Finally…the NBA is changing the way teams are seeded in the postseason, looking to avoid the controversy that surrounded last season's playoffs. Under the change, the top four seeds -- the three division winners and the second-place team with the best record -- will be seeded according to their win-loss total, guaranteeing that the top two teams in each conference can't meet until the conference finals, the league announced Wednesday.

Apparently the Suns have signed Leandro Barbosa to a five-year, $32 million extension…if so that’s a bargain for sure for a guy who would have commanded around 5 years and $50 million on the open market at the end of next season…

Idiot…SG DeShawn Stevenson opted out of the last year of his deal with Orlando, which would have paid him $3 million this year, to be a free agent…then Orlando offered him a 3 year deal for $10 million total which he turned down…now, he finds himself accepting a 2 year deal from the Wizards for $1.8 million total because he overestimated his worth to the rest of the elague and all the SG’s have been signed and nobody wants him…idiot, pain and simple…oh and he fired his agent…duh…

Big Yao says ‘no soup for me’…NBA star Yao Ming pledged Wednesday to give up eating shark's fin soup, a Chinese delicacy, as part of a campaign to promote wildlife protection in his homeland. "Endangered species are our friends," Yao said at a news conference organized by the San Francisco-based conservation group WildAid. The group said China is the world's biggest importer of shark's fins, which conservationists say are cut from sharks that are thrown back into the ocean to die. WildAid put the worldwide trade in shark's fins at 10,000 tons a year. "As the human population increases, many wildlife species are decreasing, and the primary reason is that humans fail to treat animals as friends," said Yao, who played for the Shanghai Sharks basketball team before moving to the Houston Rockets. The campaign promotes the protection of animals besides sharks. A Chinese television commercial shown at Yao's news conference features him leaping from a basketball court to block a bullet fired at an elephant.

The Dallas Mavericks signed undrafted free agent forward Pops Mensah-Bonsu on Thursday. The 6-foot-9, 240-pound Mensah-Bonsu averaged 12.6 points and 6.7 rebounds for George Washington last season. He led the Colonels in field-goal percentage (56.4 percent) and blocks (38) and is second on the school's all-time blocks list with 141. Mensah-Bonsu played for the Mavericks' summer league teams in Las Vegas and Salt Lake City, averaging about eight points and five rebounds per game.

The US team blitzed the Puerto Ricans 114-69 last night at the Thomas and Mack centre on the campus of UNLV in a pre-wordls tune-up…"Puerto Rico played a great first quarter and they made adjustments to go against our pressure defense. They were really good," U.S. coach Mike Krzyzewski said. "Then our guys made some adjustments, not overextending themselves, and we were really good." Carmelo Anthony scored 18 points, Antawn Jamison added 16 and Dwyane Wade had 14 for the Americans, who will meet Puerto Rico again on Aug. 19, in the opening game of the world championships in Sapporo, Japan. A 31-2 run spanning halftime blew open the game and sent the U.S. on its way to avenging a 92-73 loss to Puerto Rico at the 2004 Olympics -- perhaps the most embarrassing moment in U.S. basketball history. Best part of the game was the crowd booing Mike Kryzewski in the pre-game introductions…no doubt still harbouring ill will for Duke’s defeat of the then undefeated UNLV team in the NCAA title game in 1991…

Once again Bill Simmons of ESPN.com is too funny:

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=simmons/060802&lpos=spotlight&lid=tab3pos1

1) Jack MacCallum of SI.com his list of the 10 worst moments in NBA basketball:

Embarrassing moments - Violence, cover-ups, drugs cloud the NBA

It's a pity the old American Basketball Association could not be included in this discussion, for it could probably supply 10 embarrassing/worst/hilarious moments on its own. Many of them would involve Marvin Barnes and the St. Louis Spirits, perhaps the most colorful pro basketball team of all time. On Feb. 6, 1975, the Spirits decided to hold a "Beat the Nets" night. They were the New York Nets then, the defending ABA champions and led by an Afro-ed young star named Julius Erving. Barnes, a free spirit who spent most of his postgame nights -- most of his nights, in fact -- at parties and in pool halls, decided to write a couple of poems for the evening. Here is one of them:

There once was a doctor named Erving,
Whose slam dunks were especially unnerving,
But when Marvin gets movin',
And the crowd gets to groovin',
For the doctor a hospital bed they'll be reserving.

