tuesday.

“It wasn’t to be, and we don’t have any plans right now,” Stern said.

Miami Heat forward Chris Bosh endured a lot of criticism in his first year with the Miami Heat. He has been called soft, too emotional, and is often the butt of jokes.

Bosh chose not to respond to any of these criticisms until now when he clashed with ESPN personality Skip Bayless over the infamous “Bosh Spice” nickname.

Bosh went on the show and told Bayless that the nickname disrespects his family’s name. “Bosh Spice” is a play on the famous Spice Girl, Victoria Beckham’s name Posh Spice.

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The Huffington Post reports:

“I don’t have a problem with you at all. We’re both professionals, we both do our jobs,” Bosh said. “My whole problem is the misuse of the name… My family, we take a lot of pride in our name. We’re very prideful of the Bosh name. I don’t like it being made fun of and I don’t think they appreciate it either… The Bosh name, that’s all we have.”

“I respect the Bosh name, but I have no regrets with referring to you occasionally, especially early and at midseason, as ‘Bosh Spice,’” Bayless said. “I thought your performance with the Miami Heat warranted an occasional use of that nickname. You chose to join LeBron James and Dwyane Wade in Miami for $110 million. And you chose to enter the harshest, toughest, roughest spotlight in all of sports.”

Read More At The Huffington Post

Police spokesman Carlos Campos said police have secured a murder warrant for the arrest of Crittenton, who played at Georgia Tech, in connection with the shooting death of 22-year-old Jullian Jones on Aug. 19. Campos said Crittenton is not in custody and is wanted.

Atlanta police Maj. Keith Meadows told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Friday night that Crittenton is believed to be in the Los Angeles area. He said the FBI is involved in the investigation.

Jones, a mother of four, was walking with a group of people on the city’s southwest side when a dark-colored SUV drove by and she was shot by someone inside the vehicle, police said.

Investigators say they don’t believe the woman was the intended target. Campos said the motive appears to be retaliation for a robbery in April, in which Crittenton was a victim, Campos said in a statement.

Messages left for an agent who has represented Crittenton were not immediately returned Friday night.

Crittenton most recently played in the NBA with the Washington Wizards and was involved in a gun altercation with Gilbert Arenas. He is on the roster of the NBDL’s Dakota Wizards.

Crittenton didn’t play last season because of an ankle injury. He was given a 38-game suspension by the NBA after he and Arenas acknowledged bringing guns into the locker room following a dispute stemming from a card game on a team flight.

Crittenton pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor gun charge on Jan. 25, 2010 and received probation. He wasn’t re-signed by the Wizards.

The Charlotte Bobcats signed Crittenton to a non-guaranteed contract before last season but he was waived Oct. 15.

Crittenton was the 19th overall pick by the Los Angeles Lakers in 2007. He played little with Los Angeles and was sent to Memphis in the Pau Gasol deal his rookie year. He was traded to Washington in December 2008.

Crittenton averaged 5.3 points and 1.8 assists in 113 NBA games.

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The CBA would bar players under contract such as Carmelo Anthony and Chris Paul. They and others had expressed interest in playing in China if the NBA lockout drags on and results in the cancellation of all or part of the 2011-12 season.

The CBA said it will welcome free agent NBA players, but will require them to play an entire season in China, the Xinhua News Agency reported.

Xinhua said more restrictions would be announced before the start of the Chinese season on Nov. 20. It reported contracts would be designed to discourage players from ducking out for dubious reasons such as suspect injuries or unverified family problems at home.

CBA officials could not immediately be reached for comment.

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A law-enforcement official in Montgomery County, Texas, says Troy Raymond was a person of interest in the death of his wife, Leslie Anderson Raymond, whose body was discovered last Thursday at their home in Spring.

Troy Raymond’s body was discovered Thursday at a hotel in Jefferson Parish. The coroner’s office said he shot himself in the head.

Tim Holifield, a Montgomery County constable, said Wednesday that Raymond hasn’t been named a suspect in his wife’s killing and it’s premature to connect their deaths.

Raymond was a NBA referee during the 2003-04 season and has refereed college games.

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New Orleans Hornets forward Trevor Ariza, Minnesota Timberwolves forward Kevin Love, Cleveland Cavaliers guard Baron Davis, and a slew of others have all enrolled in courses to finish their incomplete degrees.

“When the lockout looked like it was going to be a definite thing, I kind of sat down with each of them and laid out a game plan,” Donaldson said. “You don’t want to get them back in something that they’re not going to be interested in. I presented them with options and they found classes that they thought would be interesting, and are easing back into it right now.”

