Dish on Yi Jianlian makes it good to have Insider today

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[Believe it or not, I actually compare Yi Jianlian to a dreamleaguer...read on!]

If you're a fan of Yi as we are, today's ESPN Insider article by Chad Ford makes the Insider subscription worth it (even though we got ours at a major discount, ha!).

Ford witnessed workouts by Yi over two days in LA and had rave reviews. Here are some samples, for those of you blocked out of the Insider wall...

• Don MacLean (former UCLA star and current trainer for Nick Young, draft prospect out of USC): "Have you seen the Yi kid yet? That kid was amazing."
  
  
• Joakim Noah, who was also training in LA, about Yi's workouts: "Something to behold. Where did that guy come from?"...

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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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SuperfluousGuy gets paid

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

John Ourand of the SportsBusiness Journal (SBJ) reported a couple weeks ago...

ESPN.com has retained its most popular columnist, Bill Simmons, signing him to a multiyear contract. Simmons signed a four-year extension through 2010.

It's probably an incentive-laden contract. Like one dollar per word after the first 10,000 words in each piece.

The SportsGuy also managed to burp out a CLM in celebration...

There were some rumors that SI.com would make a run at Simmons, but Simmons said he would never consider working for that site following the publication of a March 2006 Sports Illustrated article that Simmons felt treated him unfairly.

“I would never work for them,” Simmons said.

Let's see, ESPN's probably #1, SI's probably #2, who's #3? SportingNews?

For those of you who don't work in Corporate America, CLM = career limiting move.

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Is there a legit comparison to Kobe and MJ?

In light of Kobe's recent history-making outburst, this would be a good time to mention the nail that writer Scoop Jackson hit squarely on the head in the latest issue of Sole Collector that was passed out for free at the Jordan Brand Experience at Vegas All-Star Weekend last month.

In an interview by Anthony Gilbert, Scoop answers the question of a legit comparison to Kobe and MJ quite effectively:

Yeah, easy...like tracing paper. Xerox machine. KINKOS. As much as the replication looks, seems and feels like the original, it's not. There's always some resolution that gets lost in the process. But that's just in basketball...they are totally different as people. And that affects the outcome of their games. Kobe is not as personable and charming as Mike. It's not in his nature, that's just not who he is. Part of MJ's greatness was his ability to be cool with everyone, teammates, and victims. Dudes that played with [MJ] would kill for him, he was able to draw that much love from others. Kobe's never been able to do that and because of that I think he hasn't been able to reach MJ's level of brilliance. He has too many people around him that will never love him...It's like, imagine how differently Barry Sanders' career would have been if his offensive line hated him?...They would not block or fight as hard as they could for them to get those yards, which in the long run affect's Barry's...greatness."

ESPN.com's Chris Broussard today writes that Kobe's starting to "get it" (Insider subscription required), that he's finally maturing...

The sad thing is that if Kobe had "gotten it" years earlier, he might have left the game with more titles than MJ.

Can the right amount of maturity ever put Kobe on MJ's level? Scoop's theory seems to be the correct one, not Broussard's.

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Greg Oden = Bill Russell and NBA TV fantasy funny

Oden: a young/old Bill Russell?

Here's some hoops-only funny stuff from a recent Bill Simmons chat:

Nate (New York): Is it just me, or does Greg Oden look like an old Bill Russell? What are the chances this kid is actually only 18 years old?

And for those in the know, doesn't Oden's quiet emotionless demeanor totally remind you of former dreamleague Bay Area and current dreamleague NYC big man, Brian Liang?!

Bizarro world Bill Russell tidbits:

• Many dreamleaguers in the Bay Area still go up to the Sacramento Barons tournament, which is almost always held at Russell's alma mater, Elk Grove High School. There's a mural of him inside the gym.
  
  
• NYC dreamleaguer Shawn Liao works with Russell through Liao's Shanghai Sharks ties.

Here's the other funny part from the chat transcript:

Mike (Clifton Park, N.Y.): Ever watch NBA TV's fantasy show at 1 in the morning? Where do they find these guys for that show? And shouldn't they add a second guy to it, I feel bad for the lone dude who has to kill 30 minutes of fantasy talk by himself.

Bill Simmons: I thought I was the only one who watched that show! Sometimes I want to call in just to throw him a bone for two minutes … I always feel like he's going to assume nobody is watching and just start saying crazy things into the camera like, "Guess what I did today? I touched my own poop. And it felt good. Anyway, back to the Grizzlies …"

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Wonder-trail of MJ DKYs Part II of III

As you'll recall from Part I, our brief TrueHoop-YouTube-Google excursion of Michael Jordan Did You Know's began with the 1986 60 Minutes interview where we read the fine print and saw that MJ's "love of the game" clause was addressed to one "Jonathan". If it was addressed to "Jerry", as in Reinsdorf or Krause, we would not have pressed forward.

A Google search on "jonathan bulls owner" reveals an ESPN article from 2003 called "Cashing in on the ultimate cash cow" by Darren Rovell describing how MJ impacted the wealth of other people, with Reinsdorf at the top of the list. Curiously absent from the list: William Wesley, the most important NBA insider no one's heard of, as unearthed by TrueHoop's Henry Abbott.

More in Part III to follow.

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dreamleaguer breaks finger playing with NBA ball

The previous Sunday 12/3, due to another one of those rich youth basketball leagues that pushed us out of the usual nice main gym, and as the league of the Poor Man's Commish, naturally, we were forced to play in a high school's "auxiliary" (read: "abandoned") gym.

Here, we found out that "auxiliary" really meant the older, dusty building across the way that looked like it could have been used as a set of the movie Hoosiers. The one that got overlooked by the district for earthquake retrofitting. The one even the janitor doesn't have the keys for.

Not surprisingly, we found a ton of dead spots on the floor.

Meanwhile, I had brought one of dreamleague's two new Spalding NBA balls with me...

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A bunch of Allen Iversons play in dreamleague

Over the Thanksgiving holiday (Fri Nov 17 to be exact), I was watching the Philly vs Phoenix game on ESPN when Jim Gray reported that Allen Iverson was paying for the funeral of Kevin Johnson, a kid who got shot refusing to give up the AI jersey he was wearing...

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