Lorenzen Wright reported missing

Lorenzen Wright, who last played for the Cleveland Cavaliers during the 2008-09 season, has been reported missing by his family. Wright’s sister told Memphis’ WREG that the former 13-year pro hasn’t been seen or heard from since Sunday, when Wright was scheduled to fly out of Memphis back to his home in Atlanta.

Wright had been visiting his family in Memphis, where he also played in college and even spent five seasons with the Grizzlies, playing some of the best ball of his career in a Grizz uni. According to WREG, Wright has had some well known financial problems, but authorities aren’t expecting any foul play.

Hopefully it’s all just a mix up and Wright’s okay.

Props, SLAM

Paul Rudd, Steve Carrell mock “The Decision”

I don’t watch the ESPY’s because they already have a championship trophy for each sport, along with individual awards like MVPs, so I don’t see the point. I’ll admit that the year the Detroit Pistons took the show hostage, I watched with beaming eyes.

Other than that, I don’t really get into it.

I did catch this great clip though, and it’s hilarious. Sounds like there was plenty of other funny stuff on the show this year, so maybe people don’t watch it for the athletes, they watch it for the Saturday Night Live factor.

Here’s two of the funniest people on the planet, Steve Carrell and Paul Rudd, absolutely destroying Jim Gray and LeBron James in the spoof of “The Decision.”

Spot on job by Rudd and Carrell, classic!

LeBron James couldn’t live up to his own hype in Cleveland

LeBron James pissed off a lot of people last week, there’s no other way to put it. If you’re one of the 100,000 people that live in Miami, well, you’re obviously pretty damn happy. Same goes for front-runners of our universe — the bandwagon is filling up.

The people of Cleveland went into outrage, and rightfully so. They’re allowed to feel betrayed, that’s part of the business in sports. If LeBron is insulted that people raged the streets burning his jersey, he probably shouldn’t have made his announcement on a reality show-esque prime-time ESPN special.

If his announcement came in the middle of the day, via an update on ESPN or one of the other online sports outlets (as all other free-agent updates do), I’m sure the people wouldn’t have hit the streets in the fashion they did. The thing is, LeBron and his team of handlers, they wanted the build-up and they wanted this hype.

It was ridiculous, and that’s why so many people are angry. That’s why people are laughing at him and “witnessing” first hand just another example of how uncomfortable LeBron James is as a person. He’s a puppet and a follower, who craves the attention to validate himself.

We’ve never seen this type of display in all of sports, and hopefully we never have to see it again.

Dan Gilbert is freaking awesome

Tonight LeBron James “shocked” the sports world. He has left Cleveland, his hometown, after seven seasons. James is heading to Miami to team up with Chris Bosh and Dwyane Wade in hopes of championship glory.

LeBron made the announcement on ESPN’s “The Decision” on live TV.

Cleveland Cavaliers’ owner Dan Gilbert, was not happy about James’ decision and the way the superstar went about making it. He made it well known tonight. As unprecendented as James’ decision was in NBA history, never have we seen an owner drop an open letter to fans in the way that Gilbert has tonight.

In the letter, Gilbert refers to James as a “coward” and mocks the James’ “King” and “Witness” monickers. Gilbert also wishes a curse upon the Heat in the letter.

In the meantime, I want to make one statement to you tonight:

“I PERSONALLY GUARANTEE THAT THE CLEVELAND CAVALIERS WILL WIN AN NBA CHAMPIONSHIP BEFORE THE SELF-TITLED FORMER ‘KING’ WINS ONE”

You can take it to the bank.

That’s not all, this letter was amazing, ridiculous, unlike anything we’ve ever seen from an owner before. Calling James a coward and cursing the Heat’s title hopes was only the half of it.

In other reports, Gilbert also accused James of quitting on the team during this season’s semi-finals series against the Celtics, along with Game 6 during last season’s Eastern Conference Finals series against the Magic.

The battle has just begun, this is awesome. Gilbert is the man. In one night, he may have went from the ‘just the Cavs’ owner’ to the next Mark Cuban, or the greatest owner in the league, or at least the coolest.

Miami it is, time for Cleveland to rebuild

We heard all day that LeBron James would be going to the Miami Heat, but we still weren’t 100% sure. When he made the announcement that he would be heading to Miami tonight on ESPN, it still kind of knocked the wind out of me. I say that as a guy who doesn’t like the Cavaliers, and doesn’t want to see them be successful.

Well, until now.

We all “witnessed” it tonight.

It still came as a shocker. LeBron James will be bringing his act to Miami, since he couldn’t live up to the hype of being a “king” in Cleveland. It’s time to tear down the billboard and time for the Cavs to rebuild their franchise.

More to come…

Shaq stars as “The Karate Big Kid”

Words need not describe how ridiculous and awesome Shaquille O’Neal is. Don’t forget big Shaq is a free-agent too. Will he come back for one more year? He planned on it, but where will he be playing? Will Shaq move on from Cleveland and play for his sixth different NBA team in search of one last title?

As we await more news from the free-agent madness, enjoy a silly video that Shaq posted on his Vimeo account.

And so it begins…

We’ve been hearing about the 2010 free agent class for far too long.

Seriously, this has to be the most overdrawn out, overhyped thing in NBA history. It only got zanier when ESPN had the audacity to put up a ticker counter in honor of LeBron James‘ upcoming free agency, the moment that his Cavaliers lost to the Celtics.

Well, today at 12:01 AM, the counter struck zero.

James is a free agent, it’s the moment we’ve all been waiting for — well at least people in New York, New Jersey and Chicago. As for people in Cleveland, they’re all crapping their pants right now and probably running around the city frantically.

Of course, LeBron isn’t the only free agent, but if you turn on ESPN, CNN or other outlets, you might get that feeling.

The class is deep, very deep. Other than James, the top players available are Dirk Nowitzki, Dwyane Wade, Paul Pierce, Chris Bosh, Carlos Boozer, Joe Johnson, Amar’e Stoudemire, David Lee, Rudy Gay, Ray Allen and plenty more.

As far as breaking it all down, that’s another post, but let the speculation and rumors continue — the truth is about to come out very soon, and within the next two or three weeks the NBA should look quite different, or maybe not much different at all.

Well, except for Toronto, sorry mates.

C’mon Cleveland, really!?!?

By now you may have already seen this video of “important” people from Cleveland singing their rendition of “We Are The World,” dedicated to LeBron James. Cleverly titled, “We Are LeBron,” the video has local Cleveland celebs and even government officials singing an ode to their star Cavalier, in hopes he doesn’t leave the city this summer during free-agency.

Is the video funny? Yes. Was that it’s purpose? Yes.

Was it also pretty genuine? I would definitely say yes.

If you ask me, the people in this video are making out their entire city to be dependant upon James. Obviously James has had a huge impact on the city, and he does bring exposure and makes the city more money I’m sure — but come on Cleveland, why don’t you just have the entire city gather in the streets and bow to the guy — the same guy that has led you to zero championships.

Pathetic.

2k10 First Round Predictions: Eastern Conference

The NBA playoffs have started today, and don’t fear, I’m bringing you predictions as always. I get to start fresh and have the 16 teams that made the playoffs in front of me, this should be easy.

I also thought the same last year — what a mess!

Someone has to make some bold predictions, and generally I like to be that guy, don’t take away from my knowledge of the game — I know what’s up.

This year I’m going to call it perfectly, so let’s start with the Eastern Conference.