Easy Listening

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Not every man can admit he really likes James Blunt's voice.

Under absolutely no circumstances will certain people allow Phil Collins to be played on their stereo (You know who you are, and God is watching). But Mo Williams of the Cavs is not one of those people. In fact he says this about the song "In the Heat of the Night":

"It's just a good song to get you in a mental state of mind before the game. The Bulls came out to it forever. Back when Jordan was there, that was their intro song. The Heat came out to it a couple times, too, last year. They stole my song."

In commemoration of the NBA's opening day, Rhapsody has put together a list of different playlists (from Gilbert Arenas to Greg Oden) and get this, you can actually listen to the songs, in full, as loud as you want (Remember when we did this for baseball?).

Most players didn't stray from standard fare of the Lil Wayne/Kanye West/Jay-Z triumvirate, but it's a hard knock life, so I understand. I think.

Here are some of the best nuggets from the list:

Gilbert Arenas explains the song (Jay-Z's "Thirty Something") that made him go out and buy a Maybach:
"It made me go and buy a Maybach six-deuce with curtains. I had to get one of them because he made it sound so nice. I saw [the Maybach coupe] in the video. [It's worth] $6 million. That's actually a custom car that's in the video. I think the dude is a race car driver who had the car built for him and rents it out for $500,000 a day."

Michael Redd explains how Deitrick Haddon's song "Inspiration" influences his faith:
"Jesus Christ is my inspiration. He's my leading example and who I wanna be or exemplify to people. He's my inspiration for everything that I do, whether playing basketball, or whatever it may be.

Greg Oden likes the classiness of Will Smith's "It's All Good" (he also picked *NSYNC):
"Sometimes I like to get away from all of that cussin'."

Mo Williams on Usher's "Here I Stand.":
"I don't know why [people were disappointed with his new album]. That was my wedding song."

Juwan Howard loves James Blunt's voice. On "You're Beautiful":
"That dude is smooth. I love his voice. I think he's that crossover for urban folk, as well as people that enjoy pop and rock. Everybody enjoys that guy."

Caron Butler on Vanessa Carlton's "A Thousand Miles":
"It was in White Chicks. It's a catchy *ss song man. You have to listen to it."

Shawn Marion likes Genesis, too (he's actually got a pretty stacked playlist—Prince, Cyndi Lauper, Teena Marie). On Genesis', "In Too Deep":
"You need to put Genesis on there. Phil Collins was good. I'm a music fanatic. Anything that sounds good, I'm listening to. There's so many artists out that were really good in the 80s coming out. Music then was a lot different than it is right now because all the songs back then were a lot longer than the songs are today. A lot of the songs back then were more like five and six minutes long. Now the songs are more like three minutes."

Word is born. And reborn tonight. Check out the Rhapsody playlists here.

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