MVN - Most Valuable Network

Thursday Roundup: Is the NBA the New “No Fun League?”

Odds and ends:

• Someone explain this to me: Why won’t the NBA agree to raise the rim to 12 feet during the dunk contest, to accommodate at least one of Dwight Howard’s slams? I mean, we’re talking about the freaking dunk contest here…why does it need to be taken so seriously? Why not let Howard do something that could potentially get more people to pay attention to All-Star Saturday? I’m struggling with the league’s logic, here. Howard, Rudy Gay, and Gerald Green have been talking some smack lately about wanting to outdo each other with the height of their dunks during the contest…it was an interesting storyline that actually infused some hype into the dunk contest, but for some reason, the NBA felt the need to crush this compelling aspect of the contest. For the love of God, why can’t the league bend the rules a little?
• The 76ers had a great giveaway last night: The first 5,000 fans at their game against Memphis received this awesome Mr. Potatohead figurine. However, that freebie fails to top my favorite sports promotion of all-time: My hometown minor league baseball team, the St. Paul Saints, gave away purple and gold toy boats to fans after news broke of the infamous Minnesota Vikings sex boat scandal.
• The fine folks at Boiled Sports are still recovering from their Erin Andrews sighting at a recent Purdue basketball game.
• Unfortunately, ESPN asked YouTube to remove the embarrassing Chris Berman videos that were recently leaked to the interwebs, and YouTube complied with that request. I’m honestly not sure why ESPN reacted in this way…seriously, although the release of those videos must have been fairly upsetting for Berman, the tapes weren’t going to do any damage to his career or reputation. They were just harmless fun–ESPN completely missed that point, though, and simply showed that they take themselves waaaay too seriously.
• Ashley Judd is officially the greatest fan in college basketball–Kentucky may have been trailing by 40 with under a minute remaining in their game against Vanderbilt on Tuesday, but that didn’t stop Judd from clapping for the Wildcats. Although Kentucky suffered its most lopsided SEC loss in school history, Judd remained extraordinarily optimistic right up to the bitter end. Closed-circuit to Ashley: A 40 point deficit with 41.9 seconds left in the game is probably too much for a team to overcome.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 14th, 2008 at 5:05 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.