Bobblehead Nation 2019 Update

So it's been a couple of weeks since I posted my annual post letting all NBA fans (OK, so the 20 or so people who read this blog) know where to get the choicest bobbleheads around the NBA. When I published my Bobblehead Nation 2019 post back in October, I had just over half the NBA teams' promotional schedules and I hadn't even started checking out the G League quite yet. Three weeks or so later, I have done that (the G League part). Time for an update.

First of all, let me say that the G League bobblehead schedule this year is pretty amazing. For the past couple of years, we've seen NBA team bobbles be handed out to fans at the minor league levels on a pretty regular basis. Canton and Santa Cruz have been notable in their rigor in treating Charge and Warriors fans to Cavaliers and...well...Warriors big league bobbleheads. This year, there's plenty of that and I've listed everything I could find below. But there are also a number of bobbleheads available which are exclusive to the G League and that's pretty exciting I think. Looks like some road trips are in order for some die-hard bobblehead collectors. Let's get right to the supplemental list, shall we?

Oh..and there have been a few new NBA promo schedules released. Only one of those (Houston) features bobbleheads. For those fans in Dallas, New Orleans, Philadelphia and Utah...better luck next year. Each of those teams have released promotional schedules since my post last month and there ain't no bobbleheads on them, although the Pels' schedule is mysteriously incomplete in its stopping in December. No way are there four promo nights in November and December and nothing the rest of the season. There has to be a Zion bobble, right? RIGHT??

November

9 Sugar Skull (Windy City Bulls)

Last year my bobblehead update was posted in December. Because the Windy City Bulls are handing out a bobblehead on November 9 (or tomorrow), I've been forced to go early this year. The Bulls are handing out a pretty sweet (no pun intended) Sugar Skull bobblehead (shown above) for their season opener this year. This type of bobblehead is typically handed out in late October to coincide with dia de los muertos. Since the G League season doesn't open until November 8, the Bulls are going with better late than never here. I'd show up to the Sears Centre for this one. The Bulls do note the bobble is available while supplies last. Get there early. This is generally true for all G League giveaways.

18 Russell Westbrook (Houston Rockets)
One of the biggest offseason deals (top 3 after Anthony Davis and Kawhi/Paul George to LA?) has to be the Chris Paul and a like a half million draft picks to Oklahoma City for Russell Westbrook. I don't think Russ is winning a title in Houston; I also think the Rockets live to rue the day they made this trade. But if nothing else, Westbrook gets a bobblehead out of the deal.

29 Draymond Green San Francisco Edition (Santa Cruz Warriors)

The Warriors got bested by the Cavs in the bobblehead department at the NBA level this year. But they are still kings of the G League bobbles. Try six bobbleheads. That's more than they are giving out in San Francisco (remember there's no more Oakland...). Five of the six match giveaways scheduled at the brand new Chase Center. The last is a G League exclusive. First up? Draymond Green in the mysterious San Francisco Edition. If you miss this one six days earlier in San Fran, drive down to Santa Cruz.

December

13 Kevon Looney Stormtrooper (Santa Cruz Warriors)

Warriors bobblehead #2 in Santa Cruz, two days after the same giveaway in San Francisco. 

14 Austin Carr (Canton Charge)

This is the first of three Cleveland Cavaliers bobbleheads being handed out by the Charge this year. I'm assuming this is a duplicate of the Carr bobblehead given away in Cleveland two nights prior. First 1,500 fans only on this one, folks!

27 DeAndre Jordan Star Wars Night (Long Island Nets)

Brooklyn becomes the third NBA team to have a pile of parent club bobbles at the door of their G League franchise when they open up the arena on December 27. If you missed this one at Barclays on December 21, head out to this game six days later. The Brooklyn club doesn't have an image of this bobble on their website. The Long Island version does (above). First 1,000 fans only.

28 Whammer (Canton Charge)

Bobblehead night #2 in Canton is a repeat of the December 20 giveaway in Cleveland. First 1,500 fans here just like on December 14 in Canton.

January

4 Marvin the Martian and Gus T. Bull (Windy City Bulls)

Are you kidding me? I get that the Brooklyn Nets have co-opted about half the Marvel character list to tie in to their bobblehead promotions this year but Marvin the Martian? In the G League. I'm buying Windy City Bulls season tickets if I'm in the Chicago area. This thing is epic. Photo above. And remember...while supplies last.