Read more at BET.com

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Rodman is a five-time NBA championship, won two Defensive Player of the Year trophies, seven rebounding titles, earned seven first-team All-Defense nods and two All-Star appearances.

The 2011 Hall of Fame class also includes basketball greats Chris Mullin, Artis Gilmore and others.

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The New York Daily News reports:

Franceschini charged that patrons of the jiggle joint were ushered outside on July 21, 2010, following a fight inside the club, said his lawyer John Rapawy.

But once Franceschini got outside, Alston walloped him with a bottle, Rapawy said. Franceschini was rushed to the hospital where he had 12 staples put in his head, Rapawy said.

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Rose was sentenced last week to 93 days in jail after pleading guilty to drunk driving, but will serve 20. His expected release date is Aug. 18.

The former star point guard was arrested in March in Detroit after crash in which his Cadillac Escalade rolled over.

AC of WCHBNewsDetroit.com staked out the prison to catch the NBA star entering the prison, and provided us with this video:

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Deborah Marion has repeatedly visited and called the Memphis Police Department for answers about her son’s shooting death, though authorities have very few.

“We are a long way from solving this crime,” Memphis Police Director Toney Armstrong said last week.

Marion said: “I will never lose hope until I’m dead and buried.” But mistakes have hurt the case, which remains unsolved since Wright, 34, was found dead July 28, 2010.

Wright’s relatives and friends have complained a missing person’s report wasn’t taken seriously. It was 10 days before his body was found, complicating the investigation because evidence was left to deteriorate in a swampy field at the height of summer. A 911 call made from Wright’s cell phone soon after he was last seen by his family was botched by dispatchers. A small reward of $6,000 — less than the $8,000 offered by a family and animal rights groups for a missing pit bull named Kapone — has yielded just 28 Crime Stoppers tips.

Armstrong acknowledged the reward and the number of tips were low for such a high-profile case.

Marion filed a $2 million lawsuit Wednesday, accusing suburban authorities in Germantown and Collierville of messing up the emergency call and the missing person’s report. Officials in both municipalities have declined comment. Marion said the police departments involved did not take enough responsibility.

“It’s like they were just passing the ball from court to court,” Marion said of the agencies.

The slender, athletic Wright played for the Memphis Grizzlies and four other NBA teams as a forward and center over 13 seasons before retiring in 2009. He also played high school and college ball in Memphis, where he was a fan favorite thanks to his charity work with youth and his father’s involvement as a coach in summer leagues.

His death was immediately met with grief and calls for justice. Hundreds went to the crime scene off a back road that he often drove. A memorial service and vigil were held in the FedEx Forum arena, attended by NBA players and politicians.

Since then, public interest has waned.

More than a dozen homicide detectives were once entrenched on the case, Armstrong said at a news conference on the one-year anniversary of Wright’s disappearance. Now the case has moved into the hands of a new lead detective who Armstrong hopes can bring “fresh eyes” to the case.

Armstrong, who took over as police chief in April, also said he plans to ask city officials to increase the reward.

Wright, a father of six, was last seen on July 18, 2011, as he left the home of his ex-wife, Sherra Wright. According to an affidavit, Sherra Wright told police she saw him leave her home carrying money and a box of drugs.

Before he left, Sherra Wright said she overheard her ex-husband on the telephone telling someone that he was going to “flip something for $110,000,” the document said.

Sherra Wright said Lorenzen Wright left her home in a car with a person she could not identify. The affidavit said Sherra Wright gave the statements to police in the Memphis suburb of Collierville, where she lives, on July 27 — nine days after he left her house for the last time.

In the early morning of July 19, a police dispatcher in the suburb of Germantown received a call from Wright’s cell phone. Dispatchers acknowledged they heard noises like gunshots before the call was dropped.

Dispatchers said they didn’t alert patrol officers or commanders because they couldn’t confirm it came from their jurisdiction. They didn’t send a patrol officer or relay the information to Memphis police until days later.

Wright’s mother filed a missing person report with Collierville police on July 22. Authorities in Collierville were accused of dragging their feet in the days after the report was filed, and an apparent lack of communication kept authorities from linking the 911 call to the missing person report.

Police found Wright’s body July 28. An autopsy report showed bullet fragments were lodged in Wright’s skull, chest and right forearm, indicating five shots. Police said they recovered shell casings of different calibers with Wright’s body, indicating the possibility of two shooters.

The corpse was badly decomposed, weighing 57 pounds. The 6-foot-11 Wright’s playing weight was around 225 pounds.

Wright’s ex-wife and a half-dozen other people were called before a Shelby County grand jury, but officials have said those appearances produced no substantial leads.

Wright also had a distant connection to drug kingpin Craig Petties, who has pleaded guilty in federal court to conspiracy and racketeering in four murders for hire.