Alas, the final was 113-92, Nets. See? I got an ABA story in anyway.

Here with the NBA moments:

1. Snoozeball: Nov. 22, 1950…Opponents of the Minneapolis Lakers could never figure out what to do with George Mikan, their giant, bespectacled center and the game's first dominant player. But on this night Murray Mendenhall, coach of the Fort Wayne Pistons, had an idea. A bad idea, but an idea nonetheless. He instructed his team to do little else but hold on to the ball, thus rendering Mikan all but useless. As Fort Wayne passed the ball listlessly around the outside and various players held on to it for minutes at a time, the officials, Jocko Collins and Stan Stutz, screamed at them to do something. But the Pistons were not violating the rules at the time. There was a "flurry" of scoring at the end of each of the first three quarters, but when the Pistons scored a basket in the final seconds, they took a 19-18 lead and held on for the victory. NBA president Maurice Podoloff expressed his concern the next day that fans would be turned off -- gee, you think? -- but it wasn't until four years later that the league instituted a 24-second clock. This game was listed prominently as one of the reasons for the innovation.

2. The Punch: Dec. 9, 1977…When a fight broke out during a Los Angeles Lakers-Houston Rockets game at the Forum in L.A., Rudy Tomjanovich, then a 29-year-old, 6-foot-8 All-Star forward, did what seemed natural -- he rushed to the aid of his Houston teammate Kevin Kunnert, who was engaged in a tussle with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Kermit Washington, also 6-8, and one of the game's first real power forwards, did what seemed to be natural to him, too. He sensed Tomjanovich coming from behind and, thinking he was protecting himself and his teammate Abdul-Jabbar, turned around and threw a haymaker at Tomjanovich. It landed as squarely as any punch in any game has ever landed, and basically crushed Rudy T's face. Abdul-Jabbar later said that he didn't see the punch but heard it. Tomjanovich subsequently required five surgeries, and though he later returned to the NBA, he was never quite the same player. But in the long run, the punch was worse for Washington, and not because he was fined $10,000 and suspended for 60 days. Though he was a gentle man with a good basketball mind, Washington was labeled a villain and a thug, and after retiring from the game in 1982 he could never climb the coaching ladder. Rudy T., meanwhile, coached the Rockets to back-to-back championships in 1994 and '95. The men have since reconciled. But rarely is there a punch thrown on an NBA court when that moment in the Forum is not recalled.

3. The unseen work of art: May 16, 1980…If an NBA rookie, playing out of position in an important Game 6 in the NBA Finals, scores 42 points, grabs 15 rebounds and dishes out seven assists but nobody sees it, did it really happen? This is how low the NBA had sunk in 1980: Its national-TV contract with CBS called for tape-delayed coverage of even the championship series. That's why America missed seeing live Magic Johnson's transcendent performance that gave the Lakers a 123-107 win over the Philadelphia 76ers and the first of Magic's five championships. The story after the game was not Magic (who was moved to center because Kareem Abdul-Jabbar had sprained his ankle in Game 5) but, rather, how no one had seen what Magic had done. When David Stern took over as commissioner four years later, he pointed to this game as exactly what he didn't want to happen during his reign. And it never did.

4. The Len Bias shocker: June 19, 1986…Another NBA Draft, another Boston Celtics steal. Virtually every NBA expert evaluated Len Bias, a University of Maryland forward whom the Celtics got with the second pick, as the best talent available, the future successor to Larry Bird, the perfect player to keep Boston competitive until 2000. But just a day after the draft, Bias, 22, returned from Boston to his Maryland campus suite in Landover and, sometime in the middle of the night, ingested cocaine that may have contributed to his sudden death by cardiac arrest. "It's the worst thing I've ever heard," said Bird, who days earlier had led the Celtics to the championship. The impact of the tragedy was profound: A flurry of self-examination at college campuses and in pro sports leagues about the perils of drugs; an investigation into Maryland athletics that eventually led to the resignation of coach Lefty Driesell; a domino effect that tore through that '86 Draft, which produced a number of other drug victims and early washouts; and a low point for the Celtics franchise, which has not won a championship since.

