Friday Links

* Gilbert Arenas says he could score "84 or 85" points against Duke, in retribution for Coach K leaving him off Team USA's roster for last year's World Basketball Championships. Clearly, Gilbert doesn't watch too many Duke games because, if he did, he'd know that once he got to 45 the refs would immediately foul him out. Or he'd hit the game-winning shot and then have the refs arbitrarily add two more seconds to the game, plenty of time for Duke to steal one. All last night's Duke/Clemson game needed was Cold War overtones, '70s hairstyles and an Olympic banner overhead.
Also, Ivan Carter reports Gilbert was watching Bambi II on DVD when he got the call telling him he was voted an All-Star starter.

* According to FoxSports.com's Jay Glazer, the Cowboys have received permission to discuss their head coaching vacancy with 49ers offensive coordinator Norv Turner, news that makes me want to say, "that would be a very sensible hire, Jerry Jones," before running behind a bush and giggling maniacally.

* In Esquire, Chuck Klosterman looks into whether sports analysts were better at their original careers (playing professional sports) or their second-acts (talking about professional sports). Read the whole thing.
It's one of those ideas that you wish you had thought of yourself, and yet another reason why I consider Klosterman one of the best writers out there doing his thing. George Clooney.
Klosterman thinks Troy Aikman is a better analyst than he was a quarterback (high praise for his TV work, since Aikman is a Hall of Famer), rips on Sean Salisbury's NFL career so much that he thinks he is actually a better analyst, despite calling his TV work "an atrocity" and dishes this great line about Phil Simms: "He seems like a fictional announcer from a football movie I wouldn't pay to see," which is pretty much the perfect summary of Simms' broadcasting abilities.
Klosterman is one of those guys that a lot of people hate because he's successful, so he gets unfairly knocked around by people who are jealous of his talent and book deals. Someone once left a comment on my site suggesting that my dislike of Bill Simmons was for the very same reason, to which I responded, "some people hate Bill Simmons because they're not Bill Simmons. I just hate him because he's a d-bag."

* ESPN.com printed an appalling tale of injustice today, detailing the travails of a former high school football star in Georgia serving 10 years in prison for having consensual sex with a 15 year old girl while he was 18. Everyone involved in the case agrees Genarlow Wilson shouldn't be in jail for a decade, but nobody who can do anything about it seems eager to do so. In other news, Mike Nifong probably would have tried to get Wilson sentenced to life.

* A New York Times "Escapes" feature on the Triangle's basketball teams should have been a lot better than it was. Don't read it. I don't even know why I'm linking to it.

* Michael Wilbon thinks we could be witnessing something special in Steve Nash and the Phoenix Suns. And he doesn't have to compare their amazing run to the first 12 episodes of The White Shadow either.

* A few weeks back I started interrupting people's sentences with "George Clooney" and kept trying to get everyone over there and try to solve that thing and it made me hanker for a repeat viewing of Rick Sutcliffe's hilarious drunken appearance on a Padres telecast last May. After looking for it on the Internet for a few minutes, I determined that said video had been fully eradicated from the information superhighway and that this was, perhaps, the most amazing thing I had ever seen. How could a video just disappear? Does Rick Sutcliffe have connections?
Luckily, I'm always wrong and tonight I managed to find video documentation of this historic moment in baseball history. History, you fickle mistress whore, you've been defeated again in your attempts to hold down the brilliance of The Red Baron and for years onward schoolchildren will study Rick Sutcliffe's plan for thing-solving on foreign soil. Me? I'll be dropping off the clip tomorrow at the Smithsonian.

* And since we're on awesome guest appearances in baseball booths, here's the classic Dennis Leary/Lenny Clarke clip from NESN when Leary and Clarke found out about the heritage of Kevin Youkilis and turned it into a Mel Gibson roast. The best part about this clip (besides Jerry Remy practically keeling over from laughing so hard) is that Youkilis makes three huge plays in the half-inning, which gives Leary and Clarke even more fodder for their hysterical antics. Now if you'll excuse me I have to get outta here and call Jeffrey Katzenberg and ask him for a job.