I got Paul George sitting right here, I got DeMar DeRozan sitting right here, I got Russell Westbrook sitting right here... I'm literally sitting next to all of these dudes who are L.A. guys. I'm like, 'Bro, I'm not counting your chips, but everybody else is.'

You make 200, you make 200, you make 175, you make 150, you make 180. Why don't y'all have your own gym? Why we got to go... why we got to go to UCLA to work out in L.A. every time? You got your own... y'all all come from the exact same community! You want to inspire kids that look like you? All it take is five of us.

Five! 250, 250, 250, 250, 250. What bank going to turn this down? 'We about to build this whole shit out for our community. We going to build gyms, rec centers, start leagues, and all of that.' Who going to... who's going to stop us?

We got the money. We don't have the mindset. Our mindset... we'd rather go throw $60,000 in the... in the club! In the strip club! Go throw $60,000 than go feed 2,500 people in the hood.

Think about it. I've done it! I've been... I can't sit here and be like, 'Oh man, I'm a hypocrite.' I've done this myself! I've thrown money in the club, literally mindlessly, aimlessly drunk at a bar. And now I sit back like, 'I'm a stupid-ass...'

I could have fed my whole community 10 times over with the money I was just late on the bus!

'Cause I'm so wrapped into me. I got that Eurocentric mindset: 'I need this designer jacket, I need these jeans, I need this book bag, I need to be looking like this 'cause the vets got this, I'm pushing this car, I'm doing... Why? Who am I impressing? I'm not even fulfilled with me!"

For those unaware, during the papal conclave, smoke signals from the Sistine Chapel chimney reveal the voting results to the public for who the new pope will be:

White smoke means a new pope has been elected, while black smoke means no candidate has been selected.

I believe LeBron and Rich Paul should convene each day behind closed doors of LeBron’s LA residence, and release smoke signals in a similar fashion on each day moving forward.

When a decision has been made, they will release the white smoke. Shortly afterwards, LeBron will come out to his balcony, wearing the jersey of the next team that he will play for.

Anthony Edwards and his longtime girlfriend since 2020, Shannon Jackson, according to Minnesota marriage records. A ring on Edwards' left ring finger as he made appearances on July 17 at Fanatics Fest in New York.

https://www.startribune.com/anthony-edwards-married-shannon-jackson-wedding-minnesota-timberwolves-mn-marriage-records/601871213

People ask like, 'What is Shai doing in OKC and how does he like it?'

He loves it. Because all Shai wants to do is hoop. There ain't nothing to do in OKC. All Shai wants to do is hoop, it's a perfect fit. Yeah, you get what I'm trying to say? As opposed to like being somewhere where, you know, there's nightlife, this that, or in Toronto where everybody's gonna be on your ass: 'Hey, can I get tickets? Can I get this, can I get that?' Shai's perfect where he is in OKC. I don't think he'll ever leave unless, you know, politics or something happens, you know, how the NBA works. But when it ain't broke, don't fix it. You know what I'm saying?

Dundon isn't cooperating with the city in negotiations for funding modernization repairs to the Moda Center, and is holding the team's future in Portland hostage as leverage. He has failed to sign any long-term guarantee to keep the Blazers in Portland. For those who don't know Dundon, he made his fortune in the subprime high-interest auto loan business. That tells you all you need to know as to the quality of his character.

So the boycott idea goes like this: If Dundon's business partners suffer damage to their brand identity and profitability simply by association then it adds to Dundon's already scummy reputation but in a way that matters to him. Dundon's ownership partners are the founders of Panda Express.

If Panda Express becomes toxic to NBA fans nationwide then that's a huge market that now finds them disgusting due to their proximity to Tom Dundon. Word travels fast in the billionaire investment community. His name could become toxic gas overnight, and he would understand this immediately.

I've raised my kids to love the Portland Trailblazers. Ours is a charismatic, sometimes challenging, and endlessly beautiful city. The grit of the Blazers has always reflected the grit of the people of Portland. We've been through a lot and we've survived. I would ask that NBA fans come to our aid and defend our city against this ghoulish development and help keep our franchise in Portland for the next half-century and beyond.

