ChewThemOut Indigestion 2/14/08

• A trade that would have sent Jason Kidd back to Dallas in a seven-player deal fell through when Devean George exercised his no-trade clause. The NBA assumed it was a typo. Not the clause, but the fact that Devean George was still in the NBA.
  
  
• All-time winningest NCAA Basketball coach Bob Knight stepped down as coach of Texas Tech last week, effective immediately. Apparently he knew it was his time when he tried to throw a chair at his backup point guard and realized that he was still alone in his bathroom.
  
  
• Roger Clemens appeared on Capitol Hill to defend himself against the steroid accusations of former trainer, Brian McNamee. Clemens’ defense was weakened by visual evidence and incriminating testimony by Andy Pettitte. When questioned, Clemens threw a broken baseball bat at the representative claiming he thought it was a baseball.
  
  
• Florida Panthers forward Richard Zednik suffered a near-death experience on the ice when a rogue ice-skate sliced his throat open. The ice skate was scheduled for questioning by Senator George Mitchell, but was since destroyed by NFL commissioner Roger Goodell.
  
  
• ESPN has announced that Suzy Kolber and Michele Tafoya will see reduced roles in next year’s coverage of Monday Night Football. Their reasoning: Their target audience doesn't want to look at women. Richard Jefferson has since been let go from his position at ESPN.
  
  
• Speaking of RJ, Rumor has it that Jefferson got into an altercation with a man in a Minneapolis night club, threatening that he would “kick the guy’s ass.” And to further prove his dominance he said he would also get his 9-year-old personal tattoo artist to tattoo an RJ on the guy’s arm.
  
  
• In an unrelated nightclub story, Ron Artest embarassingly got shut out of a nightclub in front of TMZ cameras when the club claimed they had no idea who he was. Artest walked away peacefully and without argument. However, when a fan later asked him for an autograph, Artest punched him.
  
  
• Shaquille O’Neal and Bill Walton had a war of words which came about from Walton referring to Shaquille’s championship aspirations as “an insult to people to think.” However, Walton lost some credibility when he went on to say that marijuana was “an insult to people who do drugs for all-time in the history of this, or any perpendicular universe.”
  
  
• Seattle Supersonic Wally Szczerbiak made headlines when he stated his plans to name his future baby boy Maximus after the movie, Gladiator. His original choice of 'Michael' was quickly insulted then dismissed by his wife, Shannon of Minnesota.
  
  
• After several unedited, vulgar and expletive-laden clips of Chris Berman appeared on the video site YouTube, ESPN asked the site to remove all the videos citing copyright issues. Apparently, Courtney Love owns a copyright on drug-related rants.
  
  
• After much speculation that Jim Fassel would be named the next Redskins coach, Fassel blamed bloggers for him falling out of favor. He continued that he also blames Fantasy Football players for his drafting of Shaun Alexander over Adrian Peterson and Brian Westbrook.
  
  
  
• Dwight Howard’s request to raise the hoop to 12 feet for this year's slam dunk contest was denied for the second consecutive year. The league stated that they didn’t want to show favoritism as it had previously denied the other 490 players’ request to raise the hoop to 12 feet when Dwight Howard dunked.