Sixers offseason

[ice grillin you]

Nas said he's less than two weeks from finishing his next LP, Hip-Hop Is Dead ... The N, and he already has a prediction.

"All respect to all rappers on Def Jam, I love the label," Nas said. "Without disrespect, I'm about to be the craziest sh-- on Def Jam. But that should go without saying."

Nas has a lot to boast about this time around. After his last project, the 2004 double LP Street's Disciple, had a lukewarm reception, the New York legend feels confident he has another classic on his hands.

MTV News had a chance to preview some tracks last week, and to dispel some rumors, Nas is not leaving his roots. His LP is very much street, and there aren't really any commercial tracks. Lyrically he still commands the vocal booth.

A bulk of his criticism the last few years has been his choice of beat selection. On Hip-Hop Is Dead, he worked with the best, including Dr. Dre, Just Blaze, Kanye West and others. You can hear the excitement in the producers' music — they've given him top-grade material.

"It's cool," Nas said Monday about working with Dre on "QB True G," which features a guest appearance from the Game. "I worked on Dre's Aftermath album when he left Death Row. The second Aftermath album was the Firm album. I think him and [industry mogul] Steve Stoute got into a lot of beef, so the record got hurt when it came out. But that album is still a platinum monster. I know Dre was saying that n---as was bothering him, saying the Firm flopped or he turned pop, but that Firm album was not a flop. That record was a monster. Back then, [Interscope Records co-chairman] Jimmy Iovine was ready to send me a jet, trying to get me off of Sony because he was seeing my potential and what I needed to do.

"Since then, I hadn't seen [Dre], but I bumped into him in a studio and he said he was ready to do my whole album right there on the spot," Nas continued. "I just knocked out the joint I did with him."

The beat has the feel of the dark party track Dre gave 50 Cent for the "Outta Control" remix, but it has a bit more bite. Nas raps on the beat that he and the Game came to "sprinkle a little bit of heaven for your ears." The Game starts his verse by rapping that over a decade ago, he was a kid in a record store and had to decide whether to buy Nas' Illmatic or Dre's The Chronic because he only had money for one purchase. He decided to steal both albums.

"Game is a megastar, man," said Nas, who appears on the Game's upcoming The Doctor's Advocate. "That n---a shut down a whole crew by himself. That's big."

Kanye West raps on and produced "Still Dreamin'." Nas starts one verse scolding hangers-on who are looking for handouts, and on his second verse, he tells a story of a female newscaster who gets caught up in a drug dealer's lifestyle.

" 'Ye is that n---a," Nas told. "His music is right. I wish I could've got more time in with him, actually. He comes through. N---as just be kicking it. Next thing you know, he plays me his sh-- he's working on, I play my sh--, then it comes from there. He'll play me some sh--, and I'll say, 'Let me get that.' "

The song "Blunt Ashes," where Nas talks about the missteps and betrayals of R&B legends like Prince, Alexander O'Neal and Bobby Womack, came about from the wordsmith just kicking it in the lab with another one of his friends, Philadelphia 76ers forward Chris Webber. Webber produced the track.

"We was in the studio in Kelis' session," Nas said about working with his wife. "We had a room next door, because I didn't want to mess her session up, but I wanted to listen to something. I went in the other room, we was chillin'. One of my mans told Chris to put on one of his [beat] CDs. We was in there freestylin'. I started freestylin' to one joint about sh-- we just be talking about, and I was like, 'This is my sh-- right here. This is my joint.' But Chris is my homie though. One of my closest homies."

[Dillen]

Cwebb looked awesome in the first possession of the game with that turnover. Tried passing, blocked back to Webber. Obviously was angry and just handed it to Phoenix then.

[The BIGSTUD]

Sixers defeat Suns 103-100. Rodney Carney hits a game winning 3 with about 8 or so seconds left to give the Sixers the lead for good. He finished with 14 and 7. Korver with 20, AI with 29.

[MDS]

obviously this means we are going to the nba finals.

[The BIGSTUD]

Not just going, but winning it in 4 games.

[SD_Eagle5]

Team ball is back

[MDS]

igy hasn't been this hard since he saw a black guy that kinda looked like tupac.

[Magical_Retard]

man i cant wait for the nas album. cant wait for the jay z album. copped the lupe album.

eminem....call me when u realize u have talent and stop trying to be g unit.


and oh yeah i caught the end of the game...nice come back. if only we could have a defense...our offense is fine.

