The Locker Page 1350 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Fantasy Football Master's Theses Rule!
The fine, slightly scary folks at Free Darko are, apparently, in the world of post-graduate academia, a designation that makes us eye them more warily than we did before....

Vlade Divac Doesn't Want To Kill You
We'll confess a pretty strong affinity for Vlade Divac, if just because he's the only player in recent NBA history who sneaks a cigarette during timeouts. Well, as we were alerted by YAYSports!, Vlade is apparently in trouble with his home country of Serbia-Montenegro for, get this, skimping out o...

Mark Cuban's Crush On Ayn Rand
In a new story as part of "college week" on Slate.com, various "famous people" talk about the books they read in college that made a huge difference in their lives. 40 Year Old Virgin writer and director Judd Apatow says A Death In The Family. Chris Matthews says A Thousand Days. Bill Simmons even...

Rodman's Diligent Representation
Just to make sure we knew they weren't messing around when Dennis Rodman agent Darren Prince blasted us in hysterical fashion last week, the Rodman camp sent us another blistering missive over the weekend....

Introducing Darren Prince
This man you see here is not Hugo Weaving from The Matrix; he is, in fact, Darren Prince, agent for Dennis Rodman, whose book signing we popped by — and lamented — yesterday....

Deadspin Field Trip: Rodman's Book Signing
A media friend of ours emailed us yesterday and said, "Dennis Rodman's publicist just called me and promised he's going to pull a 'major' stunt at his book signing tomorrow." We couldn't imagine what Rodman could possibly do that could be classified as "major," save for, you know, sitting down and...

Why Your City Sucks
Looks like the Maloof brothers got a hold of the Jumbotron controls while drunk again. In what the team says will be a regular feature, when the Pistons were introduced last night, the Kings ran a feature about the city of Detroit on the scoreboard. You can probably guess what it was: horrible vis...

Freestyle With Ron Artest And He'll Be Your Best Friend
We remain impressed by the quality of guests that AOL Sports Bloggers Live have been bringing to their program. Dwyane Wade was on just the other day, and, in what's pretty clearly their best one yet, Ron Artest shows up and, as he tends to do, just starts freestyle rapping out of nowhere....

Stevie Franchise's Charming Nickname
In response to our Steve Francis-Cuttino Mobley item from earlier today, a "lowly paid" source "familiar with the Rockets laundry room" sends us a depressing tip:...

Francis-Mobley The New Manning-Chesney
We had a few people tell us about this, but we still hadn't gotten around to reading ESPN: The Magazine — to steal Gregg Easterbrook's classic line, published on Earth: The Planet — and it's reportedly amazing story about the unusual "friendship" between former teammates Cuttino Mobley and Steve ...

Michael Jordan's Sudden Inability To Speak
We have such huge blog crushes on the maniacs at Wizznutzz that it's somewhat embarassing to us and to our family. We love it muchly when they rip on Michael Jordan, like they did in this maddeningly brilliant post, but we've just discovered, via Mr. Irrelevant, their best find yet....

Kobe Bryant And His Leggings
YAY!Sports points out something we don't think anyone else noticed: During last night's thrilling Lakers' win over the Nuggets, Kobe Bryant — who, it seems is somewhat less than popular in the Denver metropolitian area — apparently was, uh ... wearing tights....

Mark Cuban Is Messing With Your Reality
In the wake of his somewhat wacky interview with Radar earlier this week and his continued musings on the NBA dress code on his blog, Mavs owner Mark Cuban made a statement about said code by wearing this crazy blue blazer jacket at the Mavs-Suns game last evening....

Respect The NOOCH!
Last night, the New Orleans/Oklahoma City Hornets (NOOCH!) shocked pretty much everyone by hammering to Sacramento Kings in front of nearly 20,000 crazed Oklahomans....

Welcome Back, NBA: Let's Try To Look Sharp Out There
After an offseason that saw less player movement that usual, a disastrous lockout narrowly averted (thanks to a players union with the collective strength of Shawn Bradly) and, oh yes, that whole dress code thing, the NBA returns tonight with four games before going huge tomorrow with 14 more. (I...

It's NBA Time! Ride 'Em, Suns!
Uh, we've noticed that the NBA season starts tonight, thank you very much, and we'll be blowing it out this afternoon with all kinds of goodies. But just to make sure you're adequately full of NBA piss and vinegar, here's a photo of the Phoenix Suns wearing cowboy hats, from the Arizona Republic....

Bill Simmons' Epic Battle With Star Jones
Here's something that will make your day: Our Boy Bill Simmons is playing in an NBA.com "celebrity" fantasy basketball league that includes such luminaries as Pamela Anderson, Cedric the Entertainer, Michael Rapaport and, yes yes yes, Star Jones herself....

Help Mark Cuban Find His Boogie Shoes
Mavs owner Mark Cuban, as pretty much everybody knows, is the only NBA owner with a blog. Recently, he has been disappointing us with thoughful, intelligent analysis of the NBA dress code, blog search engines and the response to Hurricane Katrina. We don't want that: We want the blatant fan-boy ge...

More "Colbert Report" Than "After M*A*S*H*"
It is with much glee that we point out that the mad scientists at Yard Work — the brilliant satirical site featuring mock columns from ESPN luminaries, along with Rickey Henderson, Ozzie Guillen and countless others — have launched their first spinoff site: the affectionately named Hard Wood, whic...

The (Gasp) Michael Jordan Backlash
True Hoop brings up something we've been noticing in recent years: People are finding it acceptable to trash Michael Jordan. In retirement, it's safer to take jabs, we guess....