A recent USA Today poll asking if the NBA draft lottery had been fixed found that 82% of responders either felt it was for certain (54%) or that it could have been (28%). It's an alarming statistic that reflects the obvious distrust in David Stern, who happened to be in charge of the team that just won the overall No. 1 pick -- the same franchise that was headed to years of ineptitude, years where Stern would be viewed as the primary offender thanks to his universally-panned veto of the Chris Paul trade.

But the problem goes deeper than that. Yes, there is an obvious conflict of interest with the New Orleans Hornets that lends itself to conspiracy talk. However, no basketball conspiracy could thrive unless people felt the games themselves were being manipulated, and this is where the NBA has a nearly catastrophic flaw. What happened in Game 2 of the Heat-Celtics series was far more egregious and has way more to do with people doubting the sincerity of the NBA than the Hornets landing Anthony Davis. The Heat went to the line so many times on so many questionable calls, much as they did in the 2006 NBA finals against Dallas, that it's only natural for a casual fan to come away thinking the games are either rigged or positioned to be rigged.

This is because so many of the fouls on the Celtics simply weren't fouls. The same way that the NFL is legislating away defense so scores can get higher, the NBA has neutered defenses to the point that a defender literally can't stand his ground without being called for a foul. And without the benefit of hand-checking, there's no practical way anymore to guard a Dwyane Wade or Manu Ginobili as they charge into the lane.

Wade in particular has become the master of the transition foul, borrowing traits from the great Reggie Miller. No one in the NBA better exploits the ridiculous preferential treatment that's been granted to offensive players over the last few years. When an offensive player moves into a defensive player, and the defensive player's feet are moving, it's technically a blocking foul -- even though the defender should have the right to stand his ground. And so whenever Wade gets in the lane, he charges into the defender, flails his arms and legs to create contact, and then throws the ball at the rim at the off chance it could go in. The only way for a defender to play him is to either be perfectly still -- which has its obvious flaws -- or to simply get out of the way. It's more or less impossible to challenge someone like Wade when he makes up his mind that he wants to drive. Hell, Wade even karate-kicked Kevin Garnett at one point, and still managed to get a foul on Garnett.

Is the NBA rigged? No. The funny thing with conspiracy theorists is that they never consider the impractical logistics of conspiracies. The same people who think George W. Bush masterminded 9/11 simultaneously acknowledge him to be completely inept at doing anything, which is a paradox few of them ever address. Likewise, those who think the NBA is biased need to consider that since Michael Jordan retired, the San Antonio Spurs have won four titles and the New York Knicks have become a laughingstock. If the NBA is run behind a secret curtain, they're the worst manipulators in conspiratorial history.

Still, that doesn't change the fact that there's an enormous flaw regarding the favoritism to offensive players. It makes people think there's a favoritism to star players, and then a favoritism to certain teams, maybe big market teams. These conspiracies would just die if it seemed like the officiating was on the up and up, but the Heat took 18 more free-throws in Game 2 despite shooting ten more three's and pulling down the same number of rebounds. So long as D-Wade can kick Kevin Garnett in the nuts and manage to draw a foul, there'd be conspiracy theories even if the Hornets hadn't won the lottery. The fact that they did is just icing on the cake.

I keep having to remind myself that I should like the San Antonio Spurs, but I can't do it, even though they personify everything I like about sports. They're a small-market team made good; they win championships by developing players, rather than signing big-name superstars to exorbitant contracts; they have a no-nonsense coach that manages to preach fundamentals without coming off as an insincere blowhard, ala Nick Saban or Bobby Petrino; they have great players who keep their mouths shut, who don't rise up on a stage and promise to win seven rings, or split time between filming a reality show, or bicker about who should close the ends of games. They truly are the epitome of what a professional basketball team should look like.

And yet... there's a part of me that hopes they lose to the Thunder in the Western Conference Finals. It's an impulse I can't seem to shake; whenever the Spurs are on TV, I suddenly want to change the channel. They're great and I wish them all the power in the world, but I can't help but think that basketball would be better off if they were a cellar-dweller.

The problem isn't even the way they play; sure, they used to be horrendously dull and slow-paced, but Greg Popavich has actually turned them into an offensive juggernaut in recent years. No, the problem is that they never play any interesting games. They're too good. When the Spurs win, they hardly ever have any last-second buzzer beaters or thrilling triple-overtime nail-biters. No, they'll just win by 20, and they usually sweep their series to boot. Look back at their previous four championships, at the limited number of games it took them to win a title, and you'll see the one common thread that explains why they're a ratings Kryptonite. They're so polished, so team-oriented and so deep that they just eviscerate teams. It's not exactly fun to sit through.

After all, if you sat down to watch a nature program about a 60-foot giant squid, would you rather the squid pummeled a defenseless crab for 90 minutes, or would you rather the squid engage in life-or-death grapples with sharks, octopi and killer whales that could swing either way? Unless you're a masochist (not a literal masochist in this case, since both options are sort of masochistic, but figuratively), you'd go with the second option. Unfortunately, the Spurs are the giant squid, and the rest of the NBA is the defenseless crab.

And by the way, don't be guilted into thinking you lack basketball credibility if you dislike the Spurs. Whether they're a great offensive or defensive team, whether they're in a small or a big market, with quiet or loud players, simply doesn't matter. What matters is that they literally drain the excitement out of every postseason they go deep in. So yeah, let's go Thunder. Even if Oklahoma City doesn't beat them, the least they can do is make the series interesting, and lord knows that rarely happens when the Spurs are involved.

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The single-game home run record is one of the strangest, coolest records in all of sports. When Josh Hamilton knocked his fourth longball against the Orioles, he tied the single-game record for homers, a notable, relevant record that deserves the as much distinction as the single-season and all-time home run records. And yet at the same time, Hamilton shares that record with 15 other players. 15! So while it's cool that he's the record-holder, he isn't exactly standing alone. It's like when I was named TIME magazine's Person of the Year in 2006; it would've been cooler had the award not also been given to everyone on the planet.

The list of people to hit four dingers in a game is a bizarre hodgepodge of Hall of Famers, solid sluggers and complete nobodies. Yes, Hamilton joins the company of Lou Gehrig, Willie Mays, Mike Schmidt and Ed Delahanty, as well as the recently-retired Shawn Green and Carlos Delgado. But also on that list are players like Mark Whiten, who hit just 94 home runs in his career, and Pat Seerey, who had a lifetime .224 average, 86 home runs and who led the American League in strikeouts four times. Bobby Lowe, who in 1894 became the first hitter to accomplish the Grand Sombrero (a term I just made up), hit only 71 home runs in his career.

Still, it's an unbelievably rare and awesome thing to see; consider that there have been 21 perfect games. It's also one of the most unbreakable single-game records out there, since the likeliness of a player even getting a chance for a fifth homer -- let alone being able to do it -- is infinitesimal. The hitter has to hope that the guys behind him are also getting on base and scoring a lot of runs, but even then, there's no earthly reason for a pitcher to throw a strike to a guy with four home runs. Hence, there's a 16-way tie for the record.

I don't think I'm overstating things when I say that this performance could go a long way to establish Hamilton as a Hall of Famer. His career has been offset by drugs and injuries to such an extent that he'll probably retire with an unimpressive home run total, comparatively speaking. And let's not forget: numbers mean everything when it comes to the Hall of Fame. But Hamilton has a chance to notch every other home run record in existence. He's already got the single-game homer mark and the record for slams in the Home Run Derby, and it's practically a foregone conclusion that he'll win the home run batting title this year (barring injury). Now the question is if he can surpass Barry Bonds' dirty 73 home runs or Roger Maris' clean 61 homers. He's on pace to do both, but the compelling aspect with Hamilton is that you can never expect him to do anything for very long before something gets in his way. He's the best slugger in the game, he's 31 years old and he's never hit more than 32 home runs in a season. There's a paradox there that can't be overlooked.

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There are some things in sports that you only get to see once: Kobe Bryant's 81-point game, the Stanford band running onto the field, Louis Oosthuizen converting a double eagle. Most things we get to see multiple times; as cool as a triple play or no-hitter is, seasoned sports fans have seen it enough times that it barely registers excitement. When Phil Humber pitched a perfect game a week ago, I'm sure a lot of people had the same reaction I did: "Again?"

Sunday's Grizzlies-Clippers game was something different. Yes, we've seen gigantic comebacks before in NBA games, and we've even seen them in playoff games. But we've never seen, and maybe never will again see, a comeback of that scope. The Grizzlies had a 24-point lead with a little over nine minutes left; the only way they could lose was if the Clippers played a flawless nine minutes of basketball, converting every shot and scoring every time down. And even then the Grizzlies would have to go on a cold streak of historic proportions; all they needed was two field goals over the final nine minutes to put the game firmly out of reach.

Somehow they only got one. Most teams don't even score 25 points in the fourth quarter, but Clippers managed to outscore the Grizzlies - a team that had been destroying them all game - to the tune of 28-3 over the final 9:12. The Grizzlies went seven minutes without a single bucket while the Clippers scored nearly every time down.

