Many of you may have already read this, but I finally got my hands on Jack McCallum's book, "Seven Seconds or Less," on Phoenix's 05-06 season.  

It is quite entertaining, as well as a fascinating (to me) look at the coaches.  

Lemme put it this way:  This book is going into my regular, permanent good-gods-the-finals-are-over-and-there's-no-more-basketball-for-mooooonnnnnnths summer rotation, right after "Breaks of the Game" and "Loose Balls".

And, with luck, not doing it again.

I expect most of you have read today's True Hoop entries (http://www.truehoop.com/) from Kevin Arnovitz.  The post that struck home with me was the reference to a column written by Bob Kravitz of the Indianapolis Star:    http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070212/COLUMNISTS01/702120328/1062/SPORTS04

Reading Mr. Kravitz's column and--more to the point--the 148 responses to the column, was a blast of deja vu.  These fans are CRANKY.  Almost every responder was ticked off about (a) the "thug" image of the players; or (b) the crappy job managment and ownership is doing; or (c) "the NBA has generally gone to hell," (but the Pacers, in particular, are in whatever circle is reserved for lousy organizations); or (d) all of the above.

After heroically suppressing the urge to post a "Nyah nyah, your turn.  What's that?  JailPacers?  hehehehe," sort of comment, I got to thinking about the flavor of the posts.

People, this was the kind of stuff I was reading about the Blazers six months ago (okay, or later, depending on who's posting--love ya, prophet and fatty!).

Now I'm not saying all is now well.  But, dang, the prospects of the team are looking a heck of a lot brighter than they were six months ago.  We like [most of] the players.  Paul Allen is buying back the Rose Garden.  And I'd say the general tenor of this site is pretty hopeful.  This is progress!  Enjoy it!  

[sigh] This post has been brought to you by Pollyannaburgian.

Found while perusing the Globetrotter (http://aloneconformist.blogspot.com/):  They have a link to a hilarious flash game called "Alien Sam," starring an elongated Sam Cassells head valiently fighting off various scary baddies, including our own Mr. Randolph.  (Well, I'm gonna take it as a good thing they consider him scary.)  

(The Globetrotter picked up the link via a Bobcats blog, http://www.bobcatsplanet.com.  Man, I love blogs!)

Just the ticket for time wasting:  

http://remaincalm.org/aliensam.html

Me, I'm off to blast aliens.