5. A Magic moment, but not a magical one: Nov. 7, 1991…The rumors started early that day. Magic Johnson, slightly past his prime but still one of the best players in the game, is retiring. But why? Finally, at a nationally televised news conference, Johnson announced that he had the AIDS virus and, indeed, would be quitting. In typical Magic fashion, what he said was that he had "attained" the AIDS virus, as if it were a conquest. And over the next few months, indeed, "conquest" became the operative word. Johnson said he had contracted the virus through heterosexual contact, of which there was no shortage -- encounters in elevators and offices, sometimes with more than one woman. As with the Bias tragedy, there was an immediate self-examination of NBA players and casual sexual encounters. But as one NBA hound reported at the time, "Outside of a few more condoms, nothing much changed."

6. Michael lost how much? May 1993…Around the NBA it was an open secret Michael Jordan loved to gamble -- in casinos, on the golf course, in private card games. He would come in from a night of gambling in Atlantic City, take a shower, go to the arena and beat up the Knicks or the 76ers. So whose business was it what Jordan did with his personal money? But then a heretofore unknown lawyer named Richard Esquinas came out with a book called Michael & Me: Our Gambling Addiction, in which he alleged that he had won $1.3 million from Jordan on the golf course. The book, coupled with the $57,000 check that Jordan had written to a guy named Slim Bouler to cover gambling losses -- any time you gamble with a "Slim," you deserve what you get -- suddenly made Jordan's alleged "addiction" a matter for national consumption. A few months later Jordan announced his retirement from basketball -- that would be his first retirement -- and speculation began as to whether NBA commissioner David Stern had demanded he get away from the game because of his unsavory gambling associations. To this day Jordan and Stern vehemently deny it, but the accusation has never gone away and probably never will.

7. Is that my neck or are you just glad to see me? Dec. 1, 1997…The relationship between Golden State Warriors guard Latrell Sprewell and his coach, P.J. Carlesimo, was never a good one. The latter didn't appreciate the former's rather loose approach to things such as schedules and practice habits, while the former didn't appreciate the latter's intensity and attention to detail. Trouble had been brewing (Carlesimo had fined Spree for missing a flight three days earlier) when on this day the coach instructed the player to make crisper passes during a practice session. Spree warned the coach to get out of his face. Carlesimo didn't. So Spree wrapped his hands around Carlesimo's neck for, as witnesses later recalled, at least 10 to 20 seconds. The two were pulled apart and Sprewell left practice, but 20 minutes later, not being a man to forgive and forget, he returned and threw a few punches at the coach before they were separated again. Spree's take on the incident? "I wasn't choking him that hard." Still, photos surfaced showing red rings around Carlesimo's neck. Both of them have moved on. Sort of. Carlesimo is an assistant with the San Antonio Spurs but hasn't gotten another head-coaching opportunity. Sprewell played with the Knicks and the Timberwolves but may have talked himself out of the league a couple of years ago when, after rejecting a multimillion-dollar free-agent contract, he said, "Hey, a man has to feed his family."

8. The U.S. just lost to who? Aug. 16, 2004…You could pick out several bad moments from the United States' disastrous performance at the 2004 Olympics in Athens, which ended with a bronze medal. But I'll take this one: A point guard from Puerto Rico named Carlos Arroyo, who had completed three undistinguished seasons in the NBA, led Puerto Rico to a 92-73 victory in the U.S.' opening game, setting the stage for America's generally tepid play throughout the remainder of the competition. Arroyo finished with 24 points, and Larry Brown, the U.S. coach, finished with a sinking feeling brought on by the realization that he had suffered the first Olympic loss since NBA stars were allowed to play, in 1992, a stretch of 24 games. But it wasn't Brown's fault alone. His allegedly All-Star backcourt of Allen Iverson and Stephon Marbury was simply embarrassed by Arroyo and his teammates.

