The game today between the Cleveland Cavaliers and the Orlando Magic turned out to be a pretty good game – as it should have. A game with Lebron James, Dwight Howard, Vince Carter, Shaquille O’Neal should at a minimum be an interesting game. That is plenty of badassitude packed on the same court. Cleveland lost the game.

The Cavaliers, you can tell, want the NBA championship very, very, badly. One suspects that somewhere in the deep recess of their brain-trust, they have come to the conclusion that the only way they will hold on to Lebron James for the long haul is a) to surround him with enough talent to win the championship like now, and b) to surround him with the team that has the potential to win more championships a la Michael Jordan in Chicago. As we all know, once star players are associated with a championship team in one city, particularly a championship team team with the potential to win more championships, they tend to stay put. No one wants to mess with a good thing.

They went out, the Cavaliers, and brought in a lot of beef and badassitude down low (about 325 pounds of beef by way of Shaquille O’Neal) where last year in the playoffs, they were abused by the Magic. Then just for good measure, they added some more size and scoring by way of Antawn Jamison. Antawn is a badass – in a calm, do your job every day kind of way. As an aside, I always take an interest in following the careers of players traded from Washington. They generally tend to win championships after they have left Washington. At one time in fact, the Wizards had 4 starters in an NBA championship team – with the Detroit Pistons.

In the fourth quarter, James already had 30 points, Shaquille and Jamison were closing in on 20 each. You would think with that score line that they were winning the game but Orlando was kicking their ass. That Jameer Nelson is a badass. I don’t think there are too many better expressions of badassitude than a point guard who comes out up with the ball, pulls up at the three and hits the three. Pure stone-cold badassitude! And that Vince Carter does entertain when he get going. When this game is done though, one wonders what else the Cavs need. You look at them on paper and you think they should have a clear path to the championship. Maybe they still will if they pick it up some more in the playoffs.

They have the personnel. Do they have enough badassitude?

I was recently engaged in an argument with a guy who knows quite a bit about basketball. The subject was this – between Lebron James or Kobe Bryant, who has more basketball badassitude. There is no doubt both guys are badass. Very, very badass. But at the height of their game, who would you give the edge? Who is the badasser badass?

It is easy to take the short route in this equation and use championships as the tie breaker. In that case, you would easily give it to Kobe. Or, you could opt for overall statistics and, on the basis of triple doubles and such, it seems to me you would go with Lebron. Or you could argue age or youth for that matter, and future upside, and again that would go to Lebron. But that would be a punkass approach to measuring badassitude.

These two guys have talent to spare. Heck, Kobe scored 80 points in a game that he finished on the bench. On the bench folks. Kobe was sitting on the bench, the game was still being played and he already had 80 points!!! Now if that is not badassitude, I do not know what is. For Lebron, the thing that totally laid bare his unadulterated badassitude for me did not even happen during a game (we see enough of those anyway). He was on 60 minutes or some such show talking to (Steve Croft?). He tells the guy he can turn his back and make a shot from way over there. Just like that, he turns around, shoots the ball – backward. Back-freaking-ward!!! And …. Swoosh!! Nothing but net. If that is not pure badassitude, I don’t know what is.

But I have watched both these guys for a while. I have watched them work when the game was on the line. When one of these guys absolutely has to get the game won. I have also watched basketball for a long time. There is killer instinct that comes out of a badass when he is the only one that everyone is counting on to deliver. No disrespect to Lebron cause I love the guy, but in those moments when the only thing on deck is to do everything and anything to win, Kobe is badasser. But who knows, by the end of this season, I might change my mind.

So I get up this morning to a note from one of my boys soliciting my opinion on the slam dunk contest from last night. I did not watch the slam dunk contest because, thankfully as it turned out, I was doing and watching other, more interesting things. That said, I decided to check it out at the NBA site where the viewing experience is more merciful having been compressed into a 3 and a half minute video of just the dunks.

I watched the contest, waited, got to the end of the video and ran it back. I wanted to be sure that I had not missed something. Sadly, I hadn’t. The contest sucked. It was a weak punkass attempt at entertainment. And it failed. Once upon a time, we waited with bated breath for the slam dunk contest. Those of us who saw its early incarnation have memories of certain dunks etched deep. Spud Webb, Michael Jordan, Dominique Wilkins, Kenny Sky Walker, Dee Brown. Remember Cedric Ceballos with the blindfold? Those guys were badass. Their dunks were a statement in badassitude.

Watching last night’s, and I was watching minus the mind numbing jibber jabber, commercials and all the accompanying bullshit that TV devised in what could only have been intended to impose pain on  viewers, it distinctly felt like we were watching a once good idea in its last throes. The slam dunk contest is dying. The reason it is dying is real simple – the guys with the best dunks are not in it. There is no incentive for them to be in it. If the best guys were in it, Lebron, Kobe, Howard, Carter would have been dunking last night. The only way it can survive will be for the NBA to make the contest attractive for the big names.

One hopes they will otherwise the slow match towards the demise of the slam dunk contest might just have turned into a sprint after last night.

For a good while, we thought Gilbert Arenas of the Washington Wizard was, or at least if he was healthy, could be a real badass on the basketball court. There was no dispute about his ability to be a badass. But a badass isn’t worth Jack unless that badass has badassitude. It is sort of like a kid who was taught all the right things and how to behave but does not know how to be a gentleman. You see, badassitude is the quality of being a badass – how you carry your badassedness. Gilbert Arenas didn’t understand that. He thought it was enough to be a badass and that being a badass in basketball made you a badass in other places and everywhere. Not true. Badassitude is what allows you to understand how and where and under what circumstances to deploy your badassedness. Arenas didn’t get that and in the end, he scored a zero on the badassitude scale, on his way to jail. Punk at this point is a generous description.