The Los Angeles Lakers will now be the team to watch in the NBA as they picked up the piece of the puzzle that they’ve been missing the past few years, a true point guard, when they acquired Steve Nash from the Phoenix Suns for two first round draft picks and two second round draft picks.  The Lakers tried using Ramon Sessions last year but in the Playoffs he disappeared and he never seemed like a true point guard.  In Steve Nash the Lakers have brought in a proven winner who can lead a team on the court, can play big minutes, is an amazing passer, but also is 38 years old.  Was four draft picks too much to give up for a player who will soon be 40?  Only time will tell how much Steve Nash has left in the gas tank but for next year this makes the Lakers the team to watch.  With two skilled 7 footers, Kobe Bryant, and now a MVP point guard who can compete with that?  If the Lakers make it to the finals against a team like Miami, Miami has shown they have no good big men and are weak inside.  Nash verse a Mario Chalmers, that will be a lesson for the former Jayhawk.

The person who should be the most excited is Kobe Bryant who has been feeling the pain of not having a true complete point guard.  With the point guard duties in the hands of someone Kobe can trust it allows him to concentrate solely on scoring and not worrying about trying to be the set up guy and distributor.  It allows Bynum and Gasol to know that if they run the fast break they will be getting picture perfect lob passes to them.  The only part of the Lakers that I do not like is smal forward.  I don’t think Ron Artest fits in.  He is old, his three point shot is off and he loves to shoot them, he is much slower now, and he is not the defender he used to be.  If the Lakers can get a small forward who guards great, rebounds the ball, and is physical I think they will win the Championship next year.  They should keep Gasol, don’t trade him, and either he or Bynum need to check the ego at the door and realize one of them is the number 2 option in the post.

A very interesting case is that of Rojadirecta which is a sports stream linking website.   The main site used to be found on Rojadirecta.org but has since moved to the .es domain extension.  Rojadirecta would list out where a bunch of sports were streaming live online each day, a web directory for the sports fans.  The website found itself in the Spanish courts over some european football matches that it was linking to.  It found itself in Spanish court not once but twice.  The outcome from both court cases was that what Rojadirecta was doing in Spain was legal.  The Spanish courts found no illegal issues with Rojadirecta linking to sports streams on their sites.  If we fast forward two years from there Rojadirecta had their domain name taken from them by the United States government who said that what Rojadirecta was doing was illegal.  The reason that the US Gov was able to take the Rojadirecta.org domain name is because the .org registry is run by a US based company.  Even though cyberspace is supposed to be neutral and for everyone the US used their power to force the company running the .org domains to turn over this domain name.

This brings up the interesting question of what happens when different countries have different laws about online related issues.  Is sports streaming and linking to sports streams legal or illegal or can it be both depending on whose soil you are standing on?  Is it legal for the US government to take away the assets of Spanish citizens?  What are the ramifications for cyberspace when one country begins to impose their laws on people located outside of their country?  These are all important questions that need to be answered before the online world and real world face a collision course.

Rojadirecta was able to easily move their site and operates on the .es registry now, so the US government effectively accomplished nothing but forcing Rojadirecta to change their domain extension.  Was this worth harming the US/Spanish relations or sending a signal to the rest of the world that the US will impose their will on foreign citizens?  Whatever the end result position of the US the fact remains that Rojadirecta is alive and well and still linking to live sporting events.

In the past five years the sports streaming niche has gained massive steam online and gained a huge following of people who had no other way to watch their favorite sports teams or the big matches.  Every year more and more people turn to the internet to get live feeds of the games they want to watch.  The question that many people have is how is this possible?  From places like P2P4U net to Wiziwig and formerly ATDHE, the ability for people to stream sports online has gone from a somewhat technical process to a rather mainstream ability.  And as technology advances the ability for everyone to stream online, and rather easily, is only a year or two away.

How streaming sports online is technologically possible is a question many had years ago, but nowadays most people take it for granted.  The process can be broken down into three parts.  A person must have access to a broadcast, this can either be through the most popular form which is their cable tv channels, it can be through items they find online, or even a video that they have at their house.  An application will take the broadcast and break it down into tiny bits and transferred them across through a medium, such as a P2P application or an internet streaming website.  When received on the other end, the pieces will be connected back together and form the stream that the viewer sees in front of them.  There are not many requirements for a person to stream a sporting event.  The streamer would need a high speed internet connection, something like a cable modem or DSL through the phone lines would be ideal.  If a person has the dial up modem circa the 1990′s then streaming sports is not going to be an option for that person.  Besides the high speed connection the person needs to find a program to use to stream the sports.  There are many standalone applications that can be used or there are many websites that have the software integrated into the site.  You may just need to install an add-on that will interact through your web browser to work with the stream and send it over to the site.

There are normally a few steps a person must go through to set up a stream.  With P2P4U net you would need to send your stream to a third party site which will broadcast the stream.  A lot of the popular third party sites like Justin.tv or UStream.tv now limit what can be streamed because many streams were not supposed to be rebroadcast.  When the owner of the broadcast complains to the site, the site must comply and take the stream down or they can face consequences.  As a result, many of the sports streamers now stream their games through the lesser known streaming sites on the internet.  This has resulted in it becoming harder for the game’s owner to identify where the stream is occurring and getting it removed.  As sites fall off the map there are always new streaming sites that pop up.

It’s that time of the year again and the NFL draft has happened and P2P4U is here to give our analysis of the football selections.  Many young college kids sat and waited patiently for their names to be called and find out where they would be earning a paycheck next year.  It is an exciting time for football fans as they can sit back and watch which direction their team is taking by drafting either offense or defense.   We put our P2P4U analysts to the task on rating how the NFL draft turned out and which picks were steals, which picks were reaches, who fumbled and who scored a TD in our draft analysis.

Andrew Luck and RGIII – These two picks should surprise no one and for months the whole world knew that Luck and Griffin were going 1 and 2 in the draft.  It will be interesting to see how these two progress.  We think Luck will have a better career than Griffin but we think that in year 1 both QBs could have many struggles.  P2P4U Rating on these picks: A

The Cleveland Browns filled two key holes in round 1 by taking Trent Richardson with the third pick (they traded up from 4 to 3 to grab him) and taking Brandon Weeden late in the first round.  What does this mean for Colt McCoy?  Likely that the McCoy experiment in Cleveland is over.  McCoy never looked comfortable in the offense.  He was getting hit a lot, held onto the ball too much, and his lack of height did not help.  To be fair the Browns didn’t have many playmakers on the offensive side, but McCoy never showed any consistency.  This was a great first round for Cleveland and the Dawgpound should be rocking this year.  P2P4U Grade: A+

The biggest headscratcher in the first round was the Chicago Bears drafting Shea McClellin.  The Bears had two gaping issues last year, they gave up too many yards passing and their offensive line needed a lot of help… so they go and draft a linebacker.  They could have traded down and still gotten Shea if they wanted him, or they might have considered trading up and grabbing a cornerback, or they could have kept their spot and picked an offensive lineman.  P2P4U grade: D-

With the first pick of the second round the Rams needed a wide receiver and they took… Brian Quick.  Maybe this is why St. Louis hasn’t had a winning season in the past decade.  There were 4 other receivers taken later in this round, all of which is P2P4U’s estimation that they all offer much more potential.  Stephen Hill was there, he has the ability to be a Calvin Johnson type of wideout with some work and he fell to the Jets (which was a nice pickup for them).  Not sure we understand the Rams pick here, time will tell, Bradford needs help on the football field and we’ll see which of the four receivers from Round 2 makes the biggest impact on the gridiron.

In our next analysis we’ll look at rounds 3 and 4.