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I'm on the road today, and will be blogging, but not on the regular schedule. Now, some bullets:

• The Save Our Sonics rally in Olympia got some nice TV coverage. And here's a version of those Where Amazing Happens ads that takes a cynical stab at the NBA's handling of the Sonic situation.
• Sonic fans are talking about what they can do for their team. And in Los Angeles, a story about what a team is doing for a fan. Melissa Rohlin in the Los Angeles Times: "Catherine Royer, a 66-year-old social worker, was diagnosed with breast cancer in December 2005. She started intensive chemotherapy twice a month. Weakened by the treatments, and despondent over losing her hair, she felt nauseated, was suffering from numbness in her arms and legs and had lost 15 pounds. Royer was not an avid sports fan. But her husband, Bill Royer, thought she needed a distraction, so he had cable TV installed in the bedroom of their Brentwood home. 'Initially, I started watching Laker games because it was convenient. I wasn't interested in sitcoms,' she said. What began as tepid interest transformed into a full-blown addiction. The Lakers' problems and successes became a key part of her world, and the team became a vicarious, second family. When Odom's infant son died in the summer of 2006, she felt sadness for his family. When rookie Ronny Turiaf underwent open-heart surgery and then made his Lakers debut six months later, she felt great pride in his accomplishment. When Kobe Bryant last spring said that he wanted to be traded, she was dismayed. Royer says focusing on the team helped her get out of her sickbed. 'I began organizing my life around the games. Basketball distanced me from my cancer. When the players are playing they have to be totally focused in the moment; so too does a fan,' she said."
• TrueHoop reader Emmett writes: "Not sure if this was brought up yet, but I just realized that all three of the serious MVP candidates (KG, Kobe, and LBJ) made the jump directly from high school. I find that interesting, considering the NBA's argument (and popular opinion) saying that college matures a player and makes him ready for the NBA." A good time to link to something I have linked to many times in the past: Michael McCann's paper showing that, as a class, players straight from high school enjoy more success, by common sense measures on and off the court, than those with one, two, three, or four years of college.
• Oscar Robertson wrote in The New York Times about the 1958 game, when he was a college player for Cincinnati, he set a building record by scoring 56 points in Madison Square Garden. It's an insightful read all the way around, but the most amazing and rare part of his tale isn't that he only missed ten of his 32 shots. It's that after the game he developed a meaningful and lasting relationship with a ... journalist? "I did not know how many points I had until I was cornered in the dressing room by the largest horde of reporters I had ever seen, all of whom wanted to ask about my record night. I had hit 22 of 32 field-goal attempts and 12 of 12 free throws. I'm afraid I wasn't a very exciting interview, giving mostly monosyllabic replies and identifying my first state high school championship as my biggest thrill to date. One writer stayed until after all the others had left, and introduced himself as Milton Gross of The New York Post. 'You know, if you're a star, you have to learn how to talk to the media,' he said. 'But I don't know them,' I replied. He said he would be willing to give advice on dealing with the press - an offer I was happy to accept - and he became a trusted friend and confidant for the rest of my college and professional careers."
• Tales of the poker games aboard NBA team planes. Some coaches say they have stepped in at times to make sure the high stakes don't create a distraction for the team.
• A detailed history of Dikembe Mutombo's finger wag.
• Look, Ma, I was on NPR!
• David Berri of Wages of Wins on Eric Gordon and O.J. Mayo: "When we turn to Win Score -- a metric that can tell us something about lighting up a box score -- we see little reason to be optimistic about Gordon or Mayo. Entering Sunday's action, Gordon had posted a 6.7 Win Score per 40 minutes (WS40) played. Mayo has a mark of 6.0. When we look at all shooting guards drafted out of college between 1991 and 2006 (and who played at least some significant minutes in the NBA), we see an average WS40 of 8.7 the last year the player played college basketball. In other words, Gordon and Mayo are far below average. To put "far below average in perspective, here are the shooting guards with a WS40 below 7.0 (again from 1991 to 2006): Kareem Rush, Kirk Snyder, Toby Bailey, Tony Dumas, Lawrence Moten, Courtney Alexander, Ed Gray, DeJuan Wheat, Chris Smith, Jimmy King, Felipe Lopez, Larry Hughes, and Jamal Crawford."
• Assessing Jason Kidd's replacements in New Jersey.
• How are those Stephon Marbury-as-a-Piston rumors playing in Detroit?
• Shaquille O'Neal, not crushing children.
• Channing Frye on Kevin Johnon's campaign to be mayor of Sacramento: "I think it's a great idea. Do I think he'll actually win this year? Probably not, but at the same time it's good to see that after basketball people are trying to do different things. I wish him all the luck in the world. Hopefully he'll make Sacramento a better city because right now it's on the bottom of every NBA player's list of road-trip cities." See that? He sounds 100% upbeat, but essentially says your city sucks and you're going to lose. Maybe Channing Frye should be the politician ...