6 Raptors Alumni Night (Raptors 905)

No promises here for a bobblehead but the Raptors' minor league franchise is hosting three Alumni Nights (on January 6, February 22 and March 11). All three nights advertise "special appearances, bobblehead giveaways and more." The focus here seems to be on Raptors players who have spent time in the G League. Pascal Siakam, maybe? Fred Van Vleet? Just my own guesses there. I don't see a promo schedule on the Raptors site right now. Could these be exclusive G League collectibles?

11 James Harden Space Bobble (Houston Rockets)
If it seems like every year I write this post, I'm writing about a James Harden bobblehead in Houston, you'd be correct. Seems like they are giving out these things more often than Harden travels in a game (not gets called for traveling, because that wouldn't be very often at all, but actually does travel). In the past five years, there have been four James Harden bobblehead nights in Houston. 2019-20 makes it five out of six. Apparently this one is space themed...cool!

18 Mark Price (Canton Charge)

Bobblehead night #3 in Canton matches the January 4 game in Cleveland. Just like the two prior bobblehead nights for the Charge, there are only 1,500 of these things available.

24 D'Angelo Russell (Santa Cruz Warriors)

Bobblehead night #3 in Santa Cruz is January 24 when the guy traded for Kevin Durant get his own plastic bobble likeness. 10 days earlier, he gets distributed at the Chase Center.

25 Gus T. Bull ASL Bobblehead (Windy City Bulls)

ASL is American Sign Language and this is the third not-available-at-the-parent-club-level bobblehead to be handed out by the Windy City Bulls. This is awesome that a bobblehead is actually addressing a cause of some sort rather than just spitting out an image of a player or mascot for the fans.

February

22 Alumni Night (Raptors 905)

See January 6 above.

28 Klay Thompson Headband Edition (Santa Cruz Warriors)

Well when I speculated about what this bobblehead would look like in my prior post, I was right. It is, in fact, Klay Thompson wearing a headband. And, yes, it's the same color as the one he wore when he dropped 52 on the Bulls.

29 Ben Wallace (Grand Rapids Drive)

No bobbleheads on the schedule for Pistons fans in Detroit but head west to Grand Rapids in late, late February (like, really late) and you can pick up a Ben Wallace bobblehead. Gotta think some Pistons fans are hopping in their cars for this one. I would.

March 

11 Alumni Night (Raptors 905) 

See January 6 above.

14 Stephen Curry Santa Cruz Warriors (Santa Cruz Warriors)

This is the only one of the six bobbleheads available this year in Santa Cruz that's exclusive to the G League. Surprise, surprise, it's Steph Curry. Presumably wearing a Santa Cruz jersey. If the Capital City Go-Go handed out a John Wall Go-Go jersey bobblehead I'd be there for sure. Of course, it's a bit further from San Francisco to Santa Cruz than it is from D.C. to another part of D.C. I'm seeing some Dubs faithful making this drive.

18 Stephen Curry Popcorn Edition (Santa Cruz Warriors)

The Steph in front of a giant tub of popcorn bobblehead that so befuddled me in my prior post shows up in Santa Cruz in mid-March. Go for it.

27 Dr. J as Black Panther (Long Island Nets)

The second Long Island Nets offering in the bobblehead department is the same as Brooklyn's giveaway three weeks prior. If the image above is true to life, I'm not sure how Dr. J is Black Panther. Maybe the real version is different? Looks like the Nets are making 2,000 of these available for G League fans. Get there early.

That's all I got bobblehead-wise until (a) the Thomas Bryant bobblehead gets released at Capital One Arena or (b) the Wizards by some miracle decide that there's another way Wiz fans get a different bobblehead this year (come on...there's got to be a Rui Hachimura bobblehead ticket package somehow). 

I'm still missing some lists from some NBA teams but there have been some bobblehead-less schedules published at the G-League level. Get ready to be disappointed some of you. Hoping for bobbleheads in Aguas Calientes (Clippers), Erie (Bayhawks but the Pelicans G League team), Greensboro (Hornets), Iowa (Wolves, short for Timberwolves), Salt Lake City (Stars which is way better than Utah Jazz) and Stockton (Kings).

Good luck NBA (and G League) bobblehead collectors!!!

G-League Logo Rank, Part 3

Over the past two weeks, I've posted 16/26ths of my G-League logo rank (or 8/13ths if you prefer to reduce fractions). Now it's time for the grand finale, the exalted top 10 of the NBA's minor league. Read on. There are some good looking logos on this list.

