4 Reasons The NBA Sucks More After The Jordan Era

4 Reasons The NBA Sucks More After The Jordan Era

By Abdul Lawani January 27, 2014

You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to notice a drop in talent and the NBA itself is taking notice due to lack of viewership and ticket sales in certain markets. And any person born from 1970 and later that was a fan before and after the Jordan Era will give you a foot note to conclude their observation as well.

#4. Bad Talent Scouting

Over the last two decades the NBA has allowed a lot of draft busts and allowed a lot of players that would have a hard time making a high school B team let alone the NBA.

                                                                                                   www.thesportsfanjournal.com

It would be hard for me to choose this guy in a pickup game at a park

Although it is hard to tell how one player or another will perform versus how they played In high school or college, the sink and swim style of the NBA is a make it or break philosophy that as of late is hurting their image. During the high performance players in the 80’s and 90’s that has a lot of people arguing 80's and 90's players in their prime would beat current talents of the present due to their high level of fundamentals, talent and work ethic.

The NBA in the last decade have been trying to make basketball and international competition by promoting games outside the USA and recruiting talent overseas.

Yao Ming Wikipedia.org

Freak of Nature created in China labs

#3. Banking On Future Talent Before They Prove Themselves

After the Jordan era big contracts became the norm throwing out Dollars like they were monopoly money, when the Best players of all time were getting paychecks similar to today’s bench players.

bleacherreport.com
"$22 Million a year to be Mediocre I love America."

Leaving Teams and owners the hardiest task to deal with a high price bust they have to keep or trade because they bet the farm on a player that is putting up bench player numbers not franchise player numbers or better.

Michaelhyatt.com

It seemed like the owners and managers who were trying to lobby the free agent market after clubs were hoping to try to get LeBron James and Chris Bosh who were currently in free agency tried to save face by offering the other players large contracts to save their reputation which ultimately destroyed it even more with the large contracts of those players during that Free Agency year in 2010.

                                                                http://media.cleveland.com

                                                                                     “We made even worst”

3 Reasons You Should Do Your Taxes as Soon as Possible

By Trent January 28, 2014

inShare1

This article first appeared at U.S. News and World Report Money.
People like to wait until the last minute to file their taxes. The reason is obvious: filing taxes can be pretty dull. It’s not a task that anyone relishes and, because of that, people often put it off for as long as they can.
Of course, putting it off as long as you can creates its own problems. The last minute panic of doing taxes can be incredibly stressful and can leave you deeply regretting your choice to wait.
At the same time, there are several incentives to actually do your taxes earlier rather than later. Here are three of the biggest reasons why you should start on your taxes as soon as your 1099s and W-2s arrive in your mailbox.

There’s more time to deal with problems. No system is perfect. Sometimes, when you’re filing your taxes, you’ll discover a serious problem. Maybe there’s an obvious error on your W-2. Maybe a company failed to send you a 1099 for the work you did for them. Maybe you sold some stock and you’re completely unsure as to how to add them to your taxes.

The earlier you start working on your taxes, the easier it is to address the many problems that can pop up. You have time to figure out how to handle a complicated tax situation. You have time to request a corrected tax form. You have time to contact an employer or a bank and make sure that they send you a 1099 or a W-2.

If you wait until the last minute, these mistakes are going to throw you into crisis mode and you’ll find yourself filing an extension, which just postpones the problem even more and leaves you potentially open to penalties and liabilities.

How one family saved more than $140,000 on their mortgage

See how one family shortened their mortgage term twice to help them dramatically cut their overall mortgage costs.

By Diana Bocco January 24, 2014 11:40 AM

.

View photo

Shorten your mortgage

Refinancing to a shorter-term loan is a smart way to help reduce interest costs and own your home sooner. But, the higher payments that come with a shorter-term loan can discourage some homeowners from making the commitment.

That wasn't the case for homeowners Danny and Tracy Kofke, who refinanced twice to lower their mortgage terms - and they did it with modest salaries behind them.
Here's their refinancing success story...

The Kofke's Background

Danny Kofke is a 38-year-old special education teacher and author of two personal finance books, including, "How To Survive (and perhaps thrive) On A Teacher's Salary." He currently teaches what is known in Georgia as a severe/profound intellectual disabilities class.
"This is my 14th year teaching and I have also taught kindergarten, first grade, and second grade," Kofke says.
Kofke's wife, Tracy, 41, is currently a second grade teacher.
"Tracy taught first grade for nine years before becoming a stay-at-home mom to our daughters, Ava and Ella," Kofke explains. Although Tracy just returned to the classroom in fall 2013, Kofke says they lived off his teacher's salary of around $41,000 a year during the nine years she stayed home to raise their daughters.
[Click to compare mortgage interest rates from multiple lenders now.]

