We now know that the deal sending Kevin Love to Cleveland will go down Saturday. Andrew Wiggins, Anthony Bennett and Miami’s 2015 first-round draft pick will go to Minnesota, and in a side deal Thaddeus Young will be sent from the Sixers to the Wolves for Luc Richard Mbah a Moute and Alexey Shved. Minnesota comes out with the last two overall No. 1 picks, Philadelphia comes out with an even worse team than before, and Cleveland comes out with …. In
The summer is winding down, and things are about to get interesting for Team USA as they depart for Spain and push forward toward a much-anticipated matchup with the host nation in the gold medal game. Unless, of course, the United States and Spain do not make it all the way to the final. Hey, a Spain-USA gold medal game is NOT a certainty. Strange things can happen along the way. Ask Paul George, who is out for a year with a
Not much happening. Which leads us to a Sportswriting Etiquette 101 lesson: It is bad form for basketball writers who are covering a tight game to say: “Looks like it’ll go to overtime.” Same thing with baseball writers, who are forbidden in press boxes from mentioning the words “extra innings” prior to the start of the 10th. It s considered a jinx. OK, not forbidden. But it is frowned upon, heavily. Sportwriters like to go home to their families, especially those families with
In an interview in April 2013, Kevin Durant told Sports Illustrated he was tired of finishing second. Durant was the second player taken in the 2007 draft. He lost in the NBA Finals in 2012. He finished second in MVP voting four times. This past season, Durant took a huge step forward when he won his first MVP award, finally emerging from the shadow cast by LeBron James. But if he doesn’t win an NBA championship in the next two years with
Golden State Warriors guard Klay Thompson has been the subject of trade rumors in the summer before he becomes a restricted free agent. The Warriors brass has refused to include the lesser acclaimed Splash Brother in a trade with Minnesota for Kevin Love, opting to keep one of the league’s most dynamic backcourts intact for at least one more calendar year. Just a year ago, the Los Angeles Clippers had another star player in the making in the backourt, Eric Bledsoe.
The recent rookie signings of Doug McDermott in Chicago and Andrew Wiggins in Cleveland put the possibility of a Kevin Love trade in a temporary holding pattern. Rookies cannot be traded in the first 30 days after signing their deals, so we are looking at late August before Minnesota Timberwolves GM Flip Saunders can complete a deal for his All-Star power forward. But that doesn’t mean Saunders can’t discuss those deals or another possible trade with the Golden State Warriors, whose proposal does
Four players – three of them future Hall of Famers – took pay cuts of a staggering eight figures this offseason. Dirk Nowitzki, Pau Gasol and Paul Pierce all took salary slashes of more than $10 million to extend their careers with contending teams. They head the list of the top 10 individual pay cuts this summer. Our list uses exact salary figures from last season. In some cases, this season’s figures are averages of multi-year deals received by players. For example,
Is the white American player making a comeback this summer? All of the recent offseason buzz is centered around Minnesota Timberwolves All-Star forward Kevin Love and which team can put together the most appealing trade package to acquire him. Meanwhile, two of the top three salary bumps also went to white American players – Chandler Parsons and Gordon Hayward. As restricted free agents, both got max salary offer sheets and cashed in. So while white men can’t jump, they certainly can jump in