NBA Oddities - And Other League Issues

[Bklyn]

Who got stabbed, who got sued by their baby mamas and who got the latest gun charge...

[It's me Karen]

[youtube]uQwa0VrdLsQ[/youtube]

[T Dot O Dot]

anybody else think Westbrook is turning into a knucklehead?

[Bklyn]

big time. The biggest issue is that he was never a point guard. I think we may be witnessing the basketball equivalent of the "hoe to a housewife" maxim.

[Bklyn]

I was having a conversation with a buddy in the office about Charles Oakley smacking someone because they owed him money, but I couldn't remember the player...only that he was a guard and had a "smack me" face.

So, I decided to Google it and started typing "Charles Oakley slaps..."

You know how Google auto-fills searches for you to speed up the process? Well, they listed about 4 "Charles Oakley slaps" recipients before it truncated, and still did not list the player (turns out it was Jeff McInnis...thank you 4th iteration of the search).

Who knew Oak was such a prolific issuer of the open hand?

[aTm]

Charles Oakley, Jeff McInnis, and some other guys.

[Bklyn]

I found it hilarious he told Barkley "I'm going to smack you every time I see you."

Classic.

[T Dot O Dot]

Oakley slappin McInnis was over a girl

Oakley showed up at Tyrone Hill's hotel room when the Sixers visitted Toronto looking for his money... I think it was about 50 grand

[Bklyn]

Oak is fast becoming my favorite NBA player of all time. My Dude needs a section in the HOF.

[T Dot O Dot]

The Toronto beat writers still miss him, he was the best interview ever

the most famous soundbite is :

“Pimpin' ain't easy. Pimpin' ain't dead. The ho's are just scared”

[Chuck Nevitt]

Shaping up to be quite an ending in Memphis...

[Johnette's Daddy]

Oakley slappin McInnis was over a girl

Oakley showed up at Tyrone Hill's hotel room when the Sixers visitted Toronto looking for his money... I think it was about 50 grand

http://gotemcoach.com/post/929773283/br ... er-chicago

-In the 2000 season, Oakley played in a pre-season exhibition game against the Sixers and Tyrone Hill. Before tipoff, Oakley found Hill and slapped him in the mouth. They started a fight and both were ejected.

-Before a regular season game, Tyrone Hill was leaving the floor after shootaround, and Oakley started throwing basketballs at him, one of which hit him in the face. Lets let Sixer point guard Eric Snow color the story: “Every time we play each other, Oakley says something about Hill. He’ll say ‘Where’s Hill at?’”

-Why did he he intimidate and rough up Hill? Two years prior, Tyrone Hill lost a dice game to Oakley, to the tune of $54,000. “A gentleman pays his debt within a week or two,” Oakley said. Because payment was deliquent, Oakley charged him double, saying, “Everything in life is double. If he didn’t pay me $108,000, he didn’t pay me.”

-In the 2001 NBA playoffs, Oakley constantly insulted teammate Vince Carter and even exchanged words with Carter’s mother. Rumor has it Oakley was displeased with Carter letting him, and other teammates, down during crunch time.

-Charles Oakley was dating a woman in Charlotte, NC. He called the woman’s house and LA Clipper Jeff McInnis was there. Oakley went hunting for Jeff that night, but couldn’t find him. So, the next time their two teams played, Oakley walked up to McInnis on the bench and punched him in the head before the game. Oakley blamed one of McInnis’ coaches at the time, Alvin Gentry, for telling reporters the story.

-Oakley had a rumored run-in with the producer of the 1989 NBA video “Awesome Endings.” No other details available, but I can’t imagine that one going well.

-Charles Oakley slapped Charles Barkley across the face during a player’s union meeting. “I heard what he was saying about me in Atlantic City and I didn’t like it. I’m fed up with him. I told him ‘You need to change your name. I’m the only Charles.’” Oakley finished by telling Barkley, “Every time I see you, I’m going to slap you.”

-In a basketball game after the slap, Oakley threw Barkley to the floor. Barkley got up swinging and the two were separated. Post-game, Clyde Drexler called Oak a “dirty player.” Oakley responded by saying, “He [Drexler] can blow me.”

-This is a quote from Oakley on Kenyon Martin, “You got to know when enough’s enough. You want to rob the bank, but you better not be complainin’ when you get caught. In my day, a guy who jumps that high with that many tatoos, he would’ve wound up sitting on the floor at least once. It’s just the kind of player (Martin) is. And the kind of guy I am.”

[Bklyn]

Seriously. Section in the Hall; right next to Horry's.

