Rockets Bullets of Furious Fists in the Head

When World's Collide... When East Meets West... we're all twisted around.

Now that T-Mac is outselling Yao in China for jerseys and the Beijing Aoshen Olympians are playing in the ABA... the East has officially met the West... and they're buying lots of shit.

Adidas is giddy about getting people who average $2900 in income a year to pay $170 for shoes.

In the "Great Posts for the Progressive Movement of International Diplomacy" dept., OddJack sounds suprised the Chinese have a different calendar and pronounces Happy New Year wrong.

To answer his question, though... the Chinese use the lunar calendar because first, it predates the Western calendar by thousands of years. Second, aside from those few who were touched by Christian missionaries, most Chinese think the Bible is really just a great novel--a little far-fetched, but entertaining.

Oh, and another tidbit, it isn't only China... much of East and Southeast Asia operates by the lunar calendar except South Koreans who are obsessed with your "JeezusChrist."

Hey, but you know what, we live in the U.S. and we use the Gregorian joint... 'cause we're not complete assholes.

Triple OT says T-Mac has Yellow Fever... that doesn't make any sense. Shouldn't it be Yellows have T-Mac Fever? But they're from TX, so they're off the hook. For now.

Houston Roundball Review's going to the All-Star game. The bastards. They also list the slam-dunk contestants... Enh.

Oops, almost forgot...

All-Star Countdown: 16 Days, 8 Hrs, 14 Min...

To comemmorate the NBA All-Star festivities in Houston this year, every post from now until the All-Star Event will bear this official All-Star logo. We will also be sending our very own Church League Revelations Division All-Star, Train, to as many shitty All-Star Events as we can.

Speaking of shitty All-Star Events, The Cavalier at YAYsports! NBA has devised a revolutionary All-Star event to spice up NBA All-Star Saturday... it's quite mad and indigenous, I mean ingenuous, no, something with genius:

No more Dunk Contest tweaks, no more Skills Challenges, and no more anything-that-involves-the-WNBA. They need to trim this down to one event: The $1,000,000 NBA All-Star On-on-One Challenge. (Ours is called the YAYsports! NBA One-on-One Challenge and it's sponsored by Han Solo, but you get the idea.)

That's all that happens Saturday night - 4 rounds, games to 7. Last two rounds are to 11. Throw in some musical entertainment that isn't country music, and you've got a true basketball EVENT.

For our purposes, we've seeded the top 16 scorers in the league, although if the NBA did it, they should probably use the All-Stars themselves.

Click here for why this is truly genius. Should this be the future of NBA All-Star Weekend? Holler holler holler holler holler holler holler...

Rockets Bullets in the Head

Yao's back! Memphis welcomes him with a L. Yao's line: 15 pts 8 rebs 1 ast 1 blk in 31 min.

Carrie B. is Rockets Power Dancer of the Week. Damn, you can dance with those things?

Carrie “picked international business as [her] major because learning about how every country is interrelated is very important as globalization increases within our society.” But of course that's your contention. You just finished some Marxian historian, Pete Garrison probably, and so naturally that's what you believe until next month when you get to James Lemon and get convinced that Virginia and Pennsylvania were strongly capitalist back in 1740. That'll last until sometime in your second year, then you'll be in here regurgitating Gordon Wood about the pre-revolutionary utopia and the capital-forming effects of military mobilization. How do you like them apples?

"John" goes Nasdaq on the Rockets in Club Yao.


ESPN reports that T-Mac outsells Yao in China.

Lunar Fists of Fury

Paul Shirley and the Beijing Aoshen defeat Game and the Inglewood Cobras to ring in the New Year. With no boxscore online it's impossible to find out how many points Shirley dropped on Game. Beijing improves to 11-8 in the American Basketball Association. Inglewood, however, is unranked... whatever that means.

Our boy, Sun Yue, has been selected to the 2006 ABA All-Star team.

Via the fan forum Club Yao, we finally penetrated the ESPN Insider wall and found Shirl's entries on playing for Aoshen. Interesting why Aoshen ended up in Cali.

What the F*ck, Dude?

While other recently re-gifted NBAers like Artest and Siz-zurb put on modest performances with their new teams, Ricky "Get Buckets" Davis had to go off.

What the fuck, dude?

Chill, son... ease into your new team. No one likes a show-off. Didn't anyone tell you the Rockets were working on a win streak? Houston has all these exaggerated expecations to still try and live up to. The 'Wolves... the 'Wolves are packin it in, dukes. Be easy...

We know you reintroduced facial hair as fashion (the way Moochie Norris and Benny Wallace did afros), you even inspired one of the greatest basketball blogs we've ever seen... we know you liked Boston. But stop taking your frustrations out on innocent people. Search within for the root of your troubles--or Danny Ainge. Face it, he never liked you.