10. Northern Arizona Suns

The Phoenix Suns began play in the NBA way back in 1968. When they did, they rolled out a secondary logo that to me is still one of the best logos ever used by an NBA franchise. Yes, it was extremely simple, just a cartoon-like sun blazing away that would look at home in a Hanna-Barbera cartoon of that era. The Suns kept that logo, which also featured the word "Suns" across the center, until 1992. A piece of classic NBA logo history died for me the day they retired it.

The simplicity of that original logo has been recreated in large part in the Northern Arizona Suns' branding. It's the resurrection of that long dead motif that lands the Suns' G-League offering at number 10 on this countdown. Admittedly, there are issues with the re-use that are lost in translation. I'm OK with the basketball at the center of the logo (so it's really a basketball shining like the sun I guess) and I don't mind the compass point pointing north at the top of the sun. But I'm not such a fan of the wordmark below the logo and I hate the NAZ abbreviation. Nonetheless, I still like this one. It's simple enough to capture something that I really like.

9. Agua Caliente Clippers

For the first time maybe since the Fort Wayne Zollner Pistons (named after the Zollner piston manufacturing company) dropped the Zollner in 1948, corporate sponsorship returns to an NBA-affiliated team in the form of the Agua Caliente casino sponsored Los Angeles Clippers G-League team. The name's not really the point of this post I guess.

The parent Clippers team in my humble opinion have the absolute worst branding in the NBA, a videogame logo inspired mess of way too simple Ls, As and Cs put together in awkward combinations. I have to say they did way way better with their G-League branding. There's nothing too complicated going on here which is refreshing. They are still using the same boxy C as they are at the NBA level, but the abstract basketball with the color swirls (or whatever else you want to call those things) and the circular text ring at the perimeter for me come together in a coherent and pleasing logo. Thumbs up! Good job!

8. Canton Charge

I despise putting anything associated with the Cleveland Cavaliers this high in any ranking I'm responsible for but let's face it, when compared to the competition logo-wise in the G-League, the Canton Charge deserve a top 10 spot.

The Charge's primary logo features a cavalier (I'm assuming) thrusting a decidedly non-elegant sword towards the viewer. Other than the blade looking way clumsier that I would imagine a swashbuckler wielding, the logo is well designed and uses color as shadow to make it simple but not simplistic. There's movement and force in this design.

I'm not thrilled with the secondary logo, which looks like a chunkier, squarer version of the Cavs' cocktail onion on a sword toothpick logo but the primary logo is good enough to carry the day here.

7. Delaware 87ers

Yes, the 87ers logo is pretty much an exact copy of the Philadelphia 76ers 2009 logo recreate featuring the classic 1977 Sixers logo with "87" placed where "76" was on the original logo. On the one hand, there's nothing wrong with this; this logo is one of the most beloved (by me) NBA logos of all time.

On the other hand, they got one thing very wrong. In the original logo, the top of the "7" is curved, which creates a perfect negative for the circle of the 13 stars from the first Stars and Stripes flag to sit. In the 87ers logo, the same curve is applied to the "7" but the circle of stars sits awkwardly above the top of the "8" and not nested in the dip like on the original logo. Who knows, maybe they tried moving it over and it looked out of place in the middle of the logo. I still say they should have done it. Good, not great, here.

6. Raptors 905

I didn't particularly know what it was quite about the Raptors 905 logo that appealed to me until I wrote this piece. Let's face it, I couldn't state "yep I like this for no particular reason" and put them in the 6 spot. It's the details for me. I love the simple symmetry of the logo, right down to an attempt to make "9" and "5" mirror images of one another (they are decidedly not in real life). I also LOVE (yes, LOVE) the raptor claw marks on the top of the ball where the seams are on the bottom. As much as I hate the Raptors' name, I am almost giddy about this design.

The secondary logo for me is OK. It's (I guess) a map of Ontario (didn't really know the shape of Ontario) with a plan white "M" for Mississauga, the town where the team plays. This looks either like a saddle with an M on it or an old college blanket of a school beginning with M draped over the back of a couch. Or both. I know, I said I love map-themed logos. I don't love this one. It's good at best. It's the primary logo that lands Raptors 905 in sixth.

5. Fort Wayne Mad Ants

Yes, it's already obvious I have a soft spot for teams that pre-date the NBA's true takeover of the G-League, especially when they have kept their names and logos intact. The Mad Ants are the first of three consecutive in that camp, although the Ants have surrendered their red and yellow color scheme for a more Indiana Pacers-themed blue and yellow package.