9. Malice at the Palace: Nov. 19, 2004…No, this doesn't refer to the Three Stooges' classic movie in which Moe, Curly and Larry set out to recover the Rootin' Tootin' stolen diamond in a faraway desert land and dress up in Santa Claus costumes to ... oh, never mind. Certainly there were Stooges in this incident, though, primarily Ron Artest, his Indiana Pacers teammate Stephen Jackson and a few beer-woozy Detroit Pistons fans at the Palace of Auburn Hills. Most everyone knows the details by now: With a Pacers victory in the bag late in the game, Artest delivered a hard foul to an already exasperated Detroit center Ben Wallace, who then shoved Artest, who then reclined on the scorer's table, which prompted a Pistons fan named John Green to dump a cup of beer on him. Artest charged into the stands, followed by Jackson, who began beating people up aimlessly. No one, least of all Artest and Jackson, knew if they had the beer-thrower, which, of course, they didn't. The melee continued for several minutes as beer, soda, ice, popcorn and even a chair or two were tossed at Pacers players. It was easily David Stern's worst moment as commissioner -- over the next few weeks the ugly incident was replayed endlessly and is still never far from the public's collective mind. Most of the blame came down on Artest, who was suspended for the entire season, but in this opinion Jackson (who got a 30-game suspension) was equally culpable, as were the fans who believed that the price of admission gave them carte blanche to act like idiots.

10. Larry gives reporters a brake: May 30, 2006…The "when will Larry Brown get fired?" circus saw its finest hour on an otherwise uninteresting stretch of road that leads to the New York Knicks' practice facility in Greenburgh, N.Y. Reporters had been waiting for weeks to get straight answers out of Brown and general manager Isiah Thomas and were blanketing all conceivable escape routes, including the highway. On this day, though, the reporters struck gold when Brown suddenly pulled over and told the media, "I feel like a dead man walking." Sure enough, after Brown was officially fired and made a dead man on June 22, the Knicks used that interview, and others like it, to claim that Brown had violated tenets of his contract (i.e., interviews had to be given with a public-relations person present) and is not entitled to the full $40 million that is owed him. The dollar figure that will be paid to Brown remains unresolved at this writing, though Knicks beat writers no longer have to act like policemen on a stakeout.

2) Chris Sheriden of ESPN.com reviews the Team USA victory:

