The Locker Page 1351 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

No, We Will Not Pay You In $1 Bills
One of our favorite underreported stories is just how bad athletes are with their finances. We're reminded of a quote from former Dolphins fullback Ron Konrad, now a financial adviser in Florida. Konrad called a fellow young player over who had started talking about some of his "investments" and a...

Artest's Penthouse Shoot In A Grand Tradition
Well, the December edition of Penthouse has hit the stands, and everybody's favorite el hombre de muy loco Ron Artest is on the cover (ESPN has a nice rundown of the interview here). We don't have much more to add — though we wonder if the nice elderly people Artest is such buddies with in Indiana...

The Cavs' Super Secret Club (No Girls Allowed!)
Free Darko has a find that's making us giggle like an idiot: Apparently, Cleveland Cavaliers stars LeBron James, Larry Hughes and Damon Jones (known around here as "two-and-a-half men") have come up with a "secret handshake that involves two low-fives, then a wave, then posing with their arms cros...

Mark Blount Shocks Us Again
You thought you knew Celtics roster filler Mark Blount. You thought he was just the portly guy who played just hard enough to get an ill-advised free agent contract, and then spent the rest of his time inhaling Cheetos. But nope. Turns out, according to our friends at YAYSports!, Blount is the typ...

Next Thing You Know, They'll Ban Chaps
We have another victim of the NBA's dress code, a guy whose personal style has been as unique as it has been personalized. The guy is sighing and obliging to David Stern's wishes, losing a little part of himself in the process, taking away his personal code and culture in the name of pleasing corp...

Who Will Be The First Fined NBA Star?
Fun post on Oddjack today: Gambling Web site Bodog has put down odds on who will be the first NBA player to be fined for violating the new dress code....

Jordan Demands Your Rapt Attention!
We haven't heard from Michael Jordan in a while, and Michael Jordan doesn't like it when we haven't heard from him in a while. In a "wide-ranging" interview with "60 Minutes" — for Jordan, "wide-ranging" interviews basically mean there's no actual fellatio shown on screen — Jordan talks to the unf...

Zoot Suitin' Boogie
All right, we've avoided this long enough: We now have to acknowledge this whole NBA dress code thing. What sparked us into action? Why, Mark Cuban, of course, who addresses the "controversy on his blog. His take: It's a matter of owners not knowing how to relate to their players, which is a shock...

This Is Not An Allan Houston Retirement Photo
Fantastic find by the rock stars at : A museum in Philadelphia is doing displays with actual dead human bodies playing basketball. That's the skin and muscle and teeth of a real live human being dribbling a basketball in that picture. The display runs through the end of April....

Much Respeck For TNT
We have to give the mad propers to TNT, which is promoting its upcoming NBA television schedule by giving their promos to the great Ali G. The hysterical faux hip-hopper interviews Lakers "star" Kobe Bryant and Esquire's Chuck Klosterman subject Steve Nash in commercials that YAYSports! helpfully ...

Hang In There, America: LeBron's Back With Us
Well, everyone can breathe a little easier: LeBron James has been released from the hospital. With Suns forward Amare Stoudamire out until at least the All-Star break, if James had been out for too long, this NBA season was in serious danger of sucking before it even started....

Dan Dickau Loses A Potential Best Pal
The kids over at Yay!Sports have this fun game they've decided to play with chats with NBA players on NBA.com: They ask them : "Freestyle a bit for us and I'll be your best friend." (The bit is derived from an actual question to LeBron James in an AOL chat; apparently the joke made him "LOL" so ha...

The Great Reggie Miller Corn Maze
Like any good Midwesterners, we've spent more than our fair share of time in corn mazes. For those of you who didn't spent their formative years surrounded by combines and grain elevators, a corn maze is exactly that; an entire cornfield formed into a giant maze, with checkpoints, dead-ends, exits...

Welcome Back, Artest! Glad To Have Ya!
That Ron Artest is back for a whole season is destined to be one of the sublime joys of the upcoming NBA season; that he vows to be as crazy as ever makes us want to get an NBA League Pass, stat. From an interview with Dave D'Alessandro in today's Newark Star-Ledger:...

Damon Stoudamire: Block Sender
We were at a bar a couple of weeks ago with some female friends of ours when, out of nowhere, some lady came up to us and asked us what we thought of a particularly brand of vodka. We told her we had no real opinions about it, but she continued, saying it mixed well with "tonic and other carbonate...

Tony Parker: The Only Cool Spur (And Frenchman, Actually)
Great NBA blog FreeDarko.com — Darko's current mood is "enraged," by the way — has made a pretty amazing find: A rap song featuring Fabolous, Spurs point guard Tony Parker and some French rapper named Booba. This is pretty fantastic for several reasons — you can download the song here — not least ...

Shane Battier, Philosopher King
Ah, Shane Battier. Can't go wrong with that guy for pure, unadulterated dorkdom. We know, role model, future politician, hard-working solid forward, all that, we get it. Dude's still square as a chessboard, exciting as rocks. We're not telling you anything you didn't already know....

Mark Cuban Is Totally Crushing, Yo
We continue to love that Mavericks owner Mark Cuban continues to blog about his team; checking in with him throughout the season is always one of our favorite NBA highlights. He files today's report from the Mavs' first practice, where he details new acquisition Doug Christie's sessions with a new...

For Relaxing Times, It's Dunleavy Time
Via Pardon The Eruption and Yay!Sports comes this pretty classic photo of Warriors guard Mike Dunleavy Jr. It was taken on Golden State's media day, apparently some part of a "promotion," though the only thing we can imagine this is "promoting" is a reason for Oakland-area women to stay single....

Bulls Wash Their Hands Of Curry
Well, the Chicago Bulls finally solved their Eddy Curry problem the way NBA executives like to solve problems: Trade him to the Knicks! Isiah Thomas will always take in your tired, your poor, your congenital heart defected. The Bulls receive wide-butt Michael Sweetney, occasional malcontent Tim Th...