The Golden State Warriors have slowly but surely replaced the Celtics as my 'cheat' team, due to a sports tumblr I follow maintained by a guy who's a GSW fan, and as a result, posts a lot of news about them.

The team is San Francisco's NBA basketball franchise, and as a way of respecting SF [and possibly a way of expanding their fan base - the team is kinda crap] they've decided to honour the LGBT community at a game.

Other events that day include a special tailgating event, lounge access before the game, an special LGBT event t-shirt to mark the night, and seating with other gay and lesbian basketball fans.

Additionally, the National Anthem will be performed by the Oakland Gay Men’s Chorus, and there will be a halftime performance by Cheer SF, a local gay cheerleading squad.

This is the first LGBT community night with the Golden State Warriors, but isn’t the NBA’s first. The Philadelphia 76ers hosted the first Gay and Lesbian community night in 2004. While the Toronto Raptors held an LGBT night dubbed Rainbow Hoops, a lesbian recreational basketball league in Toronto on February 23, 2007.

Source

Particularly pertinent considering the NBA has to deal with douchebags like this.

So my son, you've decided from my exposure of American sports that you want to start following a team. You don't know which one to choose, so you pick the one with the cool pirate logo/player who sets the most records/team which won last year. STOP!

Because I really, really care about you [and Dom too], I've done a team-by-team comparison of the NZ Super Rugby teams and revealed their Baseball, Basketball and American Football equivalents, so you can get that true patriotic feeling rather than just blindly following a side for no real reason.

You've captured my attention, take me to the article!

Those of you with ESPN will have seen the original version of this. Here's edition 2:

As a basketball fan I've seen more than my fair share of trick shot videos. In terms of production and insanity, when coupled with believeability, this is one of the best [definitely top three] that I've ever seen.

On a related note, the world junior basketball champs are going to start up this week, and we're hosting it. Last year the under-20 women's world champs were held here with reasonable success, and also managed to gather a bit of momentum for women's football in NZ. So what do you think, is there a crowd for basketball in NZ and will the champs hellp that? Or will it rely on the Emerging Tall Blacks [a name that for some reason makes me think of young cabbage trees] getting a good result?

A friend and I were having drunken argument about the NBA playoffs on Saturday night - he about the fact that the Nuggets are going to be in the final as they're the best in the West at the moment and that the East is boring, me that the Cavaliers will win without dropping a game.

We were agreed on one point: Neither of us picked the Rockets to beat the Lakers once. But twice?

Crucial to those results have been the reformation of Ron Artest. Artest, for those who haven't heard of him, is crazy. Not in the 'oooooh did you see what he just did?!' LeBron/Kobe sort of crazy, but in the Terrell Owens way. Here's an example from last week:

More after the jump

I've been torn away from the 'I-haven't-been-writing-much-because-the-NBA-playoffs-are-in-full-swing' desk for five minutes to let you all know that LeBron James is the NBA's MVP. Even Shaq agrees.

Does this mean those who knock him as being over-hyped and over-priced will now shut up? Probably not. But I can take comfort that he's got the gong in half the time it took Kobe Bryant. Oh, and that the Cavaliers are going to go through post-season undefeated this year [yes, I am putting my head on THAT chopping block].

All of the subtle ribbing from people and claims he is a cheat mean nothing to me now, given that he received 109 of the 121 possible first-round picks for MVP, and the total amount of voting points for him was 1, 172.

Congratulations from Godzone, LeBron [Now just come and play for the Breakers during the off-season].

Underway at the moment in the NBA playoffs are Celtics v Bulls, currently in double OT, and Cavaliers v Pistons, with the Magic playing the 76ers later today and the Trail Blazers squaring up to the Rockets. Live Scoring here.

Kobe has fired a shot back at LeBron, possibly not realising that all the MVP picks have been sent in already. In yesterday's match he was absolutely dominant, scoring 38 points in 39 minutes - three times as many as the next hights Laker and just under 1 point per minute.

Meanwhile, LeBron is continuing to just sit back and enjoy himself, doing things like this:

If you don't get it, it's a parody of this. C'mon, read more!

Here's the NBA's trailer for this year's playoffs. Just ignore the annoying un-talented hack musician singing the song.

Meanwhile, in result-related news, the Cavs kicked off the playoffs by stomping all over the Pistons and the Bulls 'upset' the Celtics [it wasn't that big of an upset really] in OT. I'm sitting at work watching the Lakers v Jazz game on live scoring and seeing things like this are making it just that much easier to predict that my man LeBron is going to be this year's MVP. Even if this weekend's games don't count for the regular season, it's still relevant.

Of course, I could post up a whole bunch of articles proclaiming LeBron's genius... But I won't. Or will I?

Maybe I'll just let shots like this do the talking.

The NZ Herald is today reporting that Michael Jordan will be inducted into Basketball's Hall of Fame. Anyone surprised? Anyone? No? Here's a video by DominoPro, a friend of AfroMaori [who did the great 'Rugby v Gridiron' videos which have since been ravaged by corporations].

And if you're in the mood for more greatness, check out 10 Ridiculous LeBron dunks. My favourite is the first one, because it's just insane.