It's amazing what a couple of years will bring, isn't it?

Two years ago, Larry Brown was hoisting up his first NBA Championship, and the first NBA title for Detroit since 1990.  Now his coaching stock has taken a huge dip, as the New York Knicks fired him after one season.

While the Detroit debacle last year was the fault of Brown's, the New York one was entirely different.  Brown had called New York his "dream job", and went to the media several times to emphasize that he wanted to stay there despite the writing on the wall.  However, his problems with point guard Stephon Marbury as well as with general manager Isiah Thomas proved to be his downfall.

Here's my problem with the whole situation:  Brown never agreed to a buyout, and insisted that if the Knicks wanted to get rid of him, they'd have to do so while paying him the length of his contract.  The Knicks fired him anyway, but now want an arbitrator to force Brown into a settlement.

If this happens, Brown should cart the Knicks and the NBA into federal court.  I remember when so many sports fans and media were up in arms about Terell Owens wanting to renegotiate his contract after only one year with the Eagles.  Brown's situation as well as countless others show that sports franchises do this sort of thing all the time.  The Knicks want to reneg on a 5-year, $50 million dollar contract, where they only fulfilled one year of it and now don't want to pay the other $40 million despite wanting Brown out.  They should have to pay every single dime.

The Knicks should be used to wasting money by now.  They have the NBA's highest payroll at $125 million dollars, and are still paying three other coaches after firing them; Lenny Wilkens, Herb Williams, and Don Chaney.  Isiah Thomas, former Pistons great and current GM, has been there not only to oversee those firings, but also to place this ragtag roster of untalented players together, culminating into 23 wins. 

And what does Knicks owner (Cablevision executive) James Dolan do?  Makes Thomas the coach as well.  Gotta love that move.

The fans weren't yelling last year to fire Brown; they were calling for Thomas's head.  Thomas, probably inspired by Heat coach Pat Reily and Mavericks coach Avery Johnson, thinks he can do a better job than a Hall of Fame coach.  You'll hear the catcalls for Thomas to be booted out of the Knicks franchise before December.  They got rid of the wrong guy.

Thursday afternoon I was listening to 850 The Buzz and overheard Brown's biographer and the host (It wasn't Adam Gold, as he's on vacation.  It was the guy from the ACC Sports Journal) talking about Brown being a perfect fit for the Charlotte Bobcats.  I disagree.  Let Brown sit at home and count his money.  With Emeka Okafor and others returning from an injury-plagued season, Charlotte should be better than they were last year, although not quite ready to make a playoff run just yet.    Charlotte can simply let their young players get better over time and become a mainstay in the playoff race in a couple of years.

I was very critical of the unceremonious way that Stan Van Gundy was given the boot in Miami earlier this year, and I still stand by it.  But make no mistake; it was a very shrewd move that worked. 

Pat Reilly guided the Lakers to four NBA titles, so he knew what was needed in order to succeed.  Shaq knew Van Gundy could not help the Heat advance to their potential.  Therefore, they gave him the boot only weeks after the season started.  It was a cruel move, but one that worked.

I'm not going to join the chorus of sportswriters this morning ready to proclaim the Heat's NBA championship season as the start of the Wade Era, and say he's the best player since Jordan retired from the Bulls (the second time).  The Heat has a number of aging players in Shaq, Alonzo Mourning and Gary Payton that soon have to be replaced with younger talent.  However, Wade's drive and will to win helped put them over the top, and made this one of the best finals to remember. 

If there is one lesson to be learned from the NBA Finals, it's that you can have all of the talent in the world, and still not have enough to win a championship.  Wade had the drive, Reilly had the knowledge and wisdom, and Shaq, Mourning, and Payton had the experience and temperment.  Those are all things that Mavericks' owner Mark Cuban couldn't buy in his latest quest for a world championship, and those were all things that made the Heat a better team than the Mavericks. 

Those are things that you rely on when you're down by 13 points with six and a half minutes to go in the 4th quarter, already down 2-0 in a seven game series.  Not only did they win that game, but they went on to win the next three.  On the other side of the coin, talent alone can't save you from missing clutch free throws, calling errant timeouts, cursing out NBA officials and media reporters, and being arrogant enough to think the championship is in the bag because you're up 2-0 in the Finals.  But more on that later.

To the Heat, congrats.  Now you have to defend it.

- Duncan will be healthy next year

- Stoudamire returns to Phoenix's lineup next year

- Cleveland will be a better team

- Detroit returns with that same dreaded starting 5

- The Clippers will have more experience

- The Lakers will have Kobe.  Nuff said.

- Dallas will be back.

- And most important, the Heat will be a year older.

Good luck.

Right?

You know what I'm talking about.  If they tortured them, they filmed it.  If they filmed it, they're going to put it on the net.  When they put it on the net, the reactions won't be pretty.