[hunt]

weird al has a new album coming out soon.

anyway, i just watched the 1st half.  iggy is running more point so a1 can play off the ball more...sammy still looks clueless on offense...and webber looks about 15 years older than he did last season.  carney looks pretty good & everybody else is the same as last year.

and steve nash got a haircut.

[The BIGSTUD]

He'll start sucking now. His hair gave him power.

[hunt]

yep...no mvp this year.

[ice grillin you]

is anyone elses sound distorted

[Magical_Retard]

missed the game today. anything interesting happen?

[BigEd76]

They beat Moscow and apparently won the European NBA Live tournament or whatever it was called.  Now they're on their way back to the USA

[PhillyPhreak54]

Off-season odyssey has a happy ending
Ex-Sixer John Salmons ended up a King.
By David Aldridge
Inquirer Staff Writer

DALLAS - He does not like talking about his summer because he finds that people don't really understand his thinking, and it's not something that's easy to explain. So he keeps it to himself.

"It was more of a spiritual thing than anything," John Salmons says now about the off-season that took him from the 76ers to Phoenix to Toronto... and then to Sacramento. All he was looking for was the right fit, a place where he would feel comfortable in body, in mind, and in his soul.

Who knew that would be showering next to Ron Artest?

"It could have worked in Philly if the right situation ever presented itself," Salmons said last week. "I actually felt like, when the season was over, and everything went down that was going down in Philly, I felt like that situation was going to present itself in Philly. But it didn't. So you move on."

The Sixers wanted to re-sign Salmons, a first-round pick by the Spurs they had acquired on draft night 2002 from San Antonio. In four seasons, Salmons, a graduate of Plymouth Whitemarsh High, had established himself as a talented, if uneven, player. But the luxury tax-pushing Sixers were unwilling to use their midlevel exception on anyone this summer.

So Salmons, who averaged 7.5 points off the bench last season, looked around. The Suns quickly offered $22 million over five years, and Toronto offered a million more. To the surprise of many around the league, Salmons decided to go with the rebuilding Raptors instead of the championship-contending Suns.

Yet, within a few days, Salmons was having second thoughts.

"The whole time, I just felt like something wasn't right," Salmons says. "I felt like God was telling me I shouldn't go there. Then, my agent, Joel [Bell], he was pulling his hair out, telling me I had to take one of these two. He was saying 'you'll end up with no deal if you don't take one of these.' He was doing the right thing. He was looking out for my interest. But I couldn't deny my faith."

A "pretty spiritual person," Salmons prayed on it with his then-fiancee Taniesha (now his wife; they married in September). And within a few days, Salmons backed out of the agreement, which would have netted the Sixers a $2 million trade exception in the sign-and-trade deal.

"I was going crazy," he said. "I was stressing."

And because the Sixers had rescinded their qualifying offer to Salmons on the assumption that he was going to Toronto, he was temporarily left out in the cold.

But Salmons got a break. The Kings had spent weeks trying to re-sign their own free agent guard, Bonzi Wells, who had crazily turned down a six-year, $38 million offer from Sacramento. With negotiations going nowhere, Kings GM Geoff Petrie broke off talks with Wells' representative and starting looking around.

Petrie had had an interest in Salmons, but figured he wouldn't be able to afford him-and that it was a moot point, anyway, because he was going to Toronto.

Soon afterward, though, Kings assistant general manager Wayne Cooper heard that Salmons was wavering.

"All of a sudden, Coop got a call from Joel," Petrie recalled. "We had kind of taken [Salmons] off of our radar screen. And Coop said: 'Are you ready for this?' He said: 'Would you still have an interest?' I said 'Sure.' "

Within a couple of days, Salmons had agreed to a five-year deal for slightly more ($25.5 million) than Toronto had offered.

In Sacramento, Salmons hopes to be part of a more diverse offense, one in which the ball moves around and is shared more. He's backing up starter Mike Bibby at the point, but the Kings, hoping to get more out of Salmons' diverse game than the Sixers did, envision him playing up to three positions.

"He's quiet," Kings coach Eric Musselman said. "He's respected by his teammates... and he does whatever you ask. You ask him to do something, he just rolls over to that spot. There's no bad body language, no facial expressions - It's 'OK, Coach.' He's a no-maintenance guy."

The low-key Kings seem a good fit for the low-key Salmons. Artest and the team's high-profile owners, the Maloof brothers, get all the attention. And Sacramento has always been a team that moves the ball around.

"I just think it's a great situation," Salmons said. "I'm just trying to play hard and do the best I can. The main thing I'm trying to do is forget about what went down in Philly, and just start over, and have fun."

Johnny "Reggie White" Salmons?