So The ESPY’s may not be an all-hoops award show, but outside of the U.S. Ladies and their overseas patriot smorgasbord, the ballers stole the show. It started off solid with SNL’s Seth Meyers making us laugh while making every athlete in the room sweat. Our favorite: Meyers mentioning that the Heat’s Big Three was a reference to how many quarters they play in big games. Sick. Burn. Dude. Or the one when Meyers said Kim K is only marrying a Net because she was sick of dating pro athletes. Wow. Other highlights included Blake Griffin calling Emmanuelle Chriqui “Sloan” when accepting his Breakthrough Athlete award, Sloan herself (The first time she walked out? Woah. Let’s just start Entourage right now), Jason Kidd‘s crazy hot wife (five best-looking women last night: Kerry Washington, Ms. Fredette, Sloan, that chick from SportsNation & Dirk’s lady (honorable mention: Serena‘s booty)) and the “Lockout Professionals.” The lowlight: those uncomfortable digital nominee montages. The freak athlete robots were weird. The video game portraits of the nominees were weirder. How ’bout we scrap that whole cool cutting edge thing for 2012 and go with some actual pictures? We’re just saying … Guess who else showed up? Rashad McCants … And y’all got what you wanted: LeBron James is out of Dime’s 1-On-1 NBA Tournament. D-Wade slapped him up by getting 70% of the vote. On the other side, an even bigger surprise: the so-called best one-on-one player in the game lost. Kobe is out. Dirk is moving on, winning 55% of the vote (Some Kobe fans nearly ruined it by trying to sabotage the voting.). Today at 11 A.M. EST, it’ll be Wade vs. Dirk all alone, one winner, one loser, He Got Game-style … In some actual NBA news (well, sort of), reports have come out that the NBPA’s President Billy Hunter recently dropped a memo to the players, commending Deron Williams for the courage it took to accept the offer to play in Turkey during the lockout. He’s 100% right. Also, we love how this memo magically made its way into the hands of ESPN – it’s not like the player’s union has been thinly veiling these announcements on ESPN as negotiating tools. Oh sorry, that’s exactly what they’ve been doing. You want to know what’s not thinly veiled? Jorge Sierra’s piece that mentions Besiktas as one of the many Europeans teams with a reputation for stiffing their players on salary. Yikes … And those lady footballers aren’t the only Americans thinking about international competition. Jerry Colangelo, Chairman of the USA Basketball program, plans on reaching out to 2012 Olympics candidates in the next month or so – hopefully to get the stars aligned once again for another gold medal run. While there have been a lot of ’08ers who have voiced interest in getting the band back together in London, Colangelo understands that circumstances have changed for many of those involved. Does that mean we should start expecting a mash-up of the most recent Olympics and World Championships teams? Are we talking about teaming up D-Rose and the Durantula with ‘Melo and LeBron? All we can say is: we like that … And in the wake of the firing of former T’Wolves coach Kurt Rambis, Wolves’ President David Kahn has come out and said he wants changes. Our guess: the great Don Nelson returns from Maui to coach in Minnesota, sours on Ricky Rubio and then returns back home within 18 months. It would only be fitting … A number of big college stars are on their way overseas. Jacob Pullen signed with Italy’s Angelico Biella. Ben Hansbrough signed with a team in Munich while Demetri McCamey appears likely to sign in Turkey. Our man Xavier Silas has an invite to try out with the 76ers … We’re out like Brian Wilson‘s spandex leotard/tux.
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