hiphopmusic.com:

Cheney out, Fratello in.

At the very least, Isiah sure is making things interesting. I was assuming he'd take that job for himself next year, but scoring a big name like Fratello makes me wonder.

Whatever let's just get that Rasheed Wallace deal done (and no thanks on Darius Miles).

EDIT: Chaney out, Fratello out before he got in, Wilkens in. Knicks still suck.

Aw c'mon, get off this kid's back. We forgave Shaq for Ka'zaam, how could this possibly be worse than that?

Indians Minor Leaguer: Gay Porn Role A "Mistake"

Indians minor leaguer Kazuhito Tadano is asking for forgiveness for what he called a one-time mistake -- his appearance in a gay porn video in which he engaged in a homosexual act. Tadano took part in the video three years ago when he was a college student. Sitting in the Cleveland clubhouse Tuesday, the pitcher said he hoped to put his actions in the past.

"All of us have made mistakes in our lives," Tadano said, reading a statement in English. "Hopefully, you learn from them and move on." Shunned by Japanese baseball teams, the 23-year-old Tadano signed with the Indians last March. They think he can make their club this spring...

...Through an interpreter, Tadano added: "I'm not gay. I'd like to clear that fact up right now..."

Seriously, who cares? What really makes this wack is that it's not really the porn that makes this a scandal, it's the gay. If the headline just read "porn role a mistake" it would get a totally different reaction, at least here in America.

The fact that we are living in the year 2004, and not one homosexual in any of the major sports feels safe to be open about who they are, is as shameful as it is bizarre. But of course, the same could be said for hip-hop. And many other corners of our world.

For the record, I didn't say I was rooting for the Yankees.. as I said in the infamous Red Sox post that would feel like rooting for Microsoft.. but I do love watching them make everyone freak out. I think it's great for the sport, adds much more drama.. all of America will be rooting for someone, anyone to take down this massive juggernaut from the town everybody loves to hate... what more compelling storyline could you ask for?

And on the real I don't even see how it makes sense to cast George and the Yanks as villains here.. it's not like they are cheating, every move they make is entirely within the rules. Are the rules severely screwy and unfair to most franchises? Sure, but that's the league's fault not George's.. recognizing how the system works and using it to your advantage doesn't make you a cheater, it just makes you a winner.

Michael Jordan was acutely aware of the unfair advantage he had with the refs, he knew he'd always get friendly calls nobody else got, but did he ever pass up on that advantage out of some high-minded sense of fairness?

Hell no, he milked it at every opportunity. He was constantly lobbying and buzzing in the refs' ears to make even more calls in his favor, and bent the rules all the time knowing they wouldn't usually call him on it.

That's what winners do. They do everything within their power, and within the rules, to help their team win. George Steinbrenner is not a cheater, he is simply a winner, just like Mike was. As much as we Knick fans may have hated Mike, we always had to respect him.. and Steinbrenner deserves that same respect.

G Unit/Aftermath up-and-comer The Game was in town today with a team of all-star street ball players from LA, that he co-owns along with NBA stars Baron Davis and Gilbert Arenas. And because I'd been assigned to interview him for Mean Magazine, I was lucky enogh to ride up with The Game to the Entertainers Basketball Classic in Harlem's hallowed Rucker Park, where I watched his squad take on a NY All-Star team led by Rafer "Skip To My Lou" Alston.

Quick synopsis: The Game does, it turns out, have game. And Baron Davis is apparently something other than human. But the East took it 122-120, in one of the better street ball games I've seen (and I went to the Rucker every weekend for years back in the day).

I might post a little more about the game (i mean the game, not The Game) tomorrow, but for now here are some pics.. One of them has Michael Bivins in it, see if you can find him...

One scoop I can give you cuz it'll be old news by the time the magazine comes out: Game and Joe Budden officially squashed their beef on Tuesday. And it appears the moment was captured on film here.

First things first: Yes, the Olympic officials are punking out on this one, and they should really just take the initiative themselves to award Yang Tae-Young a second gold medal instead of passing the buck to this 21 year-old kid.

And yes, I have a lot of sympathy for that kid, Paul Hamm.. he's been put in a terribly tough spot here, at what by all rights ought to be the happiest and proudest moment of his life.

But isn't that the true test of any champion, being faced with a tough spot and rising to the occasion? If so, Paul Hamm has proven himself anything but a champion when he walks off the mat.

Hamm not only refused to give his gold medal to Tae-Young, but even announced his opposition to Tae-Young receiving a second gold (as described in Reggie Rivers' excellent Denver Post commentary). And as pointed out here, in doing so Hamm missed out on the opportunity of a lifetime. If he had stepped up and given Tae-Young his gold, he would have gone down as one of the great heroes of olympic history, held up to generations of children as an icon of virtue and sportsmanship. People would would have started walking around with WWPHD bracelets. He'd be exalted for the rest of his life as the embodiment of our noble American values. And he'd be paid up the wazoo.

