Stiff List 1-3-12 by Fly Agaric

1. David Stern: Vetoing trades, being generally meddlesome and presiding over the league during an ugly, protracted lockout that, apparently, didn't solve anything: Players still have a ton of leverage to collude and go where they want and owners are still overpaying. Stern's time is up. He needs to go.
2. DeMarcus Cousins: It is real tempting to covet Cousins as a pro basketball player. He's 6'11" and 275 lbs. of muscle and explosiveness and looks like he has a long and productive NBA career ahead of him. Yet, teammates and coaches from Kentucky to Sacramento call him coddled and a bully, and the reports of his meltdowns and confrontations do little to dispel those whispers.
3. NBA schedule makers: 2012 is looking ugly. Who wants to see a team play a third night in a row? Who wants to see bricks heaved up on the tired legs of normally steady shooters? No one. There was no need to pack 66 games into such a compressed schedule, except to get more home games for the owners so they can make that concession revenue.
4. Tim Tebow / The Denver Broncos: Now, I won't capture in a few sentences the nuanced, media microscope/pressure cooker that Tebow found himself in after that crazy, statistically improbable mid-season run. Suffice to say, Tim, and the rest of the Broncos, got into the playoffs in such an ugly manner that Denver sports fans are probably, like me, not excited at all about facing the 12-4 Steelers.
5. The Denver Nuggets from downtown: When you have Danilo Gallinari, Arron Afflalo and Ty Lawson all as notable and solid — if not spectacular — perimeter players and have the best passing big man, in Nene, to work the in-and-out game, you are not supposed to be this terrible from deep (25.6%). Bench player Rudy Fernandez was supposed to be a spark off the bench. Instead he's been dropping bricks.