Purchasing Their Home

The Kofkes moved from Florida to Georgia, where they bought their home, in May 2006. The house they purchased is located in Hoschton (about one hour outside of Atlanta).
The home is roughly 1,500 square feet, has three bedrooms and two bathrooms, and is located on almost one acre of land.
"We have a great backyard in which the kids love playing in - that was a big selling point for us," Kofke explains. "Hoschton is a rural location but we are close to both Atlanta and a large mall, which is only 20 minutes up the road."
The couple purchased the home for $145,000, with a $65,000 down payment that they saved up for over several years. As a result, they took out a 30-year fixed-rate loan for just $80,000. Their interest rate on the loan was 6 percent.
Their large down payment on the property benefited them in a few ways. It allowed them to start with a relatively small mortgage, and they didn't need to add the extra expense of mortgage insurance, which is required of homeowners who put less than 20 percent down.
Plus, their mortgage payments turned out to be very affordable.
"Our monthly payment was around $700, including escrow," Kofke says. This means their monthly payments included homeowners insurance and property taxes, which they set aside in escrow.

Rick Ross Reflects On Buying Evander Holyfield's Massive 109-Room Atlanta Mansion

Wealth gap: A guide to what it is, why it matters

By CHRISTOPHER S. RUGABER and JOSH BOAK  1/27/14

WASHINGTON (AP) — From the White House to the Vatican to the business elite in Davos, Switzerland, one issue keeps seizing the agenda: the growing gap between the very wealthy and everyone else.
It's "the defining challenge of our time," says President Barack Obama, who will spotlight the issue in his State of the Union address Tuesday night. A Gallup poll finds two-thirds of Americans are unhappy with the nation's distribution of wealth. Experts say it may be slowing the economy.
Why has the issue suddenly galvanized attention? Here are questions and answers about the wealth gap — what it is and why it matters.

Q. Hasn't there always been a wide gulf between the richest people and the poorest?

A. Yes. What's new is the widening gap between the wealthiest and everyone else. Three decades ago, Americans' income tended to grow at roughly similar rates, no matter how much you made. But since roughly 1980, income has grown most for the top earners. For the poorest 20 percent of families, it's dropped. Incomes for the highest-earning 1 percent of Americans soared 31 percent from 2009 through 2012, after adjusting for inflation, according to data compiled by Emmanuel Saez, an economist at University of California, Berkeley. For the rest of us, it inched up an average of 0.4 percent. In 17 of 22 developed countries, income disparity widened in the past two decades, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

Why Twitter is Worth $12 Billion

• Posted by James Altucher

Here’s why Twitter is worth $12 billion or even much more.

Because every Thursday from 330-430 PM EST I do a Q&A on Twitter where people ask me stuff and I answer. I answer maybe 150-200 questions in that hour or so each week.

Ok, that might only account for $0.38 of Twitter’s market cap. But still. I can dream.

Curt Wehrley posted a summary of my Q&A on his site.
Here is the summary and I hope you can join me for the next Q&A this Thursday (later today). I’ve been doing them for about 2.5 years now and I’ve only missed one or two weeks. I really like doing it.
Question: How should I choose between 3 job offers?

James Altucher: Take the job with the nicest people.

Q: What are 3 key things that Treach taught you and can teach others?
JA: Everything’s gonna be alright.

Q: What would you tell your 25-year-old daughter to do with her life?
JA: If my daughter was 25 i would tell her to explore as many options as possible. my career has changed 5x since i was 25…degrees have zero percent correlation to future success. None at all.

Q: I’m agnostic, looking for evidences to believe in some god, or force. Why do you believe?
JA: There’s no reason to believe in anything. just every now and then hold up your hands and say “thanks”. that’s it…there’s no reason to care about evidence or experience. be compassionate, say thanks. and thats all you need… it doesnt matter if you believe or not.

12 Weird Ways to Halt Hunger

By The Editors of Fitbie | Love Your Body – Fri, Jan 17, 2014 5:08 PM EST

Feel like a slave to the vending machine? These surprising habits will squash your cravings faster than you can scarf down that bag of M&Ms

By Julia Merz, Fitbie.com
Nothing derails your diet quicker than a sudden hankering for a junky snack. You know you'll eat dinner in an hour, but your taste buds don't care--they want those office cookies and they want them now! But you don't have to feel powerless over your junk-food cravings. These inventive--and OK, a little weird--tactics from The 8-Hour Diet can help keep your inner Cookie Monster in check and stop you from binge eating.

