BROOKLYN – The slogan for the Milwaukee Bucks is “Own the Future,” which is fitting because they certainly haven’t owned the present. Milwaukee is now 4-12 overall since trading for Michael Carter-Williams, including five straight losses. Keep in mind, the Bucks were at the peak of their season at 31-23 overall and coming off a four-game winning streak one day after the trade deadline. On Friday night, the Bucks fell below the .500 mark for the first time since Dec. 27 (15-16)
With the NCAA Tourament upon us, it seems like as good a time as any to remind everyone that there is a canyon between coaching in college and coaching in the NBA. There is more than a generation of evidence which clearly illustrates that any NBA team hiring a head coach directly from college is making a huge mistake. P.J. Carlesimo. Tim Floyd. Leonard Hamilton. Lon Kruger. Mike Montgomery. Jerry Tarkanian. Rick Pitino, who failed twice. Even John Calipari, who is
Rudy Gobert had a coming out party for the NBA during the BBVA Compass Rising Stars Challenge with 18 points, 12 rebounds and three blocks for the World Team. The Utah Jazz eventually traded Enes Kanter at the deadline, which promoted Gobert into a full-time starting role. Since then, Gobert has averaged 10.5 points, 14.1 rebounds and 3.1 blocks per game while shooting 57 percent from the field. Another big man who’s played well lately has been New Orleans Pelicans star Anthony
This season’s MVP race is shaping up to be the best one in quite some time. The perceived top five candidates this season – James Harden, Stephen Curry, Anthony Davis, LeBron James and Russell Westbrook – represent the top five in PER, three of the top five in win shares and lead the NBA in nearly two dozen major statistical categories. We’re pretty well covered with MVP rankings on this site with Sheridan’s regular updates, and other staffers have chimed in
BROOKLYN – You know the MVP race is something special when the player leading the NBA in PER (31.4), blocks per game (2.8) and field goals made per game (9.5) isn’t running away with the award. In fact, Anthony Davis is in a five-man cluster on the MVP leaderboard along with – in no particular order – Stephen Curry, LeBron James, James Harden and Russell Westbrook. But when most people are forced to pick one and only one name, you rarely hear
Indiana’s win in New York on Saturday night epitomized the current trajectory of the team’s season. It was a slow and ugly start, but the team persevered through strong defense and playoff-tested experience. The team’s slow and ugly start began actually began nearly eight months earlier, on a sultry Friday July evening in Las Vegas with Paul George’s horrendously gruesome leg injury. The bad luck and misery continued when rotation stalwarts David West, George Hill and C.J. Watson missed the beginning of the season with
Let’s get something out of the way here. Russell Westbrook is awesome. Westbrook is one of the game’s top five players, and I’ve felt that way for a couple of years. He may not be a better conventional point guard than Chris Paul or Tony Parker or Stephen Curry. But if any of those guys even dream about being a better player than Westbrook, they better wake up and get back to reality. I also love watching Westbrook play. I cannot recall
There are few things that indicate futility more than when a coach loses the connection with his team. When that happens there is nothing to fix, nothing to do, nowhere to turn. It is over. The wonder of team sports is the coming together of a group of people willing to put personal agendas aside for the common goal of winning. When that happens you truly get a whole bigger than the sum of the parts, and magic happens. When people