ASHBURN, Va. -- Washington Redskins running backs Rob Kelley and Keith Marshall were checking out games in a store when
Authentic Lorenzo Mauldin Youth Jersey the latter overheard a conversation. A young boy, maybe 12 or 13, quizzed the cashier on the cost of a certain game. Marshall then asked Kelley: "You want to help him out and get it for him?" "The first thing that clicked in my head was, I always wanted someone to do that for me when I was a kid," Kelley said. "My people couldn't walk into a store and buy me stuff I really wanted, but with stuff going on in your family, some stuff you can't get." But now that Kelley can afford it, he and Marshall decided to buy the boy an Xbox. At first, the boy didn't understand what the two players were offering to do. Finally they said, "If you want the game, say yes." The boy then said he wanted to make sure it was OK with his grandmother. "I've been in that place where I wanted something and couldn't have it," Kelley said. "So it felt good just to be in a position to spare two, three hundred dollars to help a kid out like it's not going to affect me no type of way. Why not? I understand what he's going through"I had moments where we were poor and moments like, we were never rich, but moments where I had a scooter and other kids didn't have a scooter. But we had moments where all we had to drink was water. So I've been in both parts. It's so easy to identify certain things with kids." Kelley and Marshall posed for a picture with the boy and his grandmother; that's around the time they discovered that their September Santas were Redskins. "When we introduced ourselves they're like, 'Oh, Rob Kelley. I know you!' But at first that's what made it so good. He
http://www.authenticchicagoblackhawks.com/authentic-glenn-hall-jersey?gender=Youth didn't know us," Kelley said. Kelley did not want to post the picture with the family on social media. The story seeped out only because another customer posted what happened on Facebook. "That's not what I did it for," Kelley said. "It's cool that everyone knew it, but I'm not trying to promote it. Me and Keith, we didn't want to take a picture because we didn't want to make it seem like we're trying to make it seem like that. We had a conversation for a long time and talked to the GameStop people for a minute. But we wanted to make it known that it was not a publicity stuntFlattening the odds in the NBA's draft lottery, a change passed Thursday by an overwhelming 28-1-1 vote of team owners, will not end tanking and may not reduce it much. The league knows that; it repeatedly characterized the proposal as "an incremental step" toward more potential tweaks, sources say. The NBA is concerned about egregious tanking from teams that are already awful -- the sort of tanking that generates think pieces and angry tweets. The reform seeks to accomplish that by cutting the odds that the worst teams win the best picks. Under the current system, the worst team has a 25 percent chance of nabbing the top pick. The second-worst team has a 19.9 percent shot. Starting in 2019, the three worst teams
Simon Despres Jersey will have an equal 14 percent chance at the most coveted asset in basketball. The very best team in the lottery will have the same miniscule 0.5 percent chance of skyrocketing to the top of the draft, and the same paltry chance of landing in the top three. The teams in the middle each get a big probability bumpThis is a less dramatic version of a flattening proposal that failed in 2014 amid resistance from small-market teams that feared it nipped away at their only path to acquiring superstars. That fear remains in some corners, including (presumably) in Oklahoma City, the only franchise to vote no -- and one that, as the Sonics, tanked for stars. In other news: Russell Westbrook has still not signed his extension. The league has a legitimate interest in its worst teams not feeling as if they have to get any more embarrassingly bad in order to secure improved lottery odds. The NBA does not want to relive Trust The Process, even though the architect of the most aggressive -- and most coldly rational -- multiyear tank job in league history was ousted precisely because of the scheme's naked aggression. It would kindly prefer the Suns not send Eric Bledsoe home for two months; new rest regulations, also approved Thursday, may take care of that. Reform may change team behavior on the fringes. Bledsoe types may play more. The next version of the Sixers might be more open to signing a couple of stable veterans, even at the "risk" of winning a couple more games. April basketball will be a little less bad. But there will still be bad teams, and bad teams will still have reason to lose games. Some less-bad teams might have even more reason to lose games, especially late in the season. No league can legislate away rebuilding. Wins are a zero-sum game. A reverse-order draft, even one warped a bit by lottery odds, encourages
Authentic Brandon Thompson Womens Jersey losing. As long as the best young players go to a subset of teams at the bottom of the league, those teams will chase high picks