But he couldn't see the forest for the trees.. his pride blinded him to the big picture, and now he'll only be remembered for the big moment that proved him a small man.

And I'm glad he went out like that. Because by failing to see the difference between a winner and a hero, Paul Hamm gave the world a much more honest representation of what our American values have become in 2004. He reminded the world once again that America no longer seems to grasp the simple concept of doing the right thing. He showed the world that today's America, AKA George Bush's America, is a nation driven by a stubborn pride that overrides all honor and integrity.

I'm sure, for the rest of the globe, this only reinforced what folks already knew about us. But I hope we Americans will also remember how Paul Hamm represented us to the world, and will ask ourselves in November if that's really the America we want to be.

(And it should be easy to remember, cuz like O-Dub said, Hamm even got his medal the same way Bush got his presidency)

As pointed out by pnuthouse, OC Weekly's Steve Lowery was dropping bombs on the Bosox this week:

please, please, please, PLEASE, stop with talking about the Boston �curse.� You know the one about how the Red Sox have been cursed from winning a World Series because they traded Babe Ruth? Sure it�s a funny thing to put on a T-shirt, but it�s tired and, worse, glosses over the real reason the Red Sox haven�t won a World Series title since Woodrow Wilson was president: for much of the 20th Century, the Boston Red Sox were one of the most racist organizations in all of professional sports. They had an opportunity to sign Jackie Robinson but passed. They then had a chance to sign Willie Mays and passed, saying the game�s greatest all-around player wasn�t their type of player. In fact, the Red Sox were the last team to integrate their roster, grudgingly doing so in 1959, two years after Jackie Robinson retired. The end of it? Hardly. Between 1976, when free agency started in baseball, and 1992, the Red Sox signed no African-American free agents. Instead, for most of those years, they have cast their lot with big, slow white guys who could only score by hitting home runs. Curse? Karma.

As neither a Yankee nor a Red Sox fan, I find myself inclined to simply root for the outcome that will cause the least suffering. Which in this brutally one-sided rivalry means rooting for the Sox and their long-tortured fans.

But as a New Yorker, I am haunted by a fear that if Boston finally beats NY for once, they will never freaking shut up about it. So I'm torn.

-------

P.S. I've really had it up to here with this 7th inning "God Bless America" crap.

Come on, honestly. The winningest and most arrogant sports franchise of all time suffering the single most humbling defeat in the history of sports. How can you not love that?

Besides, the Yankees didn't have anyone on my Yahoo fantasy team, which was carried to the championship by David Ortiz and Mark Bellhorn. I'm pretty sure that's how the curse was broken, in fact.

The Times has a lot of good coverage, including Selena Roberts' breakdown of why the Yankees' attempts to conquer the world with high-priced mercenaries have always doomed to failure.

Most interesting to me is how frustrated Jeter sounds, in that piece and elsewhere, with how the team has been run for the last few years.. Since 2000 the Yankees have tried to reclaim their throne by assembling a new set of million dollar robots every year, hoping they will combine to form an invincible Voltron. But none of the Yankee teams that made up their 90s dynasty were built this way, the backbone of all those teams were guys like Jeter, Bernie, Mariano.. basically homegrown players who became stars by finding a role to play in their Yankee team.. right now those guys must feel like they are the only ones who remember that.

But really, this season was over for the Yankees as soon they began it by screwing Andy Pettite. The lesson is clear: They started the year by dissing their most ardent christian, and ended the year getting schooled by Jesus himself.

And on a related note, Jimmy Fallon is now banned from New York for all eternity. What the hell was he doing out there?

Commentators were linking Michael Vick ‘s dog fighting enterprise to hip-hop even before police broke into DMX’s Arizona compound.

It doesn’t matter that dog fighting has been around since the colonial era. It doesn’t matter that, under the current circumstances, one might just as easily link football playing to dog fighting. It doesn’t matter that, if one were to look with a level head, that dog fighting is probably more closely linked to poverty than any particular culture, or ethnicity, or race. Yet, blaming hip-hop has become as much of a convenient journalistic crutch to explain complex social problems as is, say, getting virtually anyone with a conflicting opinion to discredit a reputable source and make one’s reporting seem “fair and balanced.”

Watch Adisa Banjoko’s sober response to the DMX affair here.

What I want to know is this: If hip-hop is to blame for dog fighting, what music do we blame for cock fighting? Jazz?

RZA's final move. PHOTO: Daaim Shabazz.

LOS ANGELES

Had dinner with a friend last night who is very close with T.I. He's pretty broken up about it. J Smooth pretty much echoed my friend's feelings in his latest vlog: Possible setup, yes; smart guy, definitely; stupid choices, absolutely.

What a contrast to the smart choices I experienced two days earlier in San Francisco at the Hip-Hop Chess Federation's first annual chess invitational, which brought together kids, rappers, chess masters and martial arts champions, culminating in a climactic battle between The RZA and Monk that made this non-chess player a complete believer.