Hat tip to Tom Boorstein:

SNY.tv has rights to NIT highlights, and you may have already read about the big highlights from last night’s Seton Hall-Texas Tech affair. Here’s the highlights package:

Ouch.

This is awesome. Really top-notch mascot work:

We’re a bit short-staffed around here this week due to the holiday and so I am quite busy, but I promise to weigh in on the Bob Klapisch column that’s blowing up the Internet a bit later.

Until then, check out this awesome piece by Chris Tomasson at Fanhouse detailing the story of Marvin “Bad News” Barnes, former basketball star, drug addict and marijuana dealer.

The story is a fascinating one, but it’s loaded up with the type of “if only” quotes you always see peppering the tales of great athletes gone astray. If only he had _____, he would have been _____.

I always wonder about that. Obviously there’s something to be said for positive influences and role models that can keep a player out of trouble, but I wonder to what extent people can be hard-wired for destructive behavior.

Could Marvin Barnes have stayed away from drugs? Maybe. But maybe his proneness to drug abuse was part of who he was, and if he was different, he would have been a whole different person who also wasn’t a remarkably talented basketball player.

That might not make sense, so I’ll try to put it in simpler and far less tragic terms: How many times did you, in school or life or wherever, encounter someone truly brilliant who just could not seem to ever motivate himself? It happens all the time, it seems, and we say, oh, if that guy could only get his s@#! together he’d be the valedictorian or the CEO or the Pulitzer Prize winner.

But what if that guy’s inability to motivate himself is as much a part of his makeup as the qualities that make him seem so smart? What if some high achiever with less capacity for creative and abstract thought has more capacity for dedication and drive?

I’ve got no answers. I suppose the truth lies somewhere in the middle; people are born with certain tendencies, but their behavior comes from a combination of their makeup and their experience.

The Winter Meetings start today and, coincidentally, the Times ran this piece from Mary Jo Murphy on Saturday. It opens with the motto of Britain’s 350-year old science fraternity, the Royal Society:

“Take no one’s word for it,” or, in Latin, “Nullius in verba.”

I feel like that’s probably the best approach for fans following the Winter Meetings at their computer screens, as I am.

A few things will happen, and many, many more things will not happen.

Rumors will be developed, disseminated, then dispelled.

I’ll do my best to sift through the nonsense as best as I can here, and weigh in on whatever rumors I hear that I feel like weighing in on.

What I won’t attempt here, though, is the aggregation of every the rumor I hear surrounding the locals. That, in the first Winter Meetings following the mainstream media’s introduction to Twitter, seems like a fool’s errand.

The Winter Meetings are fun, though, because we love to speculate about what teams could do. That is, after all, why they’ve become such a media event: They are great for Web traffic, because baseball fans can’t get enough of the rumor mill.

My point is just to go forward skeptically, as the Royal Society would. Try to trace back everything you read — here or anywhere else — to its original source, and try to pay close attention to the language being used.

So Deadspin got a copy of ousted NBA ref Tim Donaghy’s tell-all about the league and its willingness to fix games.The excerpts are pretty magical.

Certainly there are reasons to doubt a guy writing from jail, and a guy already judged to have compromised his integrity for money. But the excerpts from Donaghy’s book mostly just corroborate something fans of the sport have been suggesting for years: That the league and its officials favor stars and work to manipulate playoff series.

And if that’s true, it’s pretty damning.

I remember hearing from someone who worked for the league that Major League Baseball was still more concerned with keeping gambling out of the game than steroids, even when it was clear that steroids had become a major problem. I thought it was weird and dumb at the time, but the more I think about it, the more I realize otherwise.

Steroids are against the rules, and so steroid users are cheaters, for sure. And that’s bad, no doubt. But they’re still trying to win, and that’s what matters most.

In fact, as far as we know, everyone on the baseball field — the players, the coaches, the umpires — is always trying his hardest. Sure, the umps blow calls, but they usually express remorse afterwards, and there’s really little evidence to show they’re consistently blowing calls to favor specific teams or players. Even when players cheat, they cheat to gain a competitive advantage, and so the overarching integrity of the game remains intact.

If the NBA is really fixing outcomes, though, the league is on a slippery slope toward becoming the WWE. Sports are predicated on the idea that everyone is trying to win, and that officials are working to make sure the team that plays best wins.

Once it’s clear that’s not the case — especially when it’s done at the league’s discretion — it becomes pageantry, a dog-and-pony show. And hey, maybe that would work for the NBA; it certainly hasn’t hurt the WWE. But those of us who actually enjoy the sport of basketball, not just the show, will have to continue focusing on the college game.

What I wonder, especially, is if stars like Kobe Bryant and Allen Iverson — two of the names Donaghy mentions — even want the league working on their behalf? They’re competitive guys, I assume, and I would guess they’d want to play to the same rules as everyone else on the court lest it become clear that they’re being handed points on a silver platter. Isn’t the desire to be the best a big part of what makes someone become a professional athlete? And how could anyone really be called the best if he’s not held to the same standards as his peers?

The Celtics announced yesterday that they are partnering with Chipotle Mexican Grill.

The chain, known for serving absolutely massive burritos and vaguely attempting to pass them off as healthy, will sponsor in-game promotions wherein winners receive “Burrito Bucks,” redeemable for free burritos.

There is no word yet on whether Chipotle will actually be served inside the Garden, but clearly this pioneering decision on the part of the Celtics and Chipotle is one that will send shockwaves throughout the sport. Delicious shockwaves filled with guacamole and fresh salsa.

Burritos and professional basketball: How did no one think of this before?

In a related story, Eddy Curry has demanded a trade to the Celtics¹.

¹: This part of this blog entry is not true.