OKLAHOMA CITY — There is an age-old truism pertaining to the NBA Finals that pertains to the question of old age. Young teams rarely, and we mean very rarely, win NBA championships. If the Oklahoma City Thunder somehow manage to emerge from the NBA Finals victorious, they’d be the first team with such a young nucleus to win the title since the Portland Trail Blazers in 1977 — a topic that our Hall of Fame columnist, Mark Heisler, addressed in his column
Michael Heisley, who moved the Grizzlies from Vancouver to Memphis over 10 years ago, is selling the team to a group owned by communications technology executive Robert J. Pera. The team announced the sale agreement Monday in a news release that did not disclose financial terms, although ESPN.com reported the price to be $350 million. The sale is pending the approval of the NBA Board of Governors, antitrust clearance and other conditions. Heisley, 75, bought the Grizzlies in 2000, when the franchise
// Watch the above video for my reasoning. And by the way, I am the only person on the SheridanHoops staff to pick Thunder in 5. For all of our staff’s picks, click here. (Disclaimer: The prediction business is a tricky one. I had Heat in 7 last round, but I also had Spurs in 5.) And back in the day when I was with ESPN, I was the only guy who said there was only a 10 percent chance that LeBron
The Conference Finals for both the East and the West had something in common this season: Each had a 36-year-old future hall of fame center (or power forward) in Kevin Garnett and Tim Duncan, trying desperately to help their respective teams reach the promised land of the NBA Finals. Both players had their moments, as you will see in the videos below. (via FocusedFolks20) (via Hennessy1764) Facing teams represented by the brightest superstars of today in LeBron James and Kevin Durant, Garnett and Duncan fell just short of making
The 12 referees who work the NBA Finals will wear No. 57 on their jerseys as a show of recognition to colleague Greg Willard, who has pancreatic cancer. A 24-year veteran, Willard is one of the NBA’s top officials, having worked the last two NBA Finals, the pinnacle of officiating. He was still working in the early rounds of this postseason before pulling out with an undisclosed illness. The gesture was arranged by the National Basketball Referees Association with the NBA’s cooperation. “Greg’s
Now to let the Young Guns shoot it out. … If you’re going to hear that a lot the next week or two, some of these guns are a lot younger than others. By 2007, when LeBron James and Dwyane Wade had both been in NBA Finals, Kevin Durant had yet to be drafted; Russell Westbrook was an unheralded UCLA freshman who had played nine minutes a game; and James Harden was even less heralded as a high school sophomore. Durant, Westbrook and
At the beginning of the season, Chris Sheridan polled our writers and asked for their predictions on a number of things, including the NBA Finals matchup and eventual winner. Chris Perkins, Chris Silva, and I picked the Thunder and the Heat to represent their respective conferences, and all three of us picked the Heat to win the whole thing. See for yourself. In the interest of full disclosure, though, I’ll point out that along the way, I changed my East pick to
So it’s Heat vs. Thunder in the Finals. The big question now is what happens to the Big Three in Boston, with Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen unrestricted free agents and Paul Pierce a potential trade candidate. We’ve got that, and all the latest news from around the NBA. From Alex Kennedy at HoopsWorld, Doc Rivers doesn’t want this to be the end of the Big Three. “I don’t know,” Rivers said. “I think we’re going to wait and see what