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In recent years, NBA players have started to gain much attention outside of basketball quarters. Three of these players diversifying outside of basketball: Gilbert Arenas, Shaquille O’neal, and Stephon Marbury also happen to be among the most entertaining people in show business. Gilbert has gained superstar status mostly through his blog and crazy behaviour, Shaq has and always will be the Godfather of entertainment, and Stephon Marbury has shown flashes of insanity on numerous occasions. So what would be better than bringing these three together, and making one crazy motherfreakin’ show? Nothing I tell you, absolutely nothing! Just imagining those three together puts a big smile on my face. Therefore, in order to make this timeless classic a reality, I present to you my 5 ideas for a Big Diesel/Agent 0/Starbury television show.Show Ideas

1) A question of Sanity

If you have watched any BBC, you might have run into a sports trivia show called ‘A question of Sport’. There is one host, two regular team leaders and then 2 guest celebrities on each team. Question are presented to each team on sports, with video clips, pictures, and in other entertaining forms.This is in fact a perfect model to copy and one that would enjoy unprecedented success.

Shaq would be the host and the man providing witty remarks at every approapriate junction. He would need to go to some speech training course so that people can actually understand what the hell he’s muttering, but that can be arranged. Gilbert Arenas, as a leader of ‘Team 0′, would always come up with some crazy answers that will have the crowd laughing as often as a ‘Friends’ episode. His team would probably be stuck on 0 points for most of the game, but that doesnt mean they cant win. Thats because on the other team you have Stephon Marbury, who will no doubt try his best to outcraze Arenas and come with some wacky stuff that will occasionaly cross the line and have everyone in the room quiet, wondering whether to boo him. Shaq will break that ice and come up with one of his classic punch lines that will restore sanity to the room.

Verdict: This show knows no limits besides the craziness of Arenas and Marbury, so yea – no limits. Sports celebrities guests would provide a nice colourful background to this mayhem, and some watchers will even be drawn by the sports trivia itself. This is a platinum mine.

2) The Next Big Invention

The SMG (Shaq/Marbury/Gilbert) trio no doubt have some crazy ideas deep inside their brain. This show would be reveal who among the three is the craziest of them all. The premise would be to make the best and craziest invention that they can possibly make. Their budgets would all be something around $50,000 and they would have this amount of capital to make their idea a reality. THe camera would go around tracking their progress to make their crazy invention happen. Shaq would perhaps try to make a 100% freethrow making catapult, Gilbert would try to develop a basketball jersey that hydrates your body while still playing, and Stephon Marbury would make the viewers cringe with his god-awful idea of making a solar-powered flashlight. The presentation would be similar to “The Apprentice” and the host would be no other than Mr. Donal Trump himself.

Verdict: Just imagining Marbury in a lab coat and brainstorming inventions with his advisors is enough for me to invest my life savings on this show.

3) Favorite Uncle

There’s a lot of dating shows on television where one guy/girl goes on dates with three other members of the opposite sex. In the end, through these dates the one person has to pick one of the three he/she likes best. A similar idea can be implimanted for the SMG trio where they are the contestants and instead of a woman, it is a kid’s love they have to win (I feel bad for even making this point but I dont want to get sued: its obviously a much different kind of love they need to win with the kid). What makes this idea so great is that 1) all three are just overgrown kids 2) love children – Shaq has kids, Gilbert looks after one, and Marbury writes children’s books 3) probably are the type would want to be the favorite uncle 4) and the kid can and will say anything that’s on his mind to these manchilds. Seeing these three dissed by a kid and seeing them all fight each other to be the ‘favorite uncle’ would be some good old fashioned entertainment.

Verdict: Im still not sure if three old strangers trying to impress a little kid falls in the Bill Cosby or Michael Jackson area.

