This is just awesome: http://www.thekansascitychannel.com/news/9708643/detail.html

Holy Crap so is this: http://www.nba.com/heat/dance/dancers_index.html

Yikes…Maccabi Tel Aviv signed NBA journeyman Rodney Buford to a deal as a replacement for Anthony Parker who signed with the Raptors…sorry but if Anthony Parker is not 30 times better than Rodney Buford there’s gonna be trouble…

Super-duper coaching rumour: Afte this year, Pat Riley will retire and his hand picked successor is University of Florida Gators head basketball coach Billy Donovan…wow…

Soapbox: Pro athletes in basketball and football make millions…cheerleaders are either unpaid or get honorariums of maybe $50 per game…how long before some smart lawyer decides this is wrong…

I watched Team USA battle back from a 12-point deficit in the second half to beat Italy 94-85…Carmelo Anthony went nuts in the 3rd and scored 19 of his U.S.-record 35 points, with Dwyane Wade adding 26 points…one day NBA player Marco Belinelli scored 25 points for Italians, including some DEEP threes and a very impressive steal, runout and dunk (and-1) with Carmelo Anthony defending…the kid is a player…

1) From the AP, finally:

The Indiana Pacers finally completed a sign-and-trade deal with the Atlanta Hawks for forward Al Harrington on Tuesday. The Pacers acquired Harrington and center John Edwards in exchange for a 2007 first-round pick. Harrington spent the first six years of his career with the Pacers before spending the last two in Atlanta. "We've had Al before," Pacers CEO Donnie Walsh said. "He was a good player for us when we had him the first time. He comes back with more seasoning. Most importantly, he fits in with what we're trying to do at this point." Walsh and team president Larry Bird considered Harrington one of the summer's top three free agents, along with Ben Wallace and Peja Stojakovic. The 6-foot-9 forward averaged 18.6 points and 6.9 rebounds for the Hawks last season and was the central figure to the Pacers plans to recover from a 41-41 season that ended with a first-round playoff exit. The deal followed weeks of speculation. Negotiations slowed when Harrington fired agent Andy Miller and replaced him with Arn Tellem earlier this month. Reports then surfaced that Harrington was likely headed elsewhere, but Walsh said Tuesday that negotiations never died. Harrington is expected to be a key to Indiana's transformation from a defense-oriented team to an up-tempo, athletic squad. The Pacers also have added rookies James White and Shawne Williams, guards Jimmie Hunter, Orien Greene and Darrell Armstrong and forwards Marquis Daniels, Maceo Baston, Rawle Marshall and Josh Powell. In all, the Pacers have added 11 players since the end of last season.
Harrington, by far, was the most important one. "We're very pleased to have Al back in Indiana," Bird said. "We think he brings an added dimension to our team. We know what he can do and he'll make us a deeper team and a better team." The sign-and-trade deal that sent Stojakovic to the New Orleans Hornets gave the Pacers a $7.5 million trade exception that Walsh said made the sign-and-trade with Harrington possible. The trade brings the Hawks additional financial room as well as the draft pick. "We feel this move brings us valuable assets, including additional salary cap flexibility as we move forward," said Hawks general manager Billy Knight. "When Al came to us, he brought a winning attitude to our franchise and he always put the team first. We are certainly in a better position now having had Al as a member of the Hawks." Walsh is glad to finally have the deal done. He said it has been a media blitz since the beginning, though no one with the Pacers organization was talking to reporters. "There was all this talking with the press," he said. "It was a daily litany." Walsh said the Pacers haven't sought a 3-point shooter to complement the influx of rangy, athletic forwards because guard Sarunas Jasikevicius and forward Danny Granger are capable perimeter threats. He hopes the moves make the Pacers a more exciting team. "That's what this is about, is making it fun again," he said.

