The Charlotte Bobcats Are Now Interesting

Does he look like a douche? Yes. Would I? Also yes.

So, in a five player deal earlier this week, two of my personal favorite hotties, Boris Diaw and Raja Bell, got traded to the Bobcats for DILF Jason Richardson. (Don’t judge me. He’s J-Rich, for god’s sake.) Unfortunately for the hotness/goodness-ratio theory, this will probably make the Suns a better team; neither Boris nor Raja are fitting in under the new Suns regime, and besides which, Boris hasn’t particularly been any good since 2006 at the latest.But, who cares? They’re pretty.

We Score and Score and Score and Score and Fight!

Or, “Six ‘Score’s would just have been excessive.”

The delight! The deltoids!

It’s been an exciting season already in the NBA, and it only started a couple weeks ago. Chauncey and Rip and Tayshaun had manly crying time, Dwight scored a triple double (with blocks!), the Hawks were undefeated, and the Rockets and the Suns got in a huge fistfight that did not involve Ron Artest, among others. The last week’s biggest headlines – illustrated, naturally – are just a jump away.

Finally!

NBA basketball is back. And you know what that means: silly NBA videos!

And this is why, ladies and gentlemen, I am so in love with Steve Nash.

More NBA news and silliness from the first week of action after the jump.

Massive NBA Preview Part III: Atlantic and Northwest Divisions

(Yes, this is the 999th post – expect the 1000th post, featuring our collective number one hottie (can you guess who it is?) in the afternoon.)

Ladies and gentlemen – especially ladies… – I present the final part of our Massive NBA Preview In Pictures: two divisions per week, ten teams every Friday until the season starts at the end of this month. What teams will be good, what teams will do badly, and what hotties you should keep an eye out for: this preview answers all your questions. The divisions are chosen mostly by which teams I have enough pictures for by Friday. This week: the Atlantic division, featuring the Boston Celtics, the Raptors, and some bad large-market teams; and the Northwest division, featuring the Blazers, Nuggets, Jazz, and the eviscerated remnants of Seattle’s collective basketball-fan psyche. On to the hot basketball players!

Kevin Garnett loves the smell of napalm in the morning.

Massive NBA Preview Part II: Southeast and Southwest

We now interrupt your previously scheduled 100 Hotties entertainment to bring you some even more previously scheduled entertainment. This is the second part of the Massive NBA Preview in Pictures: two divisions per week, ten teams every Friday until the season starts at the end of this month. What teams will be good, what teams will do badly, and what hotties you should keep an eye out for: this preview answers all your questions. The divisions are chosen mostly by which teams I have enough pictures for by Friday. This week: the Southeast division, featuring the Heat, the Magic, the and the Wizards, and the Southwest division, featuring the Hornets, Rockets and Spurs.

How will the Hawks do this season? More importantly, how much hotter can Al Horford possibly get?

Massive NBA Preview: Central and Pacific Divisions

This is the first part of the Massive NBA Preview in Pictures: two divisions per week, ten teams every Friday until the season starts at the end of this month. What teams will be good, what teams will do badly, and what hotties you should keep an eye out for: this preview answers all your questions. The divisions are chosen mostly by which teams I have enough pictures for by Friday. This week: the Central division, featuring the Pistons, Bulls, and Cavaliers, and the Pacific division, featuring the Suns, Lakers and Warriors.

Welcome to Cleveland. King Jesus plays here.

CFB Friday: Hotties of the SEC

Two things.

One, I keep typing “S-E-X” instead of “S-E-C”, and I’m not sure what that says about me.

And two: someday, I will give you substantive analysis on a Friday afternoon. Today is not that day.

Louis Murphy, of Florida, and others.

I’m Psychic.

I love when my good feelings turn out right. Today my boy Rey Maualuga, the one I posted about on Friday, ran an interception 48 yards for a touchdown in the second quarter against Ohio State.

And then humped it.

Now, I am not, of course, always right on these things. Like when fackin’ Tom Brady went down. But whatever, I have Philip Rivers – that’ll work, right? Oh God. I hope so.

Hottie Prospectus: The F’s Up With the Giant Pretty Dude?

Rey Maualuga, 6'3", 255, LB for USC.

I was under the impression that linebackers were, you know, rather lumpy. Not pretty, or at least not appealing to my own sensibilities. Then this cat from USC started showing up in ads and on my television.