PLUS: Is your job making you fat? Learn how to avoid office junk food traps with six expert tips.

1. Drink to your health
Your grandé mocha with whipped cream delivers a pretty nasty calorie blow, but some drinks can help you sip yourself slim by filling you up without filling you out. Our picks:
Water: Thirst often masks itself as hunger, so a cool glass of H2O might actually curb cravings.
Green tea: It's been shown to suppress appetite and aid in fat burning.
Oolong tea: One study found that drinking a cup an hour before you work out increases your fat oxidation by 12 percent.
Black tea: A study in the Journal of the American College of Nutrition found that black tea decreases blood sugar levels by 10 percent for 2 1/2 hours, so you'll feel fuller and avoid hunger later.

2. Make a fist
A lot of people become tense or stressed when a craving comes on, and you're better off trying to channel that tension into your muscles. In a study published in the Journal of Consumer Research, people who tightened their muscles (regardless of which ones) while trying to exert self-control in their food choices were better able to overcome temptations. The researchers speculated that this may be because we unconsciously associate firm muscles with willpower.
The researchers speculated that this may be because we unconsciously associate firm muscles with willpower.

20 Successful Habits I Learned Working For Two Billionaires (Part 1)

Posted by: Paul | 239 Comments

135

I have spent decades “being educated” –  in college, graduate school, numerous professional certifications, and now a PhD program. All of that schooling and training helped shape the person I am today, but at no point in my life has there been a more profound education than my time working for Enver Yucel and Oprah Winfrey.

Enver and Oprah are two extraordinary people. And on top of that, they’re both billionaires. On the surface, they appear to be totally different people. They are in different industries, have different family structures, practice different religions, and speak different languages. However, once you get past their written biographies and dig deeper, you will notice they possess many of the same successful habits.
I had the opportunity to work with both Oprah and Enver for 6 years collectively and those were, hands down, the best professional experiences of my life. I worked my ass off for them and in doing so absorbed everything I could.
It’s my honor to share with you what I learned from them. Here is Part 1 of the 20 successful habits I learned working for two billionaires:

1) Invest in Yourself

This is a very simple concept, but something you would think someone who has “made it” would stop doing. Not at all for these two. I saw them both spend a significant amount of time dedicating their resources to self-development (whether it be a new language, exercise, social media classes, etc). The moment you stop investing in yourself is the moment you have written off future dividends in life.

2) Be Curious…About Everything

What the average person sees as mundane or overly complicated is not viewed the same way with a billionaire mindset. I once had a 30 minute conversation with Enver about the height of the curbs in Washington DC versus Istanbul, Turkey.  Billionaires are incredibly curious; what the rest of the world thinks is a problem and complains about — that’s what these people go and work on.

3) Surround Yourself With “Better” People

I hope this is why they kept me around :-). Seriously, I never knew my bosses to keep anyone less-than-stellar in their inner circle. There were many times I thought to myself, “Damn, they have dream-teams built around them.” Jim Rohn had it right, “You are the average of the 5 people you spend the most time with.”

4) Never Eat Alone

The last time I had dinner with Enver, as well as the last time I ate dinner with Oprah, there were easily 15 people at our tables, respectively. Coincidence? While most of us derive our key information from blogs or the newspaper, power players get their information from the source (other power players), directly. However, just because you can’t call up the Obamas and break bread with them doesn’t mean eating with others in your circle doesn’t carry value. In one of my favorite reads of the last few years called “Never Eat Alone”, author Keith Ferrazzi breaks down how you can identify “information brokers” to dine with you.  I’ve seen first hand how enormous the benefits are of this strategy.

5) Take Responsibility For Your Losses

I was working for Oprah during the time she was taking heat from the media about poor network ratings. I was also working for Enver during the closing of one of his prized divisions. What I witnessed them both do in response was powerful. Opposed to covering the losses up with fancy PR tactics, both stepped to the stage and said in essence “I own it and I’m going to fix it” and dropped the mic. Guess what?  They sure did fix things (It’s widely noted Oprah’s network is realizing ratings gold and Enver’s assets have probably doubled since the division closing).

Read More

The 10 worst used vehicles even Car Dealers don't want

A car dealer’s scientific guide to the 10 worst used vehicles

By Steven Lang January 17, 2014 5:27 PM Motoramic

Quality is something we all want when it comes to cars, especially older used ones. But how do we get it?

