NBA News : Around the traps

A few news items floating around today.

• The Hawks officially have announced their signing of Lorenzen Wright, which everyone knew about a couple of weeks ago. Wright returns to the Team of Swingmen (aka the Atlanta Hawks) after a 5 year stint with the Grizzlies - a team that has been stacked with forwards in recent years, meaning limited playing time. He'll be pleased to come to a team which definitely will have minutes for him. Billy Knight says "Lorenzen's addition really upgrades our frontcourt." Ouch... any team saying that about the signing of Wright is definitely in dire straits.
• The Answer is being sued $4.2 million for hiring bodyguards, claimed to be "dangerous individuals." According to the article, Iverson's security firm is called The Horsemen. I thought that was what LeBron called his crew... Maybe AI should save himself the trouble and just get himself Charles Oakley as his bodyguard like Michael Jordan does.
• Charles Barkley is always good value. The Round Mound of Rebound, who dominated All-Interview teams during his career is now continuing to stir headlines with his policies in the lead-up to a potential run at being elected as Governor of Alabama. This time he's been on TV saying that he advocates same-sex marriage. Whether you agree with Sir Charles or not, the refreshing thing about him has always been his willingness to speak his mind, in an age of sports stars who give manufactured answers. If you haven't picked his book up before, Outrageous is a great read.
• Yesterday news broke that the Bay Area will see Don Nelson again. That's right, Golden State is rocking it like it's 1994 with the announcement that they are hiring him back as coach of the Warriors. Opinions vary wildly on how this will pan out. One thing is for sure, the Warriors have been disappointing and underachieving of late and this can only be a chance worth taking. Nelson was the last coach to take the team to the playoffs, 12 long years ago with a team consisting of Tim Hardaway, Latrell Sprewell, Chris Mullin, Billy Owens and Chris Webber. The current team fits this run'n'gun mould nicely, so who knows? The executive team even has a bit of Run TMC flavour with Mullin, Rod Higgins and Mitch Richmond on the staff.
• In other news, it's good to see this Blazer fan having some success on the rap circuit, without the rap-sheet to go along with it.

Things are pretty quiet on the Blazer front at the moment -- the season can't come soon enough to see how this new squad looks.