Sore Sports with Nelson Laut

As a sports fan, it goes with with territory that T-Shirts will be made to totally insult your favorite team, but seriously there should be a line when it comes to shirts like this. Words cannot describe how much this has been done in poor taste- It’s one thing to capitalize on a big sporting event like the Stanley Cup to sell alot of shirts, but to take a phrase like “Boston Strong” (a phrase that is being used to unite a city and country in the face of adversity) is just classless. 

Remember this moron? The one who decided to re-purpose the city of Boston’s mantra after the Boston Marathon bombings into cheap heat at a Toronto Maple Leafs playoff game against the Bruins? The outcry over the “Toronto Stronger” sign was … Continue reading →

Jason Kidd gives his final assist by helping the Knicks with saving cap space.

Jason Kidd will retire from the NBA, the point guard announced Monday. The decision comes with two years and a little more than $6 million left on his contract with the Knicks. Given his waning production and the team’s salary-cap problems, Kidd may have helped the Knicks. More »

Dwightmare: The Sequel coming to an off-season near you! Does $100+ million and the allure of L.A. really not enough for Dwight Howard? Maybe he really does care about winning more than entertaining if he is interested in joining either the Rockets and/or the Mavs. When Kobe, Gasol, and Nash are healthy, the Lakers would still be a contender but how can you not be intrigued by the Rockets with Harden, Lin, Asik and Parsons or a Dallas team with Nowitzki and the prospect of Chris Paul joining you?

Chicago Bulls forward Luol Deng and guard Kirk Hinrich are most likely out for Monday’s Game 4 against the Miami Heat, coach Tom Thibodeau said.

If there was any time for Derrick Rose to make a triumphant return to the Bulls now’s the time. Even if he claims that he’s not ready to play (contrary to the past couple of months of reports that he’s been practicing quite well),  the Bulls’ roster is lacking depth with Deng and Hinrich out. He should at least give it a quarter to see how much he can either help or hurt the team. What does he have to lose other than more respect the more he declines to play?

George Karl led the Denver Nuggets to a team-record 57 wins without a big name on his roster.

Kobe Bryant is in a court battle to try to keep his mother from auctioning off mementoes from his high school days in Pennsylvania and his early NBA career.

I guess Kobe should clean his room more so that his mom doesn’t give stuff away without telling him.

Manti Te’o is coming to San Diego, courtesy of a second-round pick. And, if the above cartoon from his newly-adopted hometown paper, the San Diego Union-Tribune, is any indication, old jokes about Te’o won’t die easily. The combination of poor … Continue reading →

I’d expect a joke like this from a rival team’s city Newspaper like the Boston Herald (New England Patriots) or even the New York Post (New York Jets), but seriously from the city that drafted you? Way to make Manti feel right at home. Stay classy San Diego!

A good read. Boston and New York Sports fans are very brutal towards each others teams and players but something like this should not ever be tolerated. It’s one thing to boo a player like Paul Pierce because of what team he plays for, but when the New York Knicks set up a classy pregame ceremony to honor the victims of the Boston Marathon Bombings, there’s no need for fans to be acting in that manner.

Michael Jordan’s former personal trainer Tim Grover said it was food poisoning, rather than the flu, that affected Jordan during Game 5 of the 1997 NBA Finals, which has come to be known as ‘The Flu Game.’

It doesn’t matter if Michael Jordan had the flu or ate a bad pizza - If you’re that sick and can still deliver in one of the biggest stages in sports then you are one of the greats. But I don’t think MJ would’ve won that game if he had a bad burrito though.

FAN UP, MIAMI.

Let’s hope that the Celtics, Knicks, Bulls, or Pacers can get them to eat some humble pie to go with that champagne in the playoffs.

A great read by Thomas Golianopoulos and the staff at Grantland.com.

L.A. Clippers’ forward Blake Griffin would be happy if his team won the Pacific Division but doesn’t like the idea of hanging a banner for that accomplishment.

As reported by ESPN:

“I kind of have bigger goals than that for the team,” Griffin said. “I think the team has bigger goals than that. We expected to win the division. We didn’t come into this season thinking, ‘Oh, it would be great if we could win the division.’ We expected it. It’s something to be proud of and maybe there’s a banner that goes up (in the training facility), but it’s not something that needs to go up in Staples [Center], and we don’t need to hang our hat on that.”

Of course Blake and his teammates have aspirations to win it all (I think it’s pretty safe to say that all the NBA teams want to win a championship year in and year out) but I don’t see what the problem is to hang a banner. Just because you hang a division banner doesn’t mean that your team is jinxed for the rest of the year. It’s up to the coaches and players to win those other banners and if an owner want to hang banners to celebrate the accomplishments of a team so be it.

The only way that I see hanging division banners becoming a problem is if the Boston Celtics or Los Angeles Lakers start hanging them. If those two teams hung all of their division and conference banners alongside their championship banners then it would like Paul Bunyan’s giant laundry line.

Gotta hand it to Dallas Mavs owner Mark Cuban - he does not shy away from speaking his mind in front of the media. Baylor’s Brittney Griner is a very gifted Athlete and she has a bright future ahead of her whether she plays in the WNBA and/or internationally.

Mark Cuban does bring up a very good topic for debate among basketball fans: Could Brittney Griner hold her own in the NBA? While most may say no with the only reason that she is a woman that would be playing in a very physical league like the NBA, it’s not like it’s the NFL where brutal hits happen. I think it would be possible based on her size. She 6’8” and with a frame that would be perfect for a large shooting guard or small forward. Although her game is mainly in the paint from what I’ve seen in the games I’ve watched the past couple of years, it could be possible that with some outside shooting help she could add being a spot up shooter to her already impressive skill set.

I say draft her Mark Cuban! Low risk while being a trailblazer for giving women the opportunity to play in the NBA.

This is a very amusing April Fool’s Day Joke. Only thing that I hope is true is that the Seattle gets a NBA team again.