I expect Ogrish or Rotten to have the video by the end of the week.

Rod Brind'Amour of the Carolina Hurricanes celebrates with the Stanley Cup after defeating the Edmonton Oilers in game seven of the 2006 NHL Stanley Cup Finals at the RBC Center in Raleigh, North Carolina. The Hurricanes defeated the Oilers 3-1 to win the Stanley Cup finals 4 games to 3. (AP/Yahoo)

Well, it's about time the state of North Carolina won something other than a national basketball championship.  Congratulations, Canes!!!

And to Canada....HA HA!!!!!  © Nelson Muntz

This has been a long time coming.

This goes out to Nick Berg.  This goes out to Paul Johnson.  This goes out to everyone that has found themselves on the receiving end of the viciousness of this no-good murdering bastard.

I'm glad he's dead, and I hope they bury him with his whole body dipped in lard and choking on a mouthful of chitlins.  And that's my word.

---

UPDATE:  I KNEW Malkin was up. She's got the full scoop.  There's supposed to be a press briefing by General Casey at 3pm Iraqi time.  I don't know what time that's supposed to be on the east coast.  He's supposed to explain the air raid that led to Zarqawi's death.

.......zzzzzzzzz....

*wakes up*

Oh; sorry yall.  I'll have some NBA playoff comments and stuff up sometime before the Finals start.

Oh; and GO HURRICANES!!  (No, not Miami or Katrina, fools.  Carolina.  You know, hockey...that other sport?)

I've been keeping an eye on the so-called "net neutrality" issue for a month or so now.

Congress is looking to rewrite the 1996 Telecommunications Act, which allowed deregulation of phone and media companies.  However, included in the whole debate is the idea of "net neutrality".  What is it?  It depends on who you talk to, as both sides shape the debate to their advantage.

To net neutrality supporters, it's a principle currently existing in telecommunications law that forces phone companies and internet service providers (ISPs) to provide the same access and speed to websites throughout the internet.  However, to the phone companies, like AT&T and Verizon, and ISPs, it's government regulation that will allow websites to use as much bandwidth as they want at the expense of other websites and at the cost of those companies.

At the heart of this is the development of high definition internet video, which will allow internet sites to post video files that are just as good as high definition televisions.  However, these streams use up a lot of bandwidth, and phone companies and ISPs are saying that potentially too many people could view these streams at one time, and thus "choke" the internet and run up the costs of maintaining net access.  Therefore, they want to start charging high bandwidth providers for their heavy use.

I can see the point both sides are making.  Actually, no matter what, the costs for the used bandwidth will be passed on to the consumer, one way or the other.  The question is, will it be in the form of higher phone bills and taxes, or will it be in the form of higher internet fees and services?  If I had my choice, it would be the later, considering I can better options of which internet services - in which a lot of them are pay-for-play already, like Yahoo Launchcast or ESPN's Insider - I want to use.

But there are other reasons why I question the supposed "net neutrality" movement.  Net neutrality supporters claim that the phone companies and ISPs would then discriminate and create a "tiered internet", which means the more you pay, the better access websites would receive.  However, they really don't have much proof that this would actually happen; it's more of an anticipation than anything.

A look at SaveTheInternet.org, which is sort of the center of net neutrality advocacy, could only find four incidents of anything of this kind ever happening.  They found two phone companies.  However, they were from Canada, not the U.S.  They did find an ISP that was caught blocking service from rival web-based phone companies in North Carolina; however, they didn't mention that the FCC fined them $15,000 for doing so, showing that was illegal in the first place.  They also noted that AOL was rejecting emails with any link to an advocacy website alerting AOL users of the company's proposed fee for sent emails.  However they couldn't show any evidence that the main targets of their ire - AT&T or Verizon - would act in this manner.

But what alarms me more than anything is the list of internet companies are at the forefront of this movement, particularly Yahoo, Google, and Microsoft.  Their support for net neutrality is not a big surprise.  After all, all three are user-oriented; meaning that they rely heavily on their members using a variety of services, including email, music sites, instant messengers, video uploads, blogs, etc.  These services use up a LOT of bandwidth at any given time. 

There's no question that when hi-def video comes to the internet, they're going to want a piece of it, and god forbid that they would have to pay to keep it on there, or actually charge consumers the true cost of using the service, splitting the revenue with the phone company or ISP.  Some would like to place the fee in the context of how much it would cost the companies; I would say the fee is for a service that isn't yours and that you didn't help create, but are using.  And now they want to demand the government force the companies who created it, and have to maintain upkeep for it, to give it to them for free.

Should that surprise anyone?  Only if you haven't been paying attention.

All three of these companies have figured out how the government hustle works, and have not only used their new-found skills in Washington, but also in Beijing. 