Team USA impressive after shaking off early jitters

LAS VEGAS -- Jerry Colangelo was checking his cell phone messages in the tunnel beneath the stands a few minutes after the final buzzer when I asked him for a report card on his own little Dream Team. "The effort is there, and everybody is on the same page -- and I know you didn't see that in Athens," he said. He's got a point there, and thus far everything seems to be going according to plan for the man in charge of restoring America's rightful place in the world of international basketball. Colangelo keeps talking about being on a mission, and his players truly seem to have bought into his message. The evidence was right there on the court Thursday for all to see, the Americans playing selflessly and energetically and doing all of the little things that great teams are supposed to do. After a sluggish first quarter in which they missed eight of nine 3-point attempts and led just 29-26 (so much for the idea of dominating every single quarter), the Americans got a boost from their second unit of Kirk Hinrich, Brad Miller, Gilbert Arenas, Shane Battier and Joe Johnson to close the first half with a 19-2 run that eventually became a 31-2 run once the third quarter began. The surge turned a 33-29 deficit into a 57-35 lead, and the rest of the night was showtime for the U.S. players who appear genuinely determined to start a new chapter in the evolution of Team USA. Just listen to Carlos Arroyo, who was a centerpiece of the biggest humiliation the Americans have suffered over the past four years (a 19-point victory over the United States in the Athens opener) while losing six of their 17 games at the 2002 World Championship and 2004 Olympics. "It's a team that has a lot of pride, and with what they went through the last couple years, there's nothing to expect but greatness from this team. It's a team that's hungry for a medal, that's hungry to show the world that they're not what they've shown for the last couple years," Arroyo said. The Americans forced 25 turnovers in their 114-69 victory and got 18 points from Carmelo Anthony, 16 from Antawn Jamison and 14 points, five assists and four steals from Dwyane Wade, who stopped after one breathtaking breakaway dunk to salute a group of U.S. Air Force personnel seated in the front row in their desert fatigues. Coach Mike Krzyzewski also singled out Shane Battier for praise, and it'll be interesting to see whether Battier will beat out Bruce Bowen for one of the final spots on the roster (The Americans are bringing 14 players to Asia, but only 12 will be on the active roster). Bowen was the only U.S. player who did not score Thursday night, and he also was the only American to shoot an airball. The U.S. players have been staying at the fancy Wynn Hotel and Casino, running across Americans from all corners of the country. "Every time you walk through the hotel lobby, there's people excited about USA Basketball and wanting to know how practice is going and how guys are doing. We understand that we represent more than the organizations we play for in the NBA, and we represent more than the name on the back. We represent the name on the front of our jersey, and that means a lot to every guy on this team," Wade said. Said coach Mike Krzyzewski: "There was something about being here that has helped to create a national spirit for our team." The next challenge for the Americans will be to keep their effort and enthusiasm at a peak through their exhibition tour of China and South Korea, with a side stop in Hong Kong, before arriving in Sapporo, Japan, for their first meaningful game Aug. 19. The last version of Team USA also looked great in its first exhibition game, also against Puerto Rico, but things quickly changed after they boarded a plane and made the long journey overseas. They got stomped by Italy and barely defeated Germany in their second and third exhibitions, then had a great tuneup against Serbia-Montenegro in Belgrade before taking a step backward in a tight game against Turkey in Istanbul. By the time that team arrived in Athens it was still figuring itself out, and we all remember what happened in Athens. And so while I am left every bit as impressed as Colangelo, I'm not ready to concede the gold medal to this team just yet. There's a long way to go, and strange things happen in international basketball games. Let's see how they look two weeks from now when the comforts of Vegas will be long behind them. Better yet, let's see how they look a month from now when they're bound to be road-weary right when they need to be at their peak. That's when the medal round will be held, and there's no guarantee that they'll be playing as well then as they are right now.

3) Dick Jeradi of the Philadelphia Inquirer tells us what ever happened to Dejuan Wagner:

