Links of the Day (I'm Guessing It Was Pepperoni Edition)

• Tommy Heinsohn breaks down Boston's transition game against Philadelphia while eating a slice of pizza.
• Considering sports non-fiction is basically the only genre I read for pleasure these days and my family is always hassling me about a Christmas list, I figured I'd share this list of basketball books being released this year, courtesy of The Painted Area. The Free Darko book is particularly intriguing; The Macrophenomenal Pro Basketball Almanac was really great and I expect this one to be equally good. I've generally resisted the advanced stats movement, but it's part of the dialog about the game now, so I may just pick up the Basketball Prospectus, as well. And the Whelliston book is right in the wheelhouse of stuff I like.
• Adrian Wojnarowski reports that Doc may stick around after this year. It doesn't seem like something worth talking about at the moment, but it's bound to get mentioned here and there.

Links of the Day (Congratulatory Butt Pat Edition)

• Today's big story was Grant Hill and Reggie Evans getting tossed out of Wednesday's pre-season game for excessive ass slapping. Now, RwH is generally a proponent of this gesture. It's appropriate in many circumstances on the basketball court: Encouragement after a hustle play, an "attaboy" for a particularly good one, appreciation for an opponent, or a "we'll get 'em next time" after a turnover. In fact, instead of giving out "hat tips" to other bloggers and readers for bringing my attention to interesting content (as is customary on the Internet), I think RwH will, from now on, give out ass slaps. With that said -- and contrary to what everyone on the Internet seemed to be saying -- what Hill and Evans did went beyond that. This had nothing to do with the new technical foul guidelines and everything to do with two guys (one a notorious agitator), who had gotten matching techs the previous play continuing to antagonize each other.
• Ass slap to Red's Army for this post calling out Tim Kurkjian for either over-stating the excitement of a playoff no-hitter or under-stating the excitement of a transcendent performance from a basketball player. My friends and I actually had an email discussion about this years ago, and my position was (and still is) that baseball and football have no analog to a truly great performance in basketball for one reason: flow. I've never been in a baseball stadium for a no-hitter, and I know that as a pitcher gets closer to the no-no, the excitement in the stands builds. But he still must sit on the bench for several minutes at a time while his team bats, during which period a number of events can take away from the moment, at least temporarily. Football is the same; a quarterback might complete every pass he throws, but he still has to come off the field every time his team scores. In basketball, players play offense and defense, and you know that when a team scores, they'll have the ball back in less than a minute -- and often in just a few seconds. When someone is putting on a truly transcendent performance on the basketball court, the whole gym is electric. There are no lulls, and that makes a huge difference.
• Another ass slap to Red's Army for first- and second-half highlights (in HD) from the Philly game that make us look awfully good.
• SLAM Online is ranking the top 50 players currently in the NBA. Rajon Rondo is 17th, ahead of Paul Pierce (19th), Kevin Garnett (29th), and Ray Allen (50th). Scanning the list quickly, it appears that this puts Rondo ahead of all point guards not named Rose, Nash, Williams, or Paul. He should be ahead of Rose, but whatever.
• The story behind this Michael Jordan dunk is great.
• I've said that if I ever get a tattoo, it will simply be "Havlicek stole the ball' written across my back. Looks like a Knicks fan has similar loyalty.

Muy Beno: Links of the Day (A new RwH production)

(Muy Beno, you'll recall, is my oh-so-clever homage to Beno Udrih when I write NBA posts that are not directly related to the Celtics.)

I read a lot on the Internet about pro basketball. A lot. I subscribe to well over 100, maybe approaching 200, blogs through RSS, and several hundred blog posts pass through my Google Reader on any given day, and while I read the full text of very few of them, I scan the headlines and read stuff that intrigues me, stuff that pertains to guys on my fantasy team, and stuff that pertains to players I like.

A lot of blogs throw together a daily links post full of essential reading. That's not my goal; if you want a comprehensive compilation of Celtics coverage, check out Celtics Blog, and if you were worried about missing a single bit of vital information from the excellent basketball blogs out there, you'd subscribe to them yourself. But I do think it'd be fun to share a few items -- maybe a handful -- that are informative, entertaining in themselves, or allow me to amuse myself with commentary and/or witticisms.

As the moniker "Links of the Day" suggests, my ultimate goal is to do this daily. Knowing me and my schedule, however, this could quite quickly turn into "Links Whenever I Feel Like It Or Have The Time." But we'll try it out.

• This video of Dwight Howard training with Hakeem Olajuwon was all over the basketball blogosphere today. The stuff at the beginning and the end is entertaining, and it's cool to catch little tips like the one around 2:30 into the clip, when Hakeem teaches Dwight to hop while catching an entry pass in order to catch the defender off-guard for a quick spin to the baseline. But the other stuff is kind of meh. Howard's athleticism has never been in question, so it's not all that surprising to watch him spin and glide and jump. But on the offensive end, Howard's instincts have always been a little off, and workouts like this one will do little to change that. This surely isn't the first time he's been shown a drop step or a spin move or an up and under. He worked with Patrick Ewing for the last couple of years, and I guarantee you that Ewing wasn't pushing him to shoot the running lefty hooks he resorts to so often. My sense is that Howard, at least at the start, will get one move in his head when he makes the catch and see it through no matter what, which is going to make for some tough possessions. Nice to see Dream playing a bit better than he did in that "Pros vs. Joes" episode.
• I link to this other Howard video only to introduce you to NBA Playbook, an excellent blog that also had this post on the Celtics today.
• Via Ball Don't Lie (and RwH reader Dave Roberts, and a ton of other blogs), a complete list of unlockable characters in the new NBA Jam video game.
• The NBA GM survey is out, and just one GM thinks Boston will win the NBA championship (well, one besides Danny, because GMs weren't allowed to vote for their own team). Considering we were a few minutes (and a Kendrick Perkins injury) away from winning the title in June, this seems low, especially given our off-season additions. I wonder if it's all because of what Miami did, or if Perk's injury caused some GMs to shy away from picking the Cs.
• Dime Magazine proposes new team names for all 30 NBA clubs. If you're strapped for time, the write-ups for the Bulls, Cavs, Lakers, and Sixers were particularly clever. The rest vary from mildly funny to pretty stupid.
• This is a not a headline a basketball fan ever wants to see about his team.