Miami gets a tough PF to replace PJ Brown.

Cleveland gets a "package of players" and gets rid of Shawn Kemp

Portland gets Shawn Kemp and loses Brian Grant.

The Clippers have a coach. John Lucas' asking price was steeper than they could accept and so they went to Plan J. Alvin Gentry had just signed on to be an assistant with the Spurs and had an "out" clause in that contract in case he was offered a top-slot job. In previous head coaching incarnations, Gentry compiled a record of 88-93. Elgin Baylor said that Gentry "fits right in to this organization." Clearly that is not true since his record is actually close to .500 and the Clippers aren't anywhere near that for the last 10 years. Let me translate that statement for you; Gentry "fits right in" to the Clippers because:

He is willing to work cheap!

Tony Kornheiser likes to do a segment of his radio show called "Jocks in the Docks" as various athletes run afoul of the law. That will clearly be part of his shtick today.

Michael Irvin was arrested again. He says he was in the wrong place at the wrong time (gotta give him points for probing insight there). Michael was in a home when police raided the place looking for a woman involved in a drug investigation having something to do with a heroin ring. She was not there and Michael was there visiting her sister and the police found some marijuana and so Michael was arrested. Just last month, his probation that resulted from a prior drug conviction/guilty plea was over so his possible possession of a minor amount of MJ is a pretty trivial legal matter. Problem is that he just signed to do studio commentary by FOX for NFL telecasts. There better not be any other shoes dropping here.

On the same day, Bill Romanowski has been charged with using a diet drug that had been prescribed for his wife and a friend. His lawyer claims that he also has a prescription for the drug called Phentermine. A spokesperson for the authorities said that these charges resulted from an investigation that has been ongoing for more than a year. That raises a couple of questions:

1. Can there be any serious drug problems in the Denver area if this investigation can consume a year's worth of resources?

2. Why does Romanowski associate with fat people who need prescription diet drugs?

3. How can Shawn Kemp get a prescription?

Corey Dillon has signed a one year deal with the Bungles for $3M per year which is more than double what he was offered by the Bungles. So at the end of this year, Cincy can put the franchise tag on him again and go through all this nonsense one more time, or he can become a free agent and can disappear. This saga will clearly be more entertaining than any of the concocted "Reality TV" series that threaten to dominate the Fall TV schedule.

On "The Golf Page" today, twenty-six column inches are devoted to an attempted explanation of "Course Ratings" and "Slope Ratings". Early on, we learn from author, Kathy Orton, that the mathematical calculation for slope ratings is quite complicated. I'd be willing to wager that it is not something like Fermat's Last Theorem which confounded mathematicians for about 300 years, but I'm sure that Orton would find it confusing. All that aside, there is a nugget in the article. It seems that in 1977, a Lt. Commander at the Naval Postgraduate School devised the mathematical means to determine a course's difficulty for the "bogey golfer". That was back in the Carter Administration when Zero Based Budgeting was going to assure that government was doing only the critically important things. Your tax dollars at work.

But don't get me wrong, I love sports...