Just like that, The Witness has become The Wimpness, because he is double-dribbling with his tongue.
One moment, LeBron James is saying the NBA needs to "shrink" by contracting teams, and the next, he is saying those evil media folks are twisting his words on the subject.

Whatever, dude.

When it comes to LeBron's original comments, which essentially were that he thought the league actually did need to get rid of some teams to improve the overall competition, he was wrong. He was WAY off base. He wasn't within a couple of fast breaks of reality.

That's because he didn't go far enough.

He should have said all four of the major professional sports leagues in North America need to contract. Then he should have peered into the eyes of everybody in the room with the unspoken look of "Yeah, I said it. So what do you want to do about it?"

The NBA should go from 30 teams to 27, 26 or less. With barely a nudge, for instance, Clipper fans would morph into Laker fans soon after that lesser of the two franchises in Los Angeles didn't exist. And, in contrast to the Colts sneaking out of Baltimore in the middle of the night during a blizzard, the Grizzlies could slow-dance out of Memphis in broad daylight at rush hour without hearing a whimper.

The same goes for the Nets in the Meadowlands, where their turnstiles threaten to rust every season, and where they'll remain the "other" team in the New York City area, even if they relocate to Brooklyn.

Plus, regardless of their place in the standings, the Hawks have resided near the bottom in NBA attendance for decades, which means much of Atlanta would shrug and become more obsessed with Georgia Bulldog football if the Hawks flew out of town.

Elsewhere, in baseball, no matter how prolific the Marlins and the Rays have been at times, most folks around Florida couldn't care less. So get rid of them, or combine them with the Oakland Athletics -- if that struggling franchise also isn't contracted.

Phoenix. Atlanta. Charlotte. Nashville.

Nobody in those warm-weather cities would mourn the loss of their NHL teams after a few months (or days, maybe hours). That should be just the start of contraction for a league that also lacks fans in places beyond those more suited for sunshine than snow.

Oh, and you shouldn't have an NFL team when you're in your sixth consecutive season of covering up 10,000 seats for each of your home games in an attempt to create sellouts.

Hello, Jacksonville Jaguars.

It should be goodbye, Jacksonville Jaguars.

I can dream, can't I?

Unfortunately, the player unions of each of these leagues have become so powerful that contraction won't happen -- at least, not easily. We needn't go further than the ongoing NBA labor negotiations that feature commissioner David Stern suggesting that contraction would help the league's overall financial situation, and it would.

The NBA players union couldn't care less, though, since contraction would trigger the loss of jobs for its members.

So this wasn't surprising: within milliseconds of James saying what he claims he sort of said but really didn't mean to say or was misinterpreted in saying it, he got blasted by his peers.

Thus this ongoing sight of James backpedaling faster than he ever has either on or off a basketball court.
He says now that he doesn't even know what "contraction" means. He says reporters didn't hear exactly what they heard him say last week before a game for his Miami Heat in Phoenix.

This is what they heard LeBron say: "Imagine if you take Kevin Love off Minnesota and add him to another team and you shrink the (league). Looking at some of the teams that aren't great, you take Brook Lopez or you take Devin Harris off these teams that aren't good right now, and you add him to a team that could be really good.

"Not saying let's take New Jersey and let's take Minnesota out of the league. But, hey, you guys are not stupid. I'm not stupid. It would be great for the league."

Yes, it would. And, as LeBron added that day in Phoenix before his backpedaling nearly took him from the Arizona desert to South Beach to somewhere over the Atlantic, "Hopefully, the league can figure out one day where it can go back to the situation of how it was, like in the '80s, where you had three or four All-Stars, you had three or four superstars, three or four Hall of Famers on the same team. The league was great. It
wasn't as watered down as it is (now)."

No, it wasn't, and the Milwaukee Bucks of the 1980s were a microcosm of those times by ranking high among the NBA's all-time greatest teams that nobody ever remembers. They had stars such as Sidney Moncrief, Bob Lanier and Terry Cummings, and they were led by Don Nelson, who won NBA Coach of the Year honors twice during that decade.

