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NBA All-Star blog
With Team New Orleans down to Team Hornets by nine points late in the second quarter, a new player is suddenly being added to this game. Football superstar Terrell Owens has suited up and joins Stephen A. Smith’s team, outraging Bill Walton.
InsideHoops.com is posting live notes from this ridiculous game here.
Boxing great Floyd Mayweather is playing on Team ‘Hornets’ in the 2008 NBA Celebrity Game.
I hadn’t seen him previously listed as being involved.
The kid from American Idol should challenge him to a fight.
Anyway, this game is always silly, but fun in its own ridiculous way. In the past I used to write full notes about it, but this time I’ll just record the highlights. They’ll be added to the game page, linked above.
It’s Friday and the NBA’s stars, including Jason Kidd, are in New Orleans for 2008 All-Star Weekend. Friday afternoon, Kidd met with the media and discussed the possible trade that would send him to the Dallas Mavericks. As of now the deal is currently on hold, since Devean George, a small piece of the puzzle, is using a provision in his contract to block his involvement.
Here’s part of what Kidd said today:
Q: You don’t feel like it was an opportunity or a chance that you could still go?
Jason Kidd: I haven’t talked to anybody. I spent last night with my family and just trying to enjoy the All Star festivities today. That’s it. You know, I’m a Net until I’m told otherwise, that I’m a Mav or something else.
Q: What’s been the toughest thing, Jason, about dealing with some of the uncertainty in your situation?
Jason Kidd: This isn’t the first time I’ve been traded, so I don’t think there’s anything that really bothered me. It’s just we’ll find out here soon if there’s a trade or not. Either way, the game of basketball doesn’t change, it’s just in a different city, maybe.
You must read the rest. It’s here.
Friday at All-Star weekend, Dallas Mavericks star Dirk Nowitzki had a few things to say on the possible trade that would send Jason Kidd to his team. Here’s a piece of it:
Dirk Nowitzki: “Yeah, it’s been definitely a weird couple of days. Everything kind of hanging in the air, and nobody really knew what was going on. And when they basically said the deal was done, then all of a sudden it wasn’t, the team said okay. They didn’t know if they were going to dress or not, and then they ended up playing. So it was definitely a weird feeling. But we as a team made the best out of it. We tried to stay focused and tried to keep the group together. I mean, it’s really all you can do. Once everybody goes in their own direction, then the chemistry’s going to get messed up, and we won’t win anything. We want to make sure we keep everybody together. And whoever puts the uniform on will give it their best.”
There’s a bit more worth reading, here.
At Friday’s media avilability at 2008 NBA All-Star Weekend, a stack of reporters were interviewing Kobe Bryant, but one in particular who I won’t identify kept interrupting valid questions to try to ask Kobe if he would record a voicemail message for him. It was ridiculous, listening to real reporters ask Bryant about his injured finger and about All-Star in general, only to have one fringe reporter keep busting in asking Kobe things like “Will you record a voicemail message for me on my phone?”
Now, sure, that stuff could be entertaining, and there’s a time and a place for that, but people wanted to know the latest on if Kobe was definitely playing, and if the NBA world will be without him in the event he does decide to have surgery.
Anyway, Kobe said that as of today he does still plan on trying to play through the injury and avoid having surgery during the season.