Court documents show Wright acknowledged to the FBI in 2008 that he sold a Mercedes sedan and a Cadillac SUV to Bobby Cole, known by authorities to be part of the Petties gang. The affidavits about the business deal don’t show if Wright knew Cole well or was aware he had been indicted on drug distribution charges in 2007.

As part of that drug case, Cole offered in 2008 to forfeit the vehicles to the Drug Enforcement Administration. The vehicles still were registered to Wright, who claimed in court that he didn’t know they had been used in crime. The judge ruled in favor of the DEA in March 2010, and the vehicles were forfeited.

Marion told The Associated Press she would like to hire a private investigator to look into her son’s slaying but cannot afford it. She said Armstrong, who is now police chief, recently spoke with her but didn’t seem to know anything about the case.

“He said he hadn’t been briefed on that case at all,” she said.

She said she has turned to counseling and her pastor to cope with her son’s death. Herb Wright, Lorenzen Wright’s father, continues to coach basketball, “doing exactly what he knew Lorenzen wanted, which is to keep his boys in basketball,” she said.

Wright had a house in Atlanta and spent time there, but his mother said she is certain the killer or killers are in Memphis and had a “vendetta” against her son: “They were just stone-cold killers.”

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According to the investigation, Wright’s nearly 7-foot-tall, badly decomposed body weighed only 57 pounds when it was found ten days later a few yards from the cell phone tower that received his call.

The cell phone call came into the Germantown, Tenn., police department’s emergency dispatch late one night last July. The 911 operator heard a man’s garbled voice, an expletive, then as many as ten gunshots. Then silence.

Read more at The Huffington Post.

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In surprising fashion, KFC in a open letter offered Wade a job he can’t refuse.

“It goes without saying we’d love to have you back on our team dishing out the World’s Best Chicken, like you dish out assists on the court,” it said.

““Come serve as an honorary captain at a local KFC drive-thru window. And while we can’t match your most recent salary, we’ll honor your KFC service by making a donation in your name to Colonel’s Scholars, a charity providing young people with much needed scholarships.”

The company said while he can’t match his most recent salary, it could share some of Colonel Sanders’ secrets to making buckets.

Read More At CBSLocal.com

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Three artists were named as finalists to design the statue. They will present their designs to Russell himself and the Bill Russell Legacy Committee in the fall.

“We are proud to play a role in paying tribute to one of the greatest champions the sports world has ever seen,” said Stephen Pagliuca, Celtics co-owner and president of the Boston Celtics Shamrock Foundation.

The committee said the site was chosen because of its location near the Freedom Trail, Faneuil Hall and other tourist attractions. Officials said Russell, 77, and the committee approved the site for the statute to commemorate the former Celtic as a sports champion, human rights leader and youth mentoring advocate.

The committee said it will seek private donations for the statue and will launch a public fundraising campaign in the fall to coincide with the selection of the winning design.

Russell led the Celtics to 11 league championships in 13 seasons.

President Barack Obama suggested Boston build a statue of Russell when he awarded him a Presidential Medal of Freedom in February. Obama said he hoped one day children would look up to a statue “built not only to Bill Russell the player but Bill Russell the man.”

The announcement of the statue’s site is another episode in the once-rocky relationship between Russell and the city of Boston. During his time with the Celtics, the West Monroe, La.-born Russell often complained about the city’s treatment of people of color and once called the city a “flea market of racism.”

When the Celtics retired his No. 6 jersey in 1972, Russell refused to attend the ceremony. But in recent years, Russell has visited Boston and has praised the city for changing. In 1999, Russell attended a ceremony by the Celtics to re-retire his jersey and received a long standing ovation that brought him to tears.

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Sportando reports:

Turkish TV Ntvspor (one of the most efficient sport channels in Turkey) announced few minutes ago that Besiktas agreed to terms with Deron Williams. The American point guard is expected to sign the contract any day and stay in Turkey until the lockout ends.

Read The Whole Story

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Miss Hawaii, real name Jessica Jackson, claims to have a video of Irving masturbating on Skype.

Earlier in March Miss Hawaii tweeted:

i mean this is just the beginning too dude, i have video of him masturbating on camera i mean if you want to keep f&^%$n with me, let’s go

number one draft pick masturbating on camera?? hmm not

BBM and text message evidence uncovered by BlackSportsOnline show that Miss Hawaii submitted a police report on March 22nd. She threatened to report Irving to the police after she began receiving phone calls that she believed were from Irving’s friends and family. Mediatakeout has obtained the court document for her harassment claim.

