An Apology Is In Order . . .

Today's post is sponsored by the NBA and NCAA basketball. Ok, no not really, but that seems to be most of what's happening in sports these days that's actually related to the game itself. With one off-court tennis story thrown in for good measure:

1. Recently, I sat within a few feet of J.J. Redick who was riding the Orlando Magic pine (i.e., sitting on the bench), and I feel kind of bad because I gloated about his presence. But just now I realized it's not his fault that he was overrated. It must be hard to go from being the premier player at one level to playing garbage time, so J.J., I'm sorry for yelling at you during the game.

2. The Celtics lost to the Denver Nuggets, putting them in the double digit loss column. I just wanted to point that out. Nothing further.

3. Go west, young men. The Jason Kidd trade is complete, with the Dallas Mavericks picking up Devin Harris and a few other players and items added to the shopping cart. I almost forgot he was with the Mavs when he first came into the league, so this is a reunion of sorts. With Shaq set to debut with the Phoenix Suns against the Lakers tomorrow night, this will make for a very interesting western conference battle. It seems like everyone's defecting for the west these days, which just might explain the sagging ticket sales on the opposite shore.

4. It looks like the Indiana Hoosiers are going to have no choice but to fire coach Kelvin Sampson for all of his NCAA recruiting violations. I don't feel too bad for the school because it seems that they knew what they were getting themselves into but went ahead with it anyway. Just another case of reaping what you sow.

5. So after nearly a year and some change of sniffing around, the ATP tour finally found a rat among its ranks. Although other players (almost all of them Italian, "coincidentally" says the ATP) have been fined for betting on tennis matches, they finally found the guy who pulled a Pete Rose and bet on his own games. Only his name is Giorgio Galimberti. Lovely. Like Rose, Galiberti denies ever betting on himself to lose, but that contradicts the ATP's own findings that he bet on himself to lose on at least one occasion. Galimberti is now out of the top 1,000 ranked players in the game, so perhaps he's just desperate for a few more dollars. The ATP isn't throwing the book at them, although perhaps they should if they want to send a message to others. This could be very bad for an already struggling game depending on how high up the rankings this thing really goes . . .