// The trade deadline is just a couple days away, and with all of he hullabaloo over Dwight Howard and whether he will stay in or leave Orlando, there are a couple other players — Jamal Crawford of Portland and Josh Smith of Atlanta chief among them — who might have a greater likelihood of being traded. Also, the Los Angeles Lakers are still expected to be active. But does their thