The NBA has continued to fail in reaching an agreement with its game officials. Therefore, there has been a lockout and referee training camp will begin next week. To begin the preseason and regualr season the NBA will use Developmental League and WNBA officials. In a vote among the officials (referees), the NBA’s latest offer was rejected 57-0 and was stated as asking for too many give backs in the current proposal.

Source: Yahoo!Sports

According to MemphisOnline and AI’s twitter page it appears Iverson has agreed to sign with the Grizzlies. Here is a quote from AI’s twitter page:

“God Chose Memphis as the place that I will continue my career. I met with Mr. Heinsley, Chris Wallace and my next head coach Lionel Hollins”

It is said to be a $3.5 million, one year deal.

Sources: CommercialAppeal.com & Twitter

What a spectacular dunk, simply amazing. By the way… this dunk was brought to you by Guy Dupuy from Team Flight Brothers.

Source: Yahoo!Sports

Man that goofy looking mofo can ball…he sure does look awfully familiar. Oh wait… is that… no that can’t be Steve Nash?! Yes folks, it is the masked crusader in Beijing for a little ballin’ 101 with some locals for what appears to be a Nike event.

Source: Yahoo!Sports

Free agent Mikki Moore has signed with the Golden State Warriors for one year at the verteran’s minimum of 1.3 million.

Source: ESPN.com

In a recent interview between ESPN’s Sam Alipour and Rockets GM Daryl Morey, the Rockets GM stated the following:

“Yao could return at some point in the 2009-10 season and the team no longer feels his broken left foot is a career-threatening injury.”

“Yao Ming is progressing well. I don’t think that [a career-ending scenario] is something that will happen, based on what I’m hearing from the doctors; they do know that the bone will heal and he’ll get back on it. And they have not actually ruled out [his return] this season. I think that’s less likely than likely, but they haven’t ruled it out.

“And next season, the outlook is very good. He just took off the cast for a short period [two weeks ago], so the doctors could examine it, and everything is going well. Everything is on track.”

It sounds like Yao’s foot is FINALLY starting to heal as it should. Let’s hope to see Yao suited up sometime mid-late season of 2010.

Source: ESPN.com

I came across this article and felt I had to link it here. It’s titled “The Confessions Of An NBA Scorekeeper” by Tommy Craggs of Deadspin.com. The article is narrated by a NBA Scorekeeper named ‘Alex’ and tells the story of his exposure to the subjectivity of NBA statistics while working for the Memphis Grizzlies from 1995-1998. Alex explains that he wanted the stats be accurate and tell the story of the game, but instead they were often bias and represented favoritism amongst certain players in the league. He also talks of how he was once commanded to award Hakeem Olajuwon a triple double by a ‘mid-level’ guy in operations. This commandment angered Alex and he later retaliated by handing out 23 assists to the Lakers’ Nick Van Excel. Alex admits he cooked the books and the media and NBA just played along. I highly recommend you give this article a read, very interesting stuff.

Source: DeadSpin.com