Giants ace Tim Lincecum asked for $21.5 million in salary arbitration Tuesday and was offered $17 million by the club.

Whoa! I'm a big Tim Lincecum fan but $21.5M is a lot of cheddar. Granted, this is just a starting point in negotiations but the salaries for elite MLB pitchers seems to be growing to unsustainable levels. If Tim gets say a two or three year deal worth $20M per year, that would make him about 15% of their expected payroll. I have a hard time thinking anyone can influence the outcome of a club that much given they only play once every five days. 15% of your payroll to play in about 30 or so games? Ouch...

...noting that it will cease production out of respect for Jobs and following "immense pressure" from lawyers representing Apple and Jobs' family.

I wrote about this earlier. Glad to see appropriate action was taken. I had a discussion with some friends about why I felt something like this was wrong but could care less if say someone printed a bunch of non-NBA licensed Monta Ellis jerseys and sold them. First off, this is clearly someone trying to cash in on someone else's death. There's just something morbid about that. And two, it's more "human" than say counterfeiting a jersey or putting someone's name on a product to trick people into thinking they endorse it. You're taking someone's very likeness/image and profiting from it. That's where it crosses the line for me. Would I have been as bent out of shape if say it was Amy Winehouse or Dan Wheldon? Probably not because I don't have a strong opinion about these people. But in principal I still would think it's wrong and would have no issue with their families suing the profiteers.

I don't know if this is just profiteering or a misguided homage. Either way, it's pretty disgusting. I knew people were going to try and make money off the death of Steve Jobs. Some were authorized, this is obviously not. The company behind this could have made some veiled attempt at sincerity by donating a portion of proceeds to cancer research. I hope Apple legal is on this and gets them shut down before they sell a single one.

Two people with knowledge of the negotiations say the Golden State Warriors are close to signing guard Nate Robinson, who was released by the Oklahoma City Thunder last month.

This could be interesting. Nate has shown he can score and can carry the backup role behind Steph and Monta. I think his question marks have always been attitude and defense. Not sure the defense has improved but maybe Mark Jackson can fix the attitude.

One of the more interesting experiments Thompson plans on trying is SMS-based room service for the 248 residential units inside the Grand building.

The Grand is a new-ish apartment complex in the Uptown area of Oakland and having a cafe room service thing might be interesting. I hope the owner can still make money given all the bells and whistles he's bringing to his business. The ultimate question will be whether the coffee tastes good or not. I'll definitely give them a shot when they open next year.

Tests revealed Curry didn't sustain any ligament damage and the repairs made in his offseason surgery are still intact.

Some good news for the Warriors. There's no reason to play Steph in the first two games. Let him rest up a full week and play against the Knicks in the 3rd game of the season. And if the Warriors somehow beat the Clippers AND the Bulls, I would rest him until they go on the road against Phoenix the following week. No season was won or lost on the first few games and if he hurts that ankle again, he could be out for months instead of days.

Center Kwame Brown has agreed to a one-year, $7-million contract with the Golden State Warriors, according to a Yahoo! Sports report.

Kind of scratching my head on this one. $7M for a back-up center who has had a history of underachievement? So now we have two centers who aren't worth their contracts?