The Clippers were down 21 points to begin the fourth, which ties the record as the largest deficit overcome in NBA playoff history. And to put it in perspective, the other time a team started the fourth in a 21-point hole, that comeback wasn't nearly as improbable as this. The 2002 Boston Celtics made up 21 points against the Nets in the conference finals, but consider that the Celtics were at home in that game, that the lead never got higher than 21 in the fourth, and that with 9:12 remaining, the Celtics had already trimmed the lead to 10.

Is the loss an automatic death sentence to the Memphis Grizzlies? Maybe. There have been times that teams have lost in demoralizing fashion in Game 1, only to never play competitively again the rest of the series; the first example that comes to mind is the 1995 NBA Finals, where the Magic lost a game thanks to four straight missed free throws from Nick Anderson and then fit swept by the Houston Rockets. On the other hand, this isn't the first time a team has blown a game, though maybe not to this caliber. Teams have persevered. Hell, the Mavericks could have easily folded after giving away Game 1, but they still have Oklahoma City a fight in Game 2. If Memphis has serious championship aspirations, they should be able to overcome this.

Besides, history may actually be on their side. As weird as this is, the last three teams to blow an 18-point lead to start the fourth of a playoff game all wound up getting to the finals. So who knows - maybe the biggest chokejob in NBA history was a blessing in disguise.

Is a pro athlete ever allowed to fail, or are their salaries too extreme for them to deserve any sympathy? It's a question I asked myself this week after the Mavericks cut ties with Lamar Odom, the reigning Sixth Man of the year who turned in an Adam Dunn-esque season in Dallas. Odom simply didn't play well, and now people are asking what it means about Lamar Odom. Is he spacey, sensitive, overly-emotional, melodramatic? Was he so despondent about being dealt from the Lakers that it ultimately ruined his game? Did he not even try?

Who knows. But in retrospect, it shouldn't have come as a surprise that he did struggle. Few athletes have been through as much as Lamar Odom. This man was orphaned at the age of 12 when his mother lost her life to colon cancer. He lost his son to sudden infant death syndrome in 2006. And in this most recent offseason, one day after attending the funeral of his cousin, he was in the passenger seat of an automobile accident that killed a 15-year-old kid.

We have a tendency in this country to treat athletes as soulless automatons whose only purpose in life should be to play well. The only time an athlete can miss a game without controversy is if it's serious. Strep throat, arthritis, a cold, the flu? Stuff like that doesn't count. We want our athletes toughing it out, bleeding for their money. It's why the consensus among NBA analysts diagnosing Odom tended to be: "Get over it." Not "We understand he's been through a lot" or "This is a difficult period for him." Just play.

In an ironic, sad way, Odom's poor play is something of a breathe of fresh air, if only because it might make us realize that athletes aren't quite the one-dimensional robots we think they are. They don't live in a hyperbolic freezing chamber every time they leave an arena. They have personal lives that matter, just like us. And if Tiger Woods can be reduced to a screaming, tempter-tantrum-throwing shell of himself from the weight of his baggage, imagine what the same might have done to Odom.

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At this point, it's safe to say that 2012 is the year of surprises in sports. Even If nothing else happens in 2012 -- which is a distinct possibility, since the Mayans say we're all go to meet our grisly demise in a few months -- this would still go down as one of the most unusual, unpredictable years in modern history. There have been so many unusual events in the first three months of 2012 that even if we had died on March 21st instead of December 21st, my previous assessment would still ring true.

Let's look back at what we've already seen. First there was the Jeremy Lin phenomenon. Sure, it's easy to compare Linsanity to Tebowmania, which wasn't even a year ago and may have been just as large a national story. But Lin was a true underdog, an undrafted, Ivy League Asian kid, coming from the D-League, having been waived by the Golden State Warriors and Houston Rockets. Tebow, on the other hand, might have had the most prestigious college football career in history and was a first-round draft pick. It's not even close whose rise was more improbable. We've really never seen anything like Jeremy Lin's meteoric ascension; and that he continues to play decently amidst a tumultuous, ego-driven roster of ballhogs makes the story that much better.

Then there's Dwight Howard. Yes, we've seen LeBron James and Carmelo Anthony drag out their free-agency drama for entire seasons, but Howard just did something utterly unprecedented. For all the trade demands he's made since the beginning of the season, he has inexplicably decided to drag this story out for a whole extra season by waiving his opt-out clause, a development that's as staggering as it is annoying. Even Brett Favre's sagas resolved themselves after a few months. What Howard is doing, by not signing an extension and assuring that these same trade rumors will haunt our dreams for the next year, is irritating beyond words. It's also extremely unusual. When was the last time we saw an athlete in this situation decide to stick around in a small-town city where he has less chance of winning than on another team? Had Howard not complained so much, had he not waffled at every waking opportunity, his decision to remain in Orlando could be lauded. Instead, it's just a waste of time, since we'll be witnessing this song and dance again pretty soon.

Finally we have Peyton Manning, who now finds himself on the roster of the Denver Broncos. Of all the teams Manning could have played on, he probably chose the one with the worst offense available. In Tennessee he would have had Chris Johnson and Kenny Britt; in Arizona he would have had Larry Fitzgerald; in Houston he would have had Andre Johnson and Arian Foster; in San Francisco he would have had Vernon Davis, Randy Moss and Frank Gore. And yet for all the teams he could have selected, of all the tandems he could have chosen to finish his career with, he's decided to go to war with Willis McGahee and Eric Decker.

The surprising, crazy part with Manning has nothing to do with Denver, however. We've seen a plethora of athletes land with a new organization in the final years of their career. But what we haven't seen is what the Indianapolis Colts did in waiving their franchise superstar. It's one thing for a team to ditch a star in their waning years, when they're no longer any good. But to outright waive the greatest player in franchise history, who's been medically cleared to play and who wants to play for that very team, is something new altogether. Even if it was a practical decision because of the money it would have cost to keep both Manning and Andrew Luck, the Colts have essentially thrown away their star player for a total neophyte. Manning's dismissal marks a turning point in the NFL, where it was a long-standing tradition for a rookie QB to sit on the bench for most of their first season. The days of teams being afraid to insert rookie QB's appears to be over, thanks to excellent rookie seasons from Matt Ryan, Joe Flacco, Andy Dalton, Sam Bradford and Cam Newton. And if Peyton Manning's release and the trading of RGIII's draft rights are any indication, benching a franchise quarterback to begin a season is probably now an aberration among NFL franchises.

And I didn't even mention the Sacramento Kings bypassing moving to a larger market, Tim Tebow deciding he'd rather be Mark Sanchez' backup in a media madhouse rather than the starting QB for his hometown team, and the NFL -- the league that looked the other way on Tom Cable assaulting a man -- not only suspending Sean Payton and Gregg Williams for instilling a bounty program, but punishing them harshly. If there will be an equinox on Dec. 21 that'll blow up the planet, we're already seeing signs of it. Things are happening that just don't happen in sports, and I can't wait to see what happens next -- even if I only have nine months to do it.

So here's something I found interesting. As the country is hammering away at Rush Limbaugh (and rightly so) for calling a woman a slut, I saw during last Sunday's NBA double-header on ABC an ad for one of their new shows: GCB, which stands for Good Christian Bitches. At first I was a little surprised that a major network was actually having a show where the titular characters were advertised as "bitches," but then my surprise multiplied when I found out ABC had yet another show coming out with bitch in the title: "Don't Trust the B---- in Apartment 23." What a weird world we live in where ABC, whose parent company Disney once employed Rush Limbaugh, can spend its time castigating a man for his misogynistic language, and then proudly promote its bitch-themed upcoming lineup, not to mention its town of cougars and housewives that are desperate. Yep, nothing inconsistent there.

Anyway, that has nothing to do with sports; it just happened to be on my mind. Let's talk about the Charlotte Bobcats, who many have been describing as one of the worst NBA teams ever. At 5-32, their record lends no doubt that they're the worst team in the league. But... historically bad?

How quickly we forget that just two years ago, we witnessed a New Jersey Nets team that was even worse. That team started off the season 0-18, had three separate double-digit losing streaks, were 3-34 through 37 games and had to win five of their final twelve games just to finish with a record of 12-70. The talent level on that team, with a rookie Brook Lopez and a then-respectable Devin Harris, while awful, was still probably better than this Bobcats monstrosity, whose best player is either D.J. Augustin or Kemba Walker. If they finished 10-56, that would give them a higher winning percentage than that Nets squad; five more wins sure sounds like a lot, but they already have two more of them than the Nets did through 37 games in 2010.

And last year's Cavaliers team was no slouching slouch either. Their record of 19-63 will certainly give them a higher winning percentage than what the Bobcats post this year, and let's not forget that Cleveland wasn't even the worst team in the league in 2011; that distinction belongs to the Timberwolves. All the same, in the wake of LeBron's absence, people will probably remember the Cavs' record-breaking 26-game losing streak more than they will the Bobcats' futility. It doesn't help too that in a lockout-shortened season, it'll be difficult to appreciate just how bad the 'Cats are without an 82-game slate to properly judge them. It's not unreasonable to ask if their record is skewed by the condensed schedule.