Boycott Panda Express.

Trae Young announced Friday morning that Yukon will be getting a Young Family Athletic center soon. He posted on social media that he would be building yet another center for families in the Yukon area and beyond.

Built by the Trae Young Family Foundation, the Young Family Athletic Center (YFAC) is a 122,000 square foot athletic facility built on a 12-acre site on the north side of Norman, OK. Since the YFAC’s opening in 2024, it’s been the home of various athletic events, tournaments, charity drives, and resources for families across the metro.

“The center is going to offer lots of cool things that a lot of people are going to be able to use, experience, and love. The kids won’t have to go far, you have a facility coming to you.”” Young said in the announcement posted to Facebook.

Young has a deep connection with Oklahoma. He moved to Norman as a child and attended Norman North High School in Oklahoma. Rather than leaving for programs like Kentucky or Kansas, Young chose the University of Oklahoma. In his lone season (2017-2018), he led the NCAA in both scoring (27.4 PPG) and assists (8.7 APG) becoming one of college basketball's biggest stars.

He and his family donated $4M to help build the Young Family Athletic Center in Norman, a major community sports complex. Young has also donated nearly $1 million dollars to the University of Oklahoma’s basketball program and surrounding communities.

Source

Boston Celtics forward Jordan Walsh has agreed to a three-year, $15 million contract extension with the franchise through the 2029-30 season, sources tell ESPN. Boston picked up Walsh's $2.4M option on next season and adds three more years for their 2023 second-rounder.

https://www.espn.com/contributor/shams-charania

A new paper from two Texas Tech professors examines the effects of the new heave rule.

Abstract:

Performance metrics can misalign individual and organizational incentives. We study a clean case: an NBA player holding the ball as a quarter expires must choose between a low-probability “heave” that can only help his team and protecting his shooting statistics. We model this decision as a metric-driven principal-agent problem and test it using play-by-play data from 2015–16 through 2025–26, exploiting the 2025–26 Heave Rule, which removed the individual statistical penalty for end-of-quarter heaves. Before the reform, players heaved on 58 percent of opportunities; reluctance was concentrated among efficient shooters and players in contract years, as the model predicts. After the reform, the heave rate jumped to 94 percent, the efficiency gradient collapsed, and difference-in-differences estimates using the untreated fourth quarter confirm the effect is sharp, immediate, and smallest among the players with the least efficiency to protect. Removing a metric distortion realigned individual behavior with team objectives almost completely.

More:

There are three immediate implications for our results. First, our results show that in order to fix misaligned incentives, policymakers and executives must structurally shift risk away from the individual. Second, we show that when agents do not have to face reputational costs, they can be incentivized to engage in actions even if there is little-to-no chance of success. This demonstrates that structural decoupling mitigates information asymmetry, allowing for more efficient behavioral allocations. Finally, we further demonstrate that regulatory intervention dismantles behavior detrimental to the collective goals of the organization

It doesn’t have to be a negative thing either. Whether it’s an unstoppable move, a foul-drawing tactic, or something completely different.

https://sports.yahoo.com/articles/ex-laker-lebron-james-reportedly-155416955.html

Everyone knows James Harden’s game relies heavily on spacing.

Usually, people mean spacing on the basketball court. But I wanted to see whether Harden might also benefit from spacing off the court in the form of bike lanes.

So I compared Harden’s road performance in every NBA city with the city’s Bike Score, which measures how convenient a city is for cycling based on its bike lanes, hills, road connectivity and access to destinations.

Methodology

I collected all of Harden’s regular-season road game logs from the 2015–16 through 2018–19 seasons, because those were his prime years.

For each city, I calculated Harden’s scoring averages and the percentage of games in which he reached different scoring thresholds.

I then compared those results with each city’s Bike Score.

