WHAT AM I LOOKING AT?!

Today Serena Williams tweeted out a photo of her ankle. It is gross.

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Yeah, JaVale, you've done some weird and terrible things on basketball courts before, but this is indisputably amazing.

JaVale McGee and his Denver Nuggets — yes, his Denver Nuggets — played the Houston Rockets last night. JaVale did something in that game, something that makes up for all the bad things he's done on court previously.

He self-alley-ooped in traffic on one of the league's most athletic and best defensive centers, Omer Asik.

Watch it again. Everything about it is perfect. It's like a dunk-Rothko.

JaVale knew. JaVale knows his greatness. And so JaVale ran down the court with an insane look on his face and rocked a little finger-'stache, like a boss.

Shhhhhhh. Just sit and think about what JaVale McGee means to you.

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The best gets better.

If you'll recall last season Chris Bosh proved himself to be a world champion photobomber.

Source: gotemcoach.com

This season? Well he's taken his game to a different level. And he's added a new move. Not "The Nose Pick," but "The Faux-se Pick."

Source: @corkgaines

(Original photo by Andrew Innerarity/Reuters)

Image by Jack Moore/Buzzfeed

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Obtained by Katie Couric's talk show , these voicemails (supposedly the voice of a man) give us a glimpse into what Te'o heard for months.

Earlier today we brought you the story (first reported by the New York Daily News) that the man accused of orchestrating the Te'o hoax, Ronaiah Tuiasosopo, claimed to actually be the person pretending to be Lennay Kekua on the phone. Well now, thanks to Katie Couric's talk show Katie, we can hear the voicemails for ourselves. Do you think they sound like a guy pretending to be a girl?

Here "Lennay Kekua" leaves a voicemail on "her first day of chemo."

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Here "Lennay" is upset because she thinks Te'o has someone else in his room.

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Here is a voicemail left the day before "Lennay" "died."

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“It's okay, guys, the real season doesn't start until February.”

One cliché that underachieving teams often cling to is the idea that a that, in the middle of a depressing streak of terrible results, it's never too late to turn over a new leaf. The hope is that, with enough hard work and determination, a team can rediscover its true form. The 17-25 Los Angeles Lakers are still waiting to find that form, and they've rebooted the season at least five times already.

October 30th: The Los Angeles Lakers open the actual NBA season with a loss against the Mavericks.

Image by Jae C. Hong / AP

November 9th: The Lakers fire coach Mike Brown after a 1-4 start and win a few games under interim coach Bernie Bickerstaff.

Image by Brandon Wade,File / AP

Lakers' first-season record: 5-5

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11-year-old Brooke Raboutou is a rock climbing phenom who regularly breaks world records on elite bouldering and sport climbs once thought impossible for someone her age. My arms are sore and twitching just watching this.

Source: youtube.com  /  via: youtube.com

The Association is about to hit the home stretch of another strong season; here are the year's best stories so far.

The Lakers Are At Five Minutes To Midnight

Image by Mark Blinch / Reuters

Under normal circumstances, your sport is in trouble when its most high-profile team is 17-24. That's not the case in this year's NBA; with the league still in the midst of a renaissance, swimming in spectacular but unselfish stars on competitive teams, the most captivating story is a bunch of accomplished veterans falling on their face. Steve Nash and Dwight Howard were supposed to help Kobe Bryant win another title, and the Lakers were supposed to win, like, a TON of games. Chris Sheridan, who is a very smart dude and a basketball writer with decades of experience, had them pegged at 70 wins. Right now, they're on pace for 34, and most people are beginning to concede that they probably won't make the playoffs in a hotly contested Western Conference. The Lakers are like if Zero Dark Thirty came out and it was actually Movie 43. Their internal strain is visible on the court, and it's just so transfixingly weird to watch Dwight Howard, Pau Gasol, Kobe Bryant, and Steve Nash getting casually whomped by, like, the Raptors. It's as if we could've watched Kate Winslet's face when it slowly dawned on her that she had no way to get out of being in Movie 43.

Right now it looks like there's nothing for the Lakers to do but trainwreck their way until the end of the season. They already discarded coach Mike Brown for Mike D'Antoni. If anything, it made the situation worse; Howard apparently doesn't like D'Antoni's system. It'll be hard to trade Gasol, because they've been messing with his minutes and role for the last two seasons, and he's been so bad that the Lakers have no leverage now in making a trade. Howard's trade value is about as low as could be; there's only a half-season left on his contact, and he still doesn't seem to have recovered from last season's back injury. Their best option might just be to do nothing and hope Dwight gets his act together. Which, actually, worked for another team with a talented malcontent...

