HoopsHype.com Rumors

The NBA will allow advertising on the court for the first time next season. The league sent a memo to its teams saying they will be permitted to sell space on what is referred to as the apron. The space covers the out-of-bounds area on the sideline between the baselines and the coaches' box where teams currently advertise their website or Twitter handles. ESPN.com

NBA 

The idea, proposed by deputy commissioner Adam Silver, who will take over for David Stern next season, will be evaluated over a one-year period to determine whether the league wants to make it a permanent piece of space to sell in the future. It is in lieu of putting corporate logos on jerseys, a proposal that has somewhat stalled. At one point, Silver said he believed that giving teams the rights to have a company's patch on jerseys would generate $100 million annually. ESPN.com

NBA, David Stern, Adam Silver 

The deals would be sold locally, but any corporate branding of the areas would be removed during national TV broadcasts; the floor advertising would be via decals. Similar to rotational signage at the scorer’s table, the league controls certain inventory for national broadcasts, and these new areas would fall into that realm — though no leaguewide sales efforts for the space are immediately planned. Sports Business Daily

NBA 

Majesco's best selling motion-controlled video game until now is their Zumba Fitness video game, which will release some new features in the fourth quarter of this year. In one month the company will release NBA Baller Beats. This game will be the first-ever full body, motion based NBA licensed video game that lets you perform like a pro using a real basketball. This first-of-its-kind participative basketball video game will be the best sports game of the year, especially after the Olympic Games. Seeking Alpha

NBA 

Royce Young: Schedule's out tomorrow at 7 p.m. ET according to NBA press release. Expect more leaks in the next 24 hours. Twitter

NBA 

NBA TV's NBA 2012-13 Schedule Release Special will exclusively announce the 2012-13 NBA regular season schedule on Thursday, July 26, at 7 p.m. ET. The one-hour show will highlight the season's most-anticipated games including those scheduled for Kia NBA Tip-Off '12 (the opening week of the season), Christmas Day and Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. The show will offer immediate reaction to those matchups and many other marquee games and top storylines for the upcoming season. NBA.com

NBA 

The University of Central Florida's Institute of Diversity and Ethics in Sport gave the NBA an A-plus for racial hiring and A-minus for gender hiring in its annual Racial and Gender Report Card released Tuesday. For the first time in NBA history, there were more head coaches of color (53 percent) than white head coaches. Also, African-Americans comprised 47 percent of all NBA coaches, the highest percentage since 2001-02. ESPN.com

NBA 

Alex Kennedy: Drug testing changes in the NBA: Players can now be tested for drugs/steroids up to four times during the season and twice during offseason. Twitter

NBA 

We’re still more than a few weeks away from some team claiming the Larry O’Brien trophy, but we can go ahead and crown the undisputed champ of professional sports leagues on Twitter. The NBA wins in a runaway. The NBA’s Twitter feed has a robust 5 million-plus, and counting, followers (5,011, 814 as of this morning). That dwarfs the National Football League’s 3,332,082, Major League Baseball’s 2,044,861 and the National Hockey League’s 1,166,503. NBA.com

Twitter, NBA, NFL, NHL, MLB 

The N.B.A. — like the N.F.L. and M.L.B. — files league office personnel data to Lapchick at his Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport at Central Florida. In the latest round of grading, baseball received an A in racial hiring and a B-minus in gender. The N.F.L. scored an A-plus and a C, while the N.B.A. earned an A-plus and an A-minus. The report cards have chided colleges for their record in hiring people of color and women to run athletic departments and given poor grades to newspaper sports sections in the United States. Lapchick also releases annual graduation rates of college football teams bound for the bowl games and men’s basketball teams in the N.C.A.A. tournament. New York Times

NBA, NFL, MLB 

To that end, Lapchick recalled a meeting he attended while serving with Bill Bradley, among others, on a commission to study culture and community in 1996. A female commissioner initiated a discussion on how the rap star Tupac Shakur and the industry he represented were in part responsible for a decline in social enlightenment among American youth based on music that objectified women and promoted violence and offensive language. “I was slightly aware of the genre, so it all made some sense to me,” Lapchick said. “But it later struck me that this was the week after Tupac was murdered and she might not even have heard of him until then. The next week, I was going to speak to the N.B.A.’s rookie transition program in Northern Virginia, and I was on a bus from the airport with five African-American rookies. They were talking about Tupac and one was saying, ‘What are we going to do without him?’ “They were all devastated by his death, and I realized that he was their musical wizard, their sage, their storyteller. I was about 50 at the time, and it just dawned on me that here was the same cultural phenomenon being viewed by two different generations as polar opposites. I just decided I was going to start talking about these things, and when I told my daughter what I was going to do, she said, ‘Oh, I love Tupac.’ Then I knew it wasn’t about race but class and culture, about what people have and what they don’t have.” New York Times

NBA, NFL, MLB 

David Aldridge: 8 hrs in. Re: progress as reported by Yahoo! et al: 1 high-ranking team exec previously skeptical now optimistic. But heard that before.. Twitter

CBA, NBA, Lockout, Owners 

Sam Amick: There is an interesting level of optimism among the NBA executive ranks regarding tonight's talks and how this night will end. Twitter

CBA, NBA, Lockout, Owners 

Chris Broussard: For those getting overly excited & optimistic about the NBA talks, I'm told u should slow your roll. Still a ways to go Twitter

CBA, NBA, Lockout, Owners 

Alex Kennedy: Source believes its a good sign that Gilbert and Sarver are distancing themselves from hardline owners: "Is it damage control before deal?" Twitter

CBA, NBA, Lockout, Owners 

Sam Amick: Even some agents who don't necessarily want a deal tonight are of the mind that one will be done. #falsehope? Twitter

CBA, NBA, Lockout, Owners 

Alex Kennedy: I just asked an NBPA source for a prediction: "I think we'll get really close tonight and then hammer out a deal tomorrow." We'll see. Twitter

CBA, NBA, Lockout, Owners 

Sergio Llull: I'm very happy here playing with Real Madrid but the possibility [of playing in the NBA] is there... In two, three years I would like to have that experience. Basket4Us

Houston Rockets, Real Madrid, Sergio Llull, NBA 

Nielsen: Median age of viewer -- NBA (39.3), NHL (43.4), NFL (46), MLB (51.4), NASCAR (51.6). Thought MLB will have oldest. Twitter

Media, NBA 

A former security guard has been charged by federal officials with making repeated bomb threats earlier this week to the Secaucus offices of the National Basketball Association, for whom he worked. José Quesada, 19, of Elizabeth, surrendered earlier this afternoon and is awaiting an appearance in U.S. District Court in Newark on charges of willfully providing false information "indicating that malicious damage of a building or vehicle would take place." Federal authorities said he made several calls to the NBA office from his personal cell phone over a three-day period beginning July 26, leaving voicemail messages that he was going to blow up the building and kill people. "I put a bomb outside ... Gonna kill all the NBA ... There’s a bomb outside the complex in the parking lot. I put a bomb outside in the bush. No way out. Gonna blow up at 9 o’clock in the morning. Good luck...If you come out, it will blow up," Quesada allegedly said in one July 27 call, according to documents filed in federal court. Newark Star-Ledger

Law, NBA