A wise man [I think it was Hadyn] once told me something along the lines of

I support sport teams instead of individual players because players will always eventually let you down.

We all support sport teams for a variety of reasons. I first started supporting the Cleveland Cavaliers in the mid '90s as all of my friends were into Basketball and I was on a post-Space Jam basketball buzz and wanted to be able to talk to them. I lucked into seeing the Cavs play in 1997 with Shawn Kemp and managed to catch a few of the wins and I was hooked.

Pretty much that was it. The internet was in its infancy and I was 9. My support extended to knowing one of their players and being able to talk about them.

As the internet has taken off it's been easier to follow US sports and I've put more effort into the Cavs - it helps that they play at a time when there's nothing else on.

Then in 2003, the team managed to get one of the best players currently in the NBA straight out of high school. More than that though, he was a home-town hero.

LeBron James had grown up in Akron, about 60 kilometres from Cleveland. We managed to secure one of the most promising players, after being one of the worst teams the previous season. Things were looking up.

Over the next two seasons LeBron proved all the cynics wrong. He could live up to the hype, he could perform on the national stage. There was just one problem: One player cannot win you a championship. A great player can carry a good team, even an average team. But not a mediocre team.

In 2007 we managed to re-sign 'The King' when he came off contract. The next year he'd go to Beijing to win the Olympic gold medal, the first international tournament win for the US since 2000.

LeBron came back to Cleveland and it was business as usual. The Cavaliers cruised through the 2008/2009 season and looked on track to make it through to the final. Not so. Vince Carter and [should probably check these things before posting] Dwight Howard of the Orlando Magic pretty much shredded the Cavs and advanced to take on the LA Lakers before getting absolutely annihilated.

If anything, that series started to open people's eyes to the Cavs front office. Serious concerns started to be raised within the online Cavs fan base about the effectiveness of coach Mike Brown - who appeared to make no changes to the gameplan during that Magic series - and the inability to get players who could take the heat off LeBron in big game situations. We had gone from only losing 16 games throughout the regular season to losing to a side which got trounced in the finals.

For many years LeBron 'carried' the Cavaliers. Whether it was expected of him or he he felt that had to do it, it happened. After the 08/09 finals we were promised things would change. Owner Dan Gilbert said the team was 'committed' to bringing an NBA title to Ohio.

He appeared to be backing up these words with the signing of Shaquille O'Neal. Shaq was expected to bring a prescence to the team which would allow LeBron to stay outside and put up shots to relieve the defensive pressure. The only problem was that this didn't happen. Shaq, due to his height, weight and probably age, draws the attention of the referees and gets fouls called against him on a very regular basis.

He was a great addition to the team, don't get me wrong, but what we needed with him was a guy who could shoot from the perimeter.

The reason the current Lakers squad enjoys their success is that they're unpredictable. They can shoot from the perimeter, they can shoot from mid-range, or they can drive and dunk on you.

The 2009/2010 Cavs had one thing: highlight reels. We could dunk. We could run the fastbreak. That's it. Once Shaq went off we had an undersized unit in Anderson Varejao - for whatever reason Brown lost faith in 700-game veteran Žydrūnas Ilgauskas, who had been a major part of the gameplan in the regular season. And an clear problem in previous seasons which had been brought up in many different circles was the bench.

Players coming off the bench in an NBA game, if they can keep the scoreboard ticking over, are a huge asset. LeBron would play almost an entire game - so surely you can focus on getting a guard to help him?

We had Mo Williams who has his flaws but can be relied on for three-pointers when it matters. But for shooting guard there was nobody. Delonte West had been picked up in 2008 and performed adequately. But not good enough for a starter. He had a mindset of 'drive for the layup' it seemed, and on a team where you're looking for someone to bail you out when the opposition tighten up in the lane, you want a SG who can punish from outside.

But enough of that. LeBron came to the end of his contract and became a Free Agent this off-season. As a Cavaliers fan I hoped that he would stay. I thought it was pretty unrealistic but what sort of follower would I be if I didn't think there was a chance he could stay?

For the last two seasons there'd been a strong undercurrent of expectation that he would pack up and move to play for the New York Knicks, partly because of a comment made years ago that he wanted to become the first black billionaire athlete, partly because he loves the New York Yankees, partly because people thought he was arrogant and wanted the media exposure.

The NBA passed a rule stipulating that Free Agents could not announce their signings until July 8th, probably hoping to get a massive amount of exposure and take over the headlines from the FIFA World Cup for a couple of days. LeBron's camp announced that they would hold an hour-long television special on ESPN that day.

Once that special was announced I knew he was leaving. Again, I hoped he was staying, but you don't take over an entire channel for an hour to explain your reasons for staying in a city. You do that to announce your departure and talk about how great the time has been. But I still hoped. I had to. And then this happened;

At first I was angry. So were a lot of people on Twitter and in Cleveland.