Of course, none of these teams even compare to the official worst team ever, the 1972-73 Philadelphia 76ers, who had four double-digit losing streaks (of 13, 14, 15 and 20 games) and an overall record of 9-73 -- the worst record in history. They magically won five of seven games at one point in February, only to lose their last 13. If not for an 85-82 win against Seattle on January 7, they would have lost 35 games in a row. In fact of their nine wins, seven were by seven points or less.

In terms of roster talent, this Bobcats team -- depleted of even its marginal talent in recent years (Emeka Okafor, Gerald Wallace, Raymond Felton, Stephen Jackson) -- is truly abysmal. If they win only five more games, it's hard to make a case that they're even the worst team of the past three years. Nonetheless, this is a truly, truly terrible team. It remains to be seen just how many games the Bobcats will win; a double-digit win output in a condensed season will automatically disqualify them from the discussion. But if they keep this up, if they really finish around that 9-57 mark, there's a legitimate debate to be made that this team is at least in conversation, even if it's as a finalist.

The NBA dunk contest used to feature the best players in the sport, the likes of Michael Jordan and Dominique Wilkins and Clyde Drexler. Now, we're lucky just to get Paul George and Derrick Williams.

From 1984 to 1990, the first seven years of the event, the full-season scoring average of the dunk contest winner was 21.4 points per game. From 1991 to 1997, the last year before the event was canceled, that average had dropped to a pitiful 9.7 points per game. From 2000 (when it was resurrected) to 2011, that average has bounced up slightly to 13.4, but it's sure to go down again this season, since Paul George leads this year's group of four with 12.1 points per game and is the only contestant averaging in double-figures.

It's a hell of a drop-off for an event that pretty consistently featured the premier dunkers in the game. In the 80's, every single dunk contest featured players people wanted to see; even the years when Kenny Walker and Spud Web won, it meant something since they were doing it against the likes of Drexler and Dominique; those were legitimate upsets and were acceptable since Walker and Web were at least proficient at dunking.

But now... Derrick Williams? Jeremy Evans? Chase Budinger? They may be perfectly capable of playing the upset role that Web and Walker did, but a contest made entirely of upstarts is boring, which has been the biggest of problem with the contests the last twenty years. Even when Blake Griffin and Dwight Howard won it, who were they going against? Jamario Moon, Gerald Green, JaVale McGee and Serge Ibaka -- guys casual basketball fans don't even know exist, let alone that they're somewhat decent at throwing it down.

Since the glory days of the 80's, the only time the dunk contest was filled to the brim with big-name players was in 2000, when it featured Vince Carter, Tracy McGrady, Steve Francis, Jerry Stackhouse, Ricky Davis and Larry Hughes -- six players who would all average 20 points per game within the next three years. (With all due respect to Chase Budinger and Jeremy Evans, it's hard to see those guys making an All-Star team any time soon.) And that field was only able to come together because the event had been dead for three years.

The worst stat I can offer is this: since 1991, more than half of the dunk contest winners had a single-digit scoring average. For an event that's supposed to be the staple of All-Star weekend, that's simply unacceptable. Why LeBron James, Carmelo Anthony, Dwyane Wade, Kevin Durant, Derrick Rose, John Wall and Russell Westbrook aren't in it is anybody's guess. Perhaps the stature of Jordan and Wilkins and Web is so great that today's players are afraid to even mimic what they did. But if the dunk contest is going to be great again, it has to at least be relevant first. A four-man field of Griffin, James, Howard and Wade would be an awesome attraction that everyone would turn out to see. Alas, we'll just have to settle with Chase Budinger and Jeremy Evans. Yawn.

The Golden State Warriors are the most forgettable franchise in the NBA. They have one playoff appearance in 18 years, one All-Star representative in 16 years, and they're practically the only professional sports franchise in the country without the city or state they play in in their title -- which, while neat, basically means no one knows where the hell they play, or even that they're an NBA team. They've occasionally gotten attention for being sort of quirky, like when they adopted a ridiculously high-octane style under Don Nelson, or when Latrell Sprewell -- their one All-Star in 16 seasons -- choked his head coach and nearly got thrown out of the league. But other than that, and other than having an unusually rabid fanbase, the organization has been marked by failure if it's even been marked at all. And now that Jeremy Lin has taken off since joining the New York Knicks, it's just one more example of what a disastrous franchise the often-exciting Warriors really are.

Lin basically wouldn't even be in the league if the Warriors hadn't plucked him from obscurity last season. Lin, an undrafted, Asian, Harvard-graduate California local, was an immediate fan favorite in Oakland; he received a rousing ovation every time he came in the game, without exception. But it seemed that the Warriors didn't have much use for him. He played in merely 29 games last year, averaging only 9.8 minutes, and he never got a consistent run in the rotation off the bench. At times, it seemed like the Warriors would shoehorn him into the end of games just to get a cheer out of the fans, as though the entire reason he had been drafted was to appeal to the crowd as an eastern Brian Scalabrine.

In the offseason, the Warriors changed coaches and Lin was waived in a proactive move to clear cap space in case DeAndre Jordan decided to sign with them. Not only did Jordan leave them hanging, but Lin, at last getting legitimate playing time, has morphed into a superstar for the New York Knicks. The Warriors have an atrocious history when it comes to judging talent (they once passed up Kobe Bryant for Todd Fuller), but this is the lowest point in a long line of terrible recent mistakes. It's one thing to pass on a Kobe Bryant by accident, but it's something entirely to have a great player in your possession and do nothing with him. For a while, it looked like the Warriors were patently unlucky. Now, they just look incompetent.

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We're now a full week removed from Super Bowl XLVI, but before we bury the NFL season, there's one final note that needs to be made, and that's that this generation has been unbelievably lucky when it comes to Super Bowls. We have seen more great Super Bowls since the turn of the century than in the previous 33 years altogether. It's possible that people in their teens and early twenties may have never known the Super Bowl to be unwatchable, but yes, the game has undergone a dramatic about-face in the last decade or so. Believe it or not, it was once justifiable to not watch the game because the score was usually insurmountable within a quarter or two.

In the first 33 Super Bowls, with Super Bowl XXXIII taking place in 1999, the average margin of victory was a little over 16 points. There were as many twenty-point blowouts during that span as there were single-digit affairs, and as many games decided by 25 points as there were games decided by less than a touchdown. And even though there were occasionally games with a relatively close score, they were hardly any that people would classify as "great." Super Bowl V was decided by a game-winning field-goal, but it featured so many turnovers and bad possessions that it's since been dubbed the "Blunder Bowl." Super Bowl VII saw a seven-point win for the Dolphins over the Redskins, but the overall score was 14-7, and the Redskins only got on the board thanks to a muffed field-goal attempt by the Dolphins kicker that would have made it 17-0. Super Bowl XIII ended with the Steelers beating the Cowboys 35-31, but the Cowboys had to finish with 14 unanswered points just to lose by four. The same is the case for Super Bowl XVI, where the Bengals outscored the 49ers by eight in the fourth quarter but still lost by five.

In essence, only three of the first 33 were what most sports fans would consider very good to great: Super Bowl X (where the Steelers beat the Cowboys by four), Super Bowl XXIII (capped by a game-winning Joe Montana touchdown throw) and Super Bowl XXV (where Scott Norwood missed the would-be game-ending field-goal.) But that's basically the list. That's a watchability rate of 9.1% through the first 33 years.

Contrast that with the 13 Super Bowls since 2000 and it's barely even comparable. Sure, there were a few duds; Giants-Ravens and Bucs-Raiders weren't even slightly competitive. On the whole though, it's been a steady stream of completely watchable, fun, exciting matchups. The average margin of victory during that period is 9.5 points, however, if you remove Giants-Ravens and Bucs-Raiders -- which were both 27-point slaughters -- the margin goes down to 6.9 points, and every matchup besides those two were decided by no more than two touchdowns, with eight of those eleven Super Bowls being decided by a touchdown or less. There have been more game-winning plays in the last 13 Super Bowls (five) than there were in the first 33 (two), and there have been as many games decided by seven or less in the last 13 than there were in the first 33.

Who knows how long this trend will last. There was a period from 1984 to 1995 where the average margin of victory in the Super Bowl was 23 points and there were twice as many thirty-point blowouts (four) as there were games decided by single-digits. For now, we need to appreciate how awesome it is to actually get good games on a regular basis. So much has been made about how many viewers have been tuning in to the Super Bowls lately, and how more people than ever before are watching them. Sure, the marketing and the cultural relevance of the NFL has a lot to do with it. But maybe the main reason is simply that the Super Bowl, since the year 2000, has actually been fun to sit through, which is a welcome change of pace from the first 33 editions.