Dajuan's comeback is all about intestinal

DAJUAN WAGNER was "The Messiah." He scored 100 in a high-school game. He averaged 42.5 points as a senior at Camden High. He scored 3,462 points in high school, the most in New Jersey history. He scored 25 points in the McDonald's All-American Game at Duke. It was never a question of whether Wagner would score, but how much. Nobody could stop him. He just did what he wanted when he wanted. Then, his body began to fail him. He had stomach pain. He was fatigued. He lost weight. He lost his appetite. All that was happening while he spent a year in college at Memphis and 3 years in the NBA. He tried all kinds of treatment. Nothing worked for long. It just kept getting worse. He was eventually diagnosed with colitis, inflammation of the colon or large intestine. Last October, he underwent major surgery at the Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York. "He was very, very sick when he left the Cleveland Cavaliers [in 2005]," said Dr. Joel Bauer, who performed the surgery. "We did an operation on him and basically he's recovered phenomenally." How phenomenally? Last week, Wagner had 65 points on Wednesday in the Cherry Hill League, including 15 threes. The next night, he had 67 points at Drexel in the Rankin/Anderson League. Now, 132 on consecutive nights will get your attention. "He's regained a lot of his strength," Bauer said. "The guy's built like an animal. He looks more like a defensive back than a point guard or shooting guard. The last time I saw him, he looked fabulous. From my point of view, from the gastrointestinal surgery, he's made a complete recovery." Wagner plays for Team Camden in Cherry Hill. Former Temple star Mike Vreeswyk, 39, plays for Team Philly. After losing 25 pounds, Vreeswyk said: "I've been playing as good as I've ever played." So, apparently, is Wagner. Only his best is better than almost everybody who has ever played in this area. "He's unbelievable," said Vreeswyk, the designated bomber for the Owls team that rose to No. 1 in 1988. "It was amazing what he was doing on the floor. We have a pretty good team. We started sending two guys at him. He was either going around two guys or over two guys, shooting from just deeper. He must have shot 80 percent for the game, probably more. He was getting to the basket at will. "He just single-handedly beat us. The cherry on the cake was that he hit a three-pointer with like 3 seconds left to win the game. He's in shape. He doesn't say a word on the court. I was on the court and I was kind of amazed at what he was doing." They "held" him to 35, only because Wagner did not shoot unless it was necessary. Last he looked, Vreeswyk was the second- or third-leading scorer in the league. "He didn't miss much," Vreeswyk said. "No question he can play in the NBA again." When he left the NBA, it was a question if Wagner would be able to do anything again. "The symptoms for [colitis] are diarrhea, bleeding, tremendous weight loss and weakness," Bauer said. "It can get worse than that, but that's what he had. Even a normal person, not somebody with the physical-activity level that he has, can be decimated from this. You lose 30, 40 pounds. You have no energy. You're anemic. It's terrible." Trying to play in the NBA with that? You can't even work at a normal job," Bauer said. "I couldn't do my job with this. It's impossible." Wagner was scheduled to play at Drexel around 8:30 last night. He arrived around 9. No problem. The game wasn't ready to start anyway. And it wasn't going to start until Wagner got there. Dr. Dave Scheiner, who runs the league, said the game would begin after Wagner answered a few questions. "It just feels good to be playing," Wagner said. "When you've been doing something your whole life and they take it away from you... I'm just happy I'm playing.'' Drexel's gym had cooled down to about 110 degrees by game time. There was no air moving. It was somewhere between oppressive and Hades. Wagner had 25 after 15 minutes. He broke four ankles on the same hesitation dribble and then finished off a lefthanded and one. He was shooting step backs from Market Street. Today, he is more skilled than anybody on the Sixers except Allen Iverson. "I've never played in anything like this," Wagner said during a timeout while standing in front of a fan that was mostly window dressing. But he kept playing. This was Wagner's third game in three nights. "I need it,'' he said. Wagner and his team blew a big lead in the fourth quarter, wilting