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Just what the interweb needs: More middle-aged sports bloggers! The LA Times has launched a blog by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, the bald-headed intellectual responsible for the skyhook and six NBA championships. Kareem is the rare professional athlete who became an author and historian, so his blog is, frankly, better written than most metro papers. And it includes a lesson on the black history angle of the invention of the lightbulb! So that's useful. But is this whole athlete/ blogger thing really a road we want to trod? Because Mr. Abdul-Jabbar might be the smartest guy doing it, but he's DAMN sure not the only one. Everything you need to know and nothing more, explained right now.

Football, America's most popular form of bloodletting, is not full of genius computer geeks, let's face it. But for amusement, check out Tampa Bay monster linebacker Derrick Brooks' blog. It started out in 2005 as a clearly flack-written piece of crap, with proper punctuation and messages like "To the fans, thanks for the support. Remember to stay community-minded and support charities and volunteer your time. And never forget to keep God first in your life." But the flack obviously got too busy to mess with it, because NOW D-Brooks' blog reads like so:

WELL BIG SURPRISES THIS WEEKEND BUT THE TEAM THAT MAKES LESS MISTAKES DO WIN FINAL FOUR IS HERE ITS FUN BUT WISH WE WERE THERE LIKE 28 OTHER TEAMS NOW ITS TIME TO GET ADJUSTED TO OFFSEASON FOR COUPLE OF MONTHS WELL TALK TO YOU NEXT WEEK WITH SUPERBOWL PICK

The NBA has a shitload of blogging players, probably because they tend to spend less time in hospitals than NFL players, and they're all young video game-playing whippersnappers. The best of these is by Gilbert Arenas, the Washington Wizards' certifiably insane All Star guard who just says whatever comes into his head, like calling league executives stupid, or talking about shaving his balls. Others are much worse, though; Luol Deng from the Chicago Bulls tends to say stuff like "I am definitely sick of talking about my contract," and "I bought Bob Marley's Greatest Hits. To me he is amazing."

SHUT UP AND TELL US WHO IS GAY AND/ OR STORIES ABOUT HOOKERS AND/ OR STORIES ABOUT WHO GOES TO GAY HOOKERS.

This could be a good rule of thumb for all athlete bloggers. If you're not as smart as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (which you're not), you have to throw in some dirt to make things interesting. Otherwise you become an insufferable bore like the Bush-supporting Boston Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling, who goes on and on about HIMSELF and GOD on his stupid blog, but has little scandalous dirt to report on his current teammates. Also, he is a Republican prick.

And of course, you can't talk about insufferable sports-related blogs without mentioning Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban's blog, which is long and detailed and diverse, since Cuban is a billionaire tech mogul. The problem is he has fallen into the blog rabbit hole, where his sense of self importance has been warped beyond all measure, and he wastes words doing things like endorsing Bloomberg for president, instead of discussing which of his players may be seeing (gay?) hookers. Imagine if your really computer-savvy friend who is also kind of a stuck up asshole, but still nerdy, got a billion dollars, a basketball team, and a blog. There you go.

The lesson for athletes is, unless you are smarter than you think you are, you gotta drop some gossip. Otherwise you're just a less articulate rambling team spokesman. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar can stay; but if newspapers want to set up any more player-bloggers, they have to get them all drunk first.