Top 5 Celtics That Never Were. #2: Ben Wallace.

Wallace was born the tenth of eleven children in White Hall Alabama. In high school he was All-State in basketball, football, and baseball. At 17, Wallace attended a basketball camp and met New York Knicks' center Charles Oakley. Oakley would become Ben's mentor.

After high school, Wallace attended junior college at Cuyahoga Community College in Cleveland Ohio. At Cuyahoga Ben averaged 17 rebounds and nearly 7 blocks per game. After two seasons Wallace, under the advisement of Charles Oakley, transferred to division 2 Virginia Union. In his Senior year at V.U. Wallace earned All-State honors in baseball, football, and basketball, where he averaged 13pts, 10reb, 3.6 blocks, and led his team to the Division 2 Final Four.

After a reasonably successful college career, Ben Wallace entered the 1996 NBA Draft. Unfortunately he went undrafted.

More Halloween Pierce

Here's another pic Paul posted on his twitter yesterday. For some reason Pierce reminds me of Manny Ramirez in this pic.

And here's a video of Paul bowling. Nice banner!

Paul Pierce as Buzz Lightyear

Paul Pierce tweeted a couple pics last night of him as Buzz Lightyear for Halloween. I'm guessing his wife is Storm from X-Men. No idea who his kids are dressed as. The oldest looks like a matador maybe and the baby looks like a cross between Mr. Potato Head and a doctor. Another pic of Paul after the jump. 

NBA Owner Fined for Wanting to End the Lockout

In another sign that the NBA has serious issues, Miami Heat owner Micky Arison was fined $500,000 dollars by David Stern for responding to tweets (See below). Arison is among the owners that don't want a lockout, but are being muted by the owners that want the season cancelled. See Arison is a businessman that knows how to run his businesses right. He bought his team. He hired one of the most respected basketball minds to run his team in Pat Riley and he stays out of basketball operations and let's Riley run things.

Riley in turn has continually pulled of shrewd moves to keep the Heat competitive, with the most recent being adding LeBron James and Chris Bosh to the player he drafted Dwyane Wade. So Arison and the Heat make money. In the previous collective bargaining agreement, players received 57% of BRI  and the owners 43% of BRI (That's basketball related income. Other income like cable tv deals go all to the owners.) The players already have agreed to give back 5% of BRI to the owners (so billionaire owners will increase their take home payments by nearly 12%. This in addition all the system issues that the owners will be benefitting from. Arison knows that the owners have won and wants the lockout to end.

Unfortunately the idiot owners that don't know how to run a successful business aren't satisfied yet. They want even more from the players. They want to make more money even if they hire poor GM's, or male poor decisions. Take the Cavs Dan Gilbert for example. The Cavs sucked and because of the NBA lottery system that benefits the inept run teams, the Cavs drafted LeBron James with the #1 pick. The Cavs had YEARS to surround LeBron with another star and failed time and time again. Then with their last shot during LeBron's final year, the Cavs turned down a deal for Amar'e Stoudemire, because they didn't want to give up J.J. Hickson. When free agency hit, without an Amar'e to be his sidekick, LeBron bolted. The only reason Dan Gilbert wants the season wiped out is because he has a bottom dwelling team. If he had LeBron and Amar'e he'd be singing a different tune. He'd be all set to play ball. Instead he wants Stern to bailout his team again.