Tuyen's Blog

LeBron James interview: Cleveland Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert gave him 'motivation' - ESPN

And Clevelanders, because they were the bigger-city kids when we were growing up, looked down on us. ... So we didn't actually like Cleveland. We hated Cleveland growing up. There's a lot of people in Cleveland we still hate to this day.
via sports.espn.go.com

This is an excerpt from a GQ interview with LeBron. Of course, I don't agree with his method of leaving Cleveland (The Decision) but I never had an issue with him wanting to go somewhere else to play. It's a free country and he can go any where he wants. As we know loyalty is only skin deep when it comes to players and owners.

The above quote should give people some insight into LeBron's mind though as it relates to Cleveland and his true hometown Akron. I hear a lot of folks bash LeBron because he turned his back on his hometown. But that's simply not true because LeBron never considered Cleveland his hometown. A more closer to home example for me would be if someone from the East Bay called San Francisco their hometown. It ain't. Two different cities that might as well be separated by 100 or 1,000 miles than just 10 culturally speaking.

Did the Lakers just steal Ron Artest?

I cannot believe that Ron Artest just committed to the Lakers for 3 years and $18.6M or 5 years for $33.5M. Does anyone else think that Ron Artest is woefully underpaid? The above deals value him between $6.2M and $6.7M a year. Here's a list of other players making about that much:
 
Nazr Mohammed - $6M
Vladimir Radmanovic - $6M
Tim Thomas - $6M
Jerome James - $6.2M
Marquis Daniels - $6.8M
Dan Gadzuric - $6.2M
Luke Ridnour - $6.5M
Jared Jeffries - $6M
Chris Wilcox - $6.7M
Etan Thomas - $6.8M
Mike James - $6.2M
Marko Jaric - $6.5M
Darko Milicic - $7M
Brian Cardinal - $6.3M
Antonio Daniels - $6.2M
Earl Watson - $6.2M
 
In an interview with ESPN, Artest stated that he had earned a lot of money over his career and wasn't really going after the money any more. Still, I think given that he's the only player since 1999-2000 to average 16 points, 5 rebounds, and 2 steals per game and is probably the best wing defender today, someone should have given him a lot more.

Some respite for poor Warrior's fans... At least we're not Clipper's fans.

To put the following quote in context, Bill Simmons of ESPN is writing about the Cavaliers-Clippers game yesterday.  This is a hillarious quote about the final shot of the game by Zach Randolph.

The fans are in disbelief. Randolph's teammates are in disbelief. Dunleavy is making a face that my friend Sal later describes as a face I have never seen a human being make before. What ensued in the next 20 seconds could best be described like this: Imagine being trapped in one of those big hospital elevators with eight other people. One of them pulls his pants down and just starts going to the bathroom -- not No. 1 but No. 2. At that specific moment, the doors open for the next floor. How fast would everyone else in the elevator flee for the door? Lightning-fast, right? Like, Usain Bolt-level fast, right? That was the entire stadium after Z-Bo's air ball. He basically took a dump on the 3-point line.
via sports.espn.go.com

The entire article is a nice microcosm of what I think is probably one of the worst run franchises in the NBA (Golden State used to hold that title).  A great read for all basketball enthusiasts.

The ever shrinking private space...

Just read on ESPN.com that an employee of the Philadelphia Eagles was fired for a post he put up on Facebook. Basically, this employee was upset that one of his favorite players, Brian Dawkins, signed with the Denver Broncos. His post was:

"Dan is [expletive] devastated about Dawkins signing with Denver ... Dam Eagles R Retarted!!"

Seems pretty harmless by sports forum chatter standards. The employee later deleted the post but was still fired a few days later. I've heard of similar things happening in other non-sports related companies where employees have been terminated for making detrimental statements on social networking or blog sites. I'm sure the threshold is different for each company and I can't speak to what I'd do if faced with a similar situation. Most likely, my take would be that unless an employee is leaking private company information or committing deliberate libel towards the company or another employee, it's really not a big deal. Employees shouldn't be afraid to voice their opinions about their employers. If nothing else, I'd view it as a valuable communication tool for employers to improve the way they do things. However, incidents like the above are just another reminder that in the new age of Facebook/MySpace/Twitter/Blogs/etc. we have far less privacy than we'd like to think (a lot of which is our own fault). My rule of thumb is I expect every post/update/comment/etc. that I make will be read by every single person in the world from my business partners to my mother. If I wouldn't want any of them reading it, I shouldn't even put it up.

Twitter mentioned on PTI

I'm watching PTI (Pardon the Interruption on ESPN) and one of the segments is about Twitter. The story is that guys like Chris Bosh (http://twitter.com/chrisbosh) and Shaq (http://twitter.com/THE_REAL_SHAQ) actively use Twitter (Bosh has about 2,100 followers, Shaq has over 105,000!). Dan LeBatard and Tony Kornheiser are discussing whether more and more athletes will become active on Twitter. The fact that Twitter was mentioned by a bunch of older dudes on a sports show has demonstrated for me that Twitter now has crossed over to the mainstream. It's like when my mom mentioned that she was "Googling" a while back - that pretty much meant to me that Google had arrived.
 
Back to the show, Dan made a very interesting comment that with services like Twitter, sports reporters are now becoming less and less relevant. If an athlete can connect directly with the fans, do we really need the sports reporter in the locker room with a microphone? I'd say that sports reporters and especially sports journalists are still necessary. What these athletes do with Twitter only shows me what the athlete may be willing to share but that's only part of the story. It takes an investigative reporter or journalist to dig beyond that to uncover more truth or to provide interpretation and insightful commentary. Do you think A-Rod would have confessed to taking roids had a journalist not uncovered it? I think services like Twitter are a nice addition to the sports information stream but by far not the end all.