"I understand they're making it out to make us look better to corporate and big business. But we don't really sell to big business. We sell to kids and people who are into the NBA hip-hop world."
--Raja Bell, Phoenix Suns guard

Right you are, Raja. Kids are the ones buying season tickets and luxury suites. And the checks for advertisements and sponsorships? All signed by people who are into the NBA hip-hop world.

Spot on.

I used to think that having a "Who is Mike Jones" jersey was high comedy, but the next time I overpay to wear someone else's name, it's gotta be Paul Shirley, from the Phoenix Suns. After the last two rec league bball seasons, I've slowly accepted that I might be a full 2 years away from playing like Lebron, but booooyy I could put up some Paul Shirley numbers like no other! Astonishingly, he plays approximately 200 seconds per game, give or take 2 seconds. He's gonna be a beast in the playoffs though!

Anyhow, Paul Shirley, true whiteboy geek that he is (who else in the NBA has an engineering degree?), has a blog. (I, for one, remain cordially unimpressed by the fact that he has posted to his blog more in the past week than I have in the past 2 months.) It's not bad reading though. Nowhere else on NBA.com can you find the honest-to-God truth about the Atlanta Hawks.

Saying the Hawks are a bad basketball team is like saying that living in Beirut would be exciting—true, but not really the whole story.

See, now I need a Hawks jersey for my summer trip to Lebanon.

The latest study, published in the April issue of the Journal of Adolescent Health, found that teens pledging virginity until marriage are more likely to have oral and anal sex than other teens who have not had intercourse.

- http://www.cnn.com/2005/HEALTH/03/18/virginitystudy.stds.ap

post pictures faster than me. Two weeks? Honestly, Jami, honestly?

if you can watch this and not laugh.

The only city that can bring pious religious devotees together on the same filthy street corner as thoroughly plastered college kids for night after February night, proudly presents a tale of triumph and tragedy:

The girl told the principal that her mother, who works in a bar, makes alcoholic shots at home and sells them at work. The fourth-grader said her mother had instructed her to take the shots to school and sell them, three for $1, to make some money for Christmas.

- http://www.cnn.com/2004/EDUCATION/12/08/jell-o.school.ap

Hold on a hot second - that means you could buy one of these supposed Jello shots with a postage stamp and still get change back! Yikes! The going price for liquor in New Orleans elementary schools must've taken a precipitous fall...

Including:

• nice houses
• fancy cars
• a starting spot on the whitest basketball team since my summer league squad

As Carlos Boozer is slowly learning, though, it can't buy a first-place record. (That would be Carlos Boozer, $68M man, of the 8-10 Utah Jazz.)

Turns out that if he signed for a mere $41M in Cleveland, he would be a part of the 12-6 (first-place!!) Cavaliers team.

Will people from Duke never learn...

Don't be wrong, Ellie. Because wrong people have acute passport problems, esp if they're crossing the border with Pakistani's finest.