4) The FaceOff

This show besides the SMG trio would need one more suitable NBA personality, my vote goes to Sam Cassell. This show is a mix between American Idol/BET Freestyle Friday/And1 Tour. Each of the 4 NBA stars is an agent/coach and has to find 5 under-21 team members. They each have to find 1 basketball player, 1 hiphop freestyler, 1 dancer, 1 comedian, and 1 model. After a search through auditions, parks, events, and the street, the team will be formed. Then, each week there is a small tournament to decide which of these NBA stars’ picks were the best. A one-on-one game for basketball, a freestyle battle for rappers, a dance off for dancers, a short comedy routine for comedians, and a cat walk for the models. It’s a straight 4 team bracket elimination tournament for each field, and the winner gets 4 points, 2nd gets 3, 3rd gets 2, and 4th gets 1. At the end of these 5 competitions, the coach with the most points wins. Of course along the way, there will be a lot of trashtalk between the NBA players each claiming their discovery to be the best. Coaching and motivation will also be important. Three notable NBA players/celebrities will be on hand to judge who is the winner (except for the basketball part which will be decided on score, and be the last weeks event where points count 2x more.)

Verdict: Alot to love about this show, Cassel teaching his ball player some dirty tricks, Arenas telling his rapper to diss Shaq, Marbury being uncomfortably cLose Weight Exercise/”>Lose Weight Exercise to his model, and Shaq telling his comedian joke ideas should all be memorable highlights.

5) Garage Sale

This time the SMG trio is on the same team, where they will face three contestants each episode (preferably celebrities, but not a must). The object of the game is to make the most money possible. They will have 100 dollars to go to garage sales and pick out undervalued items. Then after bargaining and arguing amongst themselves, they will have a bunch of items which they spent 100 dollars on. They will then along with the other team (say made of P.Diddy, Charles Barkley, and Jessica Alba) host their own garage sale and see who gets the most money from the sale of their recently purchased items. Seeing Shaq box out “Barkley the Salesman”, Arenas/Marbury putting on crazy outfits and demonstrating the product to bypassers while trying to compete with Alba should make this an enjoyable show.

Verdict: This show could be total chaos. The chance that they will agree on what items to buy is as likely as them agreeing on who should take the last shot if they were on the same basketball team.

Let’s Make it Happen

While I only have 5 shows listed, there are infinite possibilities. I think the SMG trio are all quite crazy but still make a good tandem – similar to Charles Barkley, Kenny Smith, Reggie Miller. However, I’m one who feels that three such crazy personalities shouldnt be wasted talking about basketball, there is room and possibility for so much more. They all seem to be interested to be on television, so I dont see why this can’t happen. If anyone out there is reading and knows either a TV executive or either one of these three players, please pass them this idea – and make the greatest TV show ever come to life.

One of my favorite quotes of all time is one by Mr. Albert, not Marv but Einstein: “Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted”. Truer words can not be said for what I think of statistics in basketball. I don’t know if it’s just that people like to simply things; Kidd is known as Mr. Triple double, Duncan is the double-double machine, LeBron had a sneaker out called 20-5-5 – but stats sure as hell get more attention than they should deserve. It’s common habit for people to judge a players performance by looking straight at the boxscore. In a 82 season league with 30 teams, you generally have no alternative unless you are glued to your couch at home and watch League pass every moment of your living day. However, besides single games, whole seasons and MVP races are evaluated using that box score and ultimately the success of a players career. First I want to take a look at the current batch of stats, and then identify some new stats that should be introduced.

Box Score aka Report Card aka KPI

Everyone at every level is judged based on certain aspects. At school you get grades which make up your report card. At work you might have some Key Performance Indicators. In the NBA theres is the boxscore. A couple of numbers in the end summarizes all of your efforts and endeavors. Here’s what I think of each stat and how much meaning we should attach to it when we look at them.

