Sports Links 06.06.08

The hurried, unvetted version.

- Derrick Rose as the new Stephon Marbury? I like the comparison, in a sense; I didn't see a lot of passing from Mr. Rose, and I don't really know how to evaluate a player in the dribble-drive system which looks like... advanced streetball to me. He's no Chris Paul, and if saw Chris Paul in college, the only worry would be if he would be marginalized because he was small (and not a great shooter), that dude could PASS.

- Please watch the Coco Crisp/ James Shields fight (third video in this post from Out In Center Field), because that fight is one of the better ones I have seen: Crisp takes umbrage with a hit that he kinda deserved, he avoids a pretty solid-looking punch from Shields, then the Rays Dioner Navarro pulls down Crisp. Jonny Gomes gets some blows in and then Akinori Iwamura, who took the rough slide from Crisp that escalated the beef, gets in some sucker punches. I don't know what Carl Crawford's doing there, though.

- Maryland's basketball program is in turmoil. Catch up here.

- Adam Zagoria and Dick "Hoops" Weiss also have picked up on Phil Wait's commitment to St. John's men's basketball program. Even with no official announcement... looks like he's coming.

- Instead of taking a whole lot of lumps in Bryant's first season in Division I, Bryant University coach Max Good decides to take on an assistant coaching job at Loyola Marymount in LA, working under Bill Bayno.

- Possible white bias in the NBA finals? Hey, if Dan Engber wrote it, it must be true (he's from the old HS, after all).

And Chris Bosh's interviews at the NBA Finals for the Jay Leno show: