Brooklyn Nets owner Mikhail Prokhorov has never met his new head head coach, but Lionel Hollins already has the respect and attention of both players and management. “We have a very strong experienced coach,” Prokhorov told reporters before Monday night’s home opener against Oklahoma City, a game in which the Nets would win by 31. In speaking with various Nets players and a coaching peer, it’s apparent that Hollins’ demanding, honest, no-nonsense style sits well with the players and is a nice
Brooklyn Nets majority owner Mikhail Prokhorov made a rare media appearance Monday night prior to the team’s home opener against Oklahoma City and maintained that he will not be giving up a majority share of the franchise. The line of questions comes amid various recent news reports and rumors that he was looking to shop the team and “cash out” given the rising value of NBA team valuations. “I will not give up control of the team,” Prokhorov emphatically stated a few times
Pau Gasol has everything the Chicago Bulls were missing in the past. Clearly Chicago needs a healthy Derrick Rose to compete for a championship, but Gasol looked every bit of the team’s missing part in Wednesday night’s 104-80 win over the Knicks at Madison Square Garden. Gasol scored 21 points and grabbed 11 rebounds in 29 minutes in the win and added a lot to the team that they lacked last year, according to Bulls players and head coach Tom Thibodeau. “He’s
Things did not start out particularly well for young Jabari Parker. Just 2:49 into the first quarter on Monday night, the 19-year-old Milwaukee Bucks rookie and second overall draft pick was called for a questionable charge on new Knicks point guard Jose Calderon. It was his second personal foul of the game and would normally earn a player a quick trip to the bench. But on this night, a preseason battle meant for learning experiences and deciding teams’ final roster slots, new
Adding some small degree of excitement to what would have been a dull, mundane preseason game at the Barclays Center, the league conducted an experiment with the Celtics and Nets playing 11-minute quarters on Sunday. In addition to the one fewer minute per quarter, there were two media timeouts in the second and fourth quarters instead of the normal three. The shorter 44-minute long game, the first one in NBA history, ended in a pleasant one hour and 58 minutes with the Celtics
How will the Oklahoma City Thunder do without Kevin Durant for the first six to eight weeks of the season? It’s extremely hard to tell, considering Durant has missed a total of 16 regular season games over the course of his seven-year career, including just two over the last two seasons. Durant’s lone absence last season came on Jan. 24 in a 101-83 win over Boston in which Russell Westbrook did not play, either. With Durant sidelined by a Jones fracture in
On Thursday, we gave you our All-Breakout Team for the upcoming season for the Eastern Conference. Today, we bring you our Western Conference All-Breakout Team. These are the players we believe are on the verge of breaking out or standing out. We used the same parameters – five players, one at each position, but no rookies. Let’s get right to it. [Read more…]
Training camps are over, exhibition games have begun, and the excitement is palpable as we build towards the 2014-2015 season with players who should have breakout or standout seasons. Here are five players in the Eastern Conference – one at each position, no rookies – who will take the next step towards greatness this upcoming season. Tomorrow, the West. [Read more…]