Carmelo And The New York Knicks Are Finally Making It Work

Image by Ray Stubblebine / Reuters

Although the Knicks have cooled a bit from their hot start, that's sort of like saying fire is cooler than the sun — they're still second in the East and they still have the league's third-best offensive efficiency rating despite the predictable drop in what was an unreasonably high three-point percentage. Most importantly, and excepting that little episode in which he may or may not have tried to fight Kevin Garnett after Garnett may or may not have told him his wife tasted like Honey Nut Cheerios, Carmelo Anthony has been a smart, consistent player who's having the best season of his career. With Melo as a top-10 guy on a well-coached team that has one of the league's best centers and a raft of handy role players — Iman Shumpert's back, Ray Felton will be back soon — the Knicks have a realistic chance (as realistic as anyone's, anyway) at upsetting the Heat in the Eastern Conference. Speaking of which:

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Te'o can't seem to keep his story straight about why he never saw the woman he thought was his girlfriend as she died in the hospital.

Image by Handout / Reuters

In a January 18 interview with ESPN's Jeremy Schaap, Manti Te'o said visiting the woman he believed to be his girlfriend as she recovered from a car accident in the hospital "never really crossed my mind." "I don't know. I was in school," he added.

In an interview less than a week later with Katie Couric on Katie, Te'o contradicted himself. Couric asked why he didn't visit Lennay Kekua when she was in the hospital even though he had at one point been on a layover in San Diego, a two-hour drive from where Kekua was supposedly recovering from a car accident. Te'o said it was too far for him to make the drive, and he decided not to change his flight — but did originally have plans to see Kekua in San Diego.

Here's the video below.

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Image by

Katie's face doesn't take crap from anybody.

The "You talked for how many hours?" face

The "So you never met her?" face

The "You do realize that none of this makes sense, right?" face

The "Tell me the truth. All I want is the truth. I'll slap you to get it if I have to" face

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That's one mean-looking bird. The logo will go into use in 2013-14.

The New Orleans Hornets will officially become the New Orleans Pelicans next season, and the new logo was unveiled today.

Via: nba.com

As we've noted before, "Pelicans" is a much more fitting team for a professional basketball team in New Orleans than Hornets. The pelican is the state bird of Louisiana, and as the Hornets outrageously claim on their website, pelicans "represent the essential qualities embodied by any successful team." But did the Hornets/Pelicans choose the correct logo? A fan-created logo contest on 99designs.com produced some very cool-looking alternatives.

The "Cool Guy" Pelican.

Via: 99designs.com

The "Globetrotter" Pelican.

Via: 99designs.com

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Smooth, Manti. Smooth.

During her Thursday interview with Manti Te'o, Katie Couric asked the question everyone was waiting for. "Are you gay?" Manti's response was...strange.

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And here it is in one awkward GIF!

Hard times for a tired coach.

Image by Photo by Harry How / Getty Images

January 17, 2013. Los Angeles. The Heat pull away to beat the Lakers in Staples Center behind LeBron James' 39 points and eight assists.

Mike D'Antoni awoke to the rhythmic tapping of water on his forehead as he lay half under his desk, on which — amongst the clutter and ash — a bong lay on its side, bleeding its contents drip drip drip onto his face. He could tell by the angle of the sunlight slicing though the blinds that it was afternoon. With a low groan, he rolled onto his side, sat up, and saw Jim Buss doing karate kicks on the other side of the desk. Jim Buss was his boss. Well, his boss's son, and that meant more or less the same thing. "I can't hear him; I'm deaf," D'Antoni thought, and reflexively brought his hands up to touch his ears. He was wearing sound-reducing earmuffs like a worker on an airport tarmac. He took them off and dropped them on the plush carpet. The world swam back into his head. The sound of Buss screaming "KI-YAI!" with each kick was like a tiny bomb going off inside D'Antoni's cranium. He noticed that a sticker on the plastic connecting the earmuffs had 'Jose' written on it in sharpie.

