5. ryan howard - yesterday, the phillies slugger was awarded $10 million in his salary arbitration case against the team. this was the highest salary every awarded to a player who won their case though last year alfonso soriano was also awarded $10 million in a losing effort. i've always wanted to be a fly on the wall during a typical arbitration hearing just because i'm very curious how it usually goes. well, flies are kind of gross. maybe just a person on the wall, who can fly. oh man that'd be so cool. back to the topic at hand, from how i understand arbitration, it seems like a player makes a case for why he deserves a certain amount of money and his team makes a case for why the player stinks. maybe there's more to it. like arm wrestling or the judge allowing 10 minutes for each side to come up with "yo momma" jokes.
4. spurs fans - last night, the spurs clipped the timberwolves, 100-99 thanks to a jumper with six seconds left by human ginobili who led the spurs with 44 points. and to continue my trend of never giving ginobili credit, note that he missed 5-of-18 shots. had he hit all of these, this game would have been decided long ago. and on top of that he even missed a free throw! uh, manu, they're called "free" throws for a reason. now that i've gotten my "bash ginobili for no reason" fix we can talk about the fact that spurs fans have the least stressful team to watch. there was not a moment in that game that i thought the spurs were going to lose. it was inevitable. i wonder what it's like to cheer for a team knowing they won't ever blow it. is it even fun? the answer is obviously yes.3. baby miner - last night, the rockets capped a very busy day with a 112-100 win over the less busy miami heat. earlier, houston swung one trade that shipped off bonzi wells and mike james for bobby jackson and another one that sent kirk snyder to minnesota for gerald green. the rockets have been playing well enough lately that i think if they manage to make the playoffs it will be less about these trades and more about carl landry dunking all the time. but the most interesting aspect about these trades to me is the rockets acquiring houston native gerald green, who i think is quickly becoming the new harold miner. if you don't remember harold miner, he was potential personified. in his rookie year he won the slam dunk contest, then in his third year he won it again. after that season he was traded and played only 19 more games in his nba career. so far, gerald green's career path has been eerily similar. this is now his third team in less than a season's worth of games and i want to see if another change of scenery will help him avoid flaming out a la miner. though i'm not sure the rockets can afford to give gerald green playing time while they fight for they're in the thick of a competitive playoff race. this means we'll likely never see someone do the cupcake dunk during a game. but if gerald green just ate a cupcake during a game that'd be almost as good to me.
2. brary bodns - sometime last week, a report surfaced that in a filing by prosecutors for barry bonds' perjury trial he failed a drug test in 2001. the sports world was abuzz, but the next day it was discovered that this was a typo as they actually meant he failed a drug test in 2000. bonds' defense is now claiming that these typos have compromised his chance for a fair trial and have filed a complaint. likewise, i expect to receive a similar complaint from bonds' team about the typos on this site very soon. anyways, because i'm not well-versed in law, i have no clue what the result could be if this complaint is accepted. it seems kind of ridiculous to throw out an entire case just because of a few typos. unless there were additional typos throughout the original document where "barry bonds" was accidentally misspelled as "roger clemens", i doubt this is going to go very far. trust me, i complain constantly, and best thing that's ever happened as a result was one time at ruby tuesday's when someone spit on a steak that i sent back to get re-cooked.
1. lebron's new teammates - the real winners of yesterday's nba trade deadline were not any specific teams, but all of the players who now get to play alongside lebron james. after missing out on mike bibby and jason kidd, cleveland gm danny ferry burned up phone lines trying to appease his lone star player. his efforts weren't in vain as he managed to pull of a 3-team, 11-player deal. all told, the cavs sent off drew gooden, larry hughes, ira newble, donyell marshall, cedric simmons and got back ben wallace, joe smith, wally szczerbiak, and delonte west. i'm sure cleveland's jersey guy is currently burning up phone lines himself trying to figure out if he has enough letters in stock to spell "szczerbiak". regardless, it's hard not to like this trade for cleveland. at only the cost of several members of the worst supporting cast in the league, lebron gets some new and better functioning toys to play with. it's like danny ferry threw away lebron's old hungry hungry hippos game that was missing all but two marbles and bought him rock-em sock-em robots. sure it's not the best toy in the world, but at least you don't have to use fruit loops in lieu of marbles when you play it. but overall, i'm not sure this is quite enough to push them past boston or detroit. of course, i'm not going to be the one who counts out lebron james. or wally scerbak.
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