Why was I not made aware of this sooner?

More Rey, and other hottie prospects for next year’s NFL and NBA drafts, after the jump.

It’s Here. And I Can’t Get Away From It.

The Ladies… had our Fantasy Football draft Wednesday night, and I’m in the midst of what Basketbawful calls drafterglow.. I feel like I have an awesome team, I’m going to smash everybody, and end the season being carried out on everyone’s shoulders or something ridiculous like that. However, I had three players play yesterday – Chris Cooley, Ahmad Bradshaw, and Amani Toomer – and got not a single point from them. Nineteen yards between the three of them! Screw those guys.

But still, I’m optimistic. I’ve got some very good big name players, some players I was hoping to get, and a pretty hot team, considering. And I got this guy here:

I hate Tom Brady. But he is the best.

Other than him, I got…

Friday Afternoon Grab-Bag: Wait, Two More Months?

I had a busy week, y’all, and I’m tired. It was my first week of classes, and of work; on top of that, there was cleaning up from Fay, taking care of new kittens, trying to figure out who to draft in fantasy football, and staying up for the DNC. Yes, I am a dork. But I am a sports dork, and as I paged through my planner this morning – determined to be organized for the first time in my life – my thoughts turned, as they often do, to basketball. Specifically, the NBA. And, as I actually noted the dates on my planner pages, my heart sank. The NBA’s season doesn’t start until October 31st. With a quadruple-header, no less! How am I going to deal that long?

But then, my heart sank even further, for at the end of my hectic week I realized: crap, I haven’t planned anything for my post this afternoon. I want to do right by you all, so I scoured my various folders for the very best of the pictures I’ve saved: pictures I’ve never had recourse to use here before, cute pictures, hot pictures, pictures for an off-season rainy day. For example, this picture of Kevin Garnett. Never had a post to use it in before; the Timberwolves jersey made it out of date before I even became a Lady. But I do appreciate his intensity here. And also, veins.

And so, join me in weeping at the length of the offseason enjoying the best of the basketball grab-bag – long on pictures, short on analysis – after the jump.

Basketball Grabbag: Team Spain!

The Olympics are for chicks, and I mean that in absolutely the best way possible. We love the Olympics, and they love us – all the boy athletes we love to lust after have girl counterparts for us to root for, and everybody gets equal time. It’s the best time for hottie-spotting and for women’s sports. What’s not to love? Me, I love the Olympics for the same reason I love so many things: basketball.

See, I adore Team USA, I really do. I love Melo and Wade and Bron, I love Tayshaun, I love Chris Bosh. But I also love international competition, because it allows me to see so many hotties I never would see otherwise. Case in point: Team Spain. Case in point on Team Spain: Ricky Rubio. Does anybody know the Spanish for “wunderkind”?

Ricky Rubio, 6'4" starting point guard for Spain.

Friday Afternoon Cheesecake: Guilty Crushes

The Olympics are here!…Well, on a tape delay, at least. Still, they’re very welcome – the natives have been getting restless on the interweb with, as my fellow Lady mentioned below, only baseball to keep us busy. But the Olympics won’t really be here until tonight, unfortunately. It’s Friday afternoon – who’s read to turn off their brains a little?

You see, this morning, I happened to turn on ESPN. Hmm, I thought absently, readying my breakfast, that guy’s kind of hot. Imagine my horror when I woke up a little to realize I had been admiring Mike Greenberg. These kinds of guilty little crushes happen to me all the time, as you’ll see under the jump. How about you, lovely readers? You got them too, right?

Joey Porter: Sucker-puncher, all-around jerk...attractive man. Alas.

Women Fight With Fists, Not Pillows; Men Frightened, Confused

I watched this game, and let me just say – awesome. A good, close game, capped off by a bench-clearing brawl and multiple ejections? Does it get better than that? The suits that run professional basketball, and the players involved, may parrot the lines about “embarrassing the sport” and “not how we want to represent ourselves”. But it’s a simple truth: people love a good fight at a sporting event. Whether it’s hockey players ripping each other’s clothes off or baseball players ineffectually posturing at each other or soccer players slap-fighting and/or head-butting each other – fights are exciting! They bring an extra dimension to something that is, by nature, fairly routine. I mean, that’s why people watch hockey, right?