BlackSportsOnline is also reporting that Miss Hawaii may actually be a prostitute and that she created a fake Twitter account, DukeLvr1989, to harass Irving and refer to his dead mother. Duke Basketball fan site, SethCurrySavesDuke, reported on the alleged fake Twitter account.

Kyrie can go to the league and make millions thats so great for him … too bad it wont bring his mother back SHES DEAD DEAD DEAD
DukeLvr1989

Around that time, Kyrie Irving erased his twitter account. You can’t find him on that particular medium any longer. Then DukeLvr posted his cell phone number. Then she posted a picture of him shirtless. Then she threatened to post sexual text message conversations she’d had with him. Then she threatened to post “a photo of Kyrie Irving’s dick.”

Here Is A Video Of Miss Hawaii Addressing Kyrie Irving(Warning Explicit Language)

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Isiah Thomas, Love & Basketball

Looking at the buzz surrounding this year’s NBA draft, it was clear that the NBA is considered a hyper-Black, savage, and pathological space. It is marketed to this effect. For non-Black players to show the least bit of talent is considered a breath of fresh air. That being said, the hype surrounding draftee Jimmer Fredette, for example, is a little too close to hopes of Fredette triumphing as this sport generation’s Great White (American) Hope.

As I watched the draft with my husband, something else piqued my interest. Of the first ten (10) players picked, four (4) were international. Paired up with the conversations about newest NBA champion Dirk Nowitzki, also an international player out of Germany, I couldn’t help but think about how the steady presence of  international players in American popular sports reflects a larger turn in the tides of what an American looks like today.

What does the popular sports narrative look like in the 21st century? Many folks would like to dismiss the still looming presence of race in popular sports to keep with the post-racial Joneses. But, like many 21st century American narratives, it’s complicated. Many of those same narratives are indeed racialized and still resonate as such. William Rhoden’s $40 Million Dollar Slaves (2006) and Thabiti Lewis’ recent book Ballers of the New School (2010), for example, look at how race impacts sports at the turn of the millennium and beyond.

Sports, like other genres of popular culture, are an accurate gauge of social-cultural attitudes in the United States. This is especially true when thinking about race relations, with sports cranking out many well documented battles about racial bias, prejudice, and misunderstandings that took place on and off playing fields. I’m thinking specifically about baseball. Heralded as “America’s favorite past-time,” America’s baseball was white and detached from African American and Hispanic experiences. Their fans were white and detached as well. African Americans struck back, however, with the Negro Leagues that produced some of the most prolific players in recorded history.

Sports, arguably, became an act of resistance against a blatantly white supremacist social outlook. And, in similar fashion to the United State’s sliding social-cultural and racial landscape, the role of sports in the contemporary American experience is shifting as well.

International players’ bodies in the NBA’s rotation further complicate American identity because they navigate both American and global identity politics by engaging in both customs simultaneously. Take, for example, the revolving door policy for international and American players. International players get put on in the NBA and American players get put on abroad. In a sense, these instances update the expatriate narrative to reflect voluntary displacement from the murkiness of current identity politics in the United States.

Another perspective, albeit a bit more historical, is the significance of international players’ experiences as an update to the immigrant narratives that played a significant part in the social history of late 19th and early 20th century America. With the steady wave of European ballers throughout the league, they are re-negotiating and blending how we understand American identity and expression. Are they simply searching for an opportunity or making a statement?

That being said, it seems the United States is in limbo with regards to this current state of social-cultural affairs. There is no longer a clean-cut understanding of what it means to be American, what an “authentic” American looks like, nor sounds like. Few markers shout “Hey! This means American!” Perhaps we can look to sports as a means to navigate through the dark and find some footing towards an understanding of 21st century American identity.

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Cheered on at the Prudential Center in Newark by family and friends, not far from where he starred at St. Patrick’s High School in Elizabeth, N.J., the 19-year-old Irving showed no signs of any lingering problems with a right foot injury as he walked up the stairs to shake hands with commissioner David Stern.

Despite playing 11 games in his only college season because of a toe injury, Irving was too good to pass up with the Cavaliers’ first No. 1 pick since taking LeBron James in 2003. Irving has said he has no health concerns, making him the best choice in what’s been called a weak draft.

“I didn’t have any doubts about going to No. 1. I was looking to the organization to pick who they felt was the right choice,’’ Irving said.

The selection of Thompson was a bit of a surprise. The Cavaliers were reportedly interested in Lithuania center Jonas Valanciunas, but they may have been turned off by his uncertain contract situation with a pro club in his home country. Valanciunas went fifth to the Raptors.

The Timberwolves took Arizona forward Derrick Williams with the No. 2 pick. The Jazz then took Turkish big man Enes Kanter, who was ruled ineligible at Kentucky.

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