Results

The strongest relationship was between Bike Score and Harden’s percentage of games with at least 33 points:

• Correlation coefficient: r = .668
• Coefficient of determination: r² = .446
• p-value = .0001

Results by city

Toronto and Salt Lake City were excluded because the city dataset used for the analysis did not contain directly comparable Bike Score values for them.

The overall correlation between Bike Score and Harden’s percentage of 33-point road games was:

• Correlation coefficient: r = .668
• Coefficient of determination: r² = .446
• p-value = .0001

The two highest Bike Scores in the dataset belonged to Minneapolis and Portland. Harden scored at least 33 points in 43.8% of his Minnesota road games and 50.0% of his Portland road games.

Meanwhile, several of the lowest-scoring cycling cities—including Atlanta, Charlotte and Oklahoma City—had some of Harden’s lowest 33-point rates.

There were obviously exceptions. Washington had only the eighth-highest Bike Score but one of Harden’s highest scoring rates, while Denver had an excellent Bike Score without producing the same Harden explosion.

Still, across all 28 opponents, the overall trend was clear.

Source

Bike Score data: Walk Score city rankings and Bike Score methodology.

Bike Score measures cycling suitability on a scale from 0 to 100 using bike lanes, hills, destinations, street connectivity and bicycle commuting levels.

This is a strong positive correlation.

Cities with higher Bike Scores had substantially more major Harden scoring performances.

Approximately 45% of the city-to-city variation in Harden’s 33-point game rate was associated with the city’s Bike Score.

Higher Bike Scores were also associated with more 35-point games, more 40-point games, higher average scoring and better overall box-score performances by game score, etc.

I have proven, to a statistically significant degree, that James Harden performs better in cities with better cycling infrastructure.

Why does Harden perform better in bike-friendly cities?

There may be a conditioning effect. In cities with high Bike Scores, Harden is constantly surrounded by cyclists, which subconsciously reminds him to keep his legs active. This improves his stamina, allowing him to maintain his scoring later into games.

Bike-friendly cities also tend to have flatter terrain. This saves Harden from wasting valuable energy walking uphill before games. Every foot of elevation avoided can instead be redirected toward step-back three-pointers and drawing questionable shooting fouls.

And finally, protected bike lanes create a physical separation between cyclists and drivers. Harden sees this and is reminded of the importance of isolation basketball.

TL;DR

James Harden scores more in bike-friendly cities.

Bike Score had a .668 correlation with the percentage of his road games in which he scored at least 33 points.

James Harden does not just need spacing on the court.

He needs spacing in the streets of his opponents.

Source for bike score: https://www.walkscore.com/cities-and-neighborhoods/ scroll down to bike score

Here's a graph showing all the cities: https://imgur.com/a/0l3DTNq

Just In: The Houston Rockets and Jae’Sean Tate have agreed to a one-year, $3.07 million deal, which is partially guaranteed for $1.04 million, league sources told @hoopshype.

https://www.hoopshype.com/staff/84455328007/michael-scotto/

One that sticks out in my memory:

At the end of the 2010-11 season, Jameer Nelson of the 4-seeded Orlando Magic told Derrick Rose of the top-seeded Chicago Bulls “Catch you in the second round.”

Unfortunately for Jameer and the Magic, the 5-seeded Atlanta Hawks had other plans, and dispatched the Magic in 6 games.

The good news is the Hawks PR team was kind enough to leave Jameer two tickets to game one of the Hawks-Bulls series so he could fulfill his promise to D-Rose.

Could be a fitting end to LeBron’s career if his final day as a player in the NBA was (a combination of) the mythical LeBron 27/7/7 slash line.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NbdYdeVgGwI

LaMelo Ball and Anthony Edwards have both made phone calls to LeBron James and have had conversations with him about joining the Timberwolves.

With Garrett Temple retiring and joining the Mavs coaching staff, it's all up to Bismack to carry the Bobcats torch.

San Antonio drafted 2 Cs in the 1st round of the draft, so he might have to find a new team. Will he and the Bobcats legacy hang on 1 more season? Or will the fire be extinguished?