Our hotel was in the French Quarter, which has been largely restored to its former glory. But as soon as you get away from the central area of the city, it’s another story.

We saw so many apartment buildings, medical plazas, schools and homes that were only partially there and abandoned. Worse was when you saw a badly damaged apartment building that obviously had people living in it.

We saw an abandoned amusement park. And several empty shopping centers, including a couple of abandoned WalMarts.

The population is WAY down from what it was before Katrina. A lot of people that evacuated simply never came back. It’s one of the reasons that so much devestation remains. There simply isn’t the manpower there locally to do all the labor required to get everything back to where it was.

People have their federal money now, but contractors, labor and building materials are hard to come by.

Anyone else find it funny that Muss is talking about coach ability?

B+ at shooting guard? That’s so far off it’s like shooting an old lawyer in the face because you thought he was a quail.

I liked what Benson had to say particularly about teams wary of him writing a blog. I’m not sure I quite understand that. Afterall Arenas just signed a 110 million dollar contract and he writes stuff that is far worse than what Rod Benson says on his posts. Beyond that, I think Benson’s posts speak to the way players, without the star mouth/talent that players like Arenas possess, are treated when teams are wary of anything about them. Beyond that, and I say that again only for this reason, is that his point about giving a break to players who are rapists, thugs among other things is well noted. Why is a guy like Benson so dangerous because he’s articulate? (I don’t get it, and never will.)

On the subject of Musselman he keeps mentioning the attitude of “all americans”. How does he know what an all american’s attitude is? in the college game generally the coaches are the bigger name because they stick around longer. In the pro game it’s all about the player, and the coaches are generally supplementary parts that the player has to agree to work with as opposed to doing it the coaches way or getting fucked in college. I love Musselman’s black & white world (one of the reason he was such a terrible coach for the Kings—you have to use shades of gray with pro players) and how pointless it is. But he would be good for a small program looking to make a big name (like San Diego state, or even Sac State for that matter) out of itself by taking a former NBA coach and bringing him in. And unlike Adelman who retreated to Portland State to geta way from the Warriors (who wouldn’t have?), this could be a move that benefits Musselman multiple fold if he uses the media covering a college team the same way he did with Amick and Co. while he was coaching the Kings.