3/4 Court Trap

Not quite a Full Court Press today but I was getting burdened by quality links and couldn't wait until Monday.  

• Doug Binder's look at Jeff High's new basketball coach is a top ten article for the year so far.  GO READ IT.

"What exists in Portland that is black?" asked Marshall Haskins, who stepped down last year as the athletic director and basketball coach at Jefferson after 10 years. "There can't be but maybe three things that come to mind -- maybe the Urban League, or (Self Enhancement, Inc.) or Jefferson. In terms of institutions, something people rally around, that's what makes (Jefferson High) so different."     

• My main man Shoals from FreeDarko devoted his weekly column to Kevin Pritchard.  Last night, we were chatting about KP and I decided that the best way to describe KP is as a brazen bank robber who doesn't wear a disguise, doesn't use a weapon, and walks in during the middle of the afternoon.  After he has cleaned the place out, his first phone call is to the bank's owner and he immediately begins pitching his services as a security consultant so this type of thing doesn't happen again.  Instead of calling the police, the bank's owner is pursuaded to meet KP for lunch and is so impressed that he lets KP keep the money and hires him as a consultant.  He then leaves the restaurant, realizes what just happened, and calls the other bank owners in town to complain.
  
• PS: next week I will have some very big, very cool news about FreeDarko and BlazersEdge.  Stay tuned! 
  
• JE Skeets writes about Bayless's dunk... Skeets was on Gmail chat late last night (eastern time) geeking out about it. Bayless will do that to you. Love it.

• Here are the second, third, and fourth installments of Casey Holdahl's series on Travis Outlaw. 
  
• This is a bit late but I wrote up some scouting reports on two of the bigger name high school prospects that were at the Les Schwab holiday tournament.  Damion, my good friend from Baltimore, runs ACCBallers and posted them because he's hoping they both wind up at Virginia. So go check out my look at Renardo Sidney and Sherrod Wright.
  
• A pretty incredible article from The Atlantic magazine regarding the end of the NY Times and print newspapers as we know it...

"At some point soon-sooner than most of us think-the print edition, and with it The Times as we know it, will no longer exist. And it will likely have plenty of company. In December, the Fitch Ratings service, which monitors the health of media companies, predicted a widespread newspaper die-off: "Fitch believes more newspapers and news paper groups will default, be shut down and be liquidated in 2009 and several cities could go without a daily print newspaper by 2010."    

• Ezra has a Franz-bread-card-inspired look at the Blazers, which includes a very funny but not very nice segment on Sergio.
  
• ClipperSteve sent over his legal look (complete with law professor interview) at the Darius Miles situation.
  
• CNNSI's Ian Thomsen says LaMarcus could maybe be an All Star.  Also, he has a great piece on the emergence of Kevin Durant.
• Here's the latest blogger MVP and ROY rankings, hosted at TruthAboutIt.net. I made a weak Eddy Curry joke.  So check that out if you have literally nothing else to do.

I'm headed to the coast here in a few hours for the weekend and will be (mostly) without internet so please email me anything good you find between now and Monday afternoon. 

-- Ben (benjamin.golliver@gmail.com)