2) From Ken Berger of Newsday, Shaq has some advice for Starbury:

Shaq to Marbury: Let your play talk

Shaquille O'Neal said Stephon Marbury should let his play speak for itself and speculated that the Knicks' point guard would have been better off playing another season for Larry Brown. "If you say you're the best point guard in the world, now you have to come out and show that every night," O'Neal said on SportsNet New York. "The only time when I really say that is when I have a real big game. You never really heard me say I'm the best center to ever play the game. When you say that, you have to come out and show that every night, especially here in New York." When asked before a game against the Nets during the 2004-05 season how he would match up with Jason Kidd, Marbury replied, "I'm the best point guard in the NBA." O'Neal, in the city with Miami Heat teammate Alonzo Mourning for a charity event, said of Marbury's relationship with Brown, "You have to listen to somebody that's been there. "If they know and understood that Larry Brown's been there - two years in a row - if you listen to a man like that, then he can take you to the next level," O'Neal said in the interview aired Monday. Commenting on Brown's messy departure from the Knicks, Mourning said: "I don't like the fact where coaches can be made scapegoats ... If you do what the coach asks you to do, you're going to get results. I don't think L.B. was telling them the wrong things ... It was just a matter of how they responded to what he was saying or how he said it to them." O'Neal said Marbury and his teammates would've been better off had Brown not been run off after one season. "It wasn't until I met Phil [Jackson], and put my ego aside, and listened to what he had to say and understood it," O'Neal said. "So I think if those guys would have listened and had paid attention and understood, then they would have been better off."

3) Seth Davis of SI.com reports on what ever happened to Nolan Richardson:

