The month of February is right around the corner, and with it comes the Super Bowl, the All-Star Game and the trading deadline. Predictions for all three: Gonna be a ton of empty seats at the Meadowlands. Too damn cold. You think the folks who attend that game are fans? Yes, they are fans of luxury, warmth and freebies. Real fans will be able to get into the game for $100 on the secondary ticket market. All-Star Game: “We are looking at
Memo to Brad Stevens: You are the new Michael Dukakis in Massachusetts. For those too young to remember, a short history lesson: Before he got trampled in the 1988 U.S. presidential election, the former governor of Massachusetts tried to toughen up his softie image by doing a photo op with Army troops, riding on an Abrams M1 tank. The whole thing was so ludicrous, so obviously staged, that Dukakis riding a tank became a euphemism for anything that seemed so completely out
Since training camp opened, there have been five significant trades involving 10 teams, 19 players and seven draft picks. The big winners have been a team that got rid of the highest scorer among the traded players and a team that acquired a player who has yet to play. The big loser has been a team that swears by analytics. Another way to look at it is like this: The biggest trades thus far have been the ones that haven’t been made
Well, Lakers fans, you get to keep staring at Pau Gasol and watch him age before your eyes — until the trade deadline, that is. OK, maybe a couple months longer. And the rebuilding plan that coincides with Kobe Bryant’s two-year contract extension? Don’t expect the Lakers to be flooded with max players. They still need to stay under the luxury tax line for two seasons to avoid the dreaded repeater tax, and it doesn’t look like this season will be
As an action packed weekend of basketball comes to a close, here’s the good, bad and the ugly of what took place. [Read more…]
The Pau Gasol-for-Andrew Bynum trade talks appear to be dormant but not dead. The Lakers would like to get another worthy asset thrown into in the deal … but so would the Cavs. And you know what? I have to side with the Cavs and general manager Chris Grant on this one. By taking Gasol’s $19.3 million salary off the Lakers’ books, they will drop Los Angels below the luxury tax threshold, saving the Buss family in the area of $20 million.
Word on the street today is louder than ever that Carmelo Anthony wants out of New York. How do we know this? Marc Berman and Frank Isola are writing it hard in the New York tabloids, and both of those fellas are as plugged into their team as any beat writers in North America. You can bristle at Isola’s anti-Berman’s tweets – a constant source of amusement for anyone who follows the Knicks – and you can bristle at Berman’s wardrobe, which
Omer Asik is going to be traded this week, and Philadelphia, Atlanta, Charlotte, Boston and Cleveland are the five teams most squarely in the mix, a league executive with intimate knowledge of the trade talks told SheridanHoops.com on Monday. A number of three-team deals are being discussed, with Houston general manager Daryl Morey seeking to land a backup center along with a 2014 first-round draft pick — unless he can land a bonafide stud. [Read more…]