Points- This is the number one most important stat in basketball. You have 30 points or more and it doesn’t matter if you had 6 airballs, 12 turnovers and played the most selfish basketball in your life – people will think you had a good game. In fact that isn’t unlike something players like Kobe and Allen Iverson did for many years. Jerry Stackhouse was a scoring champion, Ricky Davis could average insane amounts at will, and even Ronald Murray had a season where it seemed like he was going to be one of the best scoring players in the league. So basicly it doesnt mean much. Six points scored in crunch time against a good defensive team is much more meaningful that someone who scores 25 in garbage minutes.

Assists- The way an assist is calculated is that a player must take no more than one dribble after a pass is made and score. The reason I know this is because I would always complain at our stats keeper in high school that she didnt count my assists correctly. In fact, there are so many things wrong with this stat I don’t know where to begin. First of all it includes as an assist many instances where the person who passed the ball might not have done anything significant. Imagine Smush Parker passes the ball to Kobe, Kobe takes couple of seconds to eye down his opponent and throw a couple of jab steps, then he dribbles takes one step back and hits a fade away three. Assist goes to Smush Parker. Now imagine theres a 2 vs 3 fastbreak and Steve Nash cleverly misleads the 3 defenders and passes to a wide open Amare Stoudamire, and Amare dunks the ball in after two quick dribbles – Nash gets no assist. These two examples hopefully help point out the problems associated with trying to track how well a player is setting up his teammates. I’m not even going to get into the whole, ‘PG creates a perfect setup and Center misses a layup’ argument.

Rebounds- I’m always surprised at how much attention this stat gets. I can bring in a tall Mongolian freak of nature who has never stepped onto a basketball court before, and he can get 10 boards easy in a single game. Well in fact this has already been done with the likes of Gheorge Mursan. This stat almost encourage players to play the wrong way – the person who boxes out the player gets no credit while the guy who doesn’t and goes for the board does. Again, the context in which you grab a rebound is also not considered. A rebound from a center after an uncontested free-throw gets the same credit as a person who jumps over three players and manages to grab the board.

Steals and Blocks- These stats are okay I guess but many times a player gets a steal due to the defensive efforts of his other teammates. Similarly, a block is often achieved my a player intentionally leading his defensive assignment to where his big men can swat the ball.

FG/FT/3PT %: Perhaps the most useful of the stats, as it gives you exactly it says it will. Percentages can be misleading depending on what kind of team you play for, what kind of looks you get, and even small things such as launching shots at the end of buzzers. Last year’s FG% leader was Mikki Moore of the Nets, but yet he isnt a remarkable shooter by any means, he just ends up shooting alot of easy shots (dunks).

Thinking Outside the Box Score

Charges- I’ve heard people mention that Battier leads the league in charges taken, but I’m not sure if theres an official sheet with everybody’s charges. If so I would definitely like to see it. Taking a charge might be the most impressive single feat in basketball. Think about it, you sacrifice your body so that MAYBE you can get the win the ball for your team. If that doesn’t embody everything that is basketball, I don’t know what does. So please, lets start keeping track of this stat and include it as a separate column in the box score.

Crunch Time- NBA.com and Nestle had a neat tracking of performance in the game when it really mattered, but I don’t see it anymore. Their execution wasnt perfect, but it was as cLose Weight Exercise/”>Lose Weight Exercise to tracking players’ clutch ability as I have ever seen using numbers. 82games.com also had a FG% for game winning shots which was also interesting to see. More of this needs to be officially tracked.

Setup- As I mentioned earlier, assists aren’t a good indication of how well the PG does his job because it varies with how well his players shoot the ball as well as other factors. So a new stat can be introduced where we track how many clear cut scoring opportunities a player prepares for his teammates. The immediate objection would be that it’s subjective to a specific person how ‘clear-cut’ the scoring opportunity is. However such minor subjective takes doesnt prevent sports like tennis from having “Unforced Errors” stats from being displayed.

