Tonight's NBA Draft will make a handful of young men into instant millionaires and household names in their new teams' cities. The basketball contract is merely the beginning, as there will be endorsement deals, commercial acting, clothing lines and — if they're especially ambitious — an attempted rap career. The NBA is littered on all sides with players who dabbled in the hip-hop game, but the ratio of attempts to success is way off-kilter. Save for the platinum status of Shaquille O'Neal's Shaq Diesel, most of attempts at rap have ended in sadness. To wit:
» Kobe Bryant: He just won his fourth championship and is a former MVP, but his rhyming skills left a lot to be desired. He cut one track called "K.O.B.E." that featured Tyra Banks and that he performed on NBA TV and dropped in on a few cuts with 50 Cent and Beanie Sigel (all around 2000), but couldn't get his hip-hop career going.
» Tony Parker: The San Antonio Spurs guard put out a French-language rap album called TP in 2007 (Parker is originally from Belgium). Apparently he's not a bad MC, but since we don't speak French, we have to assume he's just reciting pie recipes or talking about kittens.
Read more...
Having dispatched the Orlando Magic in five games, the Los Angeles Lakers are the 2009 NBA Champions. Kobe Bryant finally won without the help of Shaquille O'Neal (just like Jay-Z hoped he would), and the team will be celebrating with a parade in Los Angeles this afternoon. All through the playoffs, it was a familiar-looking Lakers team, and not because they resembled any of the past championship clubs. Rather, they looked and played a lot like the Wu-Tang Clan. Don't believe me? Check this out:
» Kobe Bryant is RZA: The most talented and controlling member of the team (and also the richest). Are they both a little bit crazy? Sure. Doesn't it just make us love them more? Definitely. Plus, both Kobe and RZA are friendly with gritty New York City film directors (Kobe & Spike Lee, RZA & Jim Jarmusch).
» Phil Jackson is GZA: The wise sage who is heavily influenced by Eastern philosophy.
Read more...
By Ben Hockin
Lil Wayne made yet another NBA Finals appearance last night, though his presence wasn't as lucky for Kobe Bryant and the Lakers as it was on Sunday night. The Orlando Magic won their first ever NBA Finals game, topping the Lakers 108-104 and cutting L.A.'s series lead to 2-1. Despite the obvious distraction created by Weezy's Cosby-esque cardigan, the Magic managed to set a Finals record by sinking 62.5 percent of their shots.
Perhaps Wayne's next basketball-related freestyle should be called "Dwight Howard," as the Orlando star scored 21 points and pulled down 14 rebounds.
Other celebrities at courtside included Spike Lee, Ludacris, Tiger Woods, University of Florida quarterback Tim Tebow, Chris Brown and hard-core Lakers fan Jack Nicholson. Clearly the draw of the NBA Finals was inspiration enough for these guys to travel (only Woods is local). We can only hope that Lil Wayne's visit to sunny Orlando will soon result in a mixtape about visiting Sea World.
Justin Timberlake isn't a stranger to the basketball court. Remember the days when he would do charity basketball games alongside Britney Spears?
Justin, who has spent many an evening at a Lakers game, has been tapped to narrate the NBA Entertainment doc "Dream Season: 23 & 24," presented by Nike and highlighting Kobe Bryant's and LeBron James' pursuit of this year's championship, and intensifying the hoops debate of "Who's better?" according to the press release.
Timberlake, who is referred to as the "King of Pop" in the release (if they say so — we're not sure how Michael Jackson feels about that), will narrate the doc about the "Kings of the Court."
In the past, Denzel Washington, Forest Whitaker, Terrence Howard, Djimon Hounsou and Chris Rock have narrated basketball specials. Justin's special airs tomorrow night at 7 p.m.
Justin hosted the ESPY Awards for the channel last year. "I am starstruck. I mean, I grew up such a sports nut, and I'm still such a sports nut," he said. "If we would have had a conversation when I was 14 years old, I mean, you could not convince me that I was not going to play in the NBA."
By Danielle Beavers
Shaq, don't quit your multimillion-dollar day job.
Sunday night, the Phoenix Suns center took over the mic at a New York nightclub. He called what he did a "freestyle." Others called it a "verbal attack" on archrival Kobe Bryant. In case you missed it, Shaq bashed his ex-teammate — with whom he won three NBA titles — with lines like "Last week Kobe couldn't do it without me." For the chorus, he got the whole crowd to chant, "Kobe, tell me how my ass tastes." But the "big man" really made it personal with the line "I'm a horse/ Kobe ratted me out/ That's why I'm getting divorced," referring to the L.A. Lakers shooting guard's 2003 rape case, during which Kobe said he should've been like Shaq and paid his women not to say anything. And that's where the friendship ended and the rivalry began.
"I'm totally cool with Kobe. No issue at all," Shaq told ESPN.com Monday afternoon. "I was freestyling. That's all. It was all done in fun. Nothing serious whatsoever. ... That is what MCs do. They freestyle when called upon."
Given that Shaq is using the "freestyle" defense, we decided to call in the experts. We tapped some members of our Hip-Hop Brain Trust — the panel that gave us "The Hottest MCs in the Game," "The Greatest MCs of All Time" and your weekly dose of "Mixtape Monday" — to find out how Shaq measures up. Is this really "what MCs do"? It turns out his greatest sin might have been dissing Patrick Ewing. ...
Read more...
