With many of their best players resting, Australia fell short against Angola. Thursday, as the 2014 FIBA Basketball World Cup wrapped up the Group Phase, the Australian team faced Angola in its final game. With the Aussies trailing Slovenia by one game and having lost the head-to-head matchup between the two nations, they had nothing to gain from their final appearance in Group D. Their fate was destined to be the third best team out of their
Team USA had nothing to play for, and it showed. The Americans already had clinched Group C at the FIBA World Cup by winning their first four games. While other countries jockeyed to get into the knockout stage – or avoid certain opponents – Team USA was on cruise control in Friday’s game vs. war-torn Ukraine. The United States was playing for the fifth time in six nights and had a start time four hours earlier than Thursday. The combination of apathy
On Wednesday, we took a look at the biggest winners of the NBA offseason, a baker’s dozen of players, teams, coaches and even an executive who had a spectacular summer. Today, we look at the NBA offseason’s biggest losers, a collection of an unlucky 13 players, teams, coaches and even an owner. Yeah, take a wild guess at that last one. We also felt the need to include one team’s fan base, which truly deserves better than it has gotten over the
For some reason, the Phoenix Suns have put themselves in quite the vulnerable situation. With innovative coach Jeff Hornacek at the helm, the Suns were truly one of the biggest surprise teams of last season. No one expected them to be in a dog fight to be a playoff team in April. Hell, not many expected them to win even 30 games. Yet, they won 48 games and became one of the most dynamic offensive teams in the league (eighth-best offensive
Patrick Beverley and Chandler Parsons once sat side-by-side as teammates… What are they now? Are they friends? Enemies? Or, to borrow a teenage colloquialism, frenemies? One might consider that a valid question considering the tweet that Houston Rockets guard Patrick Beverley sent his former teammate Chandler Parsons. @ChandlerParsons r u excited to play us or scared??? — Patrick Beverley (@patbev21) September 4, 2014 Parsons left the Rockets as a restricted free agent over the summer after Houston general manager Daryl Morey
In a day where all 24 teams played in the FIBA World Cup leading up to Thursday’s frenetic first round finish, it was The Manimal who again stood out in another Team USA victory. After a closely contested first quarter, Kenneth Faried helped the Americans (4-0), once again propelled by their big men, take the second and third quarters by a combined 26 points and defeat the Dominican Republic (2-2) 106-71 to advance to 4-0 and clinch the best record in
When you shoot 8-for-11 from the field, as Kenneth Faried did Wednesday in Team USA’s 106-71 victory over the Dominican Republic, and your shooting percentage for the tournament actually goes down … well, that says something about the kind of tournament you are having. Faried is unquestionably the leading candidate to be MVP of the 2014 FIBA World Cup after four games of pool play. The question is whether he will be able to keep it up over Team USA’s next
Free agency has died down, the FIBA World Cup is in full swing and training camps open in less than a month, which makes it as good a time as any to look back at the NBA offseason and determine who were the biggest winners and losers. We didn’t limit ourselves to a round number. The list includes teams, coaches, players and even an executive. It is in alphabetical order and doesn’t have some secret analytic formula that determines the biggest