in basketball hell and lost the game, 122-114. Wagner finished with 57. "An off night," said Scheiner, aka Dr. Foot. Wagner remembers having stomach problems as far back as 12th grade. Back then, Wagner had a touch of baby fat. Not now. He is cut. And he got there the hard way. "It was hard because I started off from scratch," Wagner said. The surgeon removed his colon and, according to Wagner, "made me a new one." It works way better than the old one. "That was the worst," Wagner said of his illness. "I don't think it can get any worse than that. You've got to go through stuff in life.'' Said John Calipari, his college coach at Memphis: "His stomach was bad here. At certain times in the morning, he really was almost cramped up. You always wonder why isn't he eating right. So he had some of it here. "We were just like, 'Rub some dirt in it, you'll be all right.' You know how it is. We're like, 'Come on, you're soft.' What it was is the kid was probably in pain that would double you and me over. We just didn't know." Really, nobody knew. In his lone season at Memphis, Wagner averaged 21.2 points, had 32 against Temple in the NIT semifinals and was the NIT MVP as Memphis won the championship. "When he was with us, he was squinting all the time," Calipari said. "I'm like, 'What is this squinting about?' We find out later he needed contacts. All those years, he's scoring 70, 80 points and he can't even see the basket. What is that about?" The 6-2 Wagner can see these days. He can also function. And he can still ball. He is a shooting guard in the classic sense. He will shoot 'em up. And he will make enough. "I've called three [NBA] clubs right now to tell them to send somebody down there," Calipari said. "If he's back to that, there are teams out there that love guards that can score. They're not worried about defense. They're worried about points on the board. Well, he'll do that. There's no question he'll do it." Wagner did it for a time in the NBA, but his condition really gave him no chance to succeed. Cleveland took him with the sixth pick in the 2002 NBA draft. He missed his first 14 games with what was called a bladder infection. He missed the last 20 games with a torn meniscus in his right knee. In the games he played, he averaged 13.4 points. He had a seven-game stretch when he averaged 24.1 points. He could do it, if he had the chance to do it. The next season, with LeBron James now on the team, he was out for the first 2 months after arthroscopic surgery on his right knee. He averaged just 6.5 points. He played only 11 games the next season, averaging 4.0 points. Cleveland did not pick up his option. He was out of the league last season. He got $7.4 million in guaranteed money from his rookie contract, but this was "The Messiah." This ending simply would not do. So Wagner is on his way back. His Camden teammate and best friend Arthur Barclay recently gave Calipari a report. "I had a call from Arthur Barclay and he said, 'I watched him and my mouth was hanging open. It's like the old days. He's back and he's better than he was,' " Calipari said. "The thing I've always said about Dajuan Wagner, he has an unbelievable heart, just a wonderful heart, just like his dad." Milt Wagner is on Calipari's staff at Memphis. Like his son, he was a star at Camden. He won a national title at Louisville and an NBA title with the Lakers. Their games are different. Their toughness is not. "The greatest thing is, the kid never lost his confidence," Calipari said. "To be able to say, 'I'm going to make another run at this,' instead of blaming and being mad. It's because the kid's got a great heart... 'This has happened to me. I'm going to deal with it. And I'm going to make this work.' " Drexel coach Bruiser Flint has seen Wagner a few times this summer in the Rankin/Anderson League. "His body looks great," Flint said. "It looks tight. I think he's the same. There's not much defense in the league. They don't guard anybody but you know the difference between him and the other guys that's playing. There's a significant difference." And it does not take a basketball savant to notice the talent. Or the will. "I kept fighting," Wagner said. "If I were a lot of people, I would have quit, but I ain't no quitter. I'll be back." Wagner figures he will get into a couple of NBA camps. If not there, he has feelers from overseas, including one from Maccabi Tel Aviv. After all he has been through, the best news for Dajuan Wagner is this: He turned 23 on Feb. 4.

