One couldn’t have imagined a worse outcome for the Oklahoma City Thunder in the 2014-15 season. A massive plague of injuries kept the team below full strength for the entire campaign. Specifically, Kevin Durant missed 55 games, Serge Ibaka missed 18 games and Russell Westbrook missed 15 games. The other four rotation players who started and finished the season with OKC – Anthony Morrow, Steven Adams, Andre Roberson and Nick Collison – missed between eight and 16 games each. All those missed
It’s not easy to take an 11-hour flight, but that’s what former NBA player and current Maccabi Tel Aviv point guard Jordan Farmar was getting ready for on Sunday afternoon as he slowly got dressed in the locker room inside Madison Square Garden. After a two-city tour in NBA arenas, Farmar and his teammates were about to head back to Israel, traveling even further away from his native Los Angeles. Farmar, 28, was born in Los Angeles and went to high
After a summer in which the Dallas Mavericks thought they found their franchise centerpiece, they now enter the season with an unfinished roster and a litany of question marks. No more Monta Ellis. No more Tyson Chandler. No more Rajon Rondo. Dallas will start three newcomers in the 2015-2016 season. And, after falling out of the top 10 in the NBA in 3-point percentage last season, Dallas focused all summer on adding floor spacers and succeeded. Now, Rick Carlisle projects to start
It’s been quite the summer for the Chicago Bulls as they head into the 2015-2016 season. It began with another disappointing postseason exit when they were dispatched by their nemesis LeBron James and the eventual Eastern Conference champion Cleveland Cavaliers in May. From there, a whirlwind offseason began. After falling to James in the playoffs for the third time under Tom Thibodeau and failing to make it past the seccond round for the fourth consecutive year – compounded with other issues –
This is a really interesting season for the Boston Celtics. Fresh off an improbable – and for some fans, unforgivable – playoff run, the Celtics are looking at what might be a quicker-than-anticipated rebuild. Think of this Celtics team as a hurricane brewing in the Atlantic Ocean. They are at that early stage where the meteorologist tells us, “It’s trying to get its act together, and if it does, it could develop into a big storm.” Sometimes those become Category 5 monsters.
NEW YORK – Dragan Bender is the trending name amongst NBA general managers and executives after Maccabi Tel Aviv’s tour in Chicago and New York. At 17, the Croatian forward has the league drooling over his long-term potential and future lottery teams scheming for the ping-pong balls to select the 7-footer in next year’s draft. League executives and scouts from Denver, New York, Orlando, Philadelphia, Phoenix and Utah were on hand at Madison Square Garden to watch Bender. “Closest thing to Pau (Gasol)
Superstars change everything for NBA teams. For any team without one, the goal becomes finding a way to get a hold of one, either via trades or in the draft. Once a team is able to land one, however, everything changes. For the New Orleans Pelicans, everything changed in the 2012 draft when they landed Anthony Davis. Last season, they watched him emerge as – at worst – the third best player in basketball, and everything changed again. Coming off their first playoff
Once again, to the dismay of GM Sam Hinkie and the rest of the folks running the Philadelphia 76ers,.the NBA will insist the franchise play all 82 games this season rather than just skip straight to the only part they seem to care about: the draft lottery. After all, no team has seemed to make less of what goes on between the lines from late October through mid-April than the team that has openly flaunted the rules, believing it is the