Every player with a long career has experienced amazing triumphs and agonizing defeats. What is remarkable is that if you ask most athletes about those events years later, most will admit that the losses stay with them and are more impactful than the wins. After this year’s NCAA Championship game, Kentucky coach John Calipari could only talk about the missed opportunities. His team missed free throws, turned the ball over or missed shots at crucial times. He rarely mentioned the tremendous
In these rankings, much like in life, you’ve got to be lucky to win. You can be the same exact person, with the same skill set and attitude, but if that ball doesn’t bounce the right way, you don’t get the recognition you deserve. Take UConn coach Kevin Ollie. If 7-foot freshman center Amida Brimah, who hasn’t played more than four seasons of organized basketball in his life, doesn’t complete a ridiculous three-point play with less than 25 seconds left in the first
I might be talking crazy, purely out of frustration, but Roy Hibbert is overrated. On my DraftStreet fantasy team he literally took away my points, that’s hard to do. He finished with zero points, zero rebounds, zero assists, one turnover and five missed shots. Not to mention his team got trampled by the Atlanta Hawks in the game on Sunday. There might be an explanation to his poor play, according to Page Q sports, Hibbert had a falling off with
The NBA took a day off as a courtesy to the national championship game between Kentucky Wildcats and UConn Huskies, and most around the league were glued to the television on Monday night. The quest for the NCAA title always draws massive interest, but this one was particularly special for so many that are and have been in the NBA because of Kevin Ollie – the long-time, respected NBA veteran turned head coach of the Huskies. With his great leadership and
Monday afternoon the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame welcomed its class of 2014 inductees. For the NBA, it was a great unveiling, as seven-time NBA All-Star and 2006 NBA champion with the Miami Heat Alonzo Mourning and six-time All-Star and Sacramento Kings great Mitch Richmond were announced. They join recently retired NBA commissioner David Stern—who was previously announced. [Read more…]
Believe it or not, there’s someone out there who doesn’t think the Indiana Pacers are coming apart at the seams. “Everybody goes through this,” Spurs guard Tony Parker said last week after San Antonio manhandled Indiana, 103-77, on the Pacers’ home court. “I’m not worried about them. They’ll still make it to the Eastern Conference finals and they’ll still play Miami.” Parker is somewhat right. From time to time, every championship contender has a stretch during a season where they look ordinary.
Life can be tricky. Sometimes, you are judged by your successes. Other times, you are judged by your failures. Which brings us to the San Antonio Spurs, who are sitting at 60 victories with a little over a week left in the 2013-14 regular season, practically assured of having homecourt advantage throughout the playoffs. But when you play word association with the Spurs, what comes to mind first: Their 19-game winning streak that ended last week, or their 0-4 record this season
It’s been a brutal season for the Milwaukee Bucks. As of this writing, they’re sitting on 14 wins and 63 losses, a league-worst clip despite the Sixers’ recent 26-game losing streak. But unlike Philadelphia, which began this season with a nakedly obvious quest to bottom out, Milwaukee actually chased the playoffs. They (rather questionably) signed O.J. Mayo and Zaza Pachulia and traded for Wisconsin native Caron Butler, who is the only player in NBA history ever excited about getting shipped to