Going strong - Richardson is passionate about charity and coaching

Earlier this month, while shuttling from speaking appearances in Oklahoma and Virginia and putting in many hours on behalf of dozens of charities, Nolan Richardson flew to El Paso to meet with UTEP athletic director Bob Stull. UTEP was in the market for a new basketball coach, but though Stull's face-to-face with Richardson was widely characterized as an "interview," the chat lasted less than an hour. The following day, Stull announced that Tony Barbee, a 35-year-old assistant at Memphis with no head coaching experience, had been chosen to replace Doc Sadler, who had been plucked by Nebraska the previous week. If you know anything about Richardson, you know that he is not the type of person to bite his tongue if he believes he has been slighted. I thought I might hear some bile when I reached Richardson by phone late last week. Instead, he sounded sanguine about UTEP's decision -- and not just because Barbee is the first African-American head coach in school history. "I just didn't get the impression that I would be their guy. That's the bottom line," Richardson said. "They couldn't afford to hire me, so it never got to a point where they might offer me the job. I told them I certainly wish them the best. When other schools want to hire your coaches, that's when you know things are going in the right direction." Richardson, 64, still lives in a suburb of Fayetteville, Ark., about a 15-minute drive from the campus of his erstwhile employer, the University of Arkansas. He has never seriously considered another gig since Arkansas ignominiously fired him before the end of the 2001-02 season. Nor does it sound like he's avidly pursuing one. If Richardson were ever going to contemplate a return to the sidelines, UTEP would seem to be an ideal place. He was born and raised in El Paso, played at UTEP (then Texas Western) for legendary coach Don Haskins and began his coaching career in the city, first at Bowie High and then at Western Texas Junior College, where he won the national junior college championship in 1980. Richardson remains a local legend in El Paso; there is a school, a street and a recreation center named for him, and another street bears the name of his daughter Yvonne, who died from leukemia two decades ago. Indeed, Stull's invitation to meet with Richardson was really just a token gesture to satisfy the denizens who had called local radio stations pleading for Richardson to be hired.
However, you've got to believe that Richardson, for all his baggage, would be a great coup for UTEP. His frenetic, up-tempo style is both exciting and a proven winner. No doubt he would help UTEP gain the national notice it currently lacks. But Richardson insists he didn't want the job.
"I've always said that if I was going to take another job, it should be equal to the job I lost," Richardson told me. "So to me, I'd have to think of that as a major college job where I'd have an opportunity to get to the mountaintop again, not a mid-major. I don't want to coach just to coach, and I said that to Bob Stull." In other words, Richardson is pricing himself out of the market. After all, there are only a few dozen schools in the country that meet that criteria. Richardson will be 65 in December -- "I'm almost on Medicare," he quips -- and his bitter fallout from Arkansas has left the impression that he would be a risky hire. Richardson was let go following his public meltdown during a press conference in February 2002, when he infamously dared the school that "if they go ahead and pay me my money, they can take the job tomorrow." Arkansas did agree to buy out the last six years of his seven-year, $7.21 million contract, but Richardson sued the school anyway, charging racial discrimination. Richardson's claim was ludicrous on its face and was dismissed by a federal judge in 2004. A federal appeals court upheld that decision in May, effectively ending the litigation. With typical bluntness, Richardson makes no apologies about his lawsuit. But he is also not fooling himself about the damage it did to his prospects of landing a high-level coaching gig. "The bottom line is, Nolan Richardson left the University of Arkansas under a black cloud. I know that," he said. "Who's going to hire someone who's so outspoken? I'm always going to tell you what God loves, and that's the truth."
Richardson's reluctance to return makes him drastically different from many of his contemporaries. Lefty Driesell (Maryland) and Lou Henson (Illinois) finished their careers in obscurity at Georgia State and New Mexico State, respectively. After getting fired by Indiana, Bob Knight landed at Texas Tech, where he will never win a national championship but will likely break Dean Smith's record for all-time wins next season. Rollie Massimino was so desperate to coach again after being fired by UNLV and Cleveland State that he latched on at Northwood University in Florida, which didn't even have a basketball program when he took the job two years ago. Former Georgia Tech coach Bobby Cremins, 59, will be back on the sidelines next season at the College of Charleston. Asked about these examples, Richardson said, "A lot of these guys are trying to win a certain number of games, but I got started late. At age 24, Bob Knight was already a college coach. When I was 24, I was a seventh- and eighth-grade coach. Some schools are willing to bring a guy in so he can sit there and die. I'm not that kind of guy." A lot of other coaches also keep working longer than they should because they need the money. Richardson will receive checks from Arkansas that total $500,000 a year for another 18 months, but when I asked him if he'll have financial problems when those checks stop coming, he laughed. "I'll be all right," he said. "I've invested in some really good stuff and I was never a rich person anyway. I was born a ghetto kid on welfare, so I know how to survive."
Richardson's buyout deal with Arkansas also stipulates that the money be offset by whatever salary he earns from his next coaching job. Since UTEP wouldn't have been able to pay Richardson more than he's currently getting from Arkansas, he would have essentially been working for free. (However, once the buyout period is over, Richardson wouldn't have to repay Arkansas anything.) "Coaching is hard work filled with 18-hour days," Stull said. "It's real hard to come back, even to a place you love, and just coach to enjoy coaching. If I had a million dollars to offer, it might change the whole scenario. But I don't." Still, Richardson has not totally lost his passion for the game. In the fall of 2005 he coached the Panama national team to its first berth in the World Championships in 19 years. The job was unpaid and lasted about a month, but Richardson had a blast leading the team to a tie for second at the FIBA Americas Championship in Santo Domingo. "We were the Cinderella team over there. Nobody wanted to play against that 'Forty Minutes of Hell' stuff," Richardson said. "I felt I didn't have as much closure as I wanted to because I was fired [by Arkansas] before the end of the season. So after I was done with the Panama team, I told those guys, 'This is it for me, baby. I had my closure and I'm headed back home.'" Is this really it? Richardson notes that UTEP has had three coaches in the last five years, so if the opportunity to return there came up again, he might be interested. He'd also love to be an NBA head coach someday, though he concedes no offers appear to be forthcoming. In the meantime, he is enjoying his life on the cusp of Medicare. Aside from his family, which includes four children, seven grandchildren and three great-grandchildren, Richardson's biggest passion is his charity work. He works tirelessly on behalf of some three dozen organizations, many which are named for Yvonne. Otherwise, he visits with friends and proteges in the coaching profession and makes a few extra bucks on the speaking circuit. And despite his bitter divorce from Arkansas, he loves living near Fayetteville and has no plans to move. So I asked him: Can you be happy if you never coach again? "You know, I've often said, when I leave this earth and hopefully reach the kingdom of heaven, God is not going to ask me how many games I've won," Richardson said. "But He may ask me how many lives I've touched. That's why I'm so into charity work, because I know I'm blessed to bust my butt and beg for money on behalf of people who are less fortunate than I am." It may not be a million-dollar-a-year coaching job, but it sounds like pretty noble work.