Come Tuesday, Gilbert Arenas will either be locked up by the Wizards for six years at max money or near max money, or he’ll be on his way to China for an Adidas promotional tour sans contract. The issue for the Wizards, as I see it, is that they’re more or less handcuffed by Arenas. If there are 30 teams in the NBA, I’m guessing there’s at least one other team out there willing to give Arenas max money, but to me, the Wizards are almost obligated to give him that money. Gil’s a superstar in that town — the most popular athlete in DC. It’s not even a question of whether or not they think Gil can lead them to a title and be the star on a championship team. It’s about keeping him in D.C. and keeping the fans happy.

Sure, having a winning team also keeps the fans happy, and they’ll get that from the Wizards. The team is good enough to reach the playoffs consistently, even in a year when Arenas and Caron Butler were both hurt. But are they a title team? Probably not, as long as they don’t have a legitimate big man, which they haven’t had since the bringing the Arenas/Jamison/Butler trio together. So the big issue handcuffing the Wizards is Arenas’ knee. He missed almost all of this past season since shredding it up two seasons ago and he didn’t look anywhere near how he was at his peak. Gil compounded matters by trying to return from the initial surgery too quickly and was forced to have a second surgery. He might never be the same if those few games he played down the stretch were any indication. He doesn’t have the same quickness or agility — the traits that made him stand out against opposing players. It’s a gamble for the Wizards, but it’s one they pretty much have to take. (And one Gilbert can certainly repay them for).

Seeing as that Shaq promptly had his honorary deputy badges yanked following his foul-mouthed rap on Kobe, I think you can say the response to the video has not been great. And even if he tries to justify it saying that it’s just freestyle rap, he’s wrong. You Been Blinded shows us why:

Yeah, real nice, Shaq. Way to set a positive example for the kids. And what kind of parent sets their kids up to do that and then posts it on YouTube to boot? There are some real geniuses out there, I’ll tell you.

I doubted Billy Beane back in January after he traded Haren and Swisher saying the A’s had conceded the season. I learned my lesson. So when I read that Beane has become an avid soccer fan, which apparently has been ongoing for a few years, I became pretty concerned that he might lose his focus. And now SportsbyBrooks floats the idea that Beane could one day leave the A’s to run the San Jose Earthquakes or something. The idea makes sense since Lew Wolff owns both teams and wants to see the Quakes succeed. And as you could imagine, Beane is already bringing his Moneyball philosophies to MLS.

So is it possible that Beane directs his concentration fully on the Quakes? Is it possible that he’s already been spending a lot of time doing soccer anyway and we just don’t know it? One piece of evidence is from Tracy Ringolsby who takes assistant GM David Forst turning down interviews as a sign. I’m not so sure that’s much of an indication given what Beane taught his previous assistants — only take a job when you’re ready to succeed at it. Plus, Forst may have seen what happened with DePodesta and realized he has a good thing going. And like I speculated, we don’t know how Beane spends his time anyway. But there was a day when Beane was going to take the Red Sox job, so you know new projects entice him. I’ll just hope for the Angels’ sake that he’s shifting his focuses.

We’ve all heard about players getting pretty crazy in the bullpen. They’re just sitting out there for inning on end, in need of entertainment just like the rest of us. Sometimes they’ll look at naked pictures of girls, other times they’ll create new technological devices to keep busy. And in rare occasions, you might actually catch them flipping off their bullpen mates. And if you’re really lucky, you’ll catch it on national television:

Thanks to Awful Announcing for spotting that one. Man, what a sharp eye. Hopefully this will discourage FOX from doing their constant cut-aways. Man, does that get annoying.

I don’t know about you, but when it comes down to a trip to Vegas for either the National Fantasy Baseball Championship draft or the AVN Weekend, I’m going with the ladies all the way. And that’s coming from someone who loves fantasy baseball. That’s why I was pretty shocked to read what happened in Spain over the weekend where the International Erotic Film Festival of Barcelona was held. Previous editions of the Festival have drawn over 50,000 people, but this year’s edition had a much lower sausage ratio. Why you ask?

FICEB director Juli Simon blamed the lower-than-expected turnout on the fact that the festival’s opening day coincided with Spain’s 3-0 Euro 2008 semi-final win over Russia which drew a record Spanish television audience of 17 million.

“Football is one of the few things that can compete with sex,” he told private television station Telecinco.

I can’t imagine the attendance did much better on Sunday when Spain beat Germany in the finals. But seriously, if they’re actually filming live documentaries at the Festival, then I have to question the priorities of these Spaniards. After all, this is soccer we’re talking about, right?

(via Fark and photo via Deadspin’s live blog)

Two years ago they made the mistake of shipping out Brandon Roy before he had ever played a game for them. They got back Randy Foye. Exactly. So when the Timberwolves took O.J. Mayo with the third pick, as we predicted here at LBS, I wasn’t too surprised. I just really couldn’t figure out what Minnesota’s plan was; they have just a group of players that play the same position, hardly a way to build a team. Well, they at least made a move that makes more sense for the team-building concept, but they might have Minnesota Timberwolves ticket holders holding their collective breath once again. The T-Wolves traded O.J. Mayo along with Antoine Walker, Greg Buckner, and Marco Jaric to the Grizzlies for Kevin Love, Mike Miller, Brian Cardinal, and Jason Collins. In essence, the T-Wolves and Grizz swapped draft picks and bad contracts, but Minnesota probably got the best player (not counting Love or Mayo) in Miller.

Like I said, I couldn’t understand why Minnesota drafted Mayo in the first place based on the structure of their team — Randy Foye, Rashad McCants, and Corey Brewer (three of their recent picks) play essentially the same position. Now it makes more sense since they leveraged their position into getting Mike Miller along with Love, whom they may have wanted all along. While I still don’t like the Timberwolves roster, the move makes more sense. As for Memphis, I still don’t like their team, but I think O.J. Mayo will sell more Memphis Grizzlies tickets than Love would have, which given their trade of Pau, is probably all they care about. Both teams may have had top five picks, but I still don’t see either team coming anywhere close to the playoffs.

The team that I think will improve the most from last year to this year will be the Heat. I like Michael Beasley a lot as an offensive player (I’m still suspect on his defense). Adding him plus having Dwyane Wade healthy and playing a full season will mean a lot more wins than last year. Yes, I realize it would be hard not to improve when you only won 15 games last year, but I’m talking an improvement where I see them returning to the playoffs and revitalizing the interest in South Beach. Maybe no longer will Pat Riley say they need to refund the fans buying Miami Heat tickets after their pathetic performances last year. I expect a big turnaround.