from espn:

Kelenna Azubuike will return to the Golden State Warriors after the club matched the Los Angeles Clippers' three-year, $9 million contract offer for the shooting guard on Thursday.

Azubuike averaged 8.1 points and 4.0 rebounds in 81 games last season with the Warriors, who signed the former Kentucky guard out of the NBA Developmental League in January 2007. He started 17 games for Golden State, and he should see more playing time next season after Baron Davis' departure for the Clippers, Mickael Pietrus' signing with Orlando and Monta Ellis' expected move to point guard.

"We are pleased to have Kelenna back in the fold," said Chris Mullin, the Warriors' top basketball executive. "He's a young and talented player who has continued to improve during his two seasons with our team. His versatility, athleticism and ability to shoot the 3-pointer certainly fit our style of play."

Azubuike, a restricted free agent, signed the offer sheet with the Clippers last Friday, giving Golden State seven days to match it. The Warriors, who earlier signed high-scoring free agent swingman Corey Maggette from the Clippers, also signed forward Ronny Turiaf away from the Lakers last week with a similar offer-sheet deal.

Yep. The Euro rules, and the dollar drools. If only we had signed the kid.

Anyway, Childress will be playing in Greece, as reported by the worldwide misleader here.

Could this become a trend? Will the almighty Euro trump the dollar (with respect to signing pro basketball players), limit the number of foreigners in the Association, and even steal away a good chunk of American ballers, a la Childress and high schooler Brandon Jennings? It remains to be seen.

David Stern must be silently sweating this stuff out.

Well, no, no he didn't tell me exactly ... but this Web site, it told me about Manu's decision:

 http://insider.espn.go.com/nba/features/rumors?&action=login&appRedirect=http%3a%2f%2finsider.espn.go.com%2fnba%2ffeatures%2frumors

What are your thoughts, comments, or other things that I have to write in order to have enough characters to write a FanPost?

I, for one, am actually happy about this. I trust his judgment and I know this means a lot to him and his countrymen. Plus, this must be his final - or at least penultimate - world competition.

I've been too riled up for the game today. Just nerves all over the place. I am rocking the Ginobili jersey--at work!--for the first time since, I think, opening night-Oct. 30 vs. POR. Just outside my <em>trabajo</em> I found a dude wearing a NY Giants hat (bandwagon alert!) who saw me w/the Spurs jersey and he said something about how we're going to get killed today, then I said I think we'll will win in a close one, and he basically said "yeah, it will be close. Good luck."

A couple of min later I ran into a guy that said, "Game 7 tonight, eh?!" I said, "Yeah, should be a good one," and he said "I hope so."

Well I'm not sure what to make of this, since I am in Utah, but anyway.....

GO SPURS!!!

P.S. The game is at 6:30 my time, I work until 9, but I don't think the stoogetv feed will be blocked. Yes! But we have some meeting that will be about 45 min, and I was unlucky enough to be scheduled for the meeting at 7:30 pm! Other folks will have the meeting tomorrow.GRRR!

Not that it's of great concern to us right now, but the official NBA MVP ballot finally was revealed. Duncan finished 7th and Ginobili was 10th. No big whoop there, but it's nice to see Gino in the top 10 for that award considering how he often gets overlooked and may or may not ever finish that high again.  The only other time he had this much MVP consideration of any kind in the Association was in the '05 Finals.

http://www.nba.com/news/kobe_mvp_080506.html

Which version of Manu Ginobili has been better: the 2005 Playoff Manu or the 2007-08 regular season Manu? I think this one is worthy of a vote from our expert panel (the PTR members).
Take everything into consideration. Remember the performances, check out stats (although they don't tell the whole story...ok is this 300 characters yet?)

This is an interesting link to an article on who is the best of all the Barry basketballers. Brent ranks out pretty favorably in this dude's opinion (or at least in the opinion of the statistical formula he uses):

http://dberri.wordpress.com/2008/03/09/the-better-barry/

I like the comments below the article too. Pay special attention to the comment by Daniel--this site needs some positive thinking among all the doom and gloom.

Coach Pop's online username on espn.com was revealed recently as m26s26

this link http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/preview2007/news/story?page=Experts-NBAChamps
gave the coach's ID away.

The key phrase in exposing Popovich's online identity was when he wrote "ginobilis stupid foul on dirk when the spurs where (sic) up..."

No word yet on whether or not the San Antonio coach will change his username.

This is Pop's quote in its entirety:

the suns have a great team with great individual players but boring or not SA can run and score 120 or they can score 75/80 and beat teams, call them boring but they got those 4 finals trophies sitting in their case and thats all the nba looks at, not who was exciting, so go ahead suns fans lean on that, and also i could say SA should have won 5 or 6 titles one cause of that luck shot by fisher in 04 and then ginobilis stupid foul on dirk when the spurs where up but i dont do that, it wasnt our year those years...some of these suns fans are crying so much im starting to think they dont believe in their team like there never going to win a title, y'all so hung up on the past.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CiD_qNoc9ek

that's the link folks. I'm guessing it's really nothing more than a "heat of the moment" type of thing that just blows over immediately. But yeah I don't remember seeing Manu ever that incensed--at least not yelling at his coach. Usually if he yells, it means he's fired up after a clutch shot or sometimes he'll get mad about not getting a foul call.

Everyone's favorite poster, uh, post-er,post maker,mikewells seems to be AWOL. Or is he? I think I may have spotted him at a location in Houston...(cue spooky commentator voice) on the interweb! check it out at http://www.mysanantonio.com/sports/basketball/nba/spurs/stories/MYSA20080129.SpursMailbag.en.6e09cbe e.html STAMPLERS you shoud chek it out!!11!!1 Or is ur modem broKin? HAHA!!!! (notice the difference in the grammar for this Mike Wells, it must be the same dude but he's just funnin' us with his crap writing. Whaddaya think?)