NBA notes

Saw a fun little column, "Around the Association" from the Cleveland Plain-Dealer that had three interesting NBA notes. One was kind of a follow-up to the LeBron v. Kobe arguments that were everywhere following their big games at the Garden last week. The Plain-Dealer's column found an NBA blogger who has tracked players' last second shots, defined to be players' shots with less than twenty-four seconds remaining in the game and the team trailing by two points or less. This guy says surprisingly, it is not LeBron or Kone who leads the NBA in last second shot percentage. Instead, it is Carmelo Anthony, who has made 13-of-27 (48% career).

Another note from the Plain-Dealer's column was on a crazy revenue sharing agreement that the Clarion Content had never heard of previously. Get this,

"Ozzie and Dan Silna...legends...in the NBA business community for a deal they struck in 1976. At that time, the ABA merged with the NBA, with the San Antonio Spurs, Indiana Pacers, Denver Nuggets and then-New York Nets becoming full members. However, the Kentucky Colonels and the Spirits of St. Louis, owned by the Silna brothers, weren't allowed in. To settle things up, the Colonels took a one-time payment of $3.3 million and the Silnas took $2.2 million and - OK, here it is business-school students - one-seventh of the television revenue of the Pacers, Nuggets, Spurs and Nets in perpetuity. That's right, forever.

Apparently, it's an ironclad contract because those four NBA teams have tried to get out of it for years and failed. So each year, they send the money. CNBC recently estimated that the Silna brothers already had made $186 million on the deal - without owning a team, paying for the players and coaches, etc. - when the NBA reached its most recent television contract last year. This new deal with TNT and ESPN will pay the Silna brothers about $19 million more per year until 2016."

Holy crow, talk about an amazing, but little known story.

The final note we saw and liked from the Plain-Dealer was that former NBA player David Wesley has gone back to college to finish his degree. He took sixteen credit hours and got a 4.0 average last semester while helping out with the school's surging basketball program, too. Good for you David!

A further note from our editorial offices, we have heard some criticism of the New York Knicks crowd this week for ostensibly chanting MVP at Kobe Bryant. As Bill Simmons noted on his podcast, these weren't Knicks fans. Those were people who had scalped their tickets from real Knicks fans. And the reason LeBron didn't get as much cheering the following night, despite having a better game and Knicks fans fervent desire to have him come to New York, was that the game was closer. Knicks fans, first and foremost, would prefer to win. The Lakers game was a blow out, the Cavs wasn't.