Take a look at this Vent by Michelle Malkin at the excellent conservative video blog Hot Air.  Malkin takes a look at the rendezvous last monthBill Gates had with Chi-Coms President Hu Jintao during his visit to America.  That explains why Microsoft was caught censoring the Chinese language blogs on MSN Spaces, their blog service.  Yahoo was accused of supplying information to the Chi-Coms leading to the arrest of a Chinese journalist who sent a Communist Party email to "foreign-based websites".  The journalist, 37- year old Shi Tao, was convicted and sentenced to 10 years in prison.  Yahoo's snitching also led to the arrest and conviction of another journalist, Li Zhi.  Google has been the most notorious, creating a Chinese-exclusive search engine to censor the internet in China, and has been censoring Google News since 2004.  However, when the U.S. Government asked Google for search information in regards to online pornography, they refused. 

The evidence on these three companies is very clear:  they're hypocrites, and can't be trusted to perserve internet freedom.  They claim to be defenders of freedom while oppressing Chinese dissidents at the same time.  And it's a given that Washington's "concern" for net neutrality won't stop there; internet taxes will come soon, and possibly followed by internet snooping and censorship, including the harrassment of political blogs.  What's to stop these companies with not only complying with the government's demands, but advocating them, especially when it works to their advantage?  After all, they've done it in China.  They know how to play the lobbying game in Washington, so I'm sure if any government regulation comes to pass, they'll have a voice in it.

The irony of net neutrality advocates accusing phone companies and ISPs ahead of time of trying to censor the internet is that they've aligned themselves with internet companies that have already done so, and there's no evidence that shows they won't do it here if it benefits them. 

This is footage of Kobe Byrant's miraculous feats of today's Lakers victory over Phoenix in Game 4:

First, the steal by Smush Parker from Steve Nash, followed by the layup by Kobe to put it into overtime:

Then, the jump ball with six seconds left in overtime leading to Kobe's game-winning basket:

Enjoy. If these don't work, I'll give you the links instead in a few mins.

UPDATE:  They worked.  GREAT!!

Kudos goes to Jose3030 on the OkaySports board for getting these out like, SECONDS after they happened.

If you're a North Carolina State Wolfpack fan, you can't be happy with how things are going this offseason.

To be honest, NC State hasn't been happy since Jim Valvano was coach, but that's precisely what's gotten them into the situation they are in now.  Wolfpack fans have been longing for a return to the glory days of Jimmy V and Everett Case.  However, with the resignation of Valvano in 1990 amid the publishing of a book that accused the program of several violations, and subsequently placed the program on probation, NC State basketball took a major downturn.  Valvano's successor, Les Robinson, was only able to get one winning season out of the six years he was the coach of the Wolfpack.

However, Herb Sendek was hired in 96, and immediately put them back on the winning path.  Sendek gave the Wolfpack their first winning season in six years in his debut, and had five straight trips to the NIT.   After a terrible 13-15 season in 2000, Sendek was able to elevate the Pack to the NCAA Tournament five times, with one Sweet Sixteen appearance.

In almost any other state, in almost any other conference, five straight March Madness appearances would be seen as a plus for a college basketball program.  However, this is North Carolina.  This is the ACC, home of Dean Smith, Mike Krzyzewski, and Roy Williams.  if you aren't considered in the nation's elite, you're not that good.

Thus, Wolfpack fans are not satisfied, and they start complaining about Sendek - on the sports talk shows, in the newspaper, on message boards, everywhere.  If Sendek couldn't beat Williams and Krzyzewski consistently, then they were ready to run him out of town.  More than likely, Sendek saw the signs, and after this season he decided to head out into the desert, and accepted a job at Arizona State.  I imagine the heat of the desert was more comforable than the humidity coming from the mouths of NC State fans.

Wolfpack fans didn't care, however; in fact, a good number of them rejoiced.  They saw Sendek as a mediocre coach that couldn't place the program in its rightful spot at the top of college basketball.  Thus, NC State's boosters and alumni got together and put up enough cash to attract a top-level coach at $2 million/year.

But there's a problem with that, and it's called perception.  NC State just ran off a coach that most people thought did a relatively decent job.  Even for $2 million, why would a coach go into what's considered a very hostile situation at NC State, with the looming demand that he win against two of the best coaches in basketball and win immediately?  And if he doesn't win, the boosters and the fans are going to be all over you, possibly ruining your reputation and before you know it, you end up coaching for, say, SMU.   Considering recruiting is already tough in the ACC, why would a good coach, even if he was making only $1 million, go into a situation where he could be ran out of town with his tail between his legs and stressed out to hell four years down the road?

