Tonight, I find myself defending Mike Wilbon for the first time in this space. In general, I think Wilbon is full of himself, a shameless homer, rabidly anti-Notre Dame and a tool. That said, I do not share the opinion of Mr. Irrelevant, the loser blogger who condemned Wilbon to an eternity in the infernal region.

This is all in relation to the tragic death of Redskins safety Sean Taylor last night. On the Monday edition of PTI, Wilbon said he was saddened, but not shocked that Taylor was shot in an apparent home invasion late Sunday night. Wilbon's rationale was that Taylor had been involved in some troubling off-field incidents in his first two seasons in the NFL. Mr. Irrelevant condemns Wilbon to Hell because Wilbon didn't stress the fact that Taylor had calmed down and lived a much different life in the last year or so with enough emphasis to satisfy Mr. Irrelevant.

As a Catholic, I have it on reliable rumor that no blogger, not even the greatest living authority on the DC sports scene in his own mind, is counted among the few authorities with the power to condemn a soul to an eternity in hell. I also didn't find the comments Wilbon made to be tremendously out of line, but then I am notoriously insensitive. It struck me that this was Wilbon's honest reaction to a tragic situation, and it's much better that he should come out and say this as opposed to shedding crocodile tears for the people involved.

Among Wilbon's words with which Mr. Irrelevant took issue is this sentence: "Whether this incident is or isn’t random, Taylor grew up in a violent world, embraced it, claimed it, loved to run in it and refused to divorce himself from it." Wilbon actually makes a good point there. One simply doesn't announce to all that one is retiring from a violent subculture because one has had a child and expect any and all bad blood to evaporate.

That's not the way the world works. People have long memories and regardless of race, culture or creed, there are very few people who are patient enough and rational enough to walk away from a grudge. I know I don't often give up grudges easily, and very little of any lasting emotional significance has happened to me in my life.

It was great that Sean Taylor changed his life. It was great that his coaches, teammates and fans loved and admired him. Sean Taylor didn't deserve to be murdered. But that doesn't mean that all people felt that way, simply because it was the correct and rational viewpoint. And that's what Wilbon was trying to say. He wasn't saying Taylor got what he deserved. He was saying that the world is a violent and irrational place and we can't count on everybody to change for the better because one safety on one NFL team got his life in order.

Far worse, I think, than what Wilbon said about Taylor was what Mr. Irrelevant seems to regard as Wilbon's real crime in this. WIlbon said something that wasn't nice to the blogging community. Wilbon came out and said this: "There’s a ton of speculation about the details of his condition and the details of the incident, but this isn’t a blog and we’re not going to get into wild guessing and speculating here". Can you imagine the gall of the man? Even the voice of reason that is the fanhouse at AOL couldn't stand Wilbon's obvious fear and contempt for Establishment-challenging blogs.

I hate to be the one to break this story on the blogosphere, but bloggers do engage in wild flights of fancy and speculation from time to time. Case in point, check out this guy and his bizarre predictions motivated in large part by personal antipathy rather than deductive reasoning. That's part of the point of a blog, isn't it? The freedom to say things, to take chances and not worry about the pressures exerted on conventional media.

Most blogs are a total waste of time. How many blogs are out there publishing something substantially different from or more insightful than the things average people email their friends about sports or politics or movies? It's just something that most bloggers don't want to admit, probably because they cherish the dream that they might through hard work and begging other sites for links and references vault themselves over every other site saying essentially the same damn thing to become the Marcel Proust of the 21st century.

If by that you mean an uber-tool admired by a legion of lesser tools, then, yes one blogger might become this generation's Proust. But if you mean by that that you have something to say to start an intellectual movement, then you might just want to cut the dose on your meds. With my luck, if there is a next generation Proust waiting in the wings in the blogosphere, it will probably be me. In case you haven't realized, I hate Proust.

On a lighter note, I couldn't help but chuckle at this story. Great Britain's vaunted MI-6 thinks that James Bond movies are hurting their efforts to recruit quality people, particularly in the minority communities and especially among Islamic populations. That's pretty funny. Apparently, British nationals who watch Bond movies are no cooler than their American counterparts. Too many of MI-6 applicants turn out to be losers who think they can seduce beautiful spies and destroy cutting edge gadgets for Queen and Country, rather than practical people with useful skills. It's nice to know that the next time the fate of the free world rests in a British dude's hands, he won't be wearing a tux and playing baccarat with a European floozy.

