I'm sure that company that estimates how much work time is wasted discussing the Final Four will do the same with this story.

I can see it now: "New England businesses lost Umpteen Billion Dollars while Red Sox fans discussed the sock story."

The league's reaction to this study isn't very smart. If they said "hey, it looks like there's a problem, but it's small and manageable, and this is how we'll deal with it" this study would blow over in a hurry.

Because when I read the story about the study, that was my reaction--it's a problem, but small and manageable and easily dealt with, and given how race works in this society, it's actually a smaller problem than could be expected.

But then I got to the part about the league's reaction, and I thought "oh, they're really blowing it here." I think their reaction could, potentially, turn a small issue into a much larger one.

Third overall pick in the 2005 draft.

Thank you, wikipedia.

That'd be No Bitching Allowed.

I thought I would communicate to the NBA that their actions in suspending two Suns players for leaving the bench area but not Spurs players had drained my interest in the playoffs.

I thought, I'll just go to the NBA website and I'll find a phone number. No phone number listed. I tried using dexonline, found telephone numbers for NBA and National Basketball Association, but one number was disconnected, the other connected to a fax machine.

I found a "Contact Us" page on the NBA website, so I tried that, wrote up my little complaint, then discovered you have to "join" in order to write in.

Sop, I guess they really don't want to hear bad news over at the league.

The sad part about all of this is that the Suns were actually helping to increase interest in the league. It makes one wonder if the NBA has been getting marketing advice from Major League Baseball.

Long before the Trailblazers were bought by Hate Radio owner Paul Allen and I actually rooted for them, they had a Number One pick in the draft, and they picked LaRue Martin.

If you look at it long-term, the Sam Bowie pick wasn't quite as horrible as it looks--they did trade him (plus a first round pick) to the Nets for Buck Williams. You have to wonder about the Nets thinking on that one.

Speaking of Number One Pick Flops, King, I'm surprised you didn't mention Joe Barry Carroll, picked by Golden State in 1980.

Robert Parish was one of 15 centers named as one of the "50 Greatest Players in NBA History." Yao Ming is probably the only new center that can be in the discussion about being better than Robert Parish. I would say that Parish belongs with other mid-level great centers:

Dave Cowans

Bill Walton

David Robinson

Nate Thurmond

Wes Unseld

Patrick Ewing

Moses Malone

Elvin Hayes

Willis Reed

I don't really know enough about George Mikan to place him on his level of greatness.

Parish is clearly not in the class of:

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

Wilt Chamberlain

Shaq

Bill Russell

I'm not sure I could rank the first group, but I think Parish has to beat out Bill Walton (and I was a big fan of Walton's playing) because of durability.

By the way, of the fifteen centers on the list of the 50 greatest NBA players of all time, all but Patrick Ewing and Nate Thurmond won at least one championship.

I think Blazer fans would be happy with a second championship, to go alongside the one from 1977.

It's not "Attorneys General" who were fired, it was "U.S. Attorneys".

It's interesting that Bennett said that a divorced person would not be able to win the Grand Oil Party nomination, since their hero, Ronald Reagan, was divorced. Moreover, Bennett worked in Reagan's administration.

Do you have a source for that quotation?

I don't understand why righties are gung-ho about Fred Thompson. It's not like he had a distinguished career in the Senate, and he just adds to the number of divorced men at the top of the Republican race.

This article quotes Ron Paul thusly:

"To maintain our current account deficit we borrow almost $3 billion a day. It's unsustainable. It will end. And it's going to end in a worse fashion than it did in 1979 and 1980, when interest rates went to 21 percent."

It is true that we had high interest rates during the latter days of the Carter administration, but the Federal debt grew at a lower rate in all four years of his administration than during the two years of the Carter administration and all eight years of the Reagan administration.

The dirty little secret that Republicans don't want to talk about is that Ronald Reagan is the undisputed champion of deficit spending--in the second through fifth years of his Presidency the National Debt grew by 16.4%, 17.8%, 17.9%, and 17.0%. The only other year in that ballpark since WWII (where the info is easily available) is 1975, Ford's first full year.

Reagan's administration disproved the link between deficit spending and inflation, as we had huge deficits but low inflation.

Should we not be allowed to marry, since we can't sire any children? And how about women who've had their tubes tied? Or people who are infertile for any other reason?

The "marriage is for raising children" argument is a red herring. Yes, most marriages lead to offspring, but many don't, and many gay relationships lead to children, just as many heterosexual marriages lead to adopted children.