ARTWORK: Mary Jane Watson

I am a die hard Spider-man fan and I thought what better way to start my basketball shoe-comic book tie-up than with a Mary Jane Watson/Zoom Kobe V "Think Pink" illustration. This is actually the second version of this drawing as my first version made MJ look a little "butch". And it had nothing to do with her wearing basketball shoes...if you know what I mean.

ARTWORK: Dwyane Wade

I drew this during the time Wade was still a free agent and even intentionally left his uniform unfinished until I knew exactly what team he was going to play for next season. Well as you can obviously see, unless you lived under a rock this whole time, Dwyane will continue to be a player for the Miami Heat but will now have a couple of high powered "friends" joining him next season.

Why We Hate The Lebron "Decision"

Bill Simmons, an ESPN writer who answers and publishes his readers' questions, probably has the best explanation why a lot of us hate the fact that Lebron joined forces with Dwyane Wade in Miami.

As for me, I figured out why the LeBron/Wade alliance bothers everyone beyond the irrefutable "Jordan would have wanted to beat Wade, not play with him" argument. In pickup basketball, there's an unwritten rule to keep teams relatively equal to maximize the competitiveness of the games. That's the law. If two players are noticeably better than everyone else, they don't play together, nor would they want to play together. If the two guys have any pride at all -- especially if they play similar positions -- then getting the better of each other trumps any other scenario. They want that test. Joining forces and destroying everyone else would ruin the whole point of having the game. It's like a dad kicking his young son's ass in a driveway one-on-one game. What's the point? When LeBron and Wade effectively said, "Instead of trying to whup each other, let's just crush everyone else" and "If these teams end up being uneven, we're not switching up," everyone who ever played basketball had the same reaction: "I hate guys like that."

So when my wife asked in all sincerity, "What's the big deal if they play together?" I couldn't really explain it to her other than to say, "It's a basketball thing. You just don't do it." Your goal as an alpha dog is to assemble the best team you can and beat the other alpha dogs. There are five alpha dogs right now: LeBron, Wade, Kobe, Howard and Durant. If two ended up on the same team by coincidence -- like Kareem and Magic, Shaq and Kobe, or Michael and Scottie -- that's one thing. That's sports. S--- happens. But willingly deciding that it would be easier to play together than beat one another? Even two weeks later, I can't get over it. LeBron's last two Boston games were a massive disappointment to anyone who truly cares about basketball, but for me, copping out by joining forces with Wade was even worse.

I think this sums it up quite nicely. What do you think?