A literal STAGE to introduce players at an all-star game? Normally a “stage” is merely a figurative term. Not anymore. Just for comedy relief, I was half-expecting David Stern and Elton John to circle the introduced players like missiles, powered only by the jet packs strapped onto their backs. Rocket Man, indeed.

If anybody with any semblance of a business IQ does not believe the NBA and its powerful corporate partners are not going to do everything in their power behind the scenes to manuever James to the blinding bright lights of the center of the marketing universe, then I *strongly* urge you to find somebody who recorded this game’s player introductions. It was absolutely obscene and was an amazing indicator of the direction where they want the NBA to go. Only a fool would say James is not a part of that business plan.

I’m glad you’ve noted recently the weak strength of schedule the Cavs have left after the break. Last year, I tracked SOS all year, and the Cavs had a remarkably easy schedule until the break. It is reasonable to expect that they’ll finish much more strongly this year with this schedule. (As a corollary, it was reasonable to conclude that they were overvalued at this point last season.)

Also, don’t you think the improved depth this year has helped alleviate the kinds of problems that hurt last year’s team? Injuries totalled that team. Thus far, they haven’t badly damaged this one.

Admittedly, I would have less of a problem if it was called the Wooden Scale. Or even the Wilkens Scale. (or the Windhorst Scale!)

Forget about dropping it to 7 feet, make it like a high jump and have the players keep raising it to see how high they can go.

My uncle was a statistics professor in the mathematics department at the University of Buffalo for 35 years, and even he could never have devised such a revolutionary formula as the “diff.”

Yes, the Karl Scale is absolutely brilliant. The Greeks never thought of it, and the great mathematician Euclid would be in complete awe. Far more importantly, what would NBA assistant coaches do without a Karl Scale and room service to occupy their valuable time? But that diff thing puts both the brilliant Karl Scale and Euclid’s stylish Armani toga to utter retardation shame.

What Karl is saying is that good teams have great success at home and they have decent success on the road. Yeah, and? And now he gets credit for inventing a scale? Totally bogus. At least NBA commentary improved since Denver hired him.

Rant over - and this is not meant as bashing you, Brian! Love your postings.

Just randomly pitching ideas here, but in the Beat Writers Slam Dunk Contest, as they soar majestically upwards (or, far more likely than not, horizontally and then plummeting like a rock), each beat writer would be required to signal in American Sign Language an analogy, a simile and a metaphor as they and their spaghetti-stained sartorial splendor slam the biscuit in the basket and royally rock the Houston house. My dream matchup in the finals would be a creative dual to the death between the Miami Herald’s Israel Gutierrez and the Akron Beacon Journal’s Brian Windhorst. No disrespect to the whimsical white scribe up north, but I must give a decisive edge to the youthful Hispanic wordsmith.