I have been studying this question in one form or another for nearly 14 years now. I began my automotive career as a car dealer, buying and selling hundreds of vehicles a year. As time went on, I became an auto auctioneer, a remarketing manager and a part-owner of a wholesale auto auction.
I saw thousands of cars come and go through the auction block during the course of each year, and as my worked changed, so did my understanding of quality. The overwhelming majority of the time, cars and trucks considered reliable in their early days would draw the strongest bids. But it wasn't always true; I observed some models experience costly transmission failure just as the odometer rolled past the 100,000-mile mark, while others would exhibit everything from blown head gaskets, to chronic rust issues to inoperative battery packs for hybrid vehicles.

Well-respected publications such as Consumer Reports and J.D. Power & Associates do an outstanding job finding defect trends among new and slightly used vehicles. However, once that specific vehicle is sold by the survey participant, there's no access to the history of the vehicle. As the average car owner over the last decade has typically kept their vehicle for approximately five to six years, a lot of data has disappeared.

A Look Into Nas' Hip Hop Fellowship At Harvard University

4 Reasons the Housing Bubble May Pop in 2014

by Rick Aristotle Munarriz Dec 30th 2013 11:00AM

Bloomberg via Getty Images

The housing rebound is on a roll. Home prices continue to inch higher, and the number of indicators showing economic improvement suggest we'll enjoy an even rosier 2014, when the Fed won't have to do quite as much to keep the good times going.

However, there are also more than a few hints that in the year ahead, the housing market's rebound may take a breather -- or we may experience something far worse. Let's take a look at some of the warning signs.

1. Mortgage Rates Are Moving Higher

The economy's gradually getting on track, and that has resulted in interest rates inching higher. Naturally, the higher the rate, the less bang potential homebuyers get for their bucks.

There's little reason to expect this trend to reverse. The Fed recently announced that it's ready to begin tapering its rate-suppression plan by reducing its bond purchases by $10 billion a month. Easing up on this latest round of quantitative easing -- QE3 -- will have an impact on interest rates. After all, if the Fed's $85 billion in monthly bond purchases created the illusion of demand, what will the reduction do to the real demand?

In other words, interest rates for a range of investments are likely to continue inching higher in the year ahead. There's a reason why savvy investors have been pouring money out of bond mutual funds in recent months as higher rates result in lower bond prices.

2. It's No Longer House-Hunting Season

The National Association of Realtors has reported three consecutive months of declines in existing home sales.

Housing bulls will argue that the market is still strong. The association representing real estate professionals still expects 5.1 million homes to be ultimately sold in 2013, and that's the highest tally since 2007. Is that worth bragging about? Is it merely a coincidence that 2007 was when the last housing bubble popped?

Either way, the last several months have not been kind, and that's enough to kill any of the favorable momentum the market experienced earlier in the year when rates were bottoming out.

3. The Mortgage Market is Starting to Dry Up

With homes getting more expensive and interest rates getting higher, you might expect interest in buying to dry up, and that's exactly what's been happening.

Read More

Obama targets poverty

By Roberta Rampton

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama is set to speak on Thursday about how he will target job creation, housing, law enforcement and education in the poorest U.S. communities, part of his pledge to narrow the gap between rich and poor in America.

Obama signaled last month that he plans a new focus this year on income inequality, which he called "the defining challenge of our time", pushing to raise the minimum wage and find new ways to help poor children break out of the cycle of poverty.

As part of this effort, Obama will create "promise zones" in San Antonio, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, southeastern Kentucky, and the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, the White House said on Wednesday.

The announcement came on the 50th anniversary of a pledge by former President Lyndon Johnson to wage a "war on poverty."

Johnson's pledge led to programs like Medicare, Medicaid, social security, food stamps, and Head Start preschool education programs.

Read More 

Google’s plan to take over your car takes shape

By Brad Reed January 6, 2014 10:46 AM

Google’s plan to take over your car takes shape

Google is looking to get a big head start in the upcoming battle with Apple in the realm of car-based software. Google announced on Monday that it has joined with several car manufacturers to cofound the Open Automotive Alliance, a new industry group that is working to bring Android to more cars and that is a clear reference to the Open Handset Alliance that helped make Android into the world’s No. 1 mobile operating system.

In addition to Google, the new group includes car manufacturers Audi, GM, Honda and Hyundai as well as chipmaker NVIDIA, so it looks like the alliance already has a very strong base of companies right out the gate. The OAA says that its goal is “aimed at accelerating auto innovation with an approach that offers openness, customization and scale, key tenets that have already made Android a familiar part of millions of people’s lives.” The alliance’s full press release follows below.

New roads ahead for Android and the Open Automotive Alliance

Tech companies and auto industry leaders join forces to make the connected car a reality in 2014