T-Mac figured if it works for Rip, it works for T-Mac. The L sullies an otherwise decent night for the Stro'-Hayes-Baxter PForward by commision. The Hammer has hustled his way out of the rotation.

Photos by AP, except naked Ricky.

I Got Your Back, Cuz

The return of T-Mac and the Houston Rockets' 3-1 record upon said return continues to reassert our proposed value of McGrady and mounting evidence of Mac's Inverse Power Relationship (IPR) with cousin Vince Carter McGrady who, slowed by an ailing back, has totalled just 8 points in his last two appearances.

Artistic rendering of how IPR would look were it visible to the human eye.

Houston finally wins at home against Bobcats practice squad.

Rant Charlotte looks on the bright side of life before the trouncing (we thought Nelly was from St. Louis). And staying with the theme of cousins, they've issued a challenge to ours.

Roundball Review says Mac actually doesn't have his cousin's back.

Down With the Kings

Queensbridge native, and asphalt son, Ron-Ron the "True Warier" was traded to the Kings earlier tonight. But Hollis is just off the E line, express to Sutphin Blvd. and a dollar van down Jamaica Blvd. from there. Easy. Oh, the Sacramento Kings... fuck it, you figure it out.

I never really knew how big a dude Ron-Ron really was until a few nights ago, I saw a cable access channel in Brooklyn running some home video footage of the Queensbridge Summer League. Ron-Ron made a guest appearance with, of course, Queensbridge. He looked like an ogre fucking around with a bunch of little hobbits--and he spent most of the game jogging up and down the court indifferently, shrugging off fly-like defenders (who we assume were full grown men), with onlookers re-marking the court boundaries with their creeping feet, collapsing the space as the game got tighter.

It was a discovery akin to seeing Anthony Mason at the FIT summer run having to turn sideways to get into the gym... through double doors. Mindfuck.

Despite Ron-Ron's sudden freedom, TruWarier.com is still offering Free Ron Artest t-shirts. They'll probably keep the screen around.

Rockets Nation

Rockets.com Fans on Location
Proving yet again that Rockets fans are dorks

Andrew is 7' 6" and from Canada. He likes the Rockets and making ridiculous mu-mu's.

Chris from Houston, TX just got his new haircut and "livin' it" in his bedroom. (actual caption)

Jean Jacques, also from Canada, is more of a, uh... T-Mac "fan"... these jerseys were dug out of post-game hampers and smuggled across the border in his stomach as Canadians are allowed only Nash jerseys (but only from Phoenix, that's right Dallas, you know what you did).

Hey Cavo... is that? ...Is it? It can't be, can it? ...I think it is... isn't it? Casual baby strikes back sans moustache.

Clutch the Bear Issues Press Release, Will Not Be Leaving Rockets For Greener Pastures

Clutch "The Rockets Bear," as if that needed to be clarified or made any sense, has issued a new press release. Though he is not leaving the 14-26 Rockets to test the free-agent market, he has been chillin' the fuck out. Sounds like he's even got a little something going on with "the Manager" of the Rockets Power Dancers.

There's a statue of the man in a bear suit at Memorial Hermann's new outdoor basketball court.

P.S. For those of you with a Clutch decoder ring here is your secret message. 5-3-16-16-25 13-18-1-14-5-4-3-25 14-7 9-8

Can you believe this dude has been to the Great Wall and we haven't?

Greatest Show on Earth?

Last night--inspired by a particularly compelling week of basketball in which Tracy McGrady returned to the Rockets lineup and displayed his usual fourth quarter theatrics, Lebron reasserted his manhood against the Jazz, and Kobe dropped 51 against the Kings--I was in the process of remixing this photo for an entry which I had planned to pose the question: which individual player is the most exhilirating to watch in the NBA?

T-Mac is a no-brainer for us as to inclusion in this question... an inhuman performer in the clutch (which we here put a premium on)--yea, we know he hasn't gotten out of the first round... yet... Lebron, too, despite his recent haplessness in the clutch, for his playmaking skills, unselfishness and equally inhuman ability to fly and maim rims. Kobe, on the other hand...

I've never liked Kobe... all of us at Globetrotter have never liked Kobe. We laughed when he was booed in Philly and laughed when an ESPN SportsNation poll revealed that even after Kobe's 62 earlier this year, 49 states to 1 voted that they like Allen Iverson better. Any guess which state 1 was?

But we have respected his game. Even after we laughed at him air-balling crunch time shots in the playoffs his rookie year, we knew he could play. And taken by an entry from FreeDarko.com, I included Kobe in the question.

