Jason Kidd and Marcus Camby NEW YORK — If you ask New York Knicks head coach Mike Woodson why the team has gone old, he’ll tell you it’s because young NBA teams aren’t the ones winning the championships. And the Oklahoma City Thunder’s egg-laying ceremony over the course of the last season’s five-game flameout in the NBA Finals give credence to that argument. But when you build a team around over-the-hill veterans, you need two things. First, is a good
Jeff Van Gundy is my NBA idol. I like to joke that Jeff is to me what Justin Bieber is to a teenaged girl. If Jeff was a cult leader, I’d not only join, I’d drink Jeff’s Kool-Aid in the jungle. The only topic I’ve ever vehemently disagreed on with Jeff is flopping. Jeff has been condemning flopping on national NBA broadcasts, on the biggest of stages, for years now. The league has gotten embarrassed enough to finally do something and boy, is
PHILADELPHIA—Maybe it’s no big deal. Andrew Bynum will be back before they know it—with two healthy knees—and the Philadelphia 76ers will go on to have the glistening season many are projecting. His unexpected three-week precautionary absence due to a bone bruise suffered while recovering from that recent non-invasive Orthokine procedure performed on both his knees in Germany—announced at the start of Media Day here yesterday—will simply be a glitch in the road to their ultimate success. Certainly that’s what they’d all like to
The Lakers are back? If they made it to another Media Day, they made it back from the summer, anyway. Don’t laugh. Some seasons around here, that was an issue, like 2007-08, when Kobe Bryant, who had spent the summer demanding a trade, swore privately he wouldn’t report and didn’t say anything publicly until showing up that morning. So, as far as actual news from Monday goes, all these Lakers showed up! Of course, in today’s talk-show world, it’s important to foretell outcomes that
GREENBURGH, N.Y. — The Knicks are so old that even Iman Shumpert has gone waaaaaay old school, sporting a flattop hairstyle that looks like it was an idea spawned by going through old videotapes of The Fresh Prince of Bel Air. Marcus Camby, Kurt Thomas and Jason Kidd were able to move about Monday without the aid of a walking cane or a wheelchair, but trainer Roger Hinds was not made available to the media to answer the question of how
College coaches are crisscrossing the country visiting with the top stars in the high school Class of 2013 in hopes of persuading them to choose their schools. In Texas, after Kentucky coach John Calipari showed 6-foot-9 forward Julius Randle his 2012 NCAA championship ring, North Carolina coach Roy Williams one-upped Cal. Or should we say, 29-upped him. Williams brought a case of 30 rings to his home visit with Randle, including Michael Jordan’s 1992 Chicago Bulls championship ring. “He said Jordan gave it to
DALLAS – The grand experiment begins today with the first day of training camp. Call Mark Cuban, Donnie Nelson and Rick Carlisle crazy, but they believe they have found an alternative recipe for championship success. 1. Take a superstar who may be starting to decline but still is near the top of his game. 2. Add a one-time prolific offensive player who has discovered the joy of defense. 3. Toss in a point guard from Indiana, a shooting guard from Memphis, a center from
MIAMI – As LeBron James enters his 10th NBA season, title in hand, the pressure is off – for the most part. The Miami Heat forward is no longer a choker, a fraud, a slacker. Now, he’s The Man. That frees him up to cement his legacy and chase legends such as Michael Jordan (six titles), Magic Johnson (five titles) and, yes, even Kobe Bryant (five titles). His battle isn’t with himself, it’s with all-time greatness. He plans to run the race