There have been a lot of great developments so far during NBA Playoffs: Week 1.
Deron Williams proved to be even more amazing than we thought. The Spurs stole home court from the Mavs. Josh Smith has devoured four souls. Dwyane Wade learned new and more vengeful ways to hate his teammates. Joakim Noah went to war with the city of Cleveland. Gerald Wallace suffered 14 undiagnosed concussions. And J-Rich had the best game of his career.
Still, the best development of this postseason thus far has not happened on the court or even within Joakim’s scrunchy — it has happened in Photoshop.
Doc Funk has been dropping masterfully captioned photos after each game, and every batch is better than the last. LOLz for dayz. So to help spread awareness and revisit some of the awesome, I’m planning to do a little “best of” recap each Friday until the trophy is handed out by posting my fav five (don’t call it that) of the week.
Everybody knows that Manu is both one of the best players in the League and perhaps the best international guard to ever grace the NBA. He’s also one of the most fun guys to watch and the main reason that I have always been baffled that anyone could ever consider the Spurs boring. Timmy is the Big Fundamental and does everything with perfect precision, but has little in the way of flair or personality, so I get why some people would fail to enjoy his even-keeled brilliance.
But Manu?
He plays a brand of basketball that inspires joy joy feelings in all those around him and Kobe, according to Chris Ballard in his book The Art of a Beautiful Game, likes to repeatedly characterize as “balls to the wall.” Usually, Manu’s greatness comes with the rock in his hands. But this year, dude’s defense has been on full display.
Last night, par examplar, he unleashed this Yeti-like-force block on KG, who now has two huge reasons to be thoroughly embarrassed: the blowout his Celtics suffered at the hands of the old, boring Spurs and being swatted this badly by a slow, white, geeky, balding chump. (via Real Cavs Fans)
And this wasn’t the first time this year Manu has publicly de-scrotumed a future Hall of Famer named Kevin. Here we see Mr. Durant also get got by the Argentine. (Video via Project Spurs … Click through to see KD’s PG-rated response to the block … And my sincere apologies for the Sean Elliot commentary.)
Is that all?
Nope.
Here’s Manu standing on his head to prevent a lay-up attempt by his Eastern Conference SG doppelgänger. If you can’t stand the Heat, Dwyane, better get out of the kitchen.
As some of you know, I enjoy this whole Twitter fad these whipper snappers are always talking about. For general NBA stuff, I tweet under @BothTeamsPlayed and I also do a lot of in-game commenting on my Pacers under @8pts9secs. (I also cover Indy over at 8 Points, 9 Seconds, if you weren’t aware.)
But it’s not just me. The entire NBA world has embraced the micro-blogging social media site as much as any other community I can imagine. Media folks like @russbengston, @StackMack and @RobMahoney drop knowledge during games. Players like @KevinDurant35, @AndrewMBogut and @OneandonlyCP3 talk with fans constantly.
All in all, it’s pretty great.
And it seems like at least one NBA player has found a way to make money off of it. I’m not sure exactly what the consensus is on the the kosher-ness of doing this, but Jon Brockman (@MrJonBrockman), a rookie reserve with the Sacramento Kings, is reportedly getting paid to send out corporate-sponsored tweets from his account, according to Business Insider.
Jon Brockman of the Sacramento Kings has 319,195 followers on Twitter. Tweeting “Has anyone seen the new Volvo C30? There are tons of features on this thing! Check it out…http://spn.tw/5q81#ad” earns him around $411, SponsoredTweets.com reports.
$411 per tweet isn’t all that much. But it is roughly $411 more than I make per tweet.
As for whether or not celebrities should be doing this (Kim Kardashian reportedly makes $10,000 per tweet and Soulja Boy may make something similar), I don’t really care.
It’s obviously a little disingenuous, but none more so than doing a “corny”commercial for PowerBar, Samsung or Taco Bell. (What up, Lamar Odom. Nice shirt.)
Now … did he really enjoy the cake or is he just saying he did cause the cake shop paid him? I mean, I’m guessing he likes cake regardless cause who doesn’t like cake? But you know what I’m saying.
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