In one stretch, those Bucks won their division seven straight years while winning 50 or more games each of those years.

Here was their problem: the Philadelphia 76ers of Dr. J, Moses Malone and Maurice Cheeks, and the Boston Celtics of Larry Bird, Kevin McHale and Robert Parish. As a result, those Bucks never reached the NBA Finals, and they rarely reached the Eastern Conference finals, but they showed how gifted many of those other NBA teams were during the 1980s.

That's all LeBron was saying. Well, before he swore he really didn't say what -- well, you know.
What I'm saying is that, although the NBA's national television ratings are up by 30 percent so far this year, those ratings would soar to levels beyond a combination of vintage Air Jordan leaps if the league sliced either some or all of its franchises that produce yawning.

I'm still dreaming, of course.

This article contributed by Terence Moore of Fanhouse.

Resuming our countdown, we arrive at #17:  Bobby Phills.  He was born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana and attended Southern University.  Southern is one of the most well-known historically black colleges and universities.  As a Southern Jaguar, he played alongside Avery Johnson, and he his senior year he established himself as a legitimate college stud, lighting it up from behind the arc.  In the 90-91 season, his senior year, he ranked fourth in scoring with 28.4 a game.  That same year, he led the nation in three-pointers made per game with 4.39.

Bobby Phills was not drafed in the first round of the 1991 NBA Draft, but he was selected by the Milwaukee Bucks in the second round with the 45th overall pick.  As a rookie, he hadn't even played a single minute before the Bucks cut him in December.  Maybe see how he plays first? 

Determined to make it with another team, he refined his skills with the Sioux Falls Sky Force of the CBA.  That was a great move for him, because he got a chance to play and develop his skills.  He got his game back and averaged 23 points per game.  The Cavaliers took notice and signed him later that same season, and he appeared in 10 games. 

A solid defender and tireless worker, they kept a roster spot for him the next year.  In his second season he appeared in 31 games with the Cavs.  In 1993, he finally emerged as a solid NBA player, playing in 72 games.  That season, he started 53 of those game and average 8 points.  The next year in 1994, he was a regular starter and averaged 11 points per game. 

Bobby kept developing his raw talent and in the 1995-1996 Cavaliers season, one of my first as a true fan, he started drilling 3's with consistency.  On a team with Shawn Kemp, Terrell Brandon, Danny Ferry, and Bob Sura, he scored almost 15 points a game.  He improved his shooting percentage over 50 percent from the year before, and shot 44% from the behind the arc.  That was good enough for 7th in the league, better than Michael Jordan, Reggie Miller, and Allan Houston.  He also was named to the NBA all-defensive team. 

Coached by Mike Fratello, The Cavs finished 47-35 and made the playoffs that year, but were knocked out by the Knicks in the first round.  Interesting side-note: that year Shaquille O' Neal was 50% from the 3 point line.  Not sure how that works out.

Phills played one more year as a Cavalier, and then was signed by the Charlotte Hornets as a free-agent.  That year he missed 20 games due to injury, but still averaged 10.4 points a game.  He followed that up with another solid year in 1998, and was averaging 13.6 points per game 28 games into the 1999 season before his life came to a tragic end. 

On January 12, 2000, Bobby Phills died in a car accident in North Carolina on the way home from a morning shoot-around.  He was only 30 years of age.  According to the police report, Bobby and teammate David Wesley were wrecklessly racing their Porsche's over 100 miles an hour when his car spun out of control and he veered into oncoming straffic.

It sent shockwaves throughout the Association.  He was survived by his wife Kendall and two childern.  Later that year, the Hornets retired his #13 jersey during a game against the Cavaliers later that year.  Bobby Phills was a true NBA good-guy, winning the NBA's Sportsmanship Award in 1998.  Bobby helped turn around the Cavaliers franchise, at least temporarily.  His years in Cleveland will always be fondly remembered, and his 1996 season will always be remembered as a piece of Cavaliers history.  I'm guessing he probably ends up blocking Jordan in that picture.  Bobby Phills is underrated