"Tough beat. LeBron, man. KI-YAI! Pau still looked KI-YAI! concussion-y." Buss turned toward D'Antoni. He was wearing a yellow Hulkamania T-shirt. "Dwight played OK. Bout time. Metta, too; never know with him," he put his hands on his hips and jogged in place. "You better get yourself together. Plane leaves in an hour."

D'Antoni grabbed the edge of his desk and hauled himself to his feet with a sigh. He staggered over to the windows where his pants were wedged into the venetian blinds. He pulled them out and several of the plastic slats tore off the cord holding the blinds. He drove his right foot through a pant leg; hopped one-legged while trying to aim his other foot into the other leg; came down on the earmuffs, breaking them; and fell forward onto his couch, crushing a pizza box. "I'm ready," he said, his face pushed into the couch cushion. He rubbed his face into the cushion, wiping the bong water off his head and into the fine leather. He turned over, now sitting on the couch, pizza box crunching, and wrestled his other leg into the pants.

Buss had transitioned into a horse stance, throwing staccato punches with alternating hands, saying "I feel good about this team," to no one in particular, each word emphasized by a punch.

D'Antoni turned his chair right-side up, sat at his desk and punched in the key-code on the top drawer. From this he took a flask, a bottle of OxyContin, and a package of Tums. He picked up the bong, casually taking out the stem and throwing it across the room. He poured the flask, the pills, and the tums into the bong and choked the whole thing back. "Oooooooookay," he rasped in a whiskey-burn voice, and clapped his hands.

January 20, 2013. Toronto. The Lakers lose their fifth-straight road game, 108-103 to the Raptors.

The plane ride to Toronto had been a breeze as far as D'Antoni was concerned, mostly because he spent the bulk of the flight locked in the bathroom. He was close to a breakthrough on The System. He could feel it. He needed the privacy to work. But he didn't go right in. He commiserated with the troops first; he knew that was expected.

Kobe was reading documents on his iPad. His German doctors sent him background files on the human donors used for the knee platelet serum he injected before every game. "I like to know about them. How they lived. It helps me feed off their strength. Afterwards I erase all the documents so no one can trace their disappearance."

"Smart," D'Antoni said, and walked over to Pau's seat.

Pau was hunched over a medical journal and dictating into a small tape recorder.

"Pau, I'm thinking of going small," D'Antoni told him.

Pau raised a finger, telling D'Antoni to hold on. "... T2-12 kyphosis, T5-12 kyphosis, curve flexibility, number of levels fused, presence of Ponte osteotomies, etc." Pau clicked off the tape recorder. "Yes, coach, what is it?"

"I said I'm probably gonna go small here on out."

"Meaning?"

"Meaning," D'Antoni rocked forward off his heels onto his tip-toes and back to his heels. "I'mma bring you off the bench. Start Clark."

"Ah. I see." Pau opened his eyes wide and mock-smiled. The Spaniard clicked his recorder back on and resumed dictating.

D'Antoni moved on. Nash saw him coming and pretended to be asleep. D'Antoni patted Nash's head as he walked by. He saw Dwight, alone at the back of plane, practicing with two ventriloquist's puppets, and just couldn't bring himself to say anything. "Fuck that," he muttered. He went straight into the commode, locked the door, and began crushing pills with his BlackBerry on the sink top.

After the game was a blur. In a rage, he threw a folding chair at the LA Times's TJ Simers. He missed badly and hit ESPN's Ramona Shelburne on the arm.

"Ramona, listen..." he started to say when she dropped her left shoulder, pivoted, and slammed her right fist into his mustache, knocking him out. Gary Vitti carried him to the plane.

January 21, 2013. Chicago. The Bulls run over the Lakers 95-83.

D'Antoni staggered down the tunnel past the locker room and headed for the post-game press conference. Stopping at a water fountain he glanced around, popped two Percocets in his mouth, bent to the spigot and washed them down. He'd taken two Oxys during the game, but that was because he could hear Nate Robinson talking. He wished he still had those earmuff things, wherever those came from.

When he stood up, his brother Dan was at his side.

"Jesus, Dan, fucking scared me. You know I'm under a lotta stress right now and I'm carrying that knife, anyways don't sneak up on me," he said as he wiped the water out of his mustache with the back of his hand.

D'Antoni tried to move past his brother to get to the press conference, but Dan grabbed him roughly by the arm. "Let me do the press conference," Dan whispered. " You're in no shape."

