I see that the NBA, in an effort to shore up public confidence in its on-court officials in the wake of the Tim Donaghy scandal, has hired Army Maj. General Ronald L. Johnson to the newly created post of Vice President In Charge of Referee Operations.  Great.  That sure gives me loads of confidence.  After all, the Army and its leaders have performed so brilliantly in all aspects of this nation’s operations in Iraq, including rooting out corruption.  

That’s sarcasm, folks.  Having been a General in the Army is no longer (if it ever was) any recommendation for any civilian job that requires competence or intelligence.  Or is it?  One thing the Army HAS excelled at is covering up scandals, including the sordid Pat Tillman friendly fire mess, Haditha, Abu Ghraib, you name it.  So maybe this General has been hired to help sweep the evidence under the rug and help the league stonewall.  I’ll bet he’s had LOTS of practice doing that in his former job.

I’m actually not joking, much.  What was Gen. Johnson’s last assignment with the Army?  Commanding General of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Gulf Region division, responsible for overseeing $18 billion of “reconstruction” in Iraq.  

What a tasteless prank on all of us.  Iraq reconstruction?  There’s an oxymoron if ever there was one.  Shoddy work, cost overruns, zero oversight, U.S. soldiers and Marines getting electrocuted and dying while taking showers, because nobody bothered to inspect the incompetent wiring jobs being done.   The same Army Corps of Engineers, just by the by, that brought us the tragedy and suffering of the inundation of New Orleans (the African-American areas, anyway) from Hurricane Katrina.  

I don’t see how Gen. Johnson’s background qualifies him even to stack Kotex boxes at Wal-Mart, let alone oversee the probity of NBA officials.  Good on ya, Sternie baby.  As the great Harry Shearer (multiple voices on “The Simpsons,” including both Mr. Burns AND Waylon Smithers; Derek Smalls in “This Is Spinal Tap”; and so much more) has put it so poignantly:  “One can only be grateful the NBA didn’t hire the General to design and construct some levees.”

I agree with those who tell us that recent interleague results prove that the AL is vastly superior to the NL.  But how come the Angels and the Yankees, two of the better  weren’t able to capitalize?  How come Johan Santana hasn’t done squat with the Mets (7-7, albeit with a .301 ERA)?  And how come the St. Louis Cardinals, an 83-78 NL team, won the 2006 World Series — and in only 5 games?   

News is that Devean George is interested in returning to the Mavs — and that Dallas is seriously interested in bringing him back.  Really? This  bum averaged 3.7 points per game, 2.6 boards and 0.7 assists per game last season, and shot a magnificent .357 from the field. His main “contribution” to the Mavs last season — for a salary, lest we forget, of  $2,369,111, and you do the math to figure out the dollars-to-points ratio there — was to almost crater the Jason Kidd deal by refusing to go to New Jersey.  That’s certainly the way to win friends and influence people.  On the other hand, given how badly the Kidd deal worked out for the Mavs, maybe the Mavs just want to reward him for having been the only one with a brain in whole matter.  

Oh shock of shocks.  Ron Artest DIDN’T opt out of his contract with the Kings.  What could that ninny have been thinking?  After all, wouldn’t anybody reject a guaranteed salary of $7.4  million for the pleasure of making the mid-level exemption with the Lakers or the Spurs?  What’s money, anyway?  

Mind you, Artest presumably knows the value of a dollar, having taken a part-time job at Circuit City when he was a Pacer, just to be eligible for the employee discount.  And, of course, having lost almost $5 Million of his $6 Million-plus 2004-05 salary when he was suspended for his instrumental role in the “Malice in the Palace” melee.   $1.4 Million in the hand right now is a lot of money, even to a pro basketball player, considering.  

A lesson that Latrell Sprewell, for one, might have been well-advised to take to heart, given how his finances turned out.  Gilbert Arenas understands that.  For all of his flakiness, he was right on the, well, money, when he admonished people like Sprewell and Bonzi Wells on his blog not to overvalue themselves, and to realize that a big-money contract that’s for less than the theoretical max is still for a lot of money, and is a sight better than making nothing, or the minimum, which is what can happen to players who overvalue themselves.  

