Well, there’s only a few days left in the year of 2008, and Ball Don’t Lie is wrapping up things in high spirits by listening to some Green Day and talking in the third person. Here’s a look back at BDL’s busy ‘08, featuring the work of Skeets, Dwyer, Benson, Friedell, Frankel, Britt and others. Thanks to everyone who read along for the past 12 months, it’s been a blast.

Story of the Year: Gilbert Arenas’ million-dollar pool. Lets see: Huge rock mountain for the pool. Check. Three different fish tanks. Check. Secluded hot tub. Check. 50" plasma. Check. Large mural of Gil and his pit-bull standing in front of the White House and U.S. Capitol. Check. Some five million page views, making it one of Ball Don’t Lie’s most popular posts of the year. Of course. And check.

Honorable Mention: Boston Celtics 131, Los Angeles Lakers 92. That is not a typo … After three straight disappointments, Team USA reclaims gold at 4:23 a.m. EST. Naturally, we were up live blogging/drinking … BDL’s impromptu "interview" with Commissioner Stern from a men’s bathroom in New Orleans.

Video of the Year: The Machine. Sasha Vujacic recounts his story of "breaking down" during Game 4 of the NBA Finals against the "Leprechauns." Honestly, this deserves an Emmy. All of ‘em do.

Honorable Mention: Stephen Nash, the ultimate motivator … Kobe Bryant jumps a moving Aston Martin … Tracy Morgan loves him some late-80’s Chicago Bulls … Ron Artest finally starts vlogging … Shark Melas … Nash and Baron Davis on a bicycle built for two.

Satire of the Year: Oklahoma City Thunder unveil new mascot. "’We think our new mascot is classic in its style,’ said team chairman Clay Bennett. ‘We think it’s powerful in its design. We think the legendary ‘Sword of Omens’ it yields evokes fire bolts of energy …’" HO!

Honorable Mention: NO TRIP-LE DOUB-LES! … Marbury meets with Donnie Walsh … Chef Oakley’s scrumptious beef short ribs in a cinnamon red wine sauce recipe … LeBron James wins ‘09 Slam Dunk contest.

Art of the Year: Eddy Curry, gymnast. Our epic reader Photoshop contest helped turn Curry’s childhood Olympic dreams into a reality. We’re still amazed the Knicks haven’t worked this animated .gif into their player introductions.

Honorable Mention: Winners of the just as spectacular BDL Photoshop Starbury Tattoo-Off … Good grief, Kevin Durant … "The Steph & The Restless" jumps to the top of the soap ratings … Vote O-Pech!

The Best in Athlete Blogging: Too much Rod Benson? Please. There’s never enough! In one of our favorite TMRB posts of the year, Benson tackles the tricky athlete-blogger conundrum — could blogging for Ball Don’t Lie actually hurt his NBA chances?

Honorable Mention: Rod’s hilarious random drug test screening … "It wasn’t March Madness until Pistol got angry" and 101 other Pistol Pete facts … Utah Flash assignee Morris Almond starts a Blog War!

Analysis of the Year: A day after Kobe drops 52 points in a nationally televised win over Dallas, Kelly Dwyer bravely tells the NBA world "Why … Kobe Bryant is not your 2007-08 MVP." 6,455 heated comments later … KD defends his LeBron vote.

Honorable Mention: Kobe’s 81-point explosion was impressive as Wilt’s 100 … It’s nice to know Donnie reads BDL … Remembering Kevin Duckworth … Missing Dennis Rodman … Trying to figure out a way to fill all of those empty seats.

Interview of the Year: The Ball Don’t Lie interview with Greg Oden. The $64,000 question: If you could take any two animals and breed them together to create some type of "super animal," which two would you pick and why? Oden’s snap decision answer: "A monkey and bird. I want a flying monkey." And they say this guy is depressed …

Honorable Mention: Talking spaghetti, meatballs and Miracle Whip with Grizzlies rookie O.J. Mayo … 5′8", 130-pound, D-III junior Zach Feinstein declares for the NBA Draft … Charles Barkley loves politics … All-Star Dwayne Wade will not fight bobcat, thank you very much.

The Year in High Fashion: Gregg Popovich’s unruly training camp beard. Depending on who you asked, Pop’s summer "expirement" made him look like Donald Sutherland, an elderly Serpico, Gandalf or a time-obsessed postal worker. Yes, it was that awesome.

Honorable Mention: "Breaking news: Adam Morrison cuts his hair!" … Darko Milicic eats his vitamins, says his prayers and rips his jersey in half … Oden’s fro-hawk … The new Thunder unis look awfully familiar.

Comic of the Year: Garbage Time All-Stars present ‘Thunderworld.’ "A mascot without a team has got to stand for something." Wiser words have never been typed into a lonely mascot’s thought bubble.

Honorable Mention: Stephon Marbury and Eddy Curry, DNP-CD extraordinaires … Bill Russell, Kevin Garnett and the Olive Garden. "That is a promise."

The Year in Tournaments and Lists: The BDL Bedlam Tournament. During the NBA dog days of March, we compiled a list of 64 things that you love about The Associaion, seeded them and created a Madness-like bracket to vote on. Backed by horny 13-year-old males everywhere, Marko Jaric’s sexy girlfriend upset Mutombo’s finger wag in the final. As promised, it was completely pointless, yet oddly entertaining. We can’t wait to start it up again.

Honorable Mention: The All-NBA Olympics … Scoring the 2008 NBA Draft picks on a scale of 1-to-10, with 10 being Tadija Dragicevic and 1 being Shan Foster … Players who wear their headbands upside down … Ranking All-Star Saturday night’s dunks.