Thus, when NC State first looked at U. of Texas coach Rick Barnes, there was really no positive for Barnes to move to North Carolina.  He had a nice program at Texas that's under the shadow of the football program, came off of a great season this year and for the most part, doesn't have to worry about a thing.  It made no sense for him to come to the ACC, and all it did was persuade Texas to give him an extension on his contract, with more money.

The same went to John Calipari, who has had a dubious record in the past while coaching at UMass.  Now he's at Memphis, and used the NC State position to wrangle an extension with more money.  Unlike Barnes, who probably had some sort of real interest in the job, Calipari didn't, and all but admitted it after he signed the extension with Memphis, saying he would not be able to live up the expectation of ACC dominance that the Wolfpack demanded.  Well if he couldn't, why didnt he rule himself out of the running immediately?

If you want to know how bad this is getting, check this out:  NC State then approached former UCLA coach and current ESPN commentator Steve Lavin.  Negative.  Jim Beilien, head coach at West Virginia, was among those who the Wolfpack were targeting, especially since he was only being paid $750,000/year.  TURNED IT DOWN, even going so far as to shut down the rumor on West Virginia's website.  That's four rejections, and two coming within hours of each other.

At UNC, the Tarheels almost had a similar problem a few years back when Matt Doherty was fired, and many sportswriters who didn't have a clue about the whole situation speculated that players talked with NC Athletic Director Dick Baddour and told him either Doherty goes, or they would transfer.  If it wasn't for the absolute love that Roy Williams had for not just for UNC but for the state itself, and his wish to return to Carolina, the Tarheels possibly would have been in a similar situation.  Perception is reality, particularly when you're talking about recruiting players or hiring coaches.  And NC State is learning that lesson the hard way.

Now NC State is in a bad position, as they are about to pay more money to a coach who's probably not as good as Sendek, and less experienced to tackle the most talented and competitive conference in the nation.  Unless they somehow get lucky, times do not look good for Wolfpack fan.  But the truth is, they have nobody to blame but themselves.

What's next for NC State?  Well, the News and Observer is reporting that NC State officials actually TALKED to Tarheel legend Phil Fordabout taking the job.  BOOOY when it rains it pours.  Wolfpack fans will run the whole athletic department out of Raleigh if they actually hired Ford.  But it would be funny as hell.

Over the weekend, the news broke via Yahoo Sports by columnist Charles Robinson that the family of Heisman Trophy winner and projected #1 pick Reggie Bush moved out of a $700,000 home over the weekend amid a new investigation headed by the Pac-10 looking into improper relationships.  Bush's mother, stepfather, and stepbrother were living in the home.

The home belonged to a California businessman named Michael Michaels, who bought the house in March 2005 after only being completed earlier in the year.    Neighbors say that soon after the house was completed, Bush's family moved in; in fact, one of the cement slabs in the driveway says "The Griffins (Bush's stepfather's surname) 05".  But Michaels is alleged to have been peddling Bush's name to sports agents while he was to make Bush his top client in a marketing company Michaels was to start.   

However, the new company didn't get off the ground, and Bush eventually signed with another firm and another agent.  However, the Griffins stayed in the home regardless.  When questioned on Thursday, Bush's mother Debbie Griffin declined comment.  Less than 48 hours later, they were out of the neighborhood.

Bush was given several chances to clear the air in this investigation on Monday, and his lawyer and he failed miserably.  He was obviously coached by his lawyer for all of his appearances.  When pressed on ESPNNews, Reggie Bush's answer was "At the end of the day, everybody we'll see that we've done absolutely nothing wrong."  Even when he was asked about who was paying rent there, he said the same thing.  He couldn't say anything about Michaels; once again, making that same response.  

But that's expected from Bush; after all, he's relatively a kid, and it's better to put on the tired cliches.  His lawyer, David Cromwell,  was even worse, ridiculously claiming that Bush knew nothing about the home in a statement released today:

"Reggie Bush was a full-time student at the University of Southern California and never lived in the house," the statement continued. "As is the case with most 20-year-old college students, Reggie was not aware of personal or financial arrangements relating to his parents or their house.

You're kidding me.

You mean to tell me that a student at USC actually let people in who believe that the family moved into this HUGE house, especially when it is YOUR name that's making the high-scale life available?  To claim that Bush has nothing to do with personal or financial is ridiculous.  20 year olds are old enough to know right from wrong.  Pitiful excuse.

For all intents and purposes, Bush is safe as far as his NFL career is concerned.  This is an NCAA matter, and NFL scouts don't care about his possible violation.  But for USC, fines and possibly probation could hit the school, and the Heisman Trophy could revoke his award, which would be the first time that has ever happened.  However, it's likely that he'll already will play his first regular season NFL game before any actions are taken.   But for the fans, and notably, Pete Carroll, who has done everything in order to turn that ship at USC into a national powerhouse.  They will be the ones that suffer, including losing scholarships.  And they all have to Reggie Bush to tank for it.