This is pretty damn cool, and that’s a dedicated fan. (via Boing Boing)

At Heidi’s department end-of-year party today, I found out about Jared Jordan, a senior PG from Marist. Jared attended Kingswood Oxford for high school and is currently listed at number 40 on the NBA Big Board.

There’s a lot of pride in that at K-O, a school not known for its basketball program. Nowhere is that pride more evident than in this article on SI.com written Rand Richards Cooper. Since Rand is married to one of Heidi’s department colleagues, I had a chance to talk to him today at the party where Jared and this article were a hot topic of conversation.

It was actually quite amazing, by the way, to see the non-sports fan English teachers excited about NBA basketball. OK, sure, they were excited for Jared and for Rand’s article, but still… for once the “I used to work at ESPN.com” actually was relevant to the conversation at a K-O event.

Check out the article. After speaking to Rand, I can tell you this article is how he really feels. I’ve never seen someone as excited about the potential in a player as Rand is about Jared. Even acknowledging the weaknesses in his game, Rand sees some great potential here. Just talking to him got me excited enough to hope that the Sixers pick him up. A real point guard, wouldn’t that be awesome?

Got it! Ads on FatMixx are showing the NBA’s playoff video “ad” again. I have some screenshots of what I was talking about earlier. It’s a little embedded interactive app. If you click on the controls, you can navigate to one of 4 features: Recap video, Preview video, Stat Leaders, and the Playoff schedule. If you click just in the window, you get taken to the NBA playoff package on NBA.com. Very slick, and great production values.

Here are the screenshots:

This is neat, but I wonder what the practical upshot is. Google Adsense as a Widget delivery vehicle? Is this content or advertising? Does it employ the same targeting algorithms? What keywords do you buy to deliver this ad? How much is the NBA paying? This is an interesting development.

So, I was looking at how I could submit an application to get randomly accepted to buy Final Four tickets for 2008. I know it’s early for next year’s season already, but the deadline to enter is in May. While going through the process, I found something very odd and disturbing.

The process for the application works like this: You can submit an application for up to two tickets, 10 times. For each time you submit an application you pay a $5 non-refundable fee. You can select seats at either $170 or $140 per ticket for all three games (not a bad price at about $55 per game). So, when you get to the page to enter in your seat choice, number of tickets, and the number of applications you want to submit, a total price is calculated real-time for you.

Now, the site says that they will charge you up front for the amount calculated for the total amount and refund you the difference (if you are not selected or get selected for the lower valued seats) after the drawing in July.

So, in my mind I was thinking I would put in 10 applications (at $5 each), for 2 tickets of the best seats (at $170 each) for a total of $390. But, when I filled out the form the total price came to be $3450. I thought it might just be an incorrect calculation, but when I looked into it, they would really charge that amount and then refund $3060 if I won the two tickets in July.

Wondering why they would do it this way, I finally found this explanation:

Why am I required to pay for all entries at the time of application?

The NCAA’s experience with the drawing suggests that if applicants were not required to pay for each entry, nearly everyone would enter the drawing the maximum number of times, thereby reducing the advantage one might gain by entering multiple times. The alternative would be to eliminate the current opportunity that provides for an applicant to enter the drawing more than once. Although the NCAA has considered the latter option, the general sense is that the public appreciates the opportunity to increase their chances by entering multiple times on one application.

Does this make any sense? I am not a lawyer, but this seems like some sort of discrimination. They are basically saying that they believe everyone who has a few thousand dollars extra to spare for a few months deserve more of a chance than those who don’t. I don’t buy the argument that this is to fight scalpers either. Real scalping operations have large budgets, with multiple identities and credit cards to facilitate purchases like this.

By the way, they also state that they keep the interest they make by holding your money.

What do you think?

It’s actually frightening, sad, and funny… I was pins and needles waiting for one of them to say something completely offensive.

I posted a few days ago about the new Starbury One shoe, Stephon Marbury’s new shoe line that retails for $14.98.

ESPN doesn’t have the OTL segments online yet (hmmm, gotta work on that), but here’s some clips I found on YouTube and Google Video about the shoe.

Here’s the other:

I’ve never been a huge Marbury fan, but it’s nice to see an athlete trying to do the right thing.

I wonder about the choice to go with Steve and Barry’s University Sportswear as the exclusive retailer. Wonder if that was the only way he could do it, or if other retailers wouldn’t touch the shoe.

Also, if you watch the second video, when asked whether he’s wearing the shoe during NBA games to give it credibility, Marbury responds that he’s doing it because the endorsement deal requires it. Which makes me ask, who’s the deal with?

My suspicion is that Steve and Barry’s decided to do this to complement their line of discount clothing. Steve and Barry’s tries to keep prices around $7.98 for most clothing. They probably approached Marbury and not the other way around. So, Marbury is wearing the shoe as part of the endorsement deal with S&B. Nothing wrong with that, and the way the deal is structured, Marbury looks to be doing the right thing and S&B also keeps their risk down.

I might make the drive down to Waterbury just to pick up a pair. At $14.98, why not?

… or are the Knick fans a little, um, I think the word is, pissed at Isaiah Thomas?

Larry Brown no longer has to suffer as the coach of the NY Knicks. Isiah Thomas fired him and took over as head coach. That’s right: the worst executive in the NBA will now have the opportunity to ruin his team both strategically AND on the court.

With Isiah and Doc Rivers coaching in the division, the Sixers are now assured of a 3rd or better finish next year. They might be 20 games under .500, but that should be enough for 3rd place!

It’s unfortunate, really, that they won because aside from Wade, I can’t really root for any of the other guys on the Heat. Shaq and Gary Payton head up the spoiled brat bunch there, and Pat Riley isn’t exactly fan friendly either.

But, Dwyane Wade. Congratulations, man. It’s actually hard to root against you, even when you were shooting the free throws that put the game away. And congrats to the fans of the Miami Heat, winning their first championship. It’s got to feel good. Wish I could know what it feels like, since my first love are the Philadelphia teams that haven’t won anything since I’ve been paying attention to sports.

I’m a little disappointed that the first person ABC went to was Shaquille O’Neal for the post game when this championship was all about Wade. He made this happen, and he ought to be the man of the hour.

I’m also disappointed in the behavior of Dirk Nowitzki. He absolutely did not behave like a champion at the end there. After getting an admittedly cheap foul called against him, he took the rebound from Wade’s miss and slammed it to the court. Clearly not thinking about how they were going to get the winning points, he was frustrated and not focusing on the game. The Dallas Mavericks self-destructed down the stretch there, and it’s unfortunate that it came down to horrendous officiating in game 5 and stupid mistakes in game 6.

Not to take anything away from Wade and the Heat, who showed up when it mattered. I’m sure we’ll be seeing Wade’s name on a championship roster again.

(yes, I was rooting for Dallas, is it that obvious?)