Sprint Does It Again, A Clothing Dilemma, And Baron Davis to the Clippers(???)
Quick-hitters:
- So I’ve been battling some terrible allergies lately. burning red eyes, sniffles, and sneezing and wheezing have cost me several hours of sleep per night.
I’ve been popping Claritin like breath mints and dropping eye drops in my eyes like mad.
- Quick thought about the rumors that Gilbert Arenas is close to a six year, $120+ million deal with the Washington Wizards: my first thought was that this was WAY too much money for a shoot-first, recently oft-injured guard. Personally, I don’t think the Arenas/Butler/Jamison core will ever win a title.
The more I thought about it, the more I thought that the contract wasn’t terribly unreasonable, despite the $20 million average annual salary. Arenas is by and large the most recognizable player on the Wizards, and clearly he sells tickets. More importantly, though, if the Wiz let Arenas walk, who are they going to replace him with? Baron Davis?
(More on Davis later.)
- Current rebate-o-meter: $1,350, not counting a few hundred in rebates that I have yet to file 
- So I logged on to my Sprint.com account yesterday, to check to see if they finally applied the 10% monthly discount to my account that I’ve been owed since January.
Sprint, in their never ending pursuit to amaze the holy hell out of me, once again did not automatically offer me the discount. I called Customer Service again, got a nice (English speaking!) rep, who put me on hold for about five minutes after I explained what had happened. When the rep came back on the line, she manually credited my account $3 and “promised” that the credit would show up automatically.
I think I’ve heard that one before. I will now accept futures bets on the following proposition:
Will Sprint automatically apply the 10% discount to my account on next month’s statement?
Yes +180
No -200
- So as my loyal readers (all none of them) know, Ross has been a source of pain and suffering to my wallet.
I now have another victim of my addiction to Ross: the other inhabitants of my closet and dresser. Every time I do my laundry, I shoot for my new clothes first, and what happens is that I become almost reluctant to wear any of my old clothes. Sometimes I almost feel like doing laundry again after I go through all the new clothing.
There’s clearly one solution to this entire mess: buy more clothes from Ross
- Finally, in a pretty significant shocker, former Warriors G Baron Davis has verbally agreed to a five year deal with the Los Angeles Clippers worth $65 million, according to sources. Most people thought that Davis was crazy to opt-out of the final year of his deal with the Warriors, which would have paid him $17.8 million.
(Personally, I thought he was crazy too, but I figured he thought he was going to get a long-term deal from Golden State. Never did I think that he would land in LA, if the rumors are true.)
So what does this mean for the other inhabitants of Staples Center? For one thing, if this doesn’t convince Elton Brand (who opted out of the final year of his own deal) to return, nothing will. Secondly, this all but spells the end of Corey Maggette’s stay as a Clipper; I thought he wasn’t a great fit with the team anyway. Most importantly, a healthy Davis (not a safe assumption by any stretch) and a healthy Brand, with Mobley/Eric Gordon at SG, Al Thornton at SF, and Chris Kaman at C, is probably good enough to contend for a bottom-four playoff spot.
(Actually, even more importantly, it shows that Clips’ owner and noted tightwad Donald Sterling really is serious about fielding a competitive team.)
Will the signing of Davis work out? If he stays healthy, I don’t see why not. Will the Clippers knock the Lakers off the top spot in LA in the next few years? No chance, as long as Kobe doesn’t erupt again.