And I almost finished the post, too. I had strengths and weaknesses for all the candidates mapped out. I even had honorable mentions (Steve Nash, VC, D. Wade). Then Duke calls me me during Kobe's road to 81. He says only, "Kobe's got 50 in the third," and hangs up. I couldn't watch it because I've sort of moved in with my girlfriend and NBA Ticket is at Duke's place, but I kept watching Sportscenter and they kept updating not the score, but Kobe's point total.

Kobe effectively shat on my question while he shat on the Raptors, too.

Now I'm still pretty sure that if I ever met Kobe Bryant, or had to play on his team, even a pick-up game or charity event, I probably wouldn't like him (but to be fair, I'm fairly certain I wouldn't have liked Jordan either). Some still think Bryant is a rapist--I personally don't, but he's a cheater nonetheless. The chip on his shoulder was enough to separate the thing, and it seems to be tiring everyone but him. So, 81 notwithstanding, I'll probably never be sold on the man... but damn if I ever say he can't play.

The Association was there.

Detroit Bad Boys tries to downplay it and T-Mac, too.

J.E. Skeets has an open letter from a bitter Luke Ridnour.

Yay!basketball takes it all back then gives it to Ray Allen.

But Manute's Webb keeps it coming.

True Hoop dissents in the comments.

So is that it? Is Kobe the best in the world right now? Has he locked MVP before the All-Star Break?

When the West is Calling... Send Your Mediocre

Former CBA (Chinese Basketball Association) underachievers Beijing Aoshen have been playing in the ABA... how did we not hear about this? After starting off with a 10-3 record, Aoshen has dropped three straight in four days due to culturally-biased "fatigue."

Aoshen does field an NBA prospect though, in 21-year-old point guard Sun Yue (206-G-85)--I'm not sure exactly what that is in American but it roughly translates too... 6' 9"?!? damn! word? really?--anyway, he's projected by some NBA scouts to be a second round pick in next year's draft. But not by NBAdraft.net.

Who knew Sun could manage all that and double as China's "Most Popular Female" pop star?

And finally, the one and only Paul Shirley has joined the team. That's right, the "My So Called Career" Paul Shirley is running with Beijing Aoshen... you couldn't write it in a movie because it would be ridiculous... and it is. I would tap into Shirl's blog to see if Sun Yue's the real deal but it's one of those fucking ESPN Insider things. Somebody holler at me.

Rockets' Fists of Furious Futility

More from elsewhere...

Yay!basketball is looking for Stevie, too. We dreamt their entry last night and swear Dido's Roswell theme was running through our head all morning. So we chant Di-do! Di-do! Di-do! for Stevie, too. We think the reunification of Steve and Cuttino needs a comic.

NBADraft.net has already set up a mock draft, and they have the Rockets at no. 3 taking Italian Andrea Barnagni from Benetton Treviso. Who the fuck--dude looks like an extra from The O.C... How 'bout we don't fuck this one up and throw a few games to get Rudy Gay. T-Mac needs a Scottie. Did anyone else know AND1 sponsors Benetton Treviso?

Houston's Clear Thinkers have been attributing the Rockets' woes to bad management for some time now. Now they've reached the twilight.

John P. Lopez of the Chronicle gives Skip the thumbs-up for true point guard status and Stro' the thumbs down for... whatever it was he was supposed to be.

Stephanie Has What You Want...

From idle hands and the unadulterated debacle the Rockets season has become, Rockets.com has decided to occupy itself with a weekly feature on a Rockets Power Dancer of choice--sign that even the website is calling it a year?

This is Stephanie. Stephanie gently caresses her ornaments before attaching them to the tree. Stephanie likes to dress upscale, but with a little bit of that gentleman's club stretch fabric flair. You want this ornament don't you, naughty boy... this big, round ornament... you want it but you can't have it.

Tropical Fists of Fury: DJ in DR

To the camera man: pan left, bro. How do you cut off the bikini girl on the left? From the 45% of her we can see, she looks foine! You blew it.

DJ gets the star treatment even in Punta Cana. We figure it broke down (a la J.E. Skeets) a little like this:

Janisa: Ooh, Rosie, mira... mira... look, Rosie! Isn't that that cute chino from MTV2's Nike Battlegrounds: King of the Court con mi esposo Lebron James?
Rosie: Aye, mami, it is... who's dat he's wit? They don't look like no basketball players."
Janisa: They prolly his managers or sumthin'... you should go get your picture taken wit him.
Rosie: Only if you come, too. He might not like Morenas.
Janisa: Bitch, we from the Bronx! We gittin' our picture wit chino!

New BPR is Up, Rockets Down

Way down. We had 'em ranked at 28... before they lost to Atlanta. Sheesh.