The Mad Ants' (named after General "Mad" Anthony Wayne who was also whom Fort Wayne was named after) logo is fairly simple: an ant head in a circle with a triangle beneath, if that makes sense from the picture above. It's the words more than anything else that get me liking this one. I love this font. It reinforces the name more than the voracious ant with mandibles ready to chomp into anyone who opposes him.

4. Reno Bighorns

The Mad Ants predate the Pacers' takeover. Out west in Reno, the Bighorns are the last of the original west coast franchises. The Idaho Stampede are gone; the Bakersfield Jam are gone; but the Bighorns remain in Reno. And just like the Mad Ants, the Bighorns have allowed the now-parent Sacramento Kings to change their green and gold colors for the Kings' purple and silver.

If I've got a soft spot in my heart for the classic NBDL (and before) franchises, I've also got a huge spot there for bighorn sheep. I've looked for these things in the Black Hills of South Dakota; Yellowstone National Park; the stretch of Nevada between Las Vegas and the Hoover Dam; and Zion National Park in Utah (saw one far far away) before finally laying eyes on a whole herd in Carlsbad Caverns National Park in New Mexico. The image presented by the Bighorns' logo is simple and strong and shows one of these gorgeous animals in a classic pose seen from below. I'm in full support of this logo. I even like the insertion of the Kings' crown from their logo into the wordmark.

Now about that secondary logo...I'm just ignoring this thing. I don't like it at all. It's not as bad as the Legends' "TL" or the Drive's "GR" but it's not adding anything. The good outweighs the bad here by a long shot.

3. Maine Red Claws

I'm just going to throw this out there: the top three logos in the G-League are better than the top three logos in the NBA. There! I said it! And that's including the homer pick Washington Wizards being in my NBA top three. Let me prove I'm right.

Sitting at number three on my G-League logo rank is the Maine Red Claws and their lobster logo  that looks like he's about to put a beating on some dude that owes him some serious money. Huge powerful claws draped either side of the Red Claws' wordmark are intimidating, especially when combined with that facial expression that says to me "you better not drop me in no boiling water or else." He also looks none too pleased by the cute little basketballs someone has glued on to his antennae or whatever they call those things on lobsters.

Unfortunately for this crustacean, he's red, which means he's already cooked (and yes still somehow alive). But we can suspend disbelief here a little right? The secondary logo's not quite as good but if it were the only logo rolled out by this team, I still think it would get a top 10 nod. Bravo, Maine. You finally found something for me to like about your state.

2. Memphis Hustle

If you know anything about my love of logos (or if you've ready past posts from me about NBA logos and haven't just dismissed the information like you probably should have), you'll know I think the Memphis Grizzlies' bear head logo is the best in the NBA hands down. Well, I got some news: the Grizz outdid themselves with their G-League branding because this stuff is even better than the original.

The look for the brand new Hustle team set to start play in a few months consists of three logos: a bear head silhouette with Memphis Hustle written in font eerily similar to the old 1970s pump triline font (pretty much anything from the 70s makes anything more awesome) complete with a finishing star on the "e"; a stylized "mh" using a similar font to the one in the bear head; and a circular "grit & grind" logo (again with the star). I love the colors here, I love the fonts and I love the callbacks to a bygone era when Memphis was cranking out some of the funkiest music around over at the old Stax Records studio. Thumbs way up all around. They might just be the best in the G-League if only...

1. Santa Cruz Warriors

Let's gloss over the alternate logos (and their variants) that make up the Santa Cruz Warriors' branding package just for a moment shall we? These things are good but not great. I'm even not upset about the "SC" logo and we know how I feel about jumbo initial logos by now. These secondary designs are not why the Dubs are number one in this countdown.

If there's a simple more elegant logo in professional basketball in the United States, I'm not aware of it. This thing is awesome. The Warriors have taken their own color scheme and circular motif and blown the doors off Santa Cruz with this baby, a trident in the shape of a capital W that simultaneously identifies the franchise and their coastal location. I also love the way it is not constrained by the circle but instead breaks through to stand on its own. This is an A+ design. If I lived in Santa Cruz, I'd have all sorts of swag with this look on it.

So that's it! 26 down, four to go (sort of). I'm expecting at this time next year we'll at least have a 27th team in the mix in the form of my very own Washington Wizards as yet unnamed G-League team so I'll need to spend a few days at least digesting how that look shakes up this countdown. In the meantime, that's all I have on this subject. Opening night at this point is just a bit more than two months away. Can't wait!