Hustle Play- Among the most important plays in the course of a basketball game is hustle plays. These are plays that sometimes singlehandedly change the momentum of a game. Imagine Ben Wallace plays extremely good defense on one end of the court and forces a player to travel. On the other side he jumps into the crowd and saves a ball from going out leading to a basket. Here, Ben Wallace provides his team with a 4 point swing, but his box score hasn’t changed.

Defensive Stop- Back when Ron Artest was in Indiana, an intern had calculated what Ron Artest’s defensive assignment’s field goal percentage was. Along with this, how many stops vs. scores he let in should be tracked. So at any given time we can see a player’s defensive stop %. Another category can be added for how many turnovers he forced.

Statisticly Speaking

While stats do a good job giving us a general picture, it is something we have begun to rely too heavily on. So if this is the case, changes and additions need to be made to the way we keep stats. We can no longer afford to turn a blind eye to all the plays that dont show up on the stats sheet, for we may devalue those who specialize in those areas, areas that take the most effort and will. If we do make some of these changes I have proposed, and consider the currents stats with a grain of salt like Ive indicated, we may be in a world of surprise..

Dear Etan,

When I first read your letter to Andrew Bogut, I didn’t know how to react. I mean, the things you said were mostly correct, but that’s not what got me thinking. What did get me thinking is why in the world is Etan Thomas writing about this. Your reason seems to be that ESPN didn’t give it enough coverage. While I know for a fact the TrueHoop section at ESPN covered it as well as you would have probably liked, this apparently wasn’t enough for you. You wanted to make sure the whole world knew how wrong Bogut was with his claims. While I haven’t read your work in the past, it seems that you really want to get into politics and writing. Your book “More than an Athlete” kind of reinforces my point. So is it possible that you are using Andrew Bogut for this goal? Is it possible you are using the current unstable political climate in America to draw fans to your writing? Or maybe I got it all wrong, and this is just something that has really been bothering you.

Lets see, a 22 year old clueless NBA player tells a fellow Aussie reporter that things are different in America, that NBA players like to spend money, star in rap videos, and have multiple girlfriends. Is this really so far from the truth? Why do you even care, it’s not bad to spend your money in this way, no one can tell any other person that he’s not spending his money correctly unless he is hurting someone else. If I go out and earn money, I can spend it on anything and everything I want, that is my fundamental right. I’ll go out and build a castle out of chocolate bars if I want to. Then of course there’s the generalizations, the number 1 non politically correct thing you can do. Bogut really made your job too easy on this one. I can make a generalization that’s true for 95% of the country and still the bullshit associated with “political correctness” will prevent me from saying that, but anyways that’s another topic in of itself. At the end of the day, he exaggerates and makes generalizations but so what? This isn’t some Australian politician talking, its Andrew Bogut. A clueless jerk who has the balls to criticize NBA players spending habits in the same interview where he explains his love for poker and casinos.

So then all that’s left is Andrew Bogut and his elitist and uneducated assessment of American culture. While I understand Americans feel insecure and unloved in this recent era of political turmoil, do you really think that blatantly attacking and dismantling a 22 year old clueless kid is going to solve your problem? Do you really think nitpicking his obviously flawed arguments, facts, and points is going to help anything other than show what useless tool Bogut is. Everyone knows how intelligent you are with your posts and thoughts, but I think you need to pick someone of your own size and Lose Weight Exercise/”>Lose Weight Exercise-weight-Lose Weight Exercise/”>Lose Weight Exercise if you catch my meaning. Your letter was easily a heavyLose Weight Exercise/”>Lose Weight Exercise-weight-Lose Weight Exercise/”>Lose Weight Exercise knocking out a lightLose Weight Exercise/”>Lose Weight Exercise-weight-Lose Weight Exercise/”>Lose Weight Exercise – and in the field of politics, much like in boxing, this is not a correct way of attaining your ambitions.