D'Antoni studied his brother's face and it occurred to him that Dan's eyes couldn't possibly run a pick and roll with Dan's nose clogging up the face like that. Have to go small, get the nose outta there. Use a mole; stretch mole, put it on the cheek like Cindy Crawford. Nose's messing everything up.

"Pick and nose," D'Antoni cackled. He put his hand on Dan's shoulder to steady himself and doubled up with laughter.

Dan saw that people were looking now and he made a waving motion with his hand down by his waist to signal everything was OK.

Mike, still laughing, continued doubling over, now in a near-fetal position but on his feet, his hand on Dan's shoulder, slipping down to grab at Dan's tie as he continued to sink towards the ground, Dan struggling to loosen Mike's grip on his tie, Mike looking like a mountain climber trying to rappel down Dan's leg, finally letting go of the tie and crumpling to the floor of the tunnel laughing and laughing.

Gary Vitti carried D'Antoni to the hotel.

He was dreaming about the system, they were running it — high pick and roll, but Pau was in the paint in surgical scrubs sawing into someone's back with a real saw. Pau held his hand out and Mitch Kupchak handed him a scalpel but when Pau went to use it, Mike guessed he touched the side or something, because an alarm started ringing and ringing and ringing and D'Antoni woke up and realized his phone was ringing. He crawled out of the bathtub and located his Blackberry, in the wastebasket next to the toilet, in his pants pocket.

It was Mitch.

"Mike, listen, I know you have a lot on your plate, but the head grounds-keeper has been calling me non-stop. Says a couple of days ago you drove right up onto the facility lawn, crashed into a hedge, got out, snatched a pair of earplugs or headphones or whatever those guys use when they leaf-blow, you know, for the noise, right off the head of one of his guys, then climbed into your office through the window."

D'Antoni pictured the broken earmuffs, the plastic band snapped right next to the sticker with the writing. He picked at stray lump of tile grout.

"Mike?"

"Coulda happened, Mitch. Not sure. There's a bunch going on right now."

January 23, 2013. Memphis. The Lakers lose to the Grizzlies 106-93. Dwight leaves the game after re-injuring his shoulder.

The meeting — to "clear the air" — actually seemed to D'Antoni like it went pretty well. "That went well," he said to himself as he arranged his remaining pill horde by color and size on the hotel nightstand. It was the cleaning lady's idea, actually; the meeting. The hotel cleaning lady. D'Antoni had come to mid-sentence — mid-word, really — suddenly becoming aware that he was carrying on a conversation with this person, although he couldn't figure how it started or how he got into hallway. He was wearing a toga fashioned from bed sheets and towels.

"You should get everyone together and clear the air," she was saying to him.

"Hold on, I'm sorry...how long have we been talking," he asked her.

She shook her head. "You need some help, man. Just leave the sheets and stuff in front of your door." She turned back to her cleaning cart.

He waited until after shoot-around, then started clapping his hands. "OK, guys, let's go. Bring it in, bring it in," he said as they all circled up. "Listen, I, uh, woke up in the hallway and I guess I was blackout talking, anyway, the lady, she had some great advice, she said..."

"Dwight, you hate me or what?" Kobe said suddenly with his arms out, questioning. "I know I can be hard to play with, so, is that what it is?"

That's how the meeting started. D'Antoni thought it was mostly productive except for the way Dwight wouldn't look at Kobe at all, would only talk to him via his ventriloquist puppet, and then started crying. Then Dwight re-injured his shoulder during the game and D'Antoni knew all the dialogue was over, the meeting for nothing. That was Dwight's puppet arm.

D'Antoni shook his head at the memory, reached for the remote control, and started crushing pills with it.

The interview may have been totally weird, but at least it inspired some strong work on Twitter.

The Manti Te'o Saga continued Thursday afternoon with an interview on Katie Couric's creatively-titled show, "Katie." The newsiest moment of the interview came when Couric asked Te'o if he was gay. Te'o answered "No. Far from it." and then reiterated, "Faaaaaar from it." Twitter responded.

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This is how to eat like a champion.

Two-story snackadium. And broccoli trees.

Source: fungreedy.blogspot.com

That pool of guac is in desperate need of a chip.

Source: imgur.com

This one even has sponsors.

Source: ediblestadiums.com

It's so beautiful.

Source: pillsbury.com

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Women's groups want him pulled from his last official UFC fight.