Not that Arenas needs to take his own advice.  Word is that the Wizards, bereft of their senses,  have offered him the max — 6 years, $127 Million — and the Warriors, jilted by Baron Davis, are also offering him max money, but for only 5 years, which is all they’re allowed to do under the CBA.

Not bad for a guy who has no agent, and is representing himself.  The dirty little secret of the NBA under the current salary cap and CBA is that the stars’ salaries are all slotted and easily calculable.  The top players don’t really need agents, because the agents can’t get them any more money.  Why not just pay a competent contract lawyer and a sharp accountant on an hourly basis, and pocket the difference?  Not paying an agent commission is like getting an extra $6.5 Million over the life of the contract.  And why pay an agent, who’s just going to blow the money on expensive cars, trips, women, lavish Bar Mitzvahs, and the like.  Far better to let the PLAYER do the money wasting.   

True, an agent might be helpful in other areas, like negotiating endorsement deals, but agents do, in general, get way too much for what they actually do for their clients.  And I’m always suspicious of the bona fides of guys who work on a percentage of the gross, rather than an hourly.  It’s just not clear what value they add, and all too clear what value they take away.

Anyway, back to Agent Zero’s putative max deal.   It just goes to show you that a team with money to spend is a dangerous team — much like a drunken sailor on shore leave.  Arenas may be this year’s Rashard Lewis, who got max dollars last season, as far as I can tell, just because Orlando had the money available and felt it just HAD to spend it.  It’s not clear to me that the Magic were a whole lot better off with him in the lineup, or with him eating up so much of their cap.  It’s not my money, and more power to Lewis, Arenas and other undeserving souls for getting it, but it’s yet more evidence proving my theory that limiting the supply of free agents simply drives up salaries.  Think anybody’d be offering Arenas all that jack if every NBA player were a free agent this, and every, year?  Not bloody likely.

Just for the record, in case you haven’t guessed by now, I find Arenas overrated.  The Wizards sure played better without him dominating the ball.  Nice of them to offer him all that money, and I guess they can afford it.  I guess he sells tickets.  But at the end of the season, they can lose to the Cavs in the First Round just as well without him as they’ve managed with him the past couple of years, and maybe have some dollars to spare for a good big man and a more team-oriented, better-passing and better-defending point guard.

Getting back to Artest, he just wouldn’t be “Ron-Ron” if the story simply ended with his making the financially savvy decision and staying with the Kings.  Nope, he just wouldn’t be Mr. “I need a leave of absence during the season because I’m tired out from making my rap album” if he didn’t immediately have second, third, fourth, fifth and sixth thoughts about his decision not to opt out, which he’s now reported to be calling the “worst decision” he’s ever made.  

Worse than going into the stands in Detroit?  Or worse than burning his bridges so badly in Indiana that he wound up with a penny-ante (by NBA standards) $7.4 Million salary?  I don’t think so.  Or is this all just a ploy to get himself traded while keeping his (comparatively) big bucks?

I see where Seattle and the owner(s) of the Sonics have reached a settlement that would allow the team to relocate to Oklahoma City.  Makes sense to me.  Seattle will get a $75 Million payment that the city can surely use, and the team was a goner sooner or later, anyway.  

I have a small bit of sentiment for the Sonics, because I was in college in Portland during the team’s first year of existence.  Don’t ask me what year it was.  THAT memory is a bit painful.  Let’s just say that the Summer of Love occurred during it, and if I never hear “If You’re Going to San Francisco” again, it’ll still be too soon.

Anyway, the Sonics played a couple of “home” games in Portland, much the way the Packers used to play a game or two in Milwaukee, or the Sixers played games in Hershey, PA (like when Wilt scored his 100 points).  One of my classmates was friends with one of the Sonics’ bench players, and scored primo freebie tickets, which allowed me to see my first live NBA game.  

But that was then and this is now.  It’s a divorce, I think, that’s good for both parties.  Seattle is a world-class city, and doesn’t need an NBA team to validate its existence — especially since it has an NFL team and what passes for a Major League Baseball team.  What Seattle can use right now is money, and $75 Million would benefit the city a lot more right now than a pro basketball team.  Oklahoma City, on the other hand, has oil and not much else.  It is the antithesis of world-class.  It probably DOES need an NBA team to make its citizens feel like they’re on a level with the big kids on the block.  Pathetic, I know, but that’s the country in which we live.

