Links=Freedom

A couple of quick thoughts before my mother hits town:

-Not sure if you've been following this, but apparently my half-assed joke about C.J. Miles's mic prowess alienating Larry Miller was taken WAY too seriously in Utah. Oddly, they made no reference to my concerns about the other C.J. Miles. After two days of trying to explain sarcasm from scratch, I'm now hit with an odd confluence of snark and reality: C.J.'s signed an offer sheet with OKC, despite having skipped the RMR and done little to boost his stock with Utah or others.

All of which raises the question: For all of my bald-faced assaults on Oklahoma City, there could be a regional appeal for certain players. Not that OKC is Dallas, TX, but it's closer to Dallas than any other city in the league. And really not that far from Houston. This may not be a draw for tons of free agents; however, in the case of Miles—a preps-to-pros guy three years removed from Skyline—this nowhere is certainly preferable to the nowhere of Utah. Especially if he'll get more minutes in the Dust Bowl.

The big irony here: My "joke" was that Miles sounded a lot more exotic and regional on the track than Dee Brown, who if memory serves was awfully peppy and accessible. So if the location of the [OKC team] makes it attractive to Miles, then, wow, my silliness inadvertantly might have made a point.

-Sneaker wars, stuff I barely follow: Darren Rovell says that Jennings is a hotter property than Rose or Beasley. Rose is the kind of player who needs to display some genuine excellence before the tone they'll probably take makse sense. Beasley presents all kinds of challenges, though, I don't see why Barkley (not Arenas, he's not that dorky) isn't the prototype here. Jennings, on the other hand, has unmistakable flair to his game, already has the image thing down pat, and now has this socio-political crusader thing going. You have to wonder how much they'd ever explicitly reference the Italy thing in a commercial. But certainly, it gives him a kind of cachet, and worldliness, and other NBA rooks—if we even want to call Jennings that—can't match.