After all the hype and talk about what a crazy offseason this was gonna be, Rashard Lewis has been the biggest move of the summer, not so crazy in my book. This kind of makes me think perhaps all those crazy rumors were delicately planned by the League Office to make us forget about the abysmal Finals. Well done. Assuming Kobe wont get traded in a 13 team deal, and KG doesn’t end up in Atlanta for second round picks and some cash – here are my 10 predictions for the 2008 season.1. The Suns will be crowned 2008 Champs

Yawwwwn….Oh wait, I thought that read Spurs. With the addition of Grant Hill, the Suns get exactly what they need – a veteran to fill up that lack of mental strength, and a solid scorer who can create for himself once Amare is in foul trouble and Nash sleeps on the sidelines (aka rests his back). Remember they were only a couple footsteps away from being the Champs last year. The extra hunger for a championship, addition of a key piece, and the picture of Robert Horry looming over their locker room should be enough to carry them past the aging Spurs.2. LeBron will become the Nowitzki of 2008 – getting the MVP but crashing out in the 1st Round.
With stats like 27 9 8, three quarters of voters will instinctively give him their vote to King James – despite being unable to sit through a Cavs game without having “Baywatch” on splitscreen. The other quarter will have the mail that they sent in June of 2007 voting for Duncan finally arrive at NBA HQ. The Cavs will Lose Weight Exercise/”>Lose Weight Exercise to the Knicks in the first round and LeBron will have a public meltdown of Kobe proportions.

3. The Golden State Warriors will start off with 13-0 record but the law of injuries will hold them down

With hopefully some rebounding drills under their belt, the GSW will continue where they left off last season, red hot. Baron Davis will be a serious MVP candidate until he has a jaw injury due to his oversized beard. Nelson will get the extra pay he asked for and will give most of it back through fines related to drinking.4. KG will cry in John Thompson’s arms and will consider retirement

The Garbagewolves will struggle to get any wins and Garnett will reach his boiling point. He will cry on national TV and proclaim that all he ever wanted to do was win (oh wait, he’s done that already?). He will walk out of the press conference when a reporter asks him why he chose to stay in Minnesota.

5. Kobe Bryant will sit out many games, Lose Weight Exercise/”>Lose Weight Exercise that ‘edge’ and finally be traded
Minor injuries will be the reason why Kobe sits out of many games. The fire he had will disappear much like in Game 7 of the First Round of the 2006 Playoffs, and he will regain the title of public enemy number 1.

6. Oden, Durant, Portland, Seattle will all realize they won’t be as good as they thought
Oden will be in many posters with his Nike friends – although sadly for him, not on a Nike poster. Durant will have a field goal percentage in the 30s, but people will say to give him time – perhaps because he is the only thing Sonics fans will see for a loooong time.

7. Gilbert Arenas will finally cross the line
You thought Arenas did some crazy stuff in the past, wait until the 2008 season. Gilbert will decide to do something so crazy that even his blog fans, Halo Team, and the Adidas execs will be screaming – IMPOSSIBLE!.

8. Yao Ming and T-Mac will reenact the Kobe-Shaq feud for our viewing pleasure
If you’re one of those people who watched the LA-Miami Christmas games just to see if Kobe and Shaq would shake hands, well rejoice! Yao Ming will be surprisingly vocal next year and T-Mac will not have it go down easily. Shane Battier will take one for the team and announce it was his fault. T-Mac will be the second most hated person in China after Jack Bauer. Van Gundy will be hooked on popcorn.

9. There will be a massive brawl between Phoenix and San Antonio

Amare will knockout Bowen, Duncan will turn crazy like the robots in iRobot, D’Antoni will bite someones ear off, meanwhile Parker and Diaw will be on the sidelines chatting about Thierry Henry’s latest goal for Barcelona.10. Weaker teams in the East will have the dilemma of fighting for that 8th Playoff spot or getting a top 3 draft pick

Only a handful of games will separate the East’s bottom 8 team and GM’s will go by that long age instinct that rebuilding to get in the Playoffs in the future, is better than getting in the Playoffs now.