Some people think Marvin Gaye's version of the National Anthem at the All-Star Game in L.A. was the greatest of all time. Some think that title belongs to Jimi Hendrix. There is no wrong answer since it's a matter of opinion, but to me it isn't even close. Whitney Houston's rendition of the Star-Spangled Banner prior to Super Bowl XXV -- the Scott Norwood game -- is the most beautiful version I've ever heard. And it was heart-breaking to learn that she had died the other day.

It's easy to sing the anthem well. There are a billion artists who have done it with great voices of their own that were more than acceptable. But I've never heard anything that compares to Houston's. Yes, her voice was phenomenal, but she had range! She had poignancy! In her version of the anthem, she was able to sway the emotion of the crowd just by shifting her tone, going from bombastic to serene to jubilant, and she did it at a time that captured the unsettled nature of America, which had entered into the Gulf War barely a week beforehand.

To be honest, it's hard to watch her sing with such unbridled emotion without getting a little teary-eyed. Houston, after all, was married to Bobby Brown in what can only be described as one of the most turbulent, dysfunctional marriages in history; it's hard to believe she was this ambivalent, this happy in her day-to-day life. And now that she's dead, it just makes her version even sadder to revisit because a damn good singer lost her life too damn early.

I have to admit, it feels weird writing about Super Bowl XLVI because it feels like I've already done it. Dunno about the rest of you, but I was getting a serious case of deja vu throughout game; it was getting downright spooky just how similar this game was to the Super Bowl from four years ago, and it wasn't just because the teams were the same, and they were wearing the same uniforms, and they were playing in a dome like before, or that the Patriots were favored again. Both games were duller than dishwater for the first three quarters; both games had significantly less scoring than people anticipated; both games were defined by a key injury to a New England Patriot; both games ended with Eli Manning going on a game-winning drive, helped by a miracle catch by one of his receivers; in both games, the Giant who came with away with the game-winning score was someone who had been completely invisible to that point.

The similarities were so striking that when it got to Tom Brady's final possession, and the Pats were at fourth-and-16 deep in their own territory, I seriously began to question whether I was watching an exact replicate of Super Bowl XLII. However, Brady at least completed a pass to Deion Branch to extend the game, so it wasn't entirely the same.

Anywho, let's get to the records. The convenient thing -- for me anyway -- is that because there haven't even been 50 Super Bowls, it's virtually impossible for there to not be a dozen records set in every single Super Bowl. It's not like with baseball, where over a hundred years of seven-game series have made it rare for there to be a record-setting anything -- not that this latest World Series wasn't historical. I guess that was a bad example. Anyway…

Tom Coughlin, at age 65, is now the oldest Super Bowl winning coach in history. It's funny how reactionary our praise is in sports. When Tom Coughlin took over as the Giants' coach, there wasn't a single writer who stood up and wrote, "Wow, look at him coach. This is guy is going to be a Hall of Famer." It's only after he's won two rings that people are praising him as an all-time great, but the funny aspect with Coughlin is that the Giants have been itching to can him for years. Had the Giants lost their season-finale to the Cowboys, Coughlin might be out of a job right now. He'd be the exact same coach that is today, but no one would be praising him as amazing.

Now that Tom Brady has lost two Super Bowls, what does that make of him historically? I think as sports fans, we've been utterly spoiled in every aspect by Michael Jordan. Jordan had a perfect, spotless, storybook career, and he ruined what it means to be great for every other player. In truth, even the greatest of all time face defeat constantly. John Elway might be the best quarterback ever, and he lost three times in the Super Bowl in games that were never even close; Brady on the other hand has won three of his five Super Bowl appearances, and his two losses were at least competitive. In a way, Brady is a lot like Kobe Bryant: both are one of the all-time greats of their sport, both have lost twice in the championship, both are looking for one more championship to put them at an elite historical plateau -- Kobe would have as many rings as Jordan, and Brady would have as many rings as Joe Montana and Terry Bradshaw.

At one point, Tom Brady completed 16 consecutive passes, setting a new Super Bowl record. In the end, key drops from Wes Welker and Branch, not to mention the ineffectiveness of Rob Gronkowski, will deflect much of the blame away from Brady. By no means will he be looked at as the reason they lost.

Super Bowl XLVI was the most watched television event EVER. 111.3 million people tuned in, which was slightly more than the 111 million people who watched last year's game between the Packers and the Steelers. And how did NBC capitalize on their sudden ratings boom? By unveiling a horribly-derivative American Idol rip-off that has less chance of becoming a hit show than Newt Gingrich does of putting a colony on the moon. There's nothing that'll get me to flip the channel faster than fake-outrage from B-grade judges who none of us care about. Also, the chairs are way too big.

And speaking of flipping, how about that half-time show? It was the most-watched halftime show in history, and guest singer M.I.A. took advantage of the spotlight by giving the audience a big middle finger. Lovely. Here's where I'm confused. I realize that we all want the game live and everything, but why can't the halftime show have like a five second delay? Would it really be that big of a deal? Most of us just complain about the half-time show as a joke anyway -- why does it have to be a live joke, especially if there's the possibility of something like that happening? Also, if the NFL is so concerned about performers doing controversial stuff on live TV, why was M.I.A. allowed to go on stage anyway? Why is there a loophole where the main performer can't be young or potentially risque, but the side performers can dress as half-naked 300 rejects?

It's hard to rationalize why Ryan Braun should be allowed to keep the National League MVP trophy. Braun was found to have taken performance-enhancing drugs, an act that he has since denied, but one that will nonetheless cost him $1.87 million of his $6 million salary and keep him out of work for 50 games. But... he's somehow allowed to keep the MVP. Guffaw??? This would be like if you counted cards at a casino, won a poker tournament that netted you a Coupe de Ville, got busted, went to jail, and had to pay a fine... but you still got to keep the Coupe de Ville. Kinda seems like an oversight, huh?

And what's especially weird is that this has become common for Major League Baseball, a league that used to be millitant in its preservation of statistical canonology. It was baseball, after all, that put an asterisk on Roger Maris' record-breaking 61-home run season. It was baseball that lowered the mound when they thought the pitcher was getting too much of an advantage, baseball that briefly banned Willie Mays and Mickey Mantle for working at a casino and having even a tangential connection to gambling, and it was baseball that initiated a rule to keep ineligible players like Pete Rose off the Hall of Fame ballot and to keep the Hall as pure as possible.

Baseball was so steadfast in its ideology that when it was discovered that one of Ty Cobb's box scores had erroneously been counted twice, and that his hit total should have been reduced from 4,191 to 4,189, baseball simply ignored it because changing one stat would in a sense indict them all. To this day, the number of hits MLB.com says Ty Cobb has is two more than what Baseball Reference says he has, a contradiction that is absurd. Some might call this stubbornness or even close-mindedness, but to the people running Major League Baseball, the preservation of statistics was so sacrosanct that to disrupt them even rightfully wasn't even a consideration.

Now, things have changed. Baseball seems content to let the steroid-users trample the records they had worked so hard to institutionalize. In a way, it seems like baseball doesn't know how to a handle a cheating epidemic of such scale and popularity, nor do they have much of a reference point to help them out. The founding baseball fathers did a great job establishing the rules of the game a hundred years ago, but even they couldn't have imagined the day where a butt-cheek-inserted syringe could transform a middling player into a perennial All-Star. The sport appears so overwhelmed by the rampant cheating, and so unclear on what to do with the stats, that not a thing has been done to challenge the validity of the steroid era's biggest offenders, from Barry Bonds to Sammy Sosa to Mark McGwire. All the home run records still stand. All the MVP's still stand. All the players found to have used illegal substances are still eligible for the Hall of Fame. And there isn't a single veto in sight.

It's debatable whether or not baseball should retroactively displace the numbers of the steroids era with an asterisk or by putting them in their own category, or "wing" if you will. With Braun though, there's all the reason in the world to claim that his MVP is invalid, and all the reason in the world for his prize to be revoked, asterisked, or put up for a new vote altogether. If he's able to walk away with the trophy, it lends little assurance to me that the steroids era really is over. After all, Ryan Braun played so well last year that he got a $104 million extension. If a 50-game suspension and a loss of $1.87 million allowed him to earn a nine-figure contract AND keep the MVP award, then unfortunately, the end still justifies the mean. And if baseball really wants to eliminate cheating, that's the part they're going to have to work on.

In fantasy basketball, drafting a decent squad is only half the battle. Knowing who and when to add someone off the waiver wire can go a long way in securing future success. However, unless you're in the shallowest of shallow leagues, you can't afford to wait and see if a player is going to be valuable. You need to be proactive, but the only way your diligence will pay off is if you know who to pick up beforehand.

After all, if you were in a deep league last year, you couldn't have afforded to wait and see if Kris Humphries would pan out after the Nets traded Derrick Favors, or if Hedo Turkoglu would experience a renaissance after moving back to Orlando. If you didn't add them the instant they saw an increased role, it was probably too late. The same goes for Marcus Thornton when he was dealt to the Kings; he needed to be owned the second it happened.

