NEW YORK — Just a few short hours after Carmelo Anthony publicly denied having requested a trade, news broke Wednesday afternoon that Mike D’Antoni has resigned as the head coach of the New York Knicks. After being denied a contract extension by Knicks owner James Dolan last offseason, this news should not come as a surprise. D’Antoni was hired in May 2008 by then team president and general manager Donnie Walsh. He came to New York with the hopes of luring LeBron
Congratulate the Orlando Magic and general manager Otis Smith. They’ve done the right thing by keeping center Dwight Howard. Orlando as to hold onto to Howard, the NBA most dominant center, as long as possible, which means beyond Thursday’s 3 p.m. trade deadline. You only send Howard packing for a blockbuster trade proposal. If there’s no blockbuster trade proposal, keep Howard and re-evaluate things at the end of the year. Period. It should be mentioned that Howard, who can’t keep his mouth
Sometimes a trade can be a bitter pill to swallow, but a sweetener of some sort can make it easier to digest. Sometimes, that sweetener comes in the form of $3 million in cash. Other times, a future draft pick or two can even things out in the minds of the men making the deal. With the NBA trade deadline is now 10 days away, cellphone minutes are being burned at this very moment as teams try to maneuver the moves that will either
One of the minor effects of Magic Johnson’s revelation that he was HIV positive was that a new term was added to sports writing and we all had to learn how to spell it. Human Immunodeficiency Virus. Beginning with Johnson’s announcement that he was retiring on November 7, 1991, I wrote that term many more times than I would have preferred. HIV wasn’t supposed to be part of the sports section. It belonged somewhere else. Ultimately, however, the intrusion of HIV into basketball
This is all on Carmelo Anthony. Enough excuses have been made for a so-called superstar whose one-dimensional game arrived in New York over a year ago. There has been an initial acclimation period, an abbreviated training camp, a hole at point guard, an injury and another acclimation period due to a revamped roster. In and of themselves, those excuses had some legitimacy when they arose. But there has been one consistent thread through Anthony’s tenure with the New York Knicks: When he
NEW YORK – Back in May 2008, Mike D’Antoni bolted the Phoenix Suns for the skyscrapers of the Big Apple. Although he spent five seasons coaching in the desert, he’s never felt the heat like this. Not even in Miami. Sadly, the sun seems to be setting on Mike D’Antoni’s tenure in New York, and Nate McMillan might make some sense as a potential replacement. (Assuming, of course, that Phil Jackson is not interested – a topic addressed on this site
Counting down to… zip? If some players may go every which way by the trade deadline, they’re not likely to include any Dwight Howards, Deron Williams or even Pau Gasols. All three are, indeed, in play, but their destinations are a lot likelier to be revealed in June, no matter how much pure unadulterated BS you hear between now and March 15. Hey, it’s better than waiting to see if Ric Bucher thinks the Lakers should trade Kobe Bryant, the Bulls should trade
MIAMI – OK, he did it again. LeBron James, the talented and tormented Miami Heat forward, declined to take a late-game shot Friday at Utah. He saw a double-team coming and passed to forward Udonis Haslem, who missed a jumper. The Heat lost, 99-98. You’d be tempted to think it was the All-Star game all over again. It wasn’t. This wasn’t some made-for-TV pickup game. It was a regular-season game. It mattered. Now, the LeBron debate can continue. “At the end of the