Team USA won 59 straight basketball games after allowing NBA players to compete in the 1992 Barcelona Olympics. That included Olympic titles in 1992, 1996 and 2000 and a FIBA World Championship in 1994 (the U.S. sent a ragtag group of non-NBA players—Trajan Langdon, Brad Miller, Wendell Alexis—and picked up the bronze in 1998 during the NBA lockout). But ten years after Jordan and Barkley got things rolling in the right direction, the United States entrusted Baron Davis, Paul Pierce and Raef
UNDER CONTRACT: F LaMarcus Aldridge, F Nicolas Batum, G Wesley Matthews, F J.J. Hickson, F Luke Babbitt, F Jared Jeffries, G Elliot Williams, G Nolan Smith, G Ronnie Price, G Sasha Pavlovic DRAFT PICKS: F-C Joel Freeland (2006), F Victor Claver (2009), G Damian Lillard, C Meyers Leonard, G Will Barton FREE AGENTS: G Jonny Flynn, F Craig Smith, F Shawne Williams, C Dan Gadzuric MOVES: The Trail Blazers needed a real center – no, not rookie Meyers Leonard – to take the pressure off
The Orlando Magic have tried a number of two-team trades with Dwight Howard that haven’t worked. There has been talk of at least one three-team trade that did not work. Now there is apparently a four-team trade involving Howard being discussed. According to a report Thursday by Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo!, Howard would go to the Los Angeles Lakers in a true blockbuster deal also involving Philadelphia and Denver. From Yahoo!: “A deal is not considered imminent, but the talks have grown serious over
Since when did going after another player’s “jewels” become the act of frustration or retaliation in basketball? Just two days after watching Carmelo Anthony take a “cheap shot” to the groin from Argentinian guard Facundo Campazzo, we saw another hit to the groin take place on Wednesday when a frustrated Nicolas Batum threw a vicious shot at Juan Carlos Navarro. Check out what went down between France and Spain, along with how Team USA defeated Australia to move onto the semifinals below.
csprtContainer(); Can a Molten be split in thirds? Because the game ball for Wednesday’s 119-86 quarterfinal win over Australia should be divided up between Kobe Bryant, LeBron James and Kevin Love. You knew there was eventually going to be an eruption from Kobe, even when he was scoreless at halftime. And erupt he did, going for six 3-pointers and 20 points in the second half, a bunch of those points coming in rapid succession as the U.S. team pulled away with a furious
Ruben Magnano coached a game that made all of his fellow Argentinians happy. Problem was, Magnano was coaching Brazil. Magnano made the curious decision to sit Anderson Varejao for the entire fourth quarter, and Argentina held off a strong fourth-quarter run by Brazil and defeated their South American rivals 82-77 Wednesday in the quarterfinals of the 2012 Olympics. Magnano, who coached Argentina to a gold medal at the 2004 Olympics in Athens but then had a falling out with the national federation, was
