Basketball Fiend

After embarrassing Iran with a skyscraping reverse slam on Wednesday, Russell Westbrook went in on Tunisia with a series of vicious dunks (see above), the best one being his gravity-defying waltz through three cowering Tunisian defenders.

Westbrook finished with 14 points on 6-of-9 shooting off the bench as Team USA improved to 5-0 with a decisive, if sloppy, 92-57 victory. Eric Gordon led the team with 21 points.

Assist, Daily Thunder.

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With Shaquille O’Neal, Big Baby Davis and Nate Robinson already in tow, the Celtics added another colorful character to their bench Wednesday as they agreed to terms with guard Delonte West on a non-guaranteed deal.

Details, courtesy of the Boston Globe:

A free agent looking for a team to take a chance, West agreed to a nonguaranteed deal yesterday with the Celtics, his second go-round with the team.

The deal means West can be released before Jan. 10 without the Celtics being responsible for the remainder of his contract. West received $500,000 as a buyout from the Timberwolves when he was waived Aug. 3.

[Danny] Ainge has always admired West’s talents, and the swingman played his best basketball while in Boston. But his salary and Wally Szczerbiak’s, plus the draft rights to Jeff Green, were required for Ainge to obtain Ray Allen from Seattle in July 2007.

Parting was obviously sweet sorrow for Ainge the last time around — he has made no secret of how much he likes West’s competitive fire — so it makes sense that he’d give West a chance to prove himself this season. No matter how much Ainge likes him, though, there’s no guarantee that West will get playing time this year.

It’s going to be a pretty crowded backcourt in Boston with West joining Rajon Rondo, Ray Allen, Nate Robinson and Von Wafer, who also enters training camp with a non-guaranteed contract.

It’ll be interesting to see if West can beat out Wafer for the right to Tony Allen’s minutes off the bench. My money’s on West — if for no other reasons than he’ll commit to defense and he can rap circles around the Wafeman.

Whatever happens, one thing is clear: It’s going to be far from a boring season in Boston.

Hot sauce in my bag. Hot sauce in my bag.

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Well, ladies, it looks like you’re going to have to cross Chris Bosh off your list.

The Miami Heat forward got engaged Friday to his girlfriend of one year, Adrienne Williams, according to the Miami Herald.

The couple’s post-proposal celebration included dinner at Hakkasan and partying with will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas at LV. You know, the usual.

For the record, I saw these two at the ESPYs and they were absolutely crazy about each other. When Bosh presented, Williams celebrated in the V.I.P. room by jumping up and down and filming his speech with her smart phone.

They also couldn’t be more mismatched size-wise. He’s 6-foot-10. She’s about 5-foot-2. Which means their kids still have a shot at 6-foot.

Lucky (non)bastards!

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Hey Brandon, welcome to Team Awkward. You’ll be a great teammate for Mark Madsen and Stephon Marbury.

Assist, Talk Hoops.

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Thursday’s on-court brawl between Team Greece and Team Serbia featured the most egregious case of cowardice since Carmelo Anthony open-hand punched Jared Jeffries then ran away in the Knicks-Nuggets brawl in 2006. As Greek center Sofoklis “Baby Shaq” Schortsanitis lay prone against a courtside barrier, Serbian big man Nenad Krstic punched him repeatedly in the head like he was playing Whac-A-Mole. Except Schortsanitis didn’t have the option of vanishing into a hole. He just had to take the beating.

Schortsanitis ultimately rallied, pushed through the scrum and charged Krstic, at which point Krstic turned tail and ran. Apparently he wanted no part of the near 400-pounder.

That was strike one against Krstic: turning and running after he picked the fight with Schortsanitis.

Strike two was throwing a courtside chair at Schortsanitis while Schortsanitis wasn’t looking and hitting Greek center Yannis Bouroussis instead. How cowardly is that? Throwing a chair at someone while he isn’t looking? While you’re being protected by two security guards no less. Who is this guy? Orlando Bloom?

Strike three? Do we really need a strike three on this one?

Yeah, I don’t think so either.

Nenad Krstic, you’re a punk. Consider yourself branded.

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Clevelanders may be down in the dumps since losing their favorite man-child, LeBron James, but at least they still have Mike Polk.

The comedian behind the transcendentally funny “Hastily Made Cleveland Tourism Video” has another hit on his hands: “LeBron James Is A Bitch.” In it, he rips LeBron nastier than a Sammi-Ronnie fight. I mean he’s really going for blood.

The amount of hilarious one-liners are too many to name, but pay special attention to the Delonte West lines. And that D-Wade crack at the end. That had me falling out of my chair.

Assist, Dave Dulberg.

Oh boy. Here we go again.

We’re not even a game into the final season of Carmelo Anthony’s contract and the hype surrounding his impending free agency is already reaching a fever pitch. Just as with LeBron James, speculation is running rampant about where Melo will play in the future. And we all know what that means: increased pressure for the Nuggets, increased exposure for Melo and a slew of what ifs that will ultimately lead to anger in 29 of the NBA’s 30 cities and rejoicing in the other.

Didn’t we learn anything from “The Decision”?

I guess not because already reports are surfacing that Melo won’t be wearing a Nuggets jersey after this season, even though, again, no games have actually been played yet.

From ESPN The Magazine’s Ric Bucher:

All signs continue to point toward the eventual divorce between Carmelo Anthony and the Denver Nuggets.

League sources say it is now a matter of when, not if, Anthony and the Nuggets will go their separate ways.

Anthony is weighing whether to sign a three-year, $65 million extension offered by the Nuggets. His dilemma, league sources say, is what affords him the best chance of continuing his career elsewhere. Anthony could sign with Denver and convince the team to then trade him. His other option would be to not sign the extension, thereby forcing the team to move him rather than risk losing him next summer as a free agent.

A league source also told Bucher “[Melo's] going to make it real clear that he’s not coming back,” which, to me, means nothing given the time frame, but everyone else seems to be taking it as gospel.

Wouldn’t it make more sense to see how the season sorts out now that George Karl is back on the bench and the Nuggets are returning a core that ably challenged the Lakers in 2008-09? I think so.

There’s also much ado about a toast Chris Paul made at Melo’s wedding in July that suggested Melo join Amar’e Stoudemire in New York next year. There’s considerably less talk about the toast Melo’s drunk uncle made saying he should play basketball on the moon. But that’s the rub, right? CP3’s speculation is obviously some kind of trump card.

That and a quote from an unnamed league source.

Then again, wasn’t Paul the one who deked a trade demand this summer only to nullify it days later? And weren’t “multiple sources” largely to blame for a lot of the misinformation about LeBron this summer?

Again, I fail to see why we’re putting our collective trust in this report.

Can’t we just be smart about this and let the speculation rest until June?

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