“If Amar’e is really Jewish then there is only one way to prove it.”

The payoff?

“We’ll guarantee Amar’e a lifetime supply of Gold’s Horseradish (red, white or extra hot cream style) for him and his family,” Gold said.

Gold said he’ll also donate ten cases of Gold’s condiments, including its mustard products, to a charity or food bank of Stoudemire’s choice for every Knicks win for the next two seasons. And Gold says he’ll step it up for the playoffs, which the team hasn’t played in since the 2003-04 season.

- Darren Rovell, CNBC SportsBiz.

Oh man. Oh man, oh man, oh man. First of all, good luck with that, Amar’e. I could go either way on horseradish but I’ve never found it too difficult to palate. I imagine a gallon of it is pretty pungent though.

But hey, if you can handle it: FREE HORSERADISH FOR LIFE! I don’t even know if I want that after all those horseradish-related challenges. Plus I’m not certain I’ve ever even purchased horseradish. Of course, I’m not Jewish.

My favorite part of this, though, is that Gold’s is stepping up and donating mustard to the charity of Stoudemire’s choice. Because first off, it’s a condiment. It is by it’s nature extraneous — albeit delicious.

It’s not like they’re donating something with a ton of nutritional value that’s going to help food banks provide for more people. Just mustard, to make the people’s food a little tastier. Which is noble, don’t get me wrong. Just funny.

Also, it would be particularly funny if Stoudemire completed the challenge and chose a charity that was not a food bank, like the Sierra Club or one dedicated to cancer research. And I bet there are plenty of good people working at all those charities who would appreciate tons of mustard.

This absolutely has to happen. I don’t think I’ve ever wanted anything more in my whole life, and that includes the Mark-McGwire-riding-a-triceratops situation that came up in a recent email chain with the TedQuarters guest posters.

Someone start a petition or something. Take pledges. I’ll pledge $50 to the charity of the winner’s choice if Rome takes so much as one punch from the Big Shaqasso.

And Gatecrasher got a similar take from a source in Jay-Z’s camp. “Jay never expected LeBron to sign with the Nets. He knew that no 25-year-old kid with James’ profile was going to spend years in Newark,” the source tells Gatecrasher. “But he’s pissed, or at least disappointed, that LeBron didn’t consult with him.”

- Gatecrasher, N.Y. Daily News.

LeBron James: No longer YA BOYYYYYY.

- ESPN’s Chris Broussard, Twitter.

Wait a minute: What?

Look, I don’t know much about operating an NBA basketball team. In fact, there’s really only thing I’m downright certain of: Never, ever let Isiah Thomas anywhere near the controls.

And it’s not about the sexual-harassment lawsuit that cost the Knicks $11.6 million or even the time he overdosed on sleeping pills and then threw his 17-year-old daughter under the bus. I mean, yeah, those are two reasons I’d probably be leery of hiring the guy, but I’m not one for sweeping moral judgments.

I mean, holy crap, they JUST unburied themselves from all the damage the guy did while he was in charge.

For whatever reason, all 421 words of the screed were written in the less-than-intimidating Comic Sans font. This fact is already on the Comic Sans Wikipedia page and it was all over Twitter shortly after Gilbert’s letter was published. A Tweet from Jsmooth995 decried Gilbert’s choice, saying “nobody who posts official statements in Comic Sans MS should be running an NBA team.”

- David Biderman and Emily Steel, Wall Street Journal.

I fail to see how Gilbert’s use of Comic Sans is anything other than completely and utterly hilarious. Especially now that I know, from the article, that the 48-year-old multimillionaire uses Comic Sans for all his correspondence. It’s funny, just not in the way Comic Sans is intended to be funny.

But that said, the backlash over the typeface is probably the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard of. It’s a typeface. And thanks to its overuse, the font is now particularly useful for a variety of humorous pursuits. The movement to ban Comic Sans would rob future satirists the opportunity to use the font ironically. Consider this Comic Sans backlash backlash.

Hat tip to Can’t Stop the Bleeding for the link.

So that’s really all I’ve got to say about LeBron James:

Ehh, f*** ‘em.

In one fell swoop last night, LeBron defied logic multiple times. He didn’t just choose a team in an only medium-sized market where he’ll have to play alongside other stars while simultaneously disappointing a room full of children. He also somehow managed to make Kobe Bryant a sympathetic character. Who among us won’t be rooting for the Lakers if they square off with the Heat in the Finals next year?

Rooting for the Lakers. Who (outside LA, of course) could have imagined that a few weeks ago?

Or, I suppose, we could opt for the other approach, the one I’m more likely to take: We can continue not paying all that much attention to the NBA because the college game is more exciting anyway, and because the NBA is silly enough to schedule its playoffs during baseball season.

In other words: Ehh, f*** ‘em.

If it’s not New York, why make the announcement here when he dragged everyone to Akron for the pitches? He could have stayed there and maintained an illusion of neutrality.

- Michael Salfino, SNY.tv.

Salfino makes a series of reasonable points here arguing why LeBron James will inevitably end up with the Knicks. The location, he points out, is as close to New York as you can be without being in New York. The recent talk that he’s going to Miami? Salfino argues that it’s misdirection from James’ camp to build suspense around the announcement.

I don’t know. I’d say I don’t care, but that’s not entirely true. I will care if he comes to New York. That would be cool.

I won’t watch the thing tonight — there’s baseball on. Real sporting events should always take precedence over announcements about future sporting events, I think. I’m sure I’ll find out where LeBron’s heading within five minutes of the announcement, and I won’t have to sit through however many minutes of hype-machine nonsense before it.

But that said, I’m a little surprised by how much backlash there has been to the news that LeBron would announce his decision in this fashion, on ESPN. I mean, how’d you expect it to be? It’s entertainment. LeBron James is a professional basketball player. And yet this particular instance of showmanship and spectacle makes a mockery of the game?

C’mon. Maybe the league-wide disregard for traveling violations makes a mockery of the game, or the gambling officials do. But a player maximizing his time in the spotlight is only that.