But if scouting potential waiver wire studs is important, who exactly should be scouted? Tough to say. Fantasy isn't an exact science, and we're all basically weathermen when we guess who will pan out and who will suck. After all, who the hell thought Kyle Lowry would become one of the five best point guards in fantasy basketball? In my estimation: no one. Still, there are players in the league who show flashes brilliance every time they step on the court, players who deserve universal ownership if an injury or trade paved the way for them to see the court on a consistent basis.

Here are five potential stat-stuffers who should be on everybody's watch lists:

Goran Dragic

Kyle Lowry is a beast and his role isn't going to diminish any time soon. But Goran Dragic, Lowry's backup in Houston, is barely a step off from him. He's had the misfortune of playing behind studs his whole career, but in the limited time he's seen an increase in minutes, he's been awesome. In a playoff game at San Antonio a few years ago, he even scored 24 points in a single fourth quarter. Dragic is something of a mix between Jose Calderon and Ricky Rubio. He's not a horrible shooter, and he sports a totally acceptable assist-to-turnover ratio; he has a fantastic ability to make layups, something John Wall should really study in the offseason. In a thirty-minute-per-game role, there's no reason why he shouldn't produce a very respectable line. Clearly, the only way Dragic is going to get a lot of playing time is if Lowry sticks his hand in a snowblower, ala Joe Sakic, and misses the rest of the year. But should that happen, don't hesitate to click the '+' button next to Dragic's name.

Omer Asik

Asik is the best-kept fantasy secret in basketball. He's the next Marcin Gortat, the next Marc Gasol. He's waiting, dying to get a decent role, and the moment he does he'll not only average double-double numbers in the vain of Kris Humphries, he'll even block two shots per game. To the untrained eye, Asik's 5.6 rebounds and 1.2 blocks per game look utterly pedestrian... that is, until you consider that he's only playing 16.3 minutes per game. His Per-48-minutes averages are insane; he'd be averaging 3.6 blocks per game, almost a full block more than Andrew Bynum and Dwight Howard, and his 16.6 rebounds per game would be the ninth best rate in the league, even above Kevin Love. He deserves to be the trendiest name in fantasy, because unlike constant disappointments such as Tyrus Thomas and Anthony Randolph who also have tantalizing Per-48 stats, Asik has actually had monster performances with the guys in front of him still completely healthy. Should the situation arise where Joakim Noah misses some time, Asik needs to be owned ASAP. He's that good.

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If there's one generalization that I've found applies to everyone in life, it's that no one truly knows how to deal with death. There really is no right way to address it, and a lot of times, people will only focus on the positive aspects of a person's life as a sort of memorial. On the one hand, this speaks to the kindness of human nature, that we can look beyond the faults and issues of a person and focus on what made others like them. It's a well-intentioned way to look a person posthumously, but often it's often a dangerously short-sighted tactic as well. Often, the media will whitewash any controversial aspects of a person's life, probably because they don't want to seem insensitive to the dead or because they don't want to insult the next of kin. When Michael Jackson and Jerry Falwell died and were treated like flawless, exceptional human beings, it rang hollow. Everyone has faults, and when those faults are as obvious as child molestation allegations (in Jackson's case) or blaming 9/11 on women and gay people (in Falwell's case), not mentioning their flaws is not only insensitive in how biased it is, it's unethical.

Which is how I felt over the swooning that took place when Joe Paterno died. If his former players and if the current Penn State students want to proselytize what a great man he was, they have to at least acknowledge why someone so otherwise beloved and respected had to be fired in disgrace. To just circle around the same anecdotes of leadership and courage without mentioning that his lack of principle allowed dozens of children to get raped, it's just not an accurate portrayal. He isn't Santa Claus. He is a three-dimensional, flawed human being. And yet when I watched the coverage of his funeral procession on ESPN the other day, I found myself on the verge of drop-kicking my television. Not once was the Jerry Sandusky fiasco mentioned. Not once, in a segment that featured tears and appraisals and compliments of him, was there even an inference of the scandal that got him fired. And in what was a recap of the man's life, it needed to be there. It needed to be shown that this too was a part of the man, myth and legend; to just bypass it entirely was disgraceful.

Now look, I'm not going to pretend that Paterno didn't do a lot of good in his previous fifty years at Penn State -- because that'd be wrong too. He did a lot of good things for the university. He helped a lot of inner-city kids, he preached ethics, he showed a compassion and enthusiasm that propelled the school from a Podunk nothing to a college football powerhouse in the time he was there. The school today wouldn't be nearly as prominent as it is now without him, and that's partly because he contributed millions of dollars to the campus over the years. These things are by no means meaningless.... BUT...

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The Orlando Magic are a very interesting franchise. They're located in sunny Orlando, Florida, a city that at first glance would appear to be a haven for potential NBA free-agents. And yet they have a miserable history of not only attracting players, but keeping the few players they manage to bring in. The Orlando Magic have the bizarre distinction of being a prime destination that no one ever goes to. It's almost inexplicable.

For instance, last night, Dwight Howard scored 14 points and became the Orlando Magic's all-time leading scorer, passing Nick Anderson, who held the previous mark with 10,650 points. Considering that the Magic have been around for nearly 23 seasons, it's hard to accept that Nick Anderson -- who was just a role player on the great Magic teams in the 90's that had Penny and Shaq -- had held this mark for this long.

But it really was a record of attrition. Anderson held it because he is not only the only Magic player to spend ten consecutive years with the franchise, he is the only player period to last ten years with the franchise. It isn't just that Orlando has been unable to attract many big-name players (Tracy McGrady, Grant Hill and Rashard Lewis barely qualify as exceptions). It's that they've been categorically incapable of re-signing the good players they manage to get. They lost Shaq after four years, they traded Penny, they traded McGrady, they lost Hill, they dealt Steve Francis, and it's pretty damn clear that they're about to lose Howard too.

Their lack of success in retaining players is staggering. Assuming they lose Howard, not only will they have lost every single superstar they ever had no longer than seven years into their contract, they've never re-signed anyone of importance. I had to scour Basketball Reference's archives just to be sure, but here's two pieces of information that personify their ineptitude: they have never had a single player who played with them for more than seven years who made $10 million in a season with them; and Dwight Howard is the only player in franchise history to sign an extension that gave him a $10 million salary. And, again, they're about to lose him.

So what exactly is going on here? It's one thing for a cold Midwestern team to struggle to attract players and eventually lose the good ones they have. But this is Orlando, a city with a fantastic climate, an array of amusement parks and tourist attractions, and, let's not forget, it's in a state where you don't have to pay an income tax, which is an enormous plus if you happen to be a multimillionaire basketball player. And yet no wants to be there for very long. Weird.

Choking happens to athletes all the time, but that doesn't make it an indictment on the player. In 1997, in Game 5 of a semifinals series against the Jazz, an 18-year-old rookie Kobe Bryant shot not one, not two, but four airballs in the final five and a half minutes of regulation and overtime, in a game his Lakers eventually lost. By any definition, this was choking at its most obvious. Now, 15 years later, Kobe Bryant is regarded as the clutchest player in the NBA by a mile; a 2011 Sports Illustrated poll asked 166 players, "Who do you want shooting with the game on the line?," and a whopping 74% of them chose the Black Mamba. The next closest player, Kevin Durant, got only 8%.

LeBron James wasn't even in the top five.

Like Kobe, LeBron has had some disappearing acts in crunch time, most notably in the 2011 finals. Unlike Kobe, LeBron has become defined by his failures. But LeBron is a totally different animal from Kobe. Kobe resembles Michael Jordan in his brazen willingness to try to take the game over, to take as many contorted, mid-range fade-aways as humanly possible, and to always take the final shot. LeBron is a much more efficient player, even eliminating the weakest aspect of his game, the three-point shot, from his arsenal this season. Often, he seems content to let D-Wade and Chris Bosh take the last shot in the game, and whereas Kobe seems to exhibit a rabid competitiveness -- shown last week when he indignantly referenced an ESPN ranking that had him listed as the seventh best player in the league -- LeBron doesn't seem to have that drive. He was perfectly willing to join the Miami Heat and relinquish his role as the team's alpha dog, as the team leader and primary go-to-guy; it's hard to imagine Kobe willingly accepting a such subservient role.

At the same time, it's hard to believe Kobe wouldn't bristle at having such a pathetic showing in a poll by his peers. LeBron is the best player in the NBA, and not even 2% of player said they wanted him with the ball in the final minutes.

And maybe that's why Kobe is considered clutch and LeBron isn't. Whereas Kobe's imprint is always on the fourth quarter, LeBron will just vanish sometimes for no conceivable reason. With the Heat, he's developed a nasty tendency in the fourth quarter to hand the ball off to one of his teammates and just sit there in the perimeter, not even trying to get open. Not even trying to make a screen, or direct a play, or do anything that makes it look like he's in the offense. It's not even about deferring to Wade or Bosh -- there are times when he simply doesn't try, where he'll allow a gnat like J.J. Barea or Jason Terry to guard him without ever posting them up.

