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
CHICAGO – DeMarcus Cousins watched the end of practice sitting on a trainer’s table, his knee wrapped in an ice pack. A trip to a hospital awaited, where an MRI would bring further news: no structural damage. Nobody knew quite for sure earlier Thursday whether Cousins’ injury was serious as Team USA resumed training camp, but they did know one thing for certain: Never has there been a U.S. team preparation period quite like this one, with players dropping out, getting
Lots of different ways to look at the NBA schedule. Myself, I chose to write about the 10 best game nights, rather than the 10 best games. People have caleders they need to circle … ok, people my age who have actual calerdars on their wall. So who do we want to watch? We want to watch the Cleveland Cavaliers in the East. Everyone else? Not so much. In the West, we want to watch Kobe Bryant, aka basketball’s Tiger Woods. Will Kobe be that
The new NBA schedule is out, and you will want to circle a few dates on your calendar. Start with these 10. We will only highlight nationally televised games – unless otherwise noted – and we will not include any games after the trade deadline because the national TV schedule will be reconfigured so many times in March and April, it will set some sort of league record. [Read more…]
So far there has been one worthy suggestion for Team USA’s most fitting new nickname: “The Unknowns.” By the end of this week, perhaps something else will be more fitting, like the “C-Deem Team.” I was the guy four years ago who dubbed the 2010 World Championship team the “B-Deem” team as it traveled to Turkey, learned of how hard it would be to not lean on Kevin Durant, and got out of Istanbul with the gold medal by trouncing the
Kevin Durant quit. Paul George broke his leg. So what do we have here? The darkest days for USA Basketball since 2004 (Athens Olympics, which opened with a 19-point loss to Puerto Rico)? Here is the news story on Durant quitting. Yes, quitting. This is shameful, in my opinion. No national team anchor has ever done this. The fact that it comes at the same moment that Durant is leaving Nike and finishing details of an unbelievably lucrative $325 million sneaker and apparel deal with
The first round of Team USA cuts have been made. Adios John Wall, Bradley Beal and Paul Millsap. The roster now stands at 16. They have to cut it to 12 — and they’ve said they will cut it to 12 before leaving later this month for the World Cup in Spain. They still have four point guards. They are back to having just one power forward. They have four centers, one of whom — Andre Drummond — played horribly in
Glen Taylor, the owner of the Minnesota Timberwolves, is a shrewd man. A shrewd man with a very valuable trade asset in Kevin Love. And while all indications are that Love will be traded to Cleveland for a package headlined by Andrew Wiggins, one has to wonder why Taylor would come out nearly four weeks ahead of time and say Love is likely to be traded on Aug. 23 or Aug. 24. Is Taylor doing everyone and their Google calendar a favor