Once again, thanks for reading. Happy New Year!

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Why the Bulls? Why all those pasty thighs? Well, the Boston
Celtics (28-4, on pace to go 72-10) have lost two of three. Of course, the one
win in that span came by 45 points, but you get the idea. Keep it up, C’s. See
what happens. Bill Wennington has a long memory.

Let’s chat it up, with little to do in the days before the
end of the year. Swing by around 3 pm
Eastern, see what happens. Bill Wennington has a real long memory.

Chat after the jump.

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Denver
at Atlanta

You miss him, don’t you?

Go ahead, admit it. You miss him? You just said it. I heard
you. You miss him.

The Hawks don’t miss him. Not now, at least. The Hawks might
need someone like Josh Childress to pick up minutes as the season moves along,
but right now the team is rolling with a 19-10 record, and looking to win its
fifth straight against Denver
on Monday.

Denver would seem to be the
better team, but they’re also on the road, having played a little ways away in New York City on Sunday.
Then again, Chauncey Billups should manhandle Mike Bibby. Then again, Bibby has
surprised all year. Then again, the Hawks don’t miss Josh Childress, but you
do.

Denver Nuggets:
20-11, 97.1 possessions per game (5^th), 105.7 points scored per 100
possessions (10^th), 101.4 points allowed per 100 possessions (7^th).

Atlanta Hawks:
19-10, 91.7 possessions per game (25^th), 106.8 points scored per 100
possessions (6^th), 102.7 points allowed per 100 possessions (14^th).

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It’s a little basketball, actually about the size of a
softball, that twists to reveal an inner compartment that you can keep stuff
in. And though I’m hardly hanging out with Scarface, it seemed to me to be best
suited for keeping some sort of contraband in. 

Then I was told that the basketball was to keep cufflinks
in. And imagine my relief, a few minutes later, when I opened up a new set of
cufflinks, instead of a big bag o’ drugs. That would have been uncomfortable.

I also got a Dora toy that I can take into the bath. Nate
McMillan gave it to me, and you can see a picture of Nate’s presentation at the
top of this post.

I’m wondering what, if any, basketball-related gifts you
took in over the holiday season? Tell us in the comments section. Best gift and
best re-telling wins a hearty chortle and zero cufflinks.

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Yes, we’ve gotten to this point. It’s time to start
criticizing NBA players for the way they run their charitable organizations.
That is not a joke.

The Salt Lake
Tribune released a report on Sunday that details just how much most NBA
players are giving when they put together their various charity drives and
fundraisers. About 51 percent of every dollar raised by player-driven NBA
charities actually reaches some form of recipient, well below the minimum of 65
percent of every dollar (that’d be, uh, 65 cents) the Tribune quotes as "most
philanthropic watchdog groups view as acceptable."

And the reasons behind this are what you’d expect. When it
comes to raising money for the less fortunate, NBA players just have a hard
time trimming the fat off the bottom line. Poor planning, needless expenses,
and overall waste contributes to a bottom line that is far below what is
expected.

And while we can’t stand the idea of lumping each charitable
NBA player (like Dikembe Mutombo, above) in with those who let things get out
of hand, the bottom line still speaks for itself.

That said, perspective is needed. The average NBA player –
including lower rung-to-middle class rotation guys who don’t have the necessary
funds to start up a charitable organization of their own — still spend more
time performing NBA-mandated charitable tasks in a season than most of us will
perform in a year. In ten years. Combined.

Nearly one-quarter of all NBA players have their own charity
organization on top of the time the NBA
Cares program demands they spend working on charitable acts, a number that
cannot be touched by the NFL or MLB, to say nothing of the general public above
a certain income bracket.

And topping it all off is the fact that these players are
not businessmen, they’re NBA players; and in spite of the stated fact that we
continually hear from them about this being a business, this isn’t the same as
some corporate type passing the responsibility of a charitable drive to some
paid lackey within his own business operation. This is an NBA player taking on
a role that he is usually unqualified for, out of the goodness of his own
heart.

But that isn’t to say that NBA players, by and large, can’t
get their act together and get this stuff right. It starts with these very
public drives, charity events with paid entertainers and all sorts of goodies
that help to draw other entertainers and NBA players to devote their time to
the event during their summer vacations.

Now, most of the gifts that dot these gift baskets are
donated, given away for tax breaks, but the entertainment doesn’t come for
free. And often these comedians and/or musicians who grace some ignored stage
within these events are making bank while taking advantage of promoters and
charity types that aren’t used to dealing with these sorts of acts. So because
these acts don’t have to deal with a Clear Channel promoter who knows what the
going rate is, they take a significant chunk of that budget.

And a huge chunk of blame has to go to the players. You
can’t blame them too much, but they often hire friends and/or family members
who are unqualified (which is, technically, illegal), while turning these
charity events into a party. It’s what they’re used to. Drinks they don’t have
to pay for. Gifts that just appear out of the blue, for free. Adulation for
"doing the right thing." Attention.

This isn’t all, or even a majority of the NBA players who
work this way. But it’s enough to render the bottom line as well below
standard, and a lot of these charity events as an even night out when all the
perks are accounted for. Some, including Robert Horry and Chris Webber’s, come
at a loss.

A lot of these guys don’t know any better. They didn’t know
how to run things, they didn’t know what they were getting into, and they let
another chance at another lame party get in the way of actually making a
difference.

The problem with that, starting today, is that they do know
better. There are no more excuses. Thanks for what you’ve done, fellas, now get
it right.

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