Out with the old.

The holidays have arrived, and basketball is returning just in time for Christmas. While I am thankful that the NBA and its players have kissed and made up, I am still waiting patiently for baseball to kick up in February. I look forward to spending long weekends in Arizona watching my favorite teams get ready for a new season of freshness.

The Dodgers can look forward to new ownership and management, and hopefully the acquisition of some young and outstanding players. With the McCourts being forced out of the picture, hopefully the team can heal and re-establish its greatness within the league. I feel like 2012 could be a year to remember for the boys in blue.

Until all of my sports interests regenerate, I might be a little quiet. Football has been mostly disappointing to me this year, and I am hanging on for sports to come alive again in 2012.

For now, stay tuned for other things that interest me, like FOOD and MUSIC in my other blog.

Thanks for reading. Love, Kristin.

NBA players take the power position.

To the pleasure of most Americans, the NFL Commissioner and NFL Players Association finally came to an agreement to end the lockout in time to save their $9 billion season from nonexistence. I would safely say that I never lost any sleep over this lockout. There are no other countries in the world that are going to try and start an American-style football league that whisks away all of our superstar pigskin jockeys. The NFL is also a huge economic contributor in many major cities across the country, and locales would indeed have gotten involved had the league not picked something up to fill those months of empty stadiums and equally empty sports bars.

On the contrary, I have been closely following the NBA lockout from the inside out. Players that I work with are filing for COBRA insurance coverage, their NBA sponsored 401(k) plans are rolling over, and the paychecks stopped rolling in months ago. While I am sure NFL players experienced the same sort of job termination rituals, NFL players were not packing up and accepting paychecks overseas. They were starting record labels, banging supermodels, and driving lifted trucks.

From Turkey to Spain to the Philippines, professional basketball players are definitely flirting with the idea of a steady paycheck once again--no matter where it takes them. With some of these players being massively popular stars here in the states, the offers they are getting in other countries are quite handsome. And face it, at the end of the day, money talks.

The NBA should be careful to not lose their all-stars to these young foreign leagues. New Jersey Nets guard Deron Williams already signed a $5 million deal with a team in Turkey. Dwight Howard talked to the associated press last week about packing up and heading to China or somewhere else in Europe. It has been rumored that some other high-dollar ballers have been in negotiations to make similar moves. Losing key players will absolutely damage the NBA's fan base as followers of some of the league's favorite players will indeed turn their sights to their star's new team, wherever that may be.

It's basically the equivalent of throwing hundred dollar bills out of a car window while going 100mph on Interstate 5. Or just burning the mint down.

Shape up, or watch your players ship out.

The Lakers take a beating.

Sometimes I waver with religious my beliefs, however, I think that karma always finds its way in the end. The report of Kobe Bryant exiting the arena after being defeated 104-99 by the worst team in the NBA, the Cleveland Cavaliers, without saying a single word, really made me all warm and fuzzy inside.

Like, hey, you aren't the best in the world. At least not anymore. And it looks like your downfall is going to make me feel as your uprising did you.

Note: the Celtics are still killing it. Per usual. Damn the Heat, but #2 ain't bad. For now.

Being a Los Angeles native, I am really supposed to idolize this team as any other wildly retarded Angeleno would. Really. I really should. But I look at Kobe Bryant with so much disdain that I want to close my eyes and visualize Brooklyn Decker in a yellow bikini. Don't get me wrong. I don't hate Kobe as some sort of feminist. I don't look at him [every time] and think, that damn rapist. I really don't.

I look at him and think, that cocky mother f-er has to fall off of his pedestal and realize that he is just another human being at some point in time.

Oh, that time is now. Feels good, don't it?

Loving this...not believing it.

I'm reading through the sports news, the emails, and the cheap cigar adverts in my inbox today, and I come across this headline:

"Celtics looking to slow Bryant in game 2"

You might ask, is this a Craigslist ad?

Is it a joke?

As much as I dislike Kobe Bryant and his Laker lackeys, I find this to be really funny. REALLY funny. So, I click on the headline to read more. Inquiring minds want to know! There is more!

"Celtics scheme ways to overcome Kobe in game 2"

Now we're scheming!! I wonder what we're coming up with in the locker room. I'm imagining Paul Pierce and Kevin Garnett heating up a kettle of tar to dump at the doorway into the court. Maybe some banana peels. Koopa shells...I could go on. You get it.

How about instead of trying to slow one man down, you try and up your entire squad's game so that they have a shot at matching this one man and all his greatness. And by that, I mean man the hell up and don't let this one crybaby take you down that easily. At least let the other four in on the fun.

In the mean time, I'm still giggling about this scheming stuff...writers these days.

And, it continues...

Remember that time I had a sports blog?! Oh, right!! Baseball season started, and I seem to have forgotten all of you. I kid, I kid.

I'm alive, and well. New digs, new computer, new boyfriend. Okay, that last part is a lie. But I did get rid of the old one. No offense to him in any way...