4) Fran Blinebury of the Houston Chronicle reports on Hakeem “don’t call me Akeem” Olajuwon’s big man camp:

Here's how it's done - With a wealth of knowledge and techniques to spare, Hakeem Olajuwon is conducting his first Big Man Camp

Hakeem Olajuwon is conducting his first Big Man Camp. Another year, another summer, another morning inside a gym. Hakeem Olajuwon always knew he never wanted to carry a clipboard, sit on a bench or kneel in a huddle drawing up plays. But this is different. It's not coaching as much as it is teaching. It's not drilling as much as it is shining a path. A year ago, the former Rockets icon spent a week or so working one-on-one with Emeka Okafor, the former Bellaire High product who plays for the Charlotte Bobcats. Twelve months later, Olajuwon is back from his home in Jordan for his annual sojourn to Houston to take care of business, touch base with old friends and conduct his first Big Man Camp. Okafor has returned, and this time he has been accompanied by Ndudi Ebi, who went from Westbury Christian Academy to the pros as a 2003 first-round draft choice of the Minnesota Timberwolves, and a handful of other young up-and-comers. Also expected next week on the court of The Wellness Center at Memorial Hermann-HBU are DeSagana Diop and D.J. Mbenga of the Dallas Mavericks, Ike Diogu of the Golden State Warriors, Luol Deng of the Chicago Bulls and free agent Mamadou N'diaye. The Nigerian national team will spend two days in camp en route to playing in the World Basketball Championship in Japan. "I was a little bit surprised last year at how much I enjoyed the experience with Emeka, and it made me want to expand on it," Olajuwon said. "I began to think of different things that I show to young players. I began to think of different ways I get the message across. "I have never had an interest in becoming a traditional coach. Those X's and O's are for others to figure out. What interests me is showing the next generation of big men how they can take their game to a higher level." Olajuwon is not collecting an appearance fee. There is no financial gain. "If these kids want to come here and take the time to listen and to work, if they're willing, it is my honor to help," Olajuwon said. "This is my way of giving back to the game." So for a solid two hours, he puts them through a workout that emphasizes speed, quickness and flexibility. He challenges them to change the way they view almost every move they make in the low post or out on the wings. Even little things, such as pivoting on the balls of one's feet, rather than flat-footed. It allows one to explode more toward the hoop and puts less overall strain on the foot.
"Last year was really the first time in my life that I ever had to try to break down the moves that I used in my playing career and explain them to someone else," Olajuwon said. "I've spent time since then thinking about how I can expand the message and show it to a whole group." He demonstrates a move — whirling, spinning, dipping, twirling with the ball — and you can almost see his pupils' minds working in overdrive trying to comprehend. They want to make connections from A to B to C to D. And what he's trying to achieve is for them to get from A to B and then consider an infinite world of possibilities and combinations. His game in winning two NBA titles, an MVP award, five All-NBA honors and a dozen All-Star nods was always more reactive to the defense. "Don't try to go through," Olajuwon said. "Find a way around. It's easier." Okafor, the NBA's 2004 Rookie of the Year, struggled with a series of injuries last season and never could develop a steady rhythm. "I wish I could have used more of what Hakeem taught me, but I couldn't stay on the court long enough," he said. "There were a couple of times early in the season when I used a move in practice and somebody might say, 'Where did that come from?' I want to build on that." Ebi was waived by the Timberwolves after two frustrating years of sitting on the bench and played last season for Fort Worth in the NBA Development League. "This is going to help me," he said. "I'm just trying to get in there, get a fresh chance, a fresh start. I'm starting again, but I've got the right guy to show me. That's the Dream. He's taught lessons to Michael Jordan and Shaquille O'Neal. I know he can teach me." Olajuwon watches the 6-9, 22-year-old Ebi use strong head fakes to get his defender up in the air, then lean in for a finger-roll basket. "I think Ndudi was too young, too unprepared for the NBA the first time," Olajuwon said. "Now I see stronger, more confident moves. I tell him something one day, and he comes back the next day and uses it. I think he's ready." Olajuwon hears the talk about the NBA being guard-oriented in the 21st century, that big men are being de-emphasized, even phased out, and he shakes his head. "For a big man who is just big, maybe," he said. "But not if you play with speed, with agility. It will always be a big man's game if the big man plays the right way. On defense, the big man can rebound and block shots. On offense, he draws double-teams and creates opportunities. He can add so much, make it easier for the entire team." At 43, Olajuwon still has the moves, the polish, the satin feel to his game. His body is still lean and taut, his large brown eyes still filled with confidence, perhaps the only trace of age a gray strand or two in his closely cropped hair. "I like to be able to be out on the court with the guys when I'm explaining," he said. "It's still easy for me to make the plays and hold my own on offense and defense. But I know that eventually time will catch up, and I'll have to do it all with words." Before that time comes, Olajuwon would like to spend time working with one particular student. "Yao Ming, of course," he said. "He is mobile enough to be a force. He runs the floor very well. He has a soft jump shot, good skills. For him, it is just the concept, the job description, that he must learn. That lane, it belongs to him. Everybody has to go through you. You reject everything that comes in there. It is your house.` "It is more of a mental picture for him to get in his mind and then extend out to other teams. 'Oh no, we have to face the Rockets and Yao Ming! We have so much to worry about!' He needs that mentality. Everybody talks about his skills. But he is a gentleman on the court. No. It is not a place for gentlemen. Not in the lane. He must be a force. "It is about so much more than stats. It is that toughness, that image, that force that all big men must project. Tracy McGrady is a great player. But this is Yao Ming's team. It should be. He has so much more to offer. It is not out of reach. I am a realistic person. He has what it takes. But he is trying to fit in when he should be making everyone fit in around him. "Maybe you say it is cultural. I don't know. But he can change. He can be taught. Let him see how it's done. I know he has obligations this year (in China) with the world tournament. But next year, maybe he is free. I plan to be here. Hopefully, with a bigger camp. I would like to work with him." Yao and Hakeem. Some teacher. Some dream.