In simplest terms, LeBron James is hiding himself in the offense. Anyone who's ever played basketball can see it. I certainly know what it's like to have an off game, and to make a less concerted effort to find a shot out of fear that maybe I'd get the blame, or let my team down, or look badly. But I'm not an NBA player. LeBron seems to embody that self-consciousness mentality in every fourth quarter he plays. He seems to do as much as he thinks he has to, or as much as he thinks is acceptable, but little else besides that.

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*in my best Frank Sinatra impersonation*

And now, the end is near

And I present the final recaps

The FakeTeams Hoops Tournament

It's been a blast, saying what happened

The draft, we have gone through

Which teams did what, and why they did them

But now, we finish up, with the teams that diiiiiiiiiiiidnnnnnnn't

These teams, they didn't do

A recap of all of their players

Leaving me with a heap of incomplete post-draft reflections

But rather than toss them out, I've decided to post them anyway

Because hey, it is my league, and I'll do it myyyyyyyyyy waaaaaaay

Mostly though, I didn't feel like bothering these guys with writing any more than they already did. I greatly enjoyed hearing from them all, especially the blurb about Roy Hibbert, but with a couple guys voluntarily ceasing their updates, I didn't want to pester them with finishing it in the middle of the holiday season. Still, I find this a highly-enjoyable read. There are a lot of different writing styles at display here, and even if you loathe basketball and everything associated with it, you should still be able to appreciate the collective effort that went into producing this.

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So initially, I had planned to get these team-by-team testimonies of the FakeTeams Hoops Tournament members done by New Year's Day. But then I got preoccupied by stuff, and things, and whatchmacallits, and do-dads and a bunch of other holiday-related nonsense, which is why I've been a little slow in getting some of these articles out.

As a mea culpa, I'm going to combine the last two remaining dudes who wrote blurbs for all 13 of their players into one article, even though they have nothing in common other than that their first names begin with 'J.' Justin Kendall writes for The Pitch and has his own fantasy basketball blog, the link to which is below. Kendall was kind enough to step in on short notice when one of our charter members decided to amscray, saving me from finding a replacement in the middle of the Christmas holiday season, which would have been unbelievably stressful. Jeff Andriesse writes for RotoExperts and Damn Lies and Stats, the latter of which has a nifty podcast that you guys should check out.

After this, we got one more article to go, so bare with us and enjoy the different forms of writing by the people in the league.

Justin Kendall (The Pitch, Life Is Just a Fantasy... Basketball Blog)

3. Chris Paul

"This is what you do with the third overall pick (if LeBron James and Kevin Durant are already off the board). Paul is turning the City of Angels into "Lob City." Just ask the Lakers. Paul will feed Blake Griffin and DeAndre Jordan all the alley oops they can throw down. And they are going to slam a lot. I expect Paul to average around 10 dimes a game in LA. But the biggest reason I went with CP3 is the steals; 2.4 steals per game last season make him an irresistible selection. And no, I didn’t spend one second thinking of taking Dwight Howard (I had no desire to punt a category so early)."

26. Danny Granger

"I had my fingers crossed that Kobe Bryant would fall. The like Vanessa Bryant, the other owners weren’t touching the Black Mamba. But Damn Lies & Statistics snatched him at 23. Damn is right. No Mamba for me led me to take self-proclaimed "Stern’s Bitch" Danny Granger. He’s a former first-round fantasy pick, and even with his injury history, I felt better with him than Kevin Martin, who has his own injury issues (plus, K-Mart’s bruised feelings over the failed trade to New Orleans might hinder him). I’m counting on David West’s post presence opening up more opportunities for Granger. Either Granger is going to average more points and drain a ton of threes, or he’s going to build another brick batcave."

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Well, it's my turn in the box.

I was gifted with the fifth position in the FakeTeams Hoops Tournament -- the official fantasy basketball experts league of FakeTeams -- which allowed me to construct a team around Superman himself. As a result, I wound up with a pretty sweet lineup, although when I wrote about my team just days after the draft, I wasn't sure whether or not I had over-committed to my rebounds-galore strategy.

Here's what I scribbled shortly after the December 18th draft...

5. Dwight Howard

"I toiled for a minute between Howard and Love, since both offer an incredible rebounding/scoring combination. I really had to think whether I wanted the 20-and-15 guy with three-point shooting, free-throw shooting and mediocre block numbers, or the 20-and-15 guy with excellent block and field-goal percentage numbers, but god-awful foul-shooting. I decided to go with Howard since elite centers are incredibly rare, especially coming from Yahoo!, where there isn't a PF alive who isn't also considered a C. Plus, wherever Howard goes next year, it'll be on a crowded roster with at least one other established scorer, and probably two. He'll never put up better stats than he will this season, so I figured there was no better time to build around him."

24. Zach Randolph

"Man was I hoping Kobe Bryant would fall to me. Is he old? Yeah. Is he still a beast? Yeah. Things may have worked out for the best though, as I really like Randolph as a compliment to Howard. The areas that Z-bo sucks at as a forward (blocks, field-goal percentage) are areas Howard is great at. Plus it gave my team the identity as a team that would never lose in rebounding under any circumstance. It was an identity I probably beat to a bloody pulp in later rounds, but I always like to set aside one stat and categorically declare: I will never lose in this. And getting Howard and Randolph with my first two picks did just that, while still giving me players capable of putting up some points."

33. Kyle Lowry

"Sadly, Jrue Holiday didn't fall to me, so I went with the next best option. I knew I needed to draft a point guard relatively early, since D-Howard and Z-Bo never pass the ball, and I'm a big fan of the Rockets' latest trendy point guard. (They seem to go through a new one every other year, from Steve Francis to Bob Sura to Rafer Alston to Aaron Brooks.) It wasn't just that Lowry scored a lot of points and got a surprising amount of rebounds while racking up assists last year -- it's that he did it while making a tremendous amount of three's in the process. Can he keep it up for a full season? Perhaps, perhaps not. But if he can mirror what he did in the second half of 2011 and give me 16 points, 7 or 8 assists, 4 rebounds and a lot of three's, he'll be a steal at No. 33 overall."

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Dwight Howard shot 39 free-throws on Thursday, breaking a single-game record that had been held by Wilt Chamberlain for nearly 50 years. Chamberlain once attempted 34 foul shots in a game on February 22, 1962 -- just a couple weeks before his absurd 100-point outing against the New York Knicks. Chamberlain, in case you weren't aware, averaged 50.4 points, 25.7 rebounds and 48.5 minutes per game in 1962, in what is unquestionably the most statistically-incomparable single-season in NBA history, and probably sports history. So for a modern day player to actually supplant one of his seemingly-impossible benchmarks really is impressive, even if it's more a record brought on by futility than an actual accomplishment.

Now I can hear what some of you guys are going to say about this: (Or maybe it's dementia kicking in. But either way...) "This is horrible. We don't watch basketball to see a guy go to the line 39 times. It slows the game down and makes it boring to watch. Get it out of the game." And I would be inclined to agree with you... sort of.

If this was an epidemic, if these ridiculous foul-shooting numbers started popping up every other day, with DeAndre Jordan shooting 30 free-throws and Andrew Bogut shooting 20 free-throws, then yeah, I'd say a rule would need to be established to prevent this from happening all the time. However, this was a pretty unusual event. Coming into this game, the most freebies Howard had taken in a game was 14, so I doubt this will become a trend or anything. Plus, as long as it isn't being exploited to the point that it makes the game unwatchable, I don't mind seeing teams take advantage of the one obvious, glaring flaw in Dwight Howard's game.

Another reason why I don't think a rule needs to be enacted to cancel Hack-a-Shaqing is that the teams that do it almost always do so in defeat. The Magic won last night. Shaquille O'Neal, for whom the intentional foul strategy is based off of, had 10 playoff games in 2001 in which he shot 20 free-throws, and the Lakers went 9-1 in those games -- not to mention going 3-0 that year in regular season games where he went to the line 20 times. And the games in 1962 that Chamberlain shot 30 free-throws (the second being the 100-point game)? His team won both games. So let's be clear that while this tactic is annoying to sit through, it's only seen in pure desperation, and isn't something likely to catch on anytime soon.

So earlier today, I posted something on what I thought was the senseless backlash on the hiring of Penn State coach Bill O'Brien, where people are losing their minds over what a horrible hire it is. To me, it's a fine hire because he has nothing to do with the Joe Paterno-regime, and the fact that some people were actually upset about that irritated the crap out of me.

For the record, I go to Penn State, and I've been ashamed at my university over the last couple months, and not just because of what Sandusky did and what Paterno tolerated. I'm ashamed that the phrase "Penn State Proud" continues to be used. It tears at me every time I hear it. It's loyalty to a faculty that doesn't deserve it, it's indifference to the victims who have every right to hate this school. I am not proud to be attending a school where such a human rights violation could repeatedly take place. There are many words to describe what I feel, but pride isn't one of them. At the moment, there's nothing redeeming in saying you went to this university; not when doing so means blatantly disregarding everything that went on. I mean, Jerry Sandusky was recruiting for the football program as recently as last year; how can I possibly say I respect this school after learning that?

