- You are probably all aware of this already, but Guillermo Diaz is no longer a Clipper. NBA rules require teams to sign players for the rest of the season in order to keep them beyond 10 day contracts. Diaz was at the end of his 20 days, and now he's gone. Tongue in cheek discussions of tanking for draft position aside, it's pretty clear that MDsr is trying to win every game considering that he played Diaz 18 minutes during his 9 game stay with the team, while 32-year-old Cat Mobley played 324 minutes in the same span. The Clippers will undoubtedly bring in a new ten-dayer soon. Has anyone called Derrick Byars' agent? (Not that having multiple 10 day contracts on the roster would necessarily be a great thing, but at some point you have to look at Davis and Williams and say, 'You're hurt, you're in the last year of your contract, you're not helping, here's your money, I need your roster spot.' They could still be useful for matching up salaries in a trade at this point. But surely they're gone after the trade deadline if not before, right?)
- Check out Citizen ZhivClip's diary regarding Elton Brand's return. He added a poll to it, and he is so very proud (we all are). He really wants your feedback too. So vote in the poll, and leave your comment about when you think Elton will play his first game this season.
- There's a new basketball blog in the SBNation family, bringing the NBA contingent to 15, exactly half of the league. The new blog is Pickaxe and Roll, and it covers the Nuggets, in case you hadn't guessed. Jeremy is a terrific blogger, and absolutely prolific. He's got a film room where he analyzes Nuggets game footage and posts it to YouTube, an idea I've been toying with myself. But how he finds the time to do that is beyond me. I've got nothing but time, but even I find that idea daunting. Anyway, today's a good day to check out Pickaxe and Roll because it has the 5th bi-weekly Blogger MVP and ROY voting results, featuring pithy comments from yours truly among others. Welcome to the network, Jeremy!
- Check out Joe Stevens' take on the MDsr/DTS flapdoodle in the Daily News/Press Telegram. Stevens is the Clippers' beat writer, but he seems to have put on his columnist hat for this one. He's quite critical of MDsr and feels that Sterling didn't say anything unwarranted (an assertion with which I happen to disagree). I'll let a line from the piece sum up Stevens' position:
Sterling said nothing over the line. Dunleavy sprinted over the line and stayed there awhile.
Could be a little awkward for Joe at the next shoot around. Reading the article, one wonders if Stevens' has a journalism degree or a psychology degree (perhaps both). But 'Amateur Psychology Today' quips aside, I agree that MDsr's reaction was immature. It's interesting that although he finds MDsr at fault in the whole affair, he doesn't think the Clippers should get a new coach. At any rate, the anti-MDsr crowd out there in ClipsNation will eat it up.
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