According to several reports out of New York, and the Associated Press, it’s looking like Cuttino Mobley could retire as soon as today.

It’s a rather shocking turn of events, and final footnote to the Zach Randolph trade. But it sounds as if this trade could indeed have saved Mobley’s life.

I don’t believe that the Knicks are pushing Mobley to do this, though I’m not close enough to them to know for sure.

From what I understand, the Knicks had the option to just dump Mobley and allow him to return to the Clippers, as Antonio McDyess did recently with the Pistons, and chose not to. In other words, they did want him so there’d be no reason to force him to retire just to clear a roster spot.

We should have more information on Thursday. Mobley has not publicly spoken about his heart condition since the trade. But this was obviously an agonizing decision for him.

In this week’s Sports Illustrated, L. Jon Wertheim writes on Baron Davis’s use of the NBA as a platform to work as a social activist, movie producer and entrepreneur.

Wertheim writes: “When you’ve been involved in a successful presidential campaign, produced an Oscar-worthy documentary and include among your goals for 2009 brokering a truce among Bloods, Crips and Latino gangs, it’s easy to see how tossing a ball into a basket against, say, the Milwaukee Bucks could seem somewhat trifling. And while Davis won’t cop to it, there is a sense in some corners that his extracurricular activities have exacted a price on his basketball.”

Says Davis: “Basketball saved my life, it really did. I owe everything to this game. I could never be one of those players who signs a big contract and then doesn’t want to play. People look at all the things I have going on and say it’s a distraction. But, you know, they’re hobbies. Basketball is my stage, and the failing just makes you hungrier.”

It’s on page 48, if you’re curious to read more…

Just got word from the league office that both flagrant fouls from last night’s game have been reviewed –as all flagrant fouls are — and there will be no further punishment to the players involved.

Zach Randolph was assessed a flagrant foul for his hard foul on Orlando center Dwight Howard. Orlando’s Brian Cook was assessed a flagrant foul for his hard foul on Clippers guard Baron Davis.

The loss to the lowly Clippers on Saturday proved to be the final blow in the case against Minnesota coach Randy Wittman, who was summarily fired on Monday.

Almost as quickly, questions about which NBA coach would be next to be dismissed found a focus on Clippers coach Mike Dunleavy, who saw his team fall to a dreadful 4-17 with a 95-88 loss to Orlando Monday night at Staples Center.

But before anything began swirling, or spinning, Clippers president Andy Roeser put a sharp end to that discussion, publicly affirming Dunleavy’s standing with the club.

“It’s always darkest before the dawn,” Roeser said after the loss on Monday night. “We like our players and as hard as it is to say, we just need to be a little patient until it all comes together.”

It looks like the Clippers will have to wait a little longer to see how their new frontline of Chris Kaman, Marcus Camby and Zach Randolph will be able to play together.

Clippers coach Mike Dunleavy said Monday that Kaman will be out longer than the team had first expected, possibly a few more weeks in addition to the two weeks he’s already missed with a strained left arch.

“It seems like it’s going to be a little slower,” Dunleavy said. “Basically what it is, is you have a partially torn tendon in your foot. It shows up on the MRI, you see the healing process and when it’s all healed he’ll be ready to go.”

Dunleavy had initially hoped Kaman might be ready for Monday’s game against Orlando. Then that was pushed back to Friday’s game in Portland. Now he’s not even putting a timetable on it.

Kaman saw another doctor on Sunday and determined the foot was taking longer to heal than expected.

“Hopefully in a couple more weeks I’ll start playing,” Kaman said. “I don’t really know when. I just want to keep doing my rehab and staying on top of everything. It’s still a little sore, but it’s better than it was.

“I’d been testing it a little bit and it wasn’t where it needed to be. I’m going to wait until it heals and I’m not going to come back any sooner because I don’t want it to linger the rest of the year.”

Kaman has been out since November 26th.

Hey,

Sorry to have been away a few days. I don’t travel with the Clippers on the road so there isn’t as much new content to bring you.

I was thinking this might be a new cool feature for the blog. Stole the idea from Brian Dohn over at our UCLA blog…

Anyway, I’m going to be hosting live in-game chats during all games now. I’ll be on most of the time, but when I’m up against it on deadline I’ll have to duck out. But this is mostly for you guys, so let’s see how much interest there is, starting with tonight.