Riel Banaria, first "full" Asian-American in the NBA.
On Tuesday, October 6, 2009, the first full-blooded Asian-American set foot inside the lines on an NBA basketball court, his name permanently etched, as required, in the NBA boxscore archive.
His name? Riel Banaria. His position? No, not point guard. Not 1 thru 5. His role was… ref!
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Brad Miller's shot with 0.3 did not get off in time.
Last night NBA referees negated Brad Miller’s potential buzzer-beating win in the Chicago Bulls’ one-point loss to the Denver Nuggets. You can see in the paused replay above that, in fact, he did not get the shot off in time when the clock showed zeros.
Here’s a rare situation where if it can happen in the NBA, it can never happen in Dream League. In Dream League, Brad Miller’s shot counts and everybody puts it in the Top Ten coolest basketball things they’ve ever participated in. We would’ve never known that the shot really shouldn’t have counted. This brings me back to a similar play in Dream League’s Open League many years ago when the NBA’s 0.3-second rule was first introduced.
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Tre, Jim, and Deldre break up a scuffle between Nuggets and Lakers on ESPN.
UPDATE: Buntin just texted me:
CRAZY. Broke down game tape til 2am.
Three of our refs: Jim Buntin (Bay Area), Tre Maddox (Vegas), and Deldre Carr (Vegas) happened to be staffed together last night for the Lakers-Nuggets game on ESPN! It was their final night of replacement referee work for the NBA, and boy was it a night to remember. The game was held in San Diego.
Lamar Odom of the Los Angeles Lakers and Chris Andersen (aka “The Birdman”) of the Denver Nuggets got into a scuffle with 8:32 remaining in the 2nd quarter. Tre immediately called a double-technical but soon found himself trying to hold off an angry Odom from an approaching Andersen.
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Shawn Carter puts on the stripes for dreamleague (j/k) 
It was about three weeks ago when listening to Hot108.com I heard what sounded like Jay-Z and a booming chorus sung by some lady. A couple quick clicks later from the RealAudio player and it was cool to see the name Alicia Keys. But of course! Empire State Of Mind even got ol’ “golden aged” me wanting to memorize the lyrics of a rap tune for the first time since Check The Rime by A Tribe Called Quest. Got me juiced about coming back to NYC for the 4th annual Gotham Games tournament this December 19-20, 2009 hosted by Dream League New York.
Incidentally, the above is a pic of ref Charles “Stick” Crawford, who appeared at Dream League Bay Area’s Fall-Winter league launch this past Sunday with a new haircut (or lack thereof). I couldn’t believe the resemblance! From now on, we must call him “Stigga”. You know, Stick mashed with Jigga. And get this, Stick’s Stigga’s nickname from the local Oaktown dreamleaguers is none other than “Downtown”. Manhattan = Uptown/Downtown!
So anyways, I can’t believe a critic could call any of Jay-Z’s work “[feeling] dangerously close to rote”! That’s like sitting in a Chicago bistro looking up at a 15″ television bolted just below the ceiling, and seeing Michael Jordan,
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UPDATE II: Back to FOUR!!! One of the four checked the names that Lamont gave below and could not find them on the roster of replacement NBA refs. Sorry, NYC!
UPDATE: Make that SIX!!! Lamont Long, our head ref in New York, emailed to say that two of his refs have done dreamleague games in DLNY…
One of the guys, his name is Will Mentzer. He has done some dreamleague games in the past. The other guy his name is Bernard Price. Could be wrong on the last name; he also has done some dreamleague games.
Two of them, Tre Maddox and Deldre Carr (the pic above is from a paused screenshot from NBA.com’s highlight video), got the first pre-season assignment. Not to diss the other two, but Tre and Deldre getting selected to do that very important first game for replacement refs, that was no surprise to me. I was proud as heck to see them get their moment.
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