You won’t find Neil Olshey, Sam Hinkie or David Griffin on a beach at some island resort this week. We are deep into summer, but those three general managers have plenty of unfinished business as we head into the latter third of July. If you want to take pity on one of the three, pick Olshey. His Portland Trail Blazers lost four-fifths of their starting lineup from a team that ran away with the Pacific Division, and his only center heading
LAS VEGAS– The people at the NBA who make the schedule for its annual Summer League don’t do anything by accident. For the second year in a row, the featured game on the first day of action pitted this year’s top two draft picks against one another. So Sunday afternoon’s matchup between the Denver Nuggets and Sacramento Kings was meant to be an awkward, bittersweet affair. In the middle of it all was Mike Malone. Fired in the middle of last
LAS VEGAS– Thousands of Knicks fans filled the bottom half of the lower bowl inside the Thomas & Mack Center at 1:30 in the afternoon, desperate for something to be optimistic about. Sadly, the Summer League New York Knicks squad had a lot of familiar faces from the 17-win squad, the team’s worst season ever. The one major change was a 7-1 teenage Latvian named Kristaps Porzingis, the fourth overall pick in this year’s draft. After a rude reception on draft night,
The day dawned without a single word of disgust on Mark Cuban’s Twitter account. No even an emoji … even a simple one, like a frowning face. Today is the day after DeAndre Jordan reneged on his verbal commitment to the Dallas Mavericks and instead decided to return to the Los Angeles Clippers, keeping Lob City intact and making the Mavs’ decision-makers go back to the drawing board and their analytics tables to debate the relative merits of JaVale McGee and
Let’s be real here for a second. As nice of a job as the San Antonio Spurs did in free agency, along with the Sacramento Kings and Dallas Mavericks, does that really make any of them the outright winners? No, it says here. Despite a ton of unfinished business (LeBron James, Tristan Thompson, J.R. Smith and Matthew Dellavedova remain unsigned free agents, and a Brendan Haywood trade is coming), the Cavs are emerging as the biggest winners of the summer for one
So this is how it ends for Kobe Bryant, huh? A top-10 all-time player, Bryant will spend his last four years as the face of arguably the most storied franchise in NBA history, watching it plunge into unprecedented irrelevance. What has happened to the Lakers happens to a lot of successful family-owned businesses. It was handed from the patriarch to the next generation, which was in over its head. It took its brand for granted and treated the competition with disdain rather
If Laker fans hope—actually, expect—a fast turnaround, last week’s draft that brought D’Angelo Russell and two more of the top 34 picks was a reminder how tricky the process is going to be. The announcement of Russell’s selection at No. 2 prompted cries of anguish from the half of Lakerdom that wanted Jahlil Okafor. The Los Angeles Times’ Bill Plaschke kept from passing out long enough to tweet, “wow… crazy… wow… unreal… you’ve got to be kidding.” No, they were serious. The Lakers
When Dirk Nowitzki met Helmut Schmidt in 2013, the former German Chancellor offered what he considered to be sage advice, unaware that in the lucrative world of the NBA, his suggestion would be more humorous than practical. Schmidt asked Nowitzki his age, which was almost 35 at the time. Schmidt then asked if Nowitzki could play another 10 years in the NBA and Nowitzki said no, playing past 40 was not really feasible. So Schmidt, being practical, said Nowitzki should prepare for