I knew today was going to be a weird day from the start. I woke up to see a headline in the Boston Globe, one of the day's lead story in a major metropolitan newspaper, to the effect that some jackass with a pseudonymous blog (not me obviously) managed to get himself revealed in open court. He actually included a thinly veiled account of the daily proceedings of his trial for medical malpractice in his blog. As far as I'm concerned, important personal details have no business in a blog so long as the blogger wants to keep a private life apart from the blogging life. I'm not sure yet what the details are on the settlement of the other blogger's case look like, but I bet it was one hell of an expensive mistake.

Then as I was driving through a neighborhood in Boston at 7 this morning (I can't tell you which one, lest I compromise my somewhat secret identity), I found myself behind a Nissan SUV. The guy driving it was rocking a cowboy hat. At 7 AM. In Boston. And not the metropolitan area, either. The city itself. If that's not a bad omen for the start of a day, I'm not sure what is.

And there is the whole A Rod mess. So what if he yelled at a guy who was trying to field a pop fly at third base? If any other player on any other team did that it wouldn't have been a story. If one of the Red Sox players did that, Red Sox Nation would be fawning over him as though he cured polio. But since it's A Rod, it's the worst thing that has ever been done on a baseball diamond, or at least since he slapped the ball away from Bronson Arroyo. People just need to leave the guy alone for a while.

But tonight's post is really about basketball. The NBA is slowly wasting away before our eyes, and it's almost laughable. I'm not blaming the refs or the league for the on-court violence which is a far bigger problem in my eyes than the off court violence associated with the current NBA player. This degeneration from basketball to a sort of half-assed rugby is the responsibility of the players. They put up with it, so why should the league address it. Every team that whines when its star is hacked turns a blind eye when its goons maul the opposing star. So the players need to do fix this themselves.

And it starts with personal pride. Not ego, but honest-to-goodness "I did my damn job the way it ought to be done to the best of my damn ability" pride. For the love of God, Bill Russell would have been scandalized into committing ritual seppuku if he defended Chamberlain the way Prince and Hamilton played LeBron tonight and he were a samurai. A little bit of contact is fine, but a player ought to find a new line of work if he can't guard his man without hand checking him 10 times in a 24 second possession.

The three most egregious instances of shameful basketball came in the second overtime. First, Webber never should have gotten continuation on the foul that sent Ilgauskas packing. He carried the ball in the first place. Also, the motion which enabled him to put the ball in the basket was not the same motion which was interrupted by the Ilgauskas foul. That cannot be continuation, de facto or de jure. Finally, it probably wasn't even a foul at all.

Then there was the 24 second violation on Cleveland where they passed the ball to Varejao for some strange reason. As he fought for the loose ball, Billups splashed him. That's got to be some manner of foul. You simply cannot throw your body onto another player's body in a non-contact sport. It's just not the way it was intended to be played.

Finally, on one of Detroit's final possessions in the second overtime, Chris Webber tried to set a pick by hand-checking the Cleveland defender (I'm pretty sure it was Pavlovich). There's no way that you can set a pick with a hand check. Hell, according to strict semantics, I don't even think you can hand check on offense, but I don't know how else to describe what Webber did. Instead of positioning his body appropriately, he reached out and put his hand on Pavlovich's hip as the Cleveland player was defending another Piston.

But lost in the hype that will surround this game (and rightly so, it was a legendary performance by LeBron, he played like 3 men in the 4th quarter and 2 OTs), is a rare win-win situation for me. Phoenix has decided to take the GM title away from Mike D'Antoni and install Steve Kerr in that position. I like this move because I do not like the team, and I won't miss Kerr calling games.

First, Phoenix was on a nice run under D'Antoni. True, they have yet to advance past the Spurs or reach the conference finals. However, they have made the playoffs after a very good regular season in each of the past two years. It seems like an interesting time to mess with their chemistry in this fashion. Players seem to like D'Antoni, more to the point they have responded to his leadership fairly well when it comes to wins and losses.

And what exactly has Steve Kerr done to show that he's ready to build an NBA championship caliber NBA organization? Was it sitting next to Marv Albert night in and night out without being bitten? So what if he were a cog in title runs by the Bulls and Spurs? Where does that translate to successful GM?

After all, if that were all it took, maybe Danny Ainge would be helping to hang banners in the rafters of his own building. Can Phoenix not see the parallel? Role player on title teams, terrible broadcaster, terrible 80s hair. Ainge and Kerr might be the same person, for all intents and purposes, with the exception of one key detail. Ainge was a moderately successful coach for a couple of years. Kerr doesn't even have that on his resume. Enjoy the long descent into mediocrity and beyond, Phoenix fans.