But even accepting all that pop psychology, is Oklahoma City really so desperate for a self-esteem boost and so eager to spend its ill-gotten oil riches that the owners can be reasonably sure of recouping $75 Million?  On a basketball team, in football country?  Don’t touch that dial, folks.

I’ve always kind of liked Justin Gimelstob, ever since he played on UCLA’s tennis team.  Outstanding college player.  Middle-of-the-pack pro in singles; better in doubles (even won two Grand Slam titles in mixed doubles, riding on Venus Williams’s coattails).  But intelligent and well-spoken, and just nutty enough to make outrageous and uncensored statements that some (me) might find entertaining.  Like his recent — apparently unprovoked — attack on tennis’s now retired by still reigning sexpot, Anna “Porn”ikova (as Jim Rome used to love calling her).  

What got into him?  He said some incendiary stuff, and I can only assume that he had had what the Brits call a “skinful” when he did it.  

What did he say?  Well, in his spot on the “Sports Junkies” the other day — to which he’s a regular contributor — in addition to making some nondescript general observations on the state of the game, he allowed as how he hates Ms. Kournikova (well, actually, to quote his own words, “I just despise her to the maximum level just below hate”).  As if that wasn’t enough, he dug himself in even deeper by:  calling her a “bitch” and a “douche”; saying that he intends to hurt her physically next month, when they’re supposed to meet in a exhibition match in Washington, DC, by serving 128MPH (in his dreams) right at her midsection; and putting the cherry on top of the sundae he’d concocted by claiming that he wouldn’t want to knock boots with her because of her odious personality, but “I wouldn’t mind my brother, who is kind of a stud, nail her and then reap the benefits.”

Great talk show stuff, but surely career suicide.  He may well have spoken the truth, mind you.  But only in the Bible will then truth set you free.  

I don’t doubt that Kournikova, after an entire career of having her butt kissed and of making millions off endorsements without winning a single damn tournament, has a strong sense of entitlement and superiority.  I have little doubt that she treats those she considers her “inferiors”  – pretty much all of humanity, I guess — with some measure of contempt and peremptoriness.  As do a good number of prominent people, and not just in sports.  

Lots of our sports favorites are a**holes, creeps, bitches, “douches” or what have you.  As Colin Cowherd has observed on more than one occasion, if we knew what creeps most of the sports stars whom we regard as “humble,” “down to earth,” “nice guys” really are in private, we wouldn’t be fans of any athlete.

But it’s one thing to know that, and quite another to blow the athletes’ covers.  Why would anyone who makes a good living “godding up” athletes (as Red Smith used to call it) blow the gig by telling the truth?  It makes no sense.  And it especially makes no sense for a commentator in a sport where women have only recently achieved “salary parity” at Wimbledon, where women’s tennis (mainly because of the “sex sells” aspect”) is actually more popular than the men’s game, especially to the casual fan, where feminism reigns supreme, and where every comment on women’s tennis is scrutinized minutely for even a hint of condescension or bias. Especially when said commentator has just — literally a week earlier — taken a seat on the governing board of the Association of Tennis Professionals

Predictably, Gimelstob was forced to act quickly and decisively to grovel in apology.  He was given a good, old-fashioned tongue-lashing and suspended for a game without pay in WTT, where he plays, by the league commissioner, Billie Jean King, the uber-feminist, and, in general, had to eat a lot of s*** sandwiches.  Was it worth it, Justin?    

Word on the street is that A-Rod’s recent late-night private meetings with Madonna had nothing to do with extramarital sex (how could it, given that Dennis Rodman surely has spoiled her for all athletes?), but everything to do with a new-found fascination for the pop brand of Kabbalah of which she’s the world’s highest-profile practitioner.  I believe it, frankly.  A-Rod has to find SOME type of mental conditioning to get him to stop choking at every meaningful at-bat, and sports psychology doesn’t seem to work.  I guess it came down to a choice between Kabbalah and Scientology, and Madonna, even at her age, still looks a lot better than John Travolta.  Although that Kelly Preston still seems to have some of that je ne sais quoi.

Happy Fourth, everybody — and a belated Happy Canada Day (which I still remember as “Dominion Day”) to those of Canadian extraction.    

Please send comments and criticism — especially criticism — to thonglaw@sprynet.com, where it will be dealt with appropriately.