Tonight's Lineup

I purposely delayed my flight another day so I could watch tonight's match ups. (Well, that and the fact that I'm not emotionally prepared to leave my dog. My cousin's like, "I don't even know who you are anymore.") Boston has the chance to sweep the 3 Texas teams for the first time since '01 and I fully expect them to do so because KG is going to be a beast tonight after being called out for tanking. Tanking...for missing the last 5 games of the season after toiling essentially alone for the last 12 years for Minny. I have the same thing to say to Glen Taylor as Faith Hill said to the ho bag who grabbed her husband's balls: "You gotta learn some class, my friend." He could take some lessons from Micky Arison. I don't know much about Micky Arison personally, but the way he handled the Shaq trade spoke volumes about his character. If Boston goes up by 25 early on, we may even see a smackdown between Mark Cuban and Avery Johnson. My money's on Avery. You know he's still scrappy as ever.

Update: Mark Cuban is MIA. Official excuse - "family commitment." What it really means - he has a responsibility to his family not to get beat down on national TV by an employee.

NBA's Finest Parent/Coach: Del Harris

I did a NBA Parent ranking of current players a few days ago, and a couple people mentioned that I omitted Mary Thomas, the gold standard of NBA parents and parents in general. I left her off the list because 1) I only included current players, and 2) I'm desperately trying to track down a copy of A Mother's Courage: The Mary Thomas Story before I write about her. I like visual aids.

Anyway, I recorded NBA First Person on NBA TV last week, and yesterday, I finally got around to watching it. (I'll pretty much watch/read anything NBA-related, although Paul Shirley's book is killing me. I'll explain more later.) The show, hosted by Ahmad Rashad (who else), featured Tim Duncan, Reggie Miller, and Del Harris. Judging by Ahmad's weight (about 20 pounds less) and the fact that it was Timmy's 1st year in the League, it was filmed 10 years ago.

Most of the stuff on Timmy and Reggie is pretty much already known to NBA fans. However, the pleasant surprise was Del Harris, coach of the Lakers during that time. He's crazy - not in a Ron Artest way, but more in a Gilbert Arenas way.

He reminds me of what George Bush would be like if he had a brain. Between him and Avery Johnson, the Mavericks now have my favorite coaching staff in the League. I think Jack McCallum should follow those two around next season.

By the way, I included Del as a NBA Parent because while not a player, his son is part of the League. This way, I can also include Don Nelson and Jerry Colangelo in my list of NBA Parent/Coach or Executive. That list is pretty short though. The only other people I can think of are George Karl and Bill Walton and who knows how long Coby will last and Bill isn't a coach or executive. So basically, I need to rethink this whole premise. Either way, Del Harris is pretty damn cool.