After last week’s loss in Atlanta, Memphis Grizzlies coach Dave Joerger – whose team has the fifth-best record in the NBA – lamented his roster’s shortcomings. “We have to get another playmaker on the floor,” Joerger said. “We’re going to have to start playing multiple point guards (at the same time). We’ve got to be able to get inside of defenses.” It doesn’t matter that the Grizzlies have been at or near the top of the league for most of the season.
Sometimes weirdness creeps up on you slowly. You are aware of it, but because it happens gradually, you get used to it. But you watch what’s happening in New York, then you look at the larger overall NBA picture, and you think how strange is it that three of the greatest winners in the history of basketball had become either tolerant of or responsible for losing? Five years after winning his 11th NBA title as a head coach, Phil Jackson has the
When you’re already a proven NBA superstar, improvement usually comes in subtle ways. For Houston Rockets star James Harden, his ascent into the MVP conversation (it’s essentially a two-man race at this point between he and Stephen Curry, unless Anthony Davis’ New Orleans Pelicans make the playoffs) has come from a slight improvement across and board and an understanding that league MVPs are, and always will be, two-way players. The Rockets have had to rely on Harden this year more than
Greetings from New York, where Langston Galloway is the new face of the New York Knicks, and where Phil Jackson’s apologists are applauding the fact that his addition by subtraction trade of J.R. Smith and Iman Shumpert netted a second-round draft pick in 2019. In other local news, the New York Times invited its readers to find better things for Scott Cacciola to do other than cover the ‘Bockers. His editors feel sorry for him. Memo to Phil: It is one
Last season, the Adriatic League produced some of the top talents in the NBA draft, with Dario Saric, Jusuf Nurkic, Bogdan Bogdanovic going in the first round, and Nikola Jokic, Vasilije Micic and Nemanja Dangubic being selected in the second round. While we likely will not see six more NBA draft picks this season from the Adriatic League, there is little doubt that with the rich basketball tradition in the former Yugoslavian countries, it is no surprise that again young talent
While Knicks president Phil Jackson spent Monday night finalizing a three-team deal that he hopes will make Madison Square Garden relevant again, across the East River, Mavericks guard Rajon Rondo was helping Dallas beat Brooklyn with one of his patented double-doubles. You know, the one that doesn’t require points. Jackson has the woeful Knicks going all in on free agency, creating enough cap space to possibly lure two stars to the World’s Most Famous Arena. The main targets are obvious – Marc Gasol,
Is this some sort of way to earn a quasi 12th ring? New York Knicks president Phil Jackson could not have done much worse Monday night in dealing away Iman Shumpert and J.R. Smith to the Cleveland Cavaliers in a three-way trade that netted the Knicks three non-guaranteed contracts and a second-round draft pick in 2019. We’ve all heard of selling low, but this? This was a gift to the struggling Cleveland Cavaliers, who just became the first team to lose in
Young players having the best seasons in their careers right before they’re due a new contract is hardly a new phenomenon, but it takes on new significance due to the NBA’s current economic situation. A likely escalation in the salary cap this summer will allow free agents to obtain more expensive contracts from a larger pool of teams with newfound cap space. A quartet of these young, emerging stars— Milwaukee’s Brandon Knight, Chicago’s Jimmy Butler, Orlando’s Tobias Harris and Golden State’s