Canton

Since I started this blog in 2012, I've made a concerted effort to make it to at least one NBDL game each year. By and large (but not always), I've been successful in taking some time off to watch pro hoops below the NBA level. Last month, I took my fourth road trip in five seasons to the underbelly of the NBA. I stopped in Cleveland for one night (which I've already chronicled here and here) and then moved on to somewhere which I thought would be a little less cosmopolitan: Canton, Ohio. Turns out I might have been wrong.

I should probably start out by saying years and years ago (OK...decades ago) I really really wanted to make a trip to Canton because the Pro Football Hall of Fame is there. This was a time when football (and the New York Jets) was my number one sport, like when I was in high school and college. But as time passed, my urge to travel to Canton to visit a museum faded until the D-League resurrected my interest a few years ago. Finally I got to go and check the place out. The Canton-Erie NBDL swing has been on my radar for years.

So the point of making the run to Canton was obviously to see a Canton Charge home game. Canton is one of three original teams remaining in the NBDL (now the NBA Development League but I will continue to use NBDL), along with the Austin Spurs and the Oklahoma City Blue. Neither the Spurs nor the Blue (dumbest team name ever?) nor the Charge started their lives in their respective cities. The Charge started out in Huntsville, Alabama as the Huntsville Flight (awesome name, after the city's early space program history) before moving to Albuquerque and later Rio Rancho and becoming the Thunderbirds (also an awesome name) before finally landing in Canton as the Charge (NOT an awesome name), where they have been since 2011.

Considering the brief history of the D-League, the Charge's predecessor teams were relatively successful, making the Finals in 2004 while in Alabama and winning the whole shooting match in 2006 in their first season in New Mexico. Today, they are the D-League affiliate of the hated (by me) Cleveland Cavaliers as a wholly owned minor league franchise, meaning of course that Dan Gilbert is the owner. And let me say as a basketball fan if there's an owner I dislike more than Dan Gilbert, I'm not sure who it is. This dude proved he's petty and mean in his reaction the LeBron James bailing on the Cavs in 2010 and now loves everything to do with James now he's delivered him a title. And I don't say this because buying tickets for a Charge game in advance required me to use a special app on my phone and charged what I consider to be a worse than Ticketmaster fee on top of the gate price. Enough ranting. For now.

The Canton Brewing Company in downtown Canton. I'll explain later how awesome this place is.

Canton is one of those cities in the midwest's rust belt, a former center of manufacturing (originally agricultural implements and later iron) along a railroad route which has seen employers move their operations to places where it costs them a whole lot less to employ workers to make their products. Living in upstate New York for nine years I saw towns up and down the Erie Canal and Hudson River struggling with these same issues. The harm it can do to a community is significant.

The city was founded in 1805 and was named after the province in China with the same name. I know; totally random, right? Apparently the place was named by the town's surveyor after a trader whom he admired who had conducted business in China. Go figure. Other than its former place in American manufacturing history and its current place as the home of the Pro Football Hall of Fame, the town is also the adopted home of President William McKinley, who practiced law in the town before making a successful run at the Ohio governorship and then taking his talents to Washington as the Commander-in-Chief. It's pretty obvious when you are there. There are a lot of things named McKinley.

Considering the history of Canton and what I assumed would be an empty downtown center, I was a little apprehensive about my choice of hotels in the city. I love staying downtown in cities because it allows me to walk the city before and after the game (including to the arena) and really get a sense of what it's like to be there. While there seemed to be a number of chain hotels out near the Pro Football Hall of Fame, the choices for staying downtown seemed to be one: the McKinley Grand Hotel, which sounded pretty fancy but came with a decidedly un-fancy less-than-$100 per night price tag. Driving into the city pocked with vacant lots and a mixture of Richardson Romanesque (which is amazing) and late 1960s / early 1970s American concrete-heavy brutalist architecture (which is not amazing) didn't make me feel any better.

There's a reason I travel and the biggest reason is so I can go to places and make my own mind up what it's like to be there. And I have to say Canton is the greatest little town and the hotel was a good reflection of the town's overall spirit. Sure it looked a bit run down and the pool deck inside the hotel on the second level  with sliding glass doors leading directly to guest rooms seemed like it was an idea conceived in the early 1980s (it probably was) but other than that it was fine. Definitely worth less than $100 a night, which included free buffet breakfast. Just get to breakfast early. It's buffet but it runs out. I made it there before they ran out and filled up; my friend Bryan was less successful.

