5:45 PM The Verge reports that the entire staff of Curt Schilling's 38 Studios video game company were laid off today.
5:30 PM The Michigan state house has approved a bill to allow alcohol sales at Michigan Stadium for next season's NHL Winter Classic outdoor game. The bill still needs approval from the state senate.
Last month Kobe Bryant was fined $100,000 by the NBA after he was caught by a TNT camera using a gay slur during a game.
Of charging Bryant 100 large, NBA commissioner David Stern told Mike Greenberg of ESPN radio, “I’m very happy with where we sit.”
Last night the NBA playoffs turned out to be, once again, must-fee TV.
This time it was Joakim Noah who uttered a gay slur - the same used by Bryant a month earlier - also seen by a TNT audience.
Stern wasn’t shy about enlightening Bryant to the plight of gay rights with a gigantic fine and a scolding “teachable moment” diatribe on ESPN radio, but what of the lower-profile Noah?
In the past few weeks, the main media has erroneously reported a supposed rift between Pau Gasol and Kobe Bryant that allegedly began when Bryant’s wife Vanessa broke up Gasol’s relationship with girlfriend Silvia Lopez Castro.
That rumor, thanks to comments by Gasol as early as last Saturday, has now been completely debunked. Gasol has since confirmed he is still with Castro and nothing has changed in their relationship.
While that break between Gasol and Bryant never existed, now ex-Lakers Coach Phil Jackson confirmed yesterday a disconnect between himself and a key member of the Lakers basketball operation and ownership.
Wednesday, as Jackson conducted his final press conference as Lakers coach, he was asked by FOX Sports Radio reporter David Vassegh:
“Do feel you have a stronger sense of attachment (to the Lakers) other than Jeanie (Buss, Jackson girlfriend and daughter of Lakers owner Jerry Buss) than you did with the Bulls?”
Jackson reply:
“There are people in the organization, yes, that I have an attachment to. You know I haven’t spoken to (Lakers Exec. VP, Player Personnel and son of owner Jerry) Jimmy Buss this year.
“Jerry I see occasionally and we confer. (Lakers General Manager) Mitch (Kupchak) and I have our chances to be together and we have a good relationship. Those are people in that department that I have a relationship with.
“As far as management, if you want to call it that, there’s really not a relationship with that.”
Jackson couldn’t have slighted Jim Buss any more in his comments than he did with that remark.
Longtime Lakers owner Jerry Busshas made clear on numerous occasions that Jim Buss will formally take over the basketball operation of the team when he relinquishes all control of the franchise. (Jeanie will continue to run the business operation.)
While Mitch Kupchak technically runs the Lakers basketball operation, eventually he will report solely to Jim Buss, though from Jerry’s comments last August, it sounds as if that is already the case.
During a press conference on August 17, 2010, Jerry Buss said of his role with the team’s basketball operation:
“I still talk to my son Jimmy at least twice a day. Some of those phone calls are as long as an hour. The large portion of the content of those phone calls is basketball. What we should do, what we’re doing.
“In terms of (Lakers basketball) decisions, 80% of it goes with Jim and I throw in my two cents worth here and there.”
That Jim Buss did not speak to Jackson this season is very telling when it comes to the coach’s relationship to the future, formal overseer of the Lakers basketball fortunes.
If you’re wondering why Jackson is leaving L.A., there’s your ‘Exhibit A.’
Out of nowhere one afternoon, Michael Jackson made a call to the irrepressible and isolated (then-18-year-old) Kobe Bryant, and so much changed for him.
… They would talk for hours and hours, visiting at Neverland Ranch, and Bryant has long been fortified by the lessons Jackson instilled about the burden of honoring true talent, about the ways to open your mind to be smarter, sharper and insatiable in the chase
“It sounds weird, I guess, but it’s true: I was really mentored by the preparation of Michael Jackson,” Bryant told Yahoo! Sports.
Sounds weird?
More from Wojnarowski:
“We would always talk about how he prepared to make his music, how he prepared for concerts,” Bryant said. “He would teach me what he did: How to make a ‘Thriller’ album, a ‘Bad’ album, all the details that went into it.
“It was all the validation that I needed – to know that I had to focus on my craft and never waver. Because what he did – and how he did it – was psychotic. He helped me get to a level where I was able to win three titles playing with Shaq because of my preparation, my study. And it’s only all grown.
“That’s the mentality that I have – it’s not an athletic one. It’s not from [Michael] Jordan. It’s not from other athletes.
“It’s from Michael Jackson.”
After reading Wojnarowski’s lengthy piece on the inner workings of Bryant, I think I may finally have a clue why we all know so little about #24’s personal life. Read more…
Remember the notorious 6-for-24 shooting disaster suffered by Kobe Bryant in Game 7 of the 2010 NBA Finals? With the constant reminders from the media and the ever-present legions of Laker haters, how could you not?
While that disastrous inaccuracy nearly cost the Lakers the NBA title, many forget a major detail that may have led to Bryant’s shooting futility. Seven months earlier, on Dec. 11, Bryant suffered an avulsion fracture in two places near the tip of the right middle finger on his shooting hand.
Rather than sit out six weeks to allow the finger to properly heal, Bryant played through the injury - reconfiguring his shooting stroke in the process.
Brilliant marketing move by Nike this morning in Los Angeles as Beaverton’s brightest lights install an enormous banner of Kobe Bryant and LeBron James on the front, highest-profile facade of Staples Center:
As noted by L.A. sports reporter Arash Markazi, the banner shows cartoon caricatures of Bryant and James “dunking on that reindeer.”
Funny she brings it up as the future Mrs. Bryant, Vanessa Laine, was 17 when she met Kobe for the first time. Of course, that illegality had nothing to do with immigration. (Though you could make a case for sneaking over the border.) Read more…
