Other People: 9/25/08

Ziller, NBA Fanhouse: "For a few easily ascertained reasons, Manu Ginobili almost never gets mentioned in the same breath as the league's top two-guards. He gets ignored in favor of fellows like Michael Redd and, prior to last season, Ray Allen. Manu gets respect -- don't get that twisted. But it's always as a sixth man, as a firestarter and not as one of the best in the NBA, no qualifiers necessary. His role and style are so different from Kobe and Wade and Redd and Iverson that it knocks him out of the conversation, which is unfair to all of us."

FD Guest Lecture by Atticus Van Zandt: "A bad NBA player with a large contract is basically bad debt. It's an asset that's worth significantly less on the open market that what you paid for, and it sits on the books restricting your ability to manage your organization. Zach Randolph is, essentially, an illiquid asset, and there’s not much that separates NBA franchises from investment banks. During the past decade, the NBA saw an explosion of bad debt. The arms race of contracts made the competition for free agents explode and suddenly even mediocre players were getting contracts far greater than their actual worth. While such contracts had always been present in the system, during this time, they threatened to overwhelm it."

SLAM Online: "You have to love the irony of this signing. Last year’s Knicks were mostly comprised of healthy, but constantly out of shape underachievers. Now, a 37-year-old Allan Houston is making a come back despite having serious knee injuries in the past."*

Deadspin: "After putting his motorcycle in a ditch, Robles recovered from a broken right kneecap, a dislocated right elbow, and a broken right forearm. But the one thing he couldn't recover from was gnarly road rash on his pinkie finger that wouldn't heal and threatened to stall his boxing career. Since he didn't have insurance for a medical amputation, he did what any one else would do. He grabbed a chisel, a 15-pound weight and ... you probably know the rest."

Faith and Fear in Flushing: "Sometimes in the winter I'll be doing some household chore and I'll realize that for the last five or 10 minutes I've been brooding about a moment from the Mets' past, turning it over and over in my mind and wondering how everything could have gone so wrong. Sometimes I even catch myself muttering imprecations, with whatever I've been doing sidetracked by sour anger and regret."

* There is nothing I love more than making fun of the current state of the New York Knicks. This team is a living breathing manifestation of the Hindenburg. I derive so much Schadenfreude from this organization. But once upon a time, I was a Knicks fan, so I have a hard time enjoying this particular ridiculous move. As a kid I really loved Houston, and there's a part of me that wishes my idyllic memories of that time didn't have to be corrupted by watching a shell of his former self struggle to get up and down the floor.