With apologies to, uh, Todd Snider, Charles Oakley claims to be living “the rock star life” while biding his time for a) another comeback attempt (“”I’m not coming back cheap,” he said. “If you read this article and you think you can get me cheap, there’s another thought coming.”) and prepping what could be a scintillating tell-all bio. From the Sun’s Doug Smith :

“I’m not pulling any punches, true stories. It ain’t one of those Charles Barkley fake books, it’s a Charles Oakley book,” Oakley said. “It’s not an O.J. book, it’s an Oakley book.”

Any book that chronicles Oakley’s life is sure to have its fair share of explosive anecdotes. He was a guy who got suspended for a Raptor game for drilling a basketball at Jeff McInnis’s head at a shootaround. He got tossed from a pre-season game before it began for slapping Tyrone Hill in the head to remind him about a gambling debt.

Oakley has a long list of memorable sayings, ranging from `If it ain’t broke, don’t break it,” to “Just because there’s glass on the road don’t mean there’s been an accident.”

If you put those thoughts and others like it to paper, it may not be Shakespeare, but a whole lot of people will read it.

But there’s one thing he won’t reveal. Oakley, who never came across a subject he wouldn’t pontificate on, won’t give out the juiciest of book details, or the co-author’s name.

“People might try to come after us and take us down, maybe send a hit man,” he said. “I have to protect myself, can’t let it get out.”

The New York Times’ Vincent M.Mallozzi
attended Topps/Upper Deck’s photoshoot for the new rookie cards and garnered this gem of a quote from Kevin Durant :

œWhen a kid out there gets my card, I want him to be excited about it, Durant added. œWhen I was a little younger, I got Allen Iverson™s rookie card and I was ecstatic. But then I™d get other cards, and I™d be like, Oh, man, why did I get this guy? I remember getting a Howard Eisley card and not being too thrilled about it.

Diplomatic understatement of the week comes from Miami’s newly acquired Smush Parker, who calls D-Wade “more of a people person” than Kobe Bryant.

David Stern got a little testy this week when asked how the NBA could’ve allowed rogue ref Tim Donaghy to have advanced so far in the league’s officiating ranks. Sunday’s New York Post reports that Donaghy cheated on his SAT’s, while the Daily News goes back in further, claiming Public Enemy No. 1 copied someone else’s homework in high school. No word yet on how Donaghy treats dogs, however, and until such time, I’m refraining from judgement.