But I thought about it a wee bit. There are two things here: LeBron wants to win, and he's always said that while he's been with the Cavs. I hate that he's gone but if it gets him a championship, go right ahead. Secondly, it may be a blessing in disguise for the Cavaliers. As you may have guessed I've been really unimpressed with the way the team has treated its players and signed new talent over the past few seasons. All that culminated with this letter Cavs owner Dan Gilbert posted about LeBron's decision.

We won't be an instantly competitive team, but if we can make some smart moves we can still make next season's playoffs. The last 7 years have been about LeBron James, the next 3 are about the team and its ability.

And I'll still have memories like this that without LBJ would never have happened.

So I wish LeBron all the best in Miami, but I'm not gonna support him when it comes to the playoffs, and I hope the Cavaliers bounce back from this and don't become a team that used to be great.

via Up Next In Sports

Had to laugh when I saw this one...

Courtesy of Up Next In Sports

I've always tried to be pretty positive when I've put things up here unless they're about Robbie Deans or Chris Rattue. But it's impossible for me to say one good thing about this game.

I'm a casual basketball fan. I support the Cavs and Golden State, I check the scores, that's it. I'll watch the games every so often, but I don't follow it nearly as closely as NFL or rugby union. I bought this game at the recommendation of a good friend who is a lot more into basketball than I am after hearing him rave on and on and on about the My Player mode, which is gonna be the majority of what I write about in this review.

As Hadyn will be able to attest, I like to feel like I'm in a sport game, like I was the one who caused that 60yd TD pass to Andre Johnson. So My Player in 2K10 seemed like a perfect fit for me.

It's a concept you all will have encountered. Create a digital likeness of yourself [which ends up looking nothing like yourself], assign it a position, and hit play. This one's a little more in depth, with a whole host of options - you can customise shoes, and choose from [at a guess] more than 50 different shooting styles for each kind of shot you can pull off - running shots, fadeaways, stationary jumpers and the different varities of layups and dunks.

Once you've finished mucking around with this for half an hour or so, you'll go to Summer League. Here you've got to 'prove yourself' by performing key roles of your position correctly - getting assists, rebounds, blocks, steals, filling lanes, boxing out, screening properly, taking good shots [the game actually penalises you for taking bad shots, even if they go in]. You'll have a letter grade assigned to you and this will fluctuate depending on your performance. After 6 games of this and you'll either get sent to the D-League [the Heartland Championship of the NBA] or taken on by an NBA team for a Training Camp.

After this was when things went poorly for me. In my first career I managed to play 83 games in the D-League [on 12m quarters] before I found out online my career had glitched out and no matter what I did I wouldn't get called up to the NBA. On top of this, you'll find lots of weird things happening - players get stuck in a running animation when inbounding the ball, offensive and defensive players camp in the lane with no-one around them for no reason, your players will post screens metres away from players rendering them useless and cheerleaders can get stuck on the court for minutes at a time.

By far the most annoying thing though is that this game cheats. This isn't just that I'm a bad player, I've tested this theory for weeks. The game favours the home team, and tries all it can to let them win. I've raced away to a 20pt lead in the first quarter before playing away. All of a sudden, my team started missing wide open jump shots. And wide open fastbreak dunks/layups. My player, with a 99 overall 3pt, mid-range, shoot in traffic and shoot off dribble rating couldn't hit stationary mid-range shots after making several over 2 defenders earlier in one particular game. I tried it outside of My Player too - Cavs at GSW. The Cavs should win that match by 30+ in real life, but we won by 6. This was with Shaq missing 5 open dunks, and LBJ and Mo missing 12 [!] open mid-range jumpers. It's fucking annoying as hell, especially when the game gives you requirements such as meeting a certain shooting % in a game/over the season. And some of those requirements are stupid too - like limiting Carmelo Anthony to 2pts over the course of a game. Or when the '2K Insider' - kind of like a mentor to your player - tells you teams want to trade you, but there's nowhere to select this. There's also no way to request to trade teams, you're stuck with whoever you sign with. And the game makes stupid trades - like trading KG and Paul Pierce from the Celtics for Boris Diaw of the Bobcats.

I've never, ever seen so much hatred poured towards a game online, considering 2K/NBA Live fanboys are like PS3/360 fanboys in that they will usually support their chosen product 'til death do they part. You can find their outpourings here and more specifically the My Player problems here including where I asked for help. Or just check out the hundreds of videos on YouTube.

What makes matters worse is that 2K have promised a patch to fix most things, but it's not come out, even though the game's been out for 5 months.

Quite frankly, this game is utter shit. Even the 'party' modes such as the dunk contest glitch out - pulling the same dunk in two separate dunk comps [not rounds] with the same player and props gave a very different score. Glitches make it impossible to play, and it's more frustrating that enjoyable. Unless something picks up for 2K11, I won't be buying it. And in any case, I'll be waiting months and checking online before I do. Don't even buy this second hand, trust me.

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