SPECIAL WEEKEND EDITION Editor's note: ESPN.com senior NBA writer Marc Stein supplies each item for this weekly around-the-league notebook edition of the Dime. By Marc Stein ESPN.com Houston's plans to detour to Las Vegas for some team bonding before Sunday's game at Portland, spilled by TNT's studio team during a post-game interview with Tracy McGrady, are likely to be met with a fine (if not kiboshed totally) by the league office, which generally views such excursions as providing extra benefits to players. http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/dailydime?page=dailydime-051210-11 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Sorry if its been posted. Barkley and his big mouth i tell ya.
HAHAHAHA, If i was Tmac I'd be so pissed at Barkley. Did you see him in the interview he was like..."How you know about that???" "Ur not suppose to know about that"
Nope... David Stern will probably fine the Rockets again! Or JVG because it was his idea lol!! Make that another 100 grand
Just proves once again that Barkley runs his mouth without ever thinking about the consequences. Did he not hear what happend to the Nuggets over summer? They were fined as well. Hes such a moron... Thats like asking Tracy during an interview on national live television about what kind of steroids he uses (hypothetically) and just laughing like it was an inside joke. Sorry Charles, national television is not the place to talk about inside jokes. Why not just ask Tracy about it after the game or something. Idiot.
wait.........the rockets as a team can't go to vegas and have a nice little get away but the maloof brothers can own an nba team and a casino in las vegas???? not quite getting where the rockets can get fined on this.....what a completely f%cked up league the nba is, no consistency to rules whatsoever.
while i agrre that the rockets getting fined for this is ridiculous and annoying, i dont understand the comparison between this and the maloofs owning a casino. i dont see whats so illegal about the team having a getway. what, exactly, is the big deal? is the team paying for it?
Gee it is actually sunny up in Portland right now. Global warming is kicking in. The team could spend 3 days visiting Powells bookstores in Portland. Highs 45 and lows around 30. Just like Houston right now. Vs. 60/40 pt sunny in Vegas and no Powells bookstore? Boring! I hope stern does fine the team - that will be the best bonding experience of all - have a common enemy to hate. I am emoticoning today.
I think over time itd just get way out of hand. Players could have vacation trips built into their contracts. Like 10mil a year plus 5 vacations or something with the team jet. Who knows. Just throwing some ideas out there. Its minor with us now, but the possibilities could be very bad. Its like that sports store owner giving Lebron a free jersey while he was in high school. Sure its just a jersey but what if he accepted more and other things.
I understand what you say. But couldn't the league put in some allowance limit there so that teams can do some minor nicety once in a while but not going over board? BTW, didn't Cuban nicing up the Mavs lockerroom something similar? Wouldn't the league fear that players would start demanding certain amenity in the facilities in their contracts?
i may be alone on this, but oh well. frankly, if the nba does its job well, it should've been able to find out about this w/o the aid of the TNT interview. i know i'm not the only ClutchFans member who sifts through various NBA readings every damn day. that includes reading on the Chronicle, ESPN, HoopsHype, and every interesting news article linked by HoopsHype. i'm too lazy to look right now, but I read about the Vegas trip somewhere else [i'm guessing the Chronicle], and i found that just by reading out of my passion for the NBA. those working at the NBA are supposed to peruse this stuff as their J-O-B. although, i'm sure the TNT interview totally brought the NBA's attention to this trip, so every hope of it going unnoticed is vanquished, i'm sure.
If the team is doing it as teammates and the rockets organizations is not paying for it then F*** stern. I can understand the implications this might have if the team was paying for the trip but if the coach told the team, "go bond someplace fun, Las Vegas is a couple of hours away" there is nothing wrong with that.
It was mentioned during the game that the Rockets would be going to Vegas. Reggie Miller talked about the trip Larry Brown had the team take on a road trip to vegas in the early 90s. After Doug Collins predicted that the Rockets would make a 3 point shot on the next play, and it happened, they said Doug needs to head out to Vegas too!
I was really surprised in the first place that Van Gundy would let something like that happened. I would've thought he'd take them to some gym in the middle of nowhere and refuse to feed them until they learned to guard the pick and roll.
In a way you have to look at it like a coorporation. Stern is the Persident - CEO whatever of the company and all these teams are different divisions of the company. Basically they took a vacation as a team and did it during the season which is a no no because it's not allowed simple as that. You have to treat it like any other business and in other businesses you would get repremanded for doing something on "company time" which the Season is. Now if they wanted to do that stuff together on the off season i doubt stern would have anything to say about it. You really have to look at it and see that it really is a huge company and everyone works for these teams under the NBA. They have rules and regulations and these teams are in a sense not a seperate entity in a way.