Also, if you are a D-League traveler like me (and look, I know probably nobody else out there goes on these crazy minor league hoops trips), the visiting team seems to prefer to stay at the McKinley Grand. Both the Raptors 905 team (which was the Charge's opponent the night we were there) and the Long Island Nets (opponent on the second night of the homestand) were bunked up at our hotel. I even got to say hi to former Wizard and current Raptors 905 head coach Jerry Stackhouse in the lobby. 

Just an aside here. I shook hands with Jerry Stackhouse when he played for the Wiz about a dozen years ago and I have to say he had the softest hands I've ever shaken. I don't mean smooth, although they were. I mean like pillow soft, like his hands were filled with air. I shook hands again in Canton and they are definitely less soft. Maybe it's the age or maybe the Wizards have something special in that locker room.

The Canton Charge play their home games just down the street from the McKinley Grand at the Canton Memorial Civic Center. The building was built way back in 1951 and it is definitely of its time. The materials used are brick and stone on the exterior with glazed masonry inside along the concourses. Speaking of the concourses, they are extremely tight which is hardly surprising; I can't imagine concessions was the number one priority for arena design back in 1951. 

This is a great old building although I guess my one time visit and sense of nostalgia affected my judgment here. The main space was clearly built not for basketball but for performances on the stage at the west end of the arena. It works for hoops because the seating is all parallel (or perpendicular depending on your perspective, I guess) to the court, rather than being oriented towards the west end.

Despite the last paragraph, I can't get on board with the space frame inserted just below the roof structure and shown in the picture below. Those things have no place in architecture, whether being used as structure or just as decoration as they are at the Civic Center. Not good. I'm thinking it's a 1970s or 1980s addition.

The on court action that night was nothing much to write about so I won't write much about it. The Charge got killed by Raptors 905 (does this get abbreviated to "Raptors" or "905"?) by a score of 104 to 72. We kicked back and took it all in anyway along with a couple of Long Island Nets players sitting right in front of us in the smallish Civic Center seats. This is probably the first time I've attended a D-League game where I didn't root for the home team. I just couldn't; see the Dan Gilbert comments above. I didn't overtly root for the 905 either though.

That report wraps another NBDL game. That's six of the current 22 teams I've seen at home so far. Hopefully this thing settles down soon and teams stop moving around. It's getting close I believe which might have negative consequences for some communities but we'll get to that soon. 

Some final notes about Canton.

First of all, this place has a lot of soul. The city is not dwelling on the urban flight that took place in the last quarter of the 20th century. Instead, it has re-imagined itself as an arts town and has both public art displays and numerous galleries scattered around town. So despite the relatively empty feeling to some blocks, what is there is really cool and interesting. I hope it continues to develop and draws residents back in. There's clearly more than hoops happening at the Civic Center and the Palace Theater a few blocks down Market Avenue seems to be really promising.

Second, there are some awesome bars in town, which let's face it for me influences how I feel about a place a great deal. We had some drinks and snacks at the Canton Brewing Company down on Third Street before returning for dinner later the same day. The food was overall very good but the Scotch eggs (shown above) were maybe the best I've had (like ever!); it was the chorizo, I'm sure. Canton was a big brewing town at one time and one of the great things that Canton Brewing is doing is honoring the history of the town's beer making by replicating logos of historic beers of Canton on their glasses; I came home with two. Plus a metal brewery sign. Couldn't resist. The logo is incredible.

If you need a great place to hang out later in the evening, I'd recommend Conestoga Grill, which is a dark somewhat dank bar with some local beers on tap plus Heileman Old Style in 16 oz cans. And in case you are wondering, dark and somewhat dank are the best qualities one can find in a bar so those are compliments. Thanks to Natalie over at Canton Brewing for not only serving us over on Third Street but also pointing us to the Conestoga.

Finally, there's a nut and chocolate place in town named Ben Heggy's. I found this place while i was wondering around town the morning after the game and the smell of roasting nuts was irresistible. Unfortunately for me, I was out too early and the place was closed. But I ordered some for the holidays based on the smell alone. The one pound of mixed nuts I got mailed to me lasted barely a day and a half at my parents' place. I'll need two or three pounds next year, at least. I recommend you pick some up if you are ever in town.

What started out as a visit with a little apprehension on my part worked out about as well as it could. If it wasn't obvious, I'd go back to Canton in a second. Until then, I'll just keep mail ordering from Ben Heggy's. Great D-League stop. The best ever!

Hey, Mike! Show everyone how Wizards fans feel about the Cavs and their overrated point guard!