Image by Kiyoshi Ota / Getty Images

Mixed martial arts fighter Quinton "Rampage" Jackson is scheduled to have his last Ultimate Fighting Championship fight on Saturday, but women's groups are calling for his removal due to a video he made that makes light of sexual assault.

The video, which was posted last year but resurfaced in recent days, is titled "How To Pick Up A Gurl." It shows Jackson — who also has a sponsorship deal with Reebok — plotting to incapacitate a woman using chloroform so he can rape her. Says Kathleen Tucker, executive director of the anti-domestic violence group Between Friends, "There are many subtle ways of disrespecting women, and this isn't one of them. It isn't subtle at all."

Between Friends is one of several women's and anti-violence organizations to sign a letter calling on the UFC and Fox, which will broadcast the fight, to remove Jackson from the card.

Sharmili Majmudar, executive director of Rape Victims Advocates, says that many rape victims feel "that what happened to them is not taken seriously, that it's minimized, that they're told theyre lying. So when you hear or you see people in prominent roles essentially echoing those messages that sexual violence is a joke or it's no big deal or it's funny, it just compounds that experience for victims."

She adds that "sports are one way in which boys and young men learn what it is to be a man." So "for the people in those roles to essentially be saying that this is not something that's serious, that it's something to joke about, those are not just problematic but really dangerous and damaging messages" for young male sports fans to get.

Majmudar is also concerned about Jackson's recent sponsorship deal with Reebok, and while her group isn't planning a campaign against Reebok at this time, they do "want to make sure the folks at Reebok think hard about the message they want to send their consumers."

UFC fighters have sparked controversy before with jokes about rape — in 2011, fighter Miguel Torres was dropped from the league after making an apparent rape joke on Twitter. He was soon reinstated after apologizing and visiting rape crisis centers.

Neither the UFC nor Jackson's management have yet responded to requests for comment. Doherty isn't optimistic that the UFC will actually pull Jackson, but she says that the campaign is important even if it doesn't succeed: "It pays to speak out because that's one of the only ways that change is going to happen."

At the 2013 Australian Open, the Chinese player owns her terrible serve.

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According to relatives, Ronaiah Tuiasosopo's lawyer is a big fat liar.

This is Tino Tuiasosopo. According to a relative of Te'o hoax mastermind Ronaiah Tuiasosopo, Tino was the voice of Manti Te'o's fake girlfriend, Lennay Kekua.

Via: nypost.com

Earlier this week, the lawyer of Ronaiah Tuiasosopo claimed that his client imitated the voice of a woman over the phone to Manti Te'o for well over 500 hours. According to a relative of Ronaiah, the lawyer's lying. Voicemails left by "Lennay Kekua" to Manti Te'o went public yesterday, and after hearing the voice of Lennay, a cousin of Ronaiah Tuiasosopo claims that voice belongs to Tino Tuiasosopo, according to the New York Post. Tino is another cousin of Ronaiah's and lives on the island of American Samoa.

Via: nypost.com

According to the Post, Tino's backstory loosely fits Lennay Kekua's. She works for her father's construction company — Te'o told Sports Illustrated's Pete Thamel that Lennay inherited her father's job at a "Clark's construction company" — and is apparently involved in her church.

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Better stock up on 49ers birdhouses.

Ravens Apron

Buy it here.

Source: etsy.com

49ers Toffee

Buy it here.

Source: etsy.com

Ravens Bathing Suit Bottom

Because swimming in February is the most reasonable. Buy it here.

Source: etsy.com

49ers Birdhouse

Birds is fans too. Buy it here.

Source: etsy.com

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The Mighty Ducks franchise is the gift that keeps on giving.

Being someone who doesn't watch a ton of hockey, I first got only a glimpse of this glorious moment from the Edmonton Oilers in a photo on Twitter.

Source: @mwn3d

But then, thanks to the guys over at SBNation, you can watch the real thing.

Mighty Ducks:

Source: jpmoore

Oilers:

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There's just over a week until the Super Bowl. So what do you think they were talking about?

"Man, I can't wait for the Super Bowl. I'm going to turn on ESPN 2 and see what they're talking about this morning. Maybe Colin Kaepernick. I'd love to hear more about him before the big game. Or Ray Lewis' emotional final season. What a great story. Oh, I bet they're talking about the Harbaugh brothers. Brothers coaching against each other in the Super Bowl?! What are the odds?"

*Turns on TV*

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