[Simitar]

Robert "Tractor" Traylor, RIP: The former Michigan standout who was drafted in 1998 but never panned out, died Tuesday at the age of 34. Traylor was part of the heralded "2nd Fab 5" recruiting class at Michigan in 1994, but they never produced the magic of the original group. Traylor's NBA career started ominously, as he was traded to Milwaukee on draft day for Dirk Nowitzki. According to Elnuevodia, a newspaper in Puerto Rico, Traylor died Tuesday of a massive heart attack.

[Bklyn]

Sorry to hear that. Never liked the cat, but shame he bowed out so early in the game.

[T Dot O Dot]

http://nba-point-forward.si.com/2011/05 ... -to-union/

The NBA proposed to the players’ union last month a version of the “franchise tag” that it wants to include in the next collective bargaining agreement, according to sources familiar with the matter.

The tag, however, would be very different from the NFL’s version, which allows a team to essentially block one of its free agents from entering the market by binding him to his incumbent team with a one-year contract that carries a high salary based on various parameters.

The system the league has presented would not work this way, according to sources. Instead, a team would be allowed to designate one player for preferential contractual treatment, including more overall money, more guaranteed money and at least one extra year on his contract. A player would have to agree to such a designation. It is designed to work as an incentive to get a player to remain with his team rather than as a roadblock to free agency, the sources said.

Take the situation between the Cavaliers and LeBron James one year ago. Under the league’s proposal, the Cavaliers would not have been able to unilaterally “tag” James a franchise player and bind him to the team for one more season. The Cavaliers would have been able to offer James various enticements he may not have been able to get from other teams, the sources said.

The NBA’s current collective bargaining agreement already gives incumbent teams such advantages when it comes to re-signing their own players. James and Chris Bosh both took less money to sign with the Heat than they could have received from the Cavs and Raptors, respectively. The idea behind the league’s new proposal would be to increase the gap between what teams can offer a “designated player” and what non-designated players can get on the open market.

Two caveats here:

1) Though the CBA expires on June 30, negotiations are really only starting to pick up. SI.com’s Sam Amick confirmed a report that commissioner David Stern and union executive director Billy Hunter have been meeting in person recently, and added that the two have more sit-downs scheduled over the next couple of weeks. That is a good sign, but we’re early in the process, and there are still many details to work out on how the “designated player” system would work.

2) The designated player is one small part of a larger proposal and must be considered as such, sources said. It exists within an overall plan that key members of the players’ union have said they do not like. It has been widely reported that the league wants to reduce the amount of revenue players receive (currently 57 percent of all basketball-related income); trim player salaries by as much as $800 million per year; cut the length and maximum value of player contracts; and slash the amount of money guaranteed to players in each contract.

Sources also said the league’s proposal would ban fully guaranteed contracts. All contracts would have limits on the amount of money a player would be guaranteed to receive, and those guarantees would decline during the life of each contract. In other words, a player making, say, $5 million per season over four years would actually be guaranteed less than $5 million in each of those four seasons — and the amount guaranteed would drop each season. The idea is for teams to be able to get out of undesirable contacts more easily and avoid ugly, Eddy Curry-style buyout talks.

It is within that kind of system in which you have to consider the league’s designated player idea. By cutting guaranteed money and contract lengths leaguewide, the overall proposal would make the benefits the designated player would receive more meaningful.

Would that be enough to keep free agents tied to small-market teams? It’s too early to say, just as it’s too early to say exactly what sort of “franchise tag”-style system, if any, the league will adopt. But this is the starting point, at least on paper, and it’s different in one crucial way from the NFL’s well-known system.

[Bklyn]

Doesn't sound totally unreasonable...so far.

[Johnette's Daddy]

It's the owners' desperate cry to save them from themselves.

If I'm the players, no way do I accept current seasons not being fully guaranteed, unless they do like the NFL and allow amortized signing bonuses.

[tin mad dog]

Robert "Tractor" Traylor, RIP: The former Michigan standout who was drafted in 1998 but never panned out, died Tuesday at the age of 34. Traylor was part of the heralded "2nd Fab 5" recruiting class at Michigan in 1994, but they never produced the magic of the original group. Traylor's NBA career started ominously, as he was traded to Milwaukee on draft day for Dirk Nowitzki. According to Elnuevodia, a newspaper in Puerto Rico, Traylor died Tuesday of a massive heart attack.

He wasn't part of the 2nd Fab 5. That was: Jerod Ward, Mo' Taylor, Willie Mitchell, Maceo Baston and Travis Conlin.

He was in the class the year after with Albert White, Louis Bullock and the would-be Wolverine Kevin Garnett had KG gotten his SAT qualifier one test earlier.

RIP, Big Fella!

[Bklyn]

I thought KG was going to Kentucky...