The issue isn't something you can wash your hands of. What happened indelibly stains the reputation of this campus. Child molestation is inarguably the most heinous crime anyone on this planet can commit, so what kind of people are we when we flippantly use the word "proud?" What kind of example are we showing, when we say we're proud knowing full-well what went on? Just what the hell are we proud of anyway, that we can ignore something so terrible that happened so frequently?

More to the point, what exactly have we learned when we criticize the hiring of Bill O'Brien? He was hired specifically to be something different from Paterno, an outsider with no ties to the previous administration, which when informed of the incident in the shower chose to look the other way. To me, this is the only thing that matters about O'Brien. Right now, football is the most inconsequential, irrelevant subject in the world. I really don't care if O'Brien is the worst coach on the planet. All that matters is getting the human-decency part of it right. Besides, even if O'Brien is a lousy couch, who the hell are we to say we deserve better? For three decades, our football program allowed a pedophile to use his status as an assistant to establish a charity, which he in turn used as a farm system to molest as many kids as possible. I don't think I'm saying anything extreme when I write that if Penn State goes 2-10 the next five years, it won't be the most unfair thing in the world. Truth be told, I don't think there should be a football program. You can say what you want about SMU, the last school to receive the death penalty, but as crooked as they were, little kids never got fondled.

And so when I read articles and Facebook statuses and Twitter updates and had face-to-face conversations were people actually told me how upset they were over the hiring, it threw me off the deep end. To me, it just confirmed everything the people in the media have been saying about Penn State. It's unbelievably insensitive to be demanding a better football coach, knowing full-well what a gift it is to even have a football program at all. This is the same campus that threw a riot after Paterno was fired, that formed a vigil around his house as though he was the victim, that promised to walk to his house in the event that they actually won their next game. This is the campus that showed virtually no outrage and anger and fury to the coach that allowed Sandusky to recruit for him, nine years after he was spotted raping a kid in the team locker room. And now, now of all times, the campus gets indignant and upset and furious at their coach… And why? Because they don't like him.

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Neil Tardy writes for ESPN, and he's in the FakeTeams Hoops Tournament. That's pretty damn cool. I mean let's face it: there are a lot of great writing outlets out there, SB Nation included, but there's only one Mothership. So for Mr. Tardy to take place in our inaugural fantasy basketball experts league on short notice was a pleasant surprise, not to mention the fact that he clearly knows what the hell he's doing, since at the moment his 13-5 record is atop the league standings. (Followed closely by yours truly at 12-6.)

So what exactly does his team look like? Well, let's find out, shall we...

11. Amar'e Stoudemire

"I guess I was spoiled from a previous draft when, picking 13th of 16 teams, I had a choice between Westbrook and Deron Williams. I wasn't really looking for Stoudemire here -- I am aware of his production decline after Melo came on board. Still, can't complain too much about 20-plus points and a couple of blocks a night."

18. John Wall

"Very happy with this pick. He may not progress as much as I hope this season, but I consider Wall the back end of the elite PGs. And I had to have an elite PG."

39. Joakim Noah

"I may regret passing on Ibaka (who went next), but I like Noah. I always have. Obviously I feel that he's capable of staying injury-free for a full season, even if he has yet to show that. He doesn't even have to play 82 games this year. That has to improve his odds, doesn't it?"

46. Ty Lawson

"I have Lawson in both my primary leagues, and I think I got him in every mock I did as well. And no matter how early I went for Lawson, at least one other owner was seriously bummed out about it. Like a lot of folks, I'm convinced Ty is ready for a big season."'

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I'm going to be honest: I know almost nothing about Bill O'Brien. I know he was/is the offensive coordinator of the New England Patriots, but the only time I had heard of him before now was when Tom Brady shrieked at him during a Redskins game. (Perhaps provoking O'Brien to look for new work, me thinks.) Besides that, I can't profess to knowing a whole lot about the guy, and I certainly can't make a pronouncement on if he'll be a good coach or not.

But here's what else I know: the people railing against his hiring know just as much about him as I do -- and probably less. And make no mistake about it. People associated with Penn State hate this hiring, with the anger ranging from his lack of ties with the school to the fact that he isn't a big hire. Rather than paraphrase examples, I'll just direct you to some from the SB Nation Penn State blog Black Shoe Diaries, although one particular paragraph from their post-hiring recap caught my attention:

"Dave Joyner (and Ira Lubert, behind the scenes) arrogantly conducted this search with what appeared to be no help or input from anyone else, strung along Tom Bradley and the rest of the remaining coaching staff, acted coy in the media, assured everyone that Penn State knew exactly what it was doing, let the process drag out until the very last weeks of the recruiting period, and came back to us with Bill O'Brien. They proudly strode up to a five-alarm fire, waited six weeks, and threw a Dixie Cup of water on it. Tim Curley's hire of Patrick Chambers -- a mid-major coach tapped to take over a rarely-successful and marginally profitable men's basketball program -- was infinitely more clever and inspired than this."

I can't tell you how annoying it is to hear this debate right now, to witness people actually focus on this hire as though it means anything, as though the school deserves better. It pisses me off that members of my university continue to live in a cult-like vacuum, where the day-to-day decision-making of a doomed program is analyzed without anyone looking around and realizing that it's about as important as rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. It pisses me off that people are wasting their breath discussing this hire, while only referencing the child molestation fiasco that shook the university to the core as "the scandal" or "the debacle," like it's ancient history. It's insulting, it's sad, it's pathetic, and it makes me ashamed to be even slightly related to this college.

Clearly, we have learned NOTHING from the Jerry Sandusky incident. If there was any maxim the school, and the students, and the athletic program could have adopted in the wake of everything that was discovered, it was that football needed to be less of a priority. It was that human lives and the well-being of children needed to matter more than a geriatric's winning record, and that what happened with Sandusky -- when adults looked away and allowed a pedophile to wear the crest of the school's uniform knowing what he had done -- was a travesty.

So when Penn State went out a brought in a complete outsider, a man with no connections to either Sandusky or JoePa to run the football team, the alums should have understood that this was a good hire, for no other reason than because it was a necessary turn of page from the child-molestation-tolerant regime of Joe Paterno. But instead, I've spent the last week listening to PSU people bitching about the hire as it reflects the football team, saying he has no experience as a coach, saying he has no ties to the school, saying he wasn't a splashy hire. I've read and listened to complaints that have nothing to do with the Sandusky aftermath and everything to do with their on-the-field performance, and what's worse is the people most upset with the hire don't even reference Jerry Sandusky at all.

Instead of adopting that maxim, the Penn State alumni have pissed on it and thrown it out a window. They had one chance to redeem their insane rioting behavior in the wake of Paterno's firing and show that they aren't a lockstep band of idiots too obsessed with football to see what's really important; tragically, all they've done is confirm it.

I rage on in Part 2 after the jump... [explicit]

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Fourth verse, same as the first.

In today's edition, Ken Gayton of BlogDudes.com tells us what he thought about his drafted team in the FakeTeams Hoops Tournament of Supreme Importance ZOMG! Gayton and his cohort Dennis Velasco -- who's written for The Basketball Jones, True Hoop, ESPN, SI, Barkley's Mouth, and probably a dozen other sites -- are representing the "Blog Dudes" team in this competition, and Ken was kind enough to detail what the tandem came up with on Draft Day, Sunday December 18th.

13. Al Jefferson

"When I saw my draft position, I thought I was screwed. To me, it was the absolute worst pick to get. Drafting thirteenth in a draft of 12 players you can build a team around. Not only that, but I don't get to draft immediately back to back so that I can for sure pair certain players with one another. I was lucky that Jefferson fell to me because I had him as a top 12 player. He's rated lower on ESPN, but since we are counting turnovers in this league I think he should be higher. Not worried about Enes Kanter or Derrick Favors stealing minutes from him because the Jazz are going to want to get maximum value for Jefferson in a trade, thus wanting his stats inflated. Twenty and ten with two blocks a game is very realistic. Not to mention low turnovers and decent free throw percentages for a big."

16. Dirk Nowitzki

"The guy I wanted to pair with Jefferson, Monta Ellis, got drafted so now I am left with either reaching for one of the second tier point guards or building on my strengths. I toyed with drafting Wall here, but I don't see much of an improvement on last years numbers. Everyone assumes that Wall will make this big jump because Derrick Rose made one last year. I don't see it. He won't make a lot of threes (and didn't work on that like D-Rose did), shoots poor percentages, and turns the ball over a lot. He's a slightly better option than Rajon Rondo because he'll get more points. I drafted Dirk instead, giving me another 20plus scorer with high field goal percentages and low turnovers. Guess I'm punting assists."

