US Team Report Card, LeBron v. Kobe, and OMG!-Please-Don't-Let-That-Be-OKC's-New-Logoness

1. Basketball freelance writer extraordinaire David Friedman has written a couple of gems:

a) A detailed report card of each U.S. Olympic Team player's 2008 performance. Not surprisingly, Dwayne Wade (.671 from field, .471 3-pters), LeBron James (led Team USA in steals and blocked shots, ranked second in scoring and assists and shot .602 from the field, including .464 3-pters, but only made .458 FTs), and Kobe Bryant (1st in threes made but made .583 FTs) earned A's.

Chris Bosh's A-grade numbers stirred the pot a bit, though. We knew the 4th pick in the celebrated 2003 NBA draft class was good but who knew he would become the Americans' most effective post weapon in FIBA play?

Chris Bosh (17.3 mpg, 9.1 ppg, .3 apg, 6.1 rpg, two steals, six blocked shots overall)

Bosh led Team USA in rebounding and field goal percentage (.774) and he ranked second in free throw percentage (.862). He was perhaps the most pleasant surprise; Wade's performance was more a matter of him getting healthy than anything else, but Bosh supplanted Howard as Team USA's most effective big. Bosh not only played very well in the paint at both ends of the court but he also did a great job of helping to defend on the perimeter against screen/roll plays. His emergence relegated Boozer to mop up duty and further reinforced a theme that I emphasized all along, namely that Team USA did not need another big on the roster; USA Basketball managing director Jerry Colangelo was right to bolster the team's size and defensive flexibility on the perimeter, fully realizing that Team USA would only play one traditional big at a time.

b) A comparison between LeBron James and Kobe Bryant based not primarily on statistics or vague evocations of "teamwork" and "killer instinct" but an analysis of the two towering talents' skill sets - shooting, passing, defense, footwork/fakes, ballhandling, and rebounding.
Somewhat surprisingly, the comparison is a draw or in Bryant's favor in all skills except passing. Friedman admits that LeBron's hyperathleticism/"beastliness" makes up for current skill deficiencies:

There is not a huge gulf between Bryant and James at this point. It seems that most of the people who believe that James is already better than Bryant fall into two camps: fans who are speaking from the heart more than the mind and stat heads who strictly look at (certain) numbers without considering any context. If you talk to NBA executives, coaches, players and scouts their evaluation will generally resemble the one that was offered above; it may differ in certain specific details but people who look at the game from a technical, objective standpoint realize that Bryant’s skill set is more well rounded than James’ skill set at this point. James’ size and athletic ability mitigate those skill set factors to some extent, so one could make a case that James is better than Bryant in that sense but I’d have to see an improvement in James’ shooting and/or a greater decline in Bryant’s athletic ability to agree with that take.

3. Well, it looks like my home state of Arkansas now has NBA teams in four of its surrounding states (Tennessee, Texas, Louisiana, and now Oklahoma). Woo-hoo! Six years ago, this number was one.
Oklahoma City's new team mascot and logo has been kept "under-wraps" until the lid was taken off recently.
Is this possibly the lamest professional mascot/logo of all time? I dare say it was dreamt up by a Stepford Wife on one of her less creative days...