T-Mobile Rookie Challenge Rosters Announced

Here are the players who will be participating in the Rookie/Sophomore game that will be played on February 13 during All-Star Weekend in Phoenix.

 

Rookie Team Roster

Player (Team) Position Height Weight School/Country Michael Beasley (Heat) F 6-9 245 Kansas State Rudy Fernandez (Trail Blazers) G-F 6-6 185 Spain Marc Gasol (Grizzlies) C 7-1 265 Spain Eric Gordon (Clippers) G 6-3 222 Indiana Brook Lopez (Nets) C 7-0 260 Stanford O.J. Mayo (Grizzlies) G 6-4 210 USC Greg Oden (Trail Blazers) C 7-0 285 Ohio State Derrick Rose (Bulls) G 6-3 190 Memphis Russell Westbrook (Thunder) G 6-3 187 UCLA

Head Coach — TBD Assistant Coach — Dwyane Wade

  

Sophomore Team roster

Player (Team) Position Height Weight School/Country Aaron Brooks (Rockets) G 6-0 161 Oregon Wilson Chandler (Knicks) F 6-8 220 DePaul Kevin Durant (Thunder) G-F 6-9 215 Texas Jeff Green (Thunder) F 6-9 235 Georgetown Al Horford (Hawks) F-C 6-10 245 Florida Luis Scola (Rockets) F-C 6-9 245 Argentina Al Thornton (Clippers) F 6-8 220 Florida State Rodney Stuckey (Pistons) G 6-5 205 Eastern Wash Thaddeus Young (Sixers) F 6-8 220 Georgia Tech

Head Coach — TBD Assistant Coach — Dwight Howard

Gerald Wallace Severely Injured In LA

Today was so hectic for me that I didn’t have a chance at all to catch up on the happenings around the League Tuesday night until I got home. So I’m watching the Duke/Wake Forest game on ESPN and I’m reading the crawl at the bottom of the screen and I see that it said Gerald Wallace had a cracked rib and a collapsed lung. My immediate thought was that he was in a car accident or something…until I read the rest. It said that this all happened from running into Andrew Bynum! My first thought was, wait…hold up. What?! So I run to my computer to find the highlight and I couldn’t believe it when I saw it. To me it looked like a routine play that happens all the time in basketball and not something that would’ve put him in the hospital. Keep in mind that just a week earlier I saw him almost break his neck running into Shaq on a screen that he didn’t see coming. That play looked way more violent than the Bynum incident. I’m going to post both videos so that you can see what I’m talking about. And some people actually think that basketball isn’t a physical game…HA!! Get well soon Crash.

Kobe Wants To Sell You Ankle Insurance

To purchase, please visit: http://notmybrokenankles.com. Don’t let broken ankles affect your game.

Brandon Jennings – No European “Vacation”

If you’ve seen any of the National Lampoon’s  vacation movies then you’re probably familiar with the hilarious disasters of the Griswold family where things start off great and then go downhill in a hurry. Such is the plight of Brandon Jennings who became the first HS player to skip college and play professional basketball in Europe. What happens to the Griswold’s is fictional and comedic; what’s happening to Brandon is real and not at all funny.

Brandon Jennings described in an email what his experience has been like since signing a 3yr ($1.2 million per) contract to play in Italy with Lottomatica Virtus Roma last summer. He has a tattoo on his back that says “Young Money” and he also has those same words stitched into his signature Under Armour shoe. So it’s very ironic when he says that since he’s been in Italy he’s only been paid on time once! I guess he should call himself  “Late Money” instead. He also complained that he’s been treated like a kid and not as a man and that some nights he plays heavy minutes and then others he doesn’t play at all. All of this has been described as a warning to other HS players here in the states to not make the same decision that he made.

You guys know me and you know that I’m very opinionated and very vocal about certain things…and this time will be no different. All I have to say to Brandon is dude…STOP COMPLAINING! Nobody held a gun to to your head in that Las Vegas hotel room when you signed that contract last summer. If you didn’t qualify academically to play at Arizona then you could’ve gone the prep school route instead of letting them sell you on going to Europe and being this trailblazing, trendsetter that kids after you would be sure to follow. I’m sure it all sounded good at the time, but how much research did you do? How many guys did you talk to that actually played overseas? How many of the horror stories did you hear about the practices, or the substandard living conditions, or the late salary payments or better still, the ones about some guys not getting paid at all? You either didn’t talk to anybody at all and if you did, you probably felt like you were better than them anyway and what happened to them wouldn’t happen to you. Rude awakening huh?

I read an article on espnthemagazine.com and there is a video of him showing off all of the Gucci and Louis Vuitton stuff that he bought since he’s been there. At one point in the video the interviewer asked him about his decision to play overseas instead of going to UA — this was right after the whole Lute Olson thing broke — and I believe his exact words were : “Do I look like the dumb one now for not going to Arizona?”

Well based on all the Gucci gear you bought no, you don’t look like the dumb one for not going to Arizona. But after what you said in your email, it sounds to me like you wish you would have.

Tyrus Thomas Jams On Jermaine O’Neal!

Two words…Good Lord!