41. Brook Lopez

"Yup, another big. Paul George wasn't the only NBA baller that grew over the summer, Lopez shot up to seven feet which should help him grab more than six rebounds a game. Wait, he was always that tall? Well maybe he'll play more inspired with Deron Williams feeding him the ball? It allowed me to add yet another 20plus scorer with a high field goal percentage that will allow me to draft some gunners later. Throw in the blocks and good free throw percentage and Lopez is a solid pick here. Plus, he hasn't missed a game in three years....oh no....not good."

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Hello, friends.

How long has it been? 5 days you say, 5 days since the latest draft update from FakeTeams Hoops Tournament? Well that just won't do. Not at all. I know how much you've all been clamoring for this, refreshing FakeTeams every couple minutes just on the slight chance that there's a new update. And because I'm still in the Christmas-giving mood, I present the latest and greatest installment of our team-by-team fantasy basketball experts league draft results.

Today, Adam Madison, formerly of ESPN and the Talented Mr. Roto, will discuss what he liked and disliked about his drafted squad. Adam wasn't personally able to attend the draft due to a snafu with the Internet, but he was happy to discuss what the auto-picking computer did in his place.

8. Deron Williams

"I have D-Will ranked 8th in turnover leagues, so no complaints."

20. Carmelo Anthony

"I usually hate drafting SG/SFs early, but I'm okay with this pick; 'Melo's my 13th ranked player. He shot 42.4 percent on 3-point attempts after joining Mike D'Antoni in New York, and while his career percentage of 32.0 percent implies that's a fluke, he was chucking 4.6 triples per game. Fluke or not, that's a boon to his fantasy value even if his field goal percentage correspondingly drops a couple of points. He's always been one of the few stars with a low turnover rate relative to his usage, so I captured some value here."

37. Steve Nash

"Now we're talking! I've ranked Nash 25th on my Big Board, right ahead of Rajon Rondo and Rudy Gay and below Chris Bosh and Brook Lopez. Nash is a symptom of a major market inefficiency going on this year: veterans. Peers such as Jason Kidd, Tim Duncan, Kevin Garnett, Ray Allen and Carlos Boozer are also extremely underrated. Nash keeps himself in impeccable shape, so I'm not worried as much as I otherwise would be about attrition. Why would Kyle Lowry be picked ahead of Nash when the latter finished 18th on the player rater and Lowry couldn't even crack the Top 50? Turnovers, you claim? That's why I knocked him seven spots on my rankings."

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Do you get drowsy looking at your fantasy basketball team? Are you depressed after losing too many matchups? Don't be ashamed. There are millions of Americans, just like you, who no longer have the energy to get out of their chair and check on their team. It's natural. When you were younger, and you first discovered fantasy, you could check on your team for five, ten, or (if you were really excited) even fifteen minutes at a time. But now the sport has grown on you and you're not winning as much. If you check your team at all now, it's only for like 90 seconds; five minutes tops. Luckily, there's something I can recommend that'll make you love your fantasy team like you were 19 again, and give you all the energy you need to satisfy not only your own fantasy basketball desires, but the computer's as well. After all, it isn't fair to just go to sleep every night, leaving the computer alone with your five dynasty leagues that are all in their infancy. No successful fantasy partnership can be built without both parties working in harmony, taking turns with decision-making, deciding which league needs the most attention, which players need to be put in timeout.

Have I beaten the analogy to death yet? Well too bad!, because the thing I'm recommending is actually a person: Jason Hahn of fbasketballblog.com, who also writes for Dime Magazine as the Fantasy Doctor. Unlike most dimwits in the fantasy bracket (yo), this guy is actually getting paid for his surgical analysis of fantasy teams, so his opinion carries much more weight than your average fantasy-medical-expert-wannabe. Also, he's a good writer and has something new up every day, so go visit his blog, won't you?

Unfortunately, Jason wasn't actually able to attend the draft way back on Dec. 18 -- probably due to emergency triple-bypass surgery on a team that accidentally drafted Larry Hughes in the first round. It didn't matter though, because the computer made some unbelievable picks in his place. Sure, getting the No. 2 overall selection helped, but the auto-picker was brilliant, and Jason was appreciative.

To see what Mr. Hahn wrote about his 13 drafted players, click on the jump......

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Monday was the 30th anniversary of The Epic in Miami, a playoff showdown between the Chargers and the Dolphins that is widely considered the best NFL game of all time. The game had it all: an epic comeback, a series of clutch plays, a miracle hook-and-lateral at the end of the first half, an all-time great performance from Chargers tight end Kellen Winslow, and even a few missed field-goals that nearly pushed the game to double overtime. (If you're interesting in reading more about the game, I wrote a diddy about a few years back: 1/02/1982 - The Epic in Miami.)

However, there's one aspect of the Epic that's never made sense to me, and that is the widely-reported figure that Kellen Winslow lost 13 pounds during the course of the game. 13 pounds! Yeah, the game was played in the extreme humidity of the Orange Bowl, and it was a four-hour game, and Winslow caught 13 catches for 166 yards, blocked a field-goal, and played with a pinch nerve, a 105 degree temperature, a swollen eye, a split lip, an injured shoulder and cramps brought on by dehydration, and that he had to be carried off the field. But still... 13 pounds?

This isn't a Twitter-inspired, totally-unreliable factoid either. Here's a Washington Post column where it was noted in 1997. Here it is again in an ESPN25 retrospective column (which, I need to point out, misidentified Winslow as having 16 catches in the game). And here is an SI article and a New York Times article where he supposedly lost 12 pounds, and not 13. So am I really supposed to believe that this completely unbelievable figure is true, that in a four-hour period, Kellen Winslow lost the equivalent of 52 Quarter Pounders, that he basically gave birth to a pair of 6.5 pound sweat babies? (Or 6-pound sweat babies, depending on which version you believe.)

I'm skeptical. If he really did lose that much weight, then we truly are the dumbest country in the world, because the world's greatest weight loss program has been under our noses for 30 years, and we haven't utilized it at all. Sure, you may have to suffer a split lip and a few cramps and injuries along the way, but who can argue with the results? It's especially hard to take the number at full value because there are plenty of Chargers who, to this day, believe that Winslow was greatly exaggerating his injuries, with the cou de gras being the final moment when he appeared unable to stand on his own feet and had to be lifted off the field. Former San Diego linebacker Kim Bokamper expressed as much in 2006: "Every time I see it you wonder whether he should have gotten an Academy Award for the performance. It gnaws at some people, and it certainly gnaws at me."

But until the Academy awards Winslow an honorary Oscar, the credibility of the sources above push this story out of the myth category. It really is amazing that anyone could lose that much weight that quickly, assuming that it's true.

Hey, remember a few weeks ago when I announced who was in the newly-minted FakeTeams Hoops Tournament, and when I also announced that there was gonna be a round-by-round recap of everyone selected, featuring blurbs by all of the owners? Yeah, well... funny thing that.

See, making plans in December is easy, and agreeing to said plans is even easier. But finding the time for said plans smack dab in the middle of the Christmas season is hard to do, and getting all 14 members of the league to contribute blurbs proved to be, let's just say, difficult. So in my best Drew Brees impression, I'm calling an audible and changing the gameplan. The ones who were kind/free/bored enough to sit down and recap their lineups will get the benefit of having an article completely devoted to their team, in their own words. The others? Bubkis!

And yeah, I know what else you're thinking (unless I'm projecting, which I am). "It's January. Isn't it a little late to publish these blurbs now, two weeks after the draft and a week after the fantasy basketball season started?" Maybe. But you know what -- if Harry Potter can end its movie series with mid-twentysomethings playing teenagers, then this isn't the worst stretch in the world.

The first owner to speak on behalf of his team is Mike Gallagher, of FakeTeams fame. Here's his Twitter address.

Here's what he said about his team, back when it was 2011 and the season hadn't started...

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One of the longest standing maxims in not only football but in all of sports has a tremendous chance of being proven wrong this year. Those who believe defense is more important than offense will probably have to reevaluate their beliefs in February, since it's all too likely the Super Bowl winner will not only have a bad defense, but one of the worst defenses of all time.

As of now, the benchmark for the worst defense to win it all is the 2006 Indianapolis Colts, who despite having the second-best pass defense in the league ranked dead last in rushing yards allowed. However, that pales in comparison to the Saints, Packers and Patriots of 2011, all of whom already have allowed substantially more yards in 15 games than the '06 Colts allowed in 16. The Packers and Patriots in particular are allowing 400 and 412 yards a game, 40 and 52 more yards than the Colts allowed per game. And while the Colts ranked 21st in yards allowed, the Saints, Packers and Patriots rank 26th, 31st and 32nd overall, while the Packers and Patriots are on pace to allow 1,000 more yards than the Colts did in 2006.

And here's another nugget. In 2006, of the teams that ranked 17-32 in yards allowed, only three had a winning record. In 2011, half the teams ranking 17-32 in yards allowed are at least 8-8, while two other teams (Tennessee and Arizona) have 7 wins. And of the eight teams that don't have 8 wins, only the Buffalo Bills aren't also one of the 16 worst teams in the league in terms of offensive yardage. In other words, there are hardly any examples this season of a team entirely owing its futility to defense, if there's even an example at all.