Here’s how it all went down:

Tiger Saves Kitten and Other Awws

Want something to make you smile as you get ready for the weekend?

Matt Joyce: Professional ballplayer. Young. Handsome. Rescues helpless kittens.

Wrap-up, Special Weekend Edition: WRRRRYYYY, Hot Dogs

Happy long weekend! It’s the NBA offseason, and I’m here to bring you the moves – or not-moves – of this week in the NBA, as well as hot-dog eating, just because.

Filmmaker, friend of Alba, and noted bearded hottie Baron Davis opted out of his contract with the Golden State Warriors a year early this week to sign a million, six-year contract with the LA Clippers. So…what exactly is Fear the Beard supposed to do now?

Why, Baron? However is the Bay area going to be cool again without you?

Michael Beasley Looks Better Horizontal, Or, The Only Draft Preview You Need

What? Don’t look at me like that. He does.

No, it's okay, Mike. You don't have to get up...

It’s that time of year again, kids – the best time of year for nineteen-to-twenty-two-year-old tall-skinny-hottie watching. That’s right. The 2008 NBA draft is tonight, and I’m here to guide you through it, player by player (but not pick by pick, because then I’m always wrong). So, here it is: Your absolutely objective, totally informed, journalistically integritous draft preview, courtesy of your friends here at the Ladies.

Three Things, Ladies and Also Those Who Are Not Ladies

1: In the last two weeks or so, I have developed a violent crush on Michael Beasley.

Seriously, y’all. I got it bad. Everything I learn about the kid makes me like him more, from the “I’m nineteen, what do you want from me” thing to autographing his principle’s car to frightening/angering old white men. Michael, I’ll overlook your character issues any day.

The Only Finals Preview You Need (Also Christina’s): Lakers Edition

The NBA’s most storied franchises, the Celtics and the Lakers, have met nine times in its Finals. Between the two, they hold twenty-nine of the league’s sixty championships, and one or both have been there 39 of its sixty years. As I learned at Basketbawful, home of great basketball analysis, eighteen of the league’s official Top 50 players of all time are from these two teams. Where do this year’s teams place in the pantheon of great Celtics and Lakers teams of the fifties, sixties and eighties? By extension, how does this year’s Finals match up with those of the past, and how do today’s player’s?

I think the most important question to ask, though, is this: who cares? We’re all about the here and now, people, and tonight there are talented hotties playing basketball.

Winning the Lottery, One Basketball Player at a Time

Look, okay. We’ve already established that I’m a bad basketball fan. I get it! I try, I really do. But when my two choices to watch are Lakers/Spurs and Celtics/Pistons – when the closest thing to an exciting young team to root for is the Lakers – well, it’s enough to send any fan into wait-til-next-year mode. And who’s waiting for next year the most? Well, the team that won the lottery, of course:

Chris Paul Does Not Sleep. He Waits.

Chris Paul knows the singular of “thumbs up”.

So much I’ve missed to talk about in the last couple of weeks of the NBA playoffs. There was the Hawks…and then there wasn’t the Hawks. There were all the teams that lost, there was Steve breaking my heart again, there was an award for Kobe (and not an award for Al). There were sweeps, a seven game series, and the emasculation of LeBron, if only for a game. There was validation; there was utter wrongness. And, of course, there was Chris Paul.

Chris Paul is, at twenty-two, what Steve took thirty years to reach. He is elite. He is amazing. He had the best statistical season (according to PER) of anyone in NBA history except Michael Jordan: he is the GOATEFMJ. He deserves in-depth contemplation and analysis, which is why I’m not going to analyze a thing…except for cute/funny pictures of him, of course.

Playoff Hotties: We’re Going to Miss You in About a Week Edition

In no particular order, let’s take a look at the boys we probably won’t be seeing much of in two or three games!

Denver: Kleiza!
To sum up the Denver defense:

THIS! IS! DENvahh fuck it.

Well, to be fair, Linas always plays hard.

Nom nom nom…I mean, uh. If you’re into that sort of thing.

The Only NBA Playoffs Preview You Need

Sorry, D-Wade. Not you.

Hey, everybody. I’m Maria Alana, and I’m here to guide you through the National Basketball Association’s postseason. It’s important to have an idea of how the basketball matchups will go, but it’s just as important – maybe even more so – to check out the Hottie Matchups of each series. Let’s get to it!