If you're gonna hire ballers to be on TV...

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[From Stephen B. Snyde...]

Last week the SportsBusiness Journal reported a poll by Turnkey Sports and Entertainment, which found that...

58% of respondents preferred the NBA on TNT as compared to 42% on ESPN.

If this were a presidential poll, we'd call it a landslide. The NBA on TNT has more personality, more chemistry. We want to hear Kenny Smith's inside perspectives and whatever smart or dumb thing that comes out of Charles Barkley's mouth, as well as Ernie Johnson's tactful yet modest-sounding, ego-less rebuttals. We want to see the post-game interviews because we believe the players will respond better to the TNT bunch than your average news crew.

Last night Ernie wasn't there, apparently receiving a well-deserved Emmy. Now, if you're gonna go out and hire ballers like Kenny the Jet, Chuckie, and sometimes Magic Johnson and Reggie Miller, why not just run your crew like an NBA team?

Ernie is clearly the point guard, distributing the conversation and making sure everybody's heard. Ironically, Kenny remains like a 2-guard, initiating the conversation and going for the big points, while Chuckie's doing the dirty work, adding a little negative or positive, the emotional spark down low. When he's there, Magic actually is the role player who fills in the blanks.

To the NBA broadcasting world, Ernie's like what Magic was to the Showtime Lakers. He's just so fun to watch. If the old school Lakers didn't have Magic for a game or two, wouldn't Michael Cooper slide in from the bench to play the point? Or heck, if this was rec league, you'd almost rather play with 4 guys against 5, just not to mess with the championship/hall-of-fame/legendary starters' chemistry!

You'd just as soon move Byron Scott to the (gasp) 1 -- i.e., Kenny the Jet assumes Ernie's role and it's just him and Chuckie all night long -- before you give the car keys to some schmuck off the street, right?

Who's the GM of the TNT team?

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Guess this means the Mavs will win the championship

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The #8 Golden State Warriors just beat the #1 Dallas Mavericks by double-digits (12, to be exact), leading to much joy in the Bay Area today. Which got me wondering, when was the last time the team with the best record in the NBA lost its first playoff game?

Let us preface by noting ESPN's Elias Says, embedded in the game's boxscore, which mentions the following...

Only one other team in NBA history lost its first playoff game following a season in which it won more than 63 games. The 1966-67 Philadelphia 76ers won 68 games during the regular season and went on to win the NBA title despite dropping their playoff opener to the Cincinnati Royals (120-116 at Philadelphia, March 21, 1967).

If you look up the last 10 years of playoff results on Wikipedia [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1997_NBA_Playoffs, where you can type in your desired year in the URL], you'll see that there are only two instances in the last 10 years when the team with the best record lost its first game in the playoffs...

• 2003: The Stephon Marbury-led Phoenix Suns defeated the San Antonio Spurs, 96-95, on Marbury's buzzer-beating bankshot trey.
  
  
• 1998: The Houston Rockets, behind Hakeem Olajuwon, Clyde Drexler, Charles Barkley coming off the bench (?), and -- believe it or not -- an 18-and-14 by Kevin Willis, defeated the Utah Jazz by 13, 103-90. Utah tied the Chicago Bulls for the best record in the NBA that year and had the tiebreaker over the Bulls.

So now that they have botched Game 1 against the #8 seed, this means the Mavs are guaranteed to reach the Finals, because we know the 76ers did it 1967, Jazz in 1998, and Spurs in 2003.

Both the 1967 76ers and 2003 Spurs won the championship. Since the 1998 Jazz don't count because they faced Michael Jordan's 2nd three-peat and impending retirement, as well as the Willis factor (remember, he's now on the 2007 Mavericks!), this means the Mavs will win the 2007 championship. I'm not a Mavs fan, I'm just showing you the voodoo.

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How 'bout Yao now?

[From Stephen B. Snyde for Friday tidbits...]

This one goes out to all you who dumped on Yao Ming in the past. From Charles Barkley to Shaquille O'Neal to TrueHoop reader "Femzilla", who once wrote...

...there haven't been many Chinese players in the league, and going by the track record Yao has really been the only one to accomplish success--and he hasn't even lived up to the hype...

The upcoming NBA playoffs in a few weeks is probably going to be the more visible, noticeable turning point for Yao. To be accompanied by silence. From all those critics from before who will be shut up with nothing to say.

I give you The Evolution of Yao, by Chris Ballard for SportsIllustrated.

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Charles Barkley opens the door to the Iraq at home

Thanks to TrueHoop (and no thanks to TNT.tv or NBA.com which gave no indication there were NBA telecasts on Monday), Poor Man's Commish saw this...

Charles Barkley from TNT last night: “If (Dr. King) were still alive today, as a person who preached non-violence, would he be disturbed at all the violence we have going on in the black community? It does a great disservice to Dr. King with all this black on black crime going on in our communities.”

Remember, I wrote back in the first dreamBlogue entry that I would delve into the scariness of the numbers that our very own James Love fell victim to.

I've been waiting to find the right time to bring this up and thanks to Chuckie, now is the right time...

Read the rest of the story

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