These potential lottery picks would not have been left out.

If you’re an NBA guy like me, you should be rooting for the NCAA Tournament expansion. Sometimes, excellent NBA Draft talent just so happens to be stuck on not-so-great teams, as alluded to in the previous four posts in the “Through NBA Eyes” series (1 2 3 4). And with all the variables that go into a successful team, can you really blame these players?

Warrior fans ought to know!

Not only that, but the atrocies that CBS has committed this year only solidify the need for the Tournament to move to ESPN. CBS doesn’t have enough channels to handle such a load — heck, they can’t even handle 64 teams, as I’ll explain – while ESPN has the depth and breadth of broadcasting logistics and talent.

Here are the three reasons why NCAA Tournament expansion is good, especially if you’re an NBA fan…

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96 teams, 32 per regional (click)

As someone who runs tournaments and mints brackets for a living, here’s how I would’ve structured the new 96-team format that the NCAA just announced. First of all, since I’m an NBA guy, I’m all for the expansion because it allows NBA’ers to better evaluate draft prospects under one roof – but that’s for another blogpost.

NCAA vice president Greg Shaheen yesterday suggested the following changes to the existing 65-team format…
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In case you didn’t know, there are four NCAA post-season tournaments. The 65-team NCAA field and the NIT are probably the two you already know about. The third is called the CBI (College Basketball Invitational) and has a contract with HDNet, which is owned by Mark Cuban, to broadcast all of its games on TV.

Last year, I was told that Harvard would’ve made the CBI had they won their last game. Unfortunately, they lost that last game and extended the streak of zero post-season appearances since 1946.

With this year’s 20-win team, I figured the CBI had to be a lock, since this year’s team is way, way better than last year’s. Not so. By finishing in 3rd behind Princeton and Cornell in the Ivy League, and with a bevy of “BCS” powerhouse teams such as UConn and UNC underachieving this year, there weren’t many spots left in either the NIT or the CBI.
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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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