Moving on...let's get down to business.

The NBA finals are giving us the showdown that everyone loves and hates to see. It's probably the biggest rivalry in basketball. It's The Boston Celtics versus the Los Angeles Kobe...I mean, Lakers! We all know how I feel about Kobe Bryant and his little cronies, but what you may not know is that my father's side of the family hails from Boston, and that allows me to default my team of choice as such. Done.

In deathmatch #12 (yes, they have battled in 12 series against one another), we can look at overall numbers, or we can look at today's team. I prefer to look at the overall numbers since they make the Lakers look massively inferior. The Celtics have only lost three finals ever. Lakers, 15. Which makes a draw for them, only winning 15 titles ever. Celtics - 17 of those shiny ass rings. Yep.

This series will be fun to watch regardless of who wins. Don't forget to watch for the Kardashian clan in the audience. You know, if you're into that sort of thing. Game one starts tomorrow at 6pm PST.

May the best team -- ahem, Celtics -- win!

Arenas on indefinite suspension.

I don't think he looks very apologetic. Regardless, Washington Wizards guard Gilbert Arenas has been indefinitely benched without pay by the NBA for "behavior that made him not currently fit to take the court."

This behavior includes pointing fingers at other players as if he were shooting guns shortly after going under federal investigation for bringing actual guns into the locker room.

Not that I condone the use of firearms for much of anything, but I bet lots of players bring guns into the locker room...remember Plaxico Burress? Yeah...barely. Oh well.

Luckily for Arenas, he has being a three time All Star player on his side. I don't think he will be on the sidelines for too long.

Twitter rules off the court.

The NBA will soon be placing strict guidelines on the use of the somehow overly popular social [unnecessary] information site, Twitter, for its players.

“Obviously, there is a happy medium between tweeting before the game and tweeting from our bench during the game,” Stern said. “You want to make sure that pop culture doesn’t intrude on what brought us here, which is the game, and that we show the right respect for the game.”

The announcement comes after the NFL placed similar guidelines for Twitter use on its players on Monday.

“We just need to make sure when it’s OK to Tweet and when it’s not OK to Tweet so it at least focuses around the game,” said Stern.

Tweet, tweet. When appropriate!

Follow me on Twitter!

No bun in Nowitzki's oven.

Dallas Mavericks forward Dirk Nowitzki is either breathing a sigh of relief, or picking his nose, upon receiving news from the department of corrections that his former fiancee is not pregnant after claims from prison that she was with his child. Conjugal visits, huh?

Cristal Taylor is serving a four year prison sentence for violating parole on theft of services charges and some other stupid crap. She seriously didn't pay her dentist. That must have been a boatload of dental work, donkey! She was arrested earlier this year (on my birthday) at Nowitzki's home.

What a charming gal!

Former Miami Heat player...takes some real heat.

Let me premise this by saying that I have the utmost respect for our men and women in the armed services. However, there is some degree of confusion here for me. Could it have been early consumption of lead paint? Maybe early onset dementia? Just plain old stupidity? Because I certainly do not understand how one goes from being a first round NBA draft pick, to a U.S. Army Task Force officer.

Let's start with saying that Tim James traded in a 7-figure paycheck to make around $2,600 a month, 5 star hotels to live in 130+ temperatures, and manages to be as far as humanly possible from his family. If he were my husband, I'd be on a plane to Iraq with a frying pan in hand to smack that guy in the head a few times.

Granted, his NBA career was really just a shooting star in the midst of the giant solar system of big time ball, but I thought most of us had a similar goal in life: work less, make more. Maybe that is just mine?

I can't see how this could end well, taking into consideration that there are no other known former NBA players to ever enlist in any armed services. There was an Arizona Cardinals safety that did years ago, and he was killed by 'friendly fire' in Afghanistan in 2004. Friendly fire, huh? I think David Cross has a killer skit on that. Talk about an oxymoron. Moron.

More Pitino, please.

I have to really take a moment to defend Rick. So, the man made a drunken mistake in a closed restaurant after hours. The bitch obviously went bat-shit crazy on the poor guy, and dragged her husband into it. Rick did the right thing by opening up and taking responsibility for the incident. Am I condoning what he did? No, but give the man a break.

To have journalists drag his name through the mud for not landing another coaching spot in the NBA because of a 'fall from grace' with the Louisville Cardinals is just plain ignorant. He made a mistake. We all make mistakes.

Think of what an accomplished college basketball coach he is. Yeah, he didn't really shine in his previous run with the NBA, but I would never say he fell from grace in the NCAA.

And his infidelity to his wife has absolutely nothing to do with him not scoring a job with the Sacramento Kings. Get a grip.

MOREbury!

(image via berecruited.com)

The New York Knicks have reportedly bought out guard Stephon Marbury for $400,000. That's a lot of pairs of $15 shoes! I guess five years was a little too much for them. He'll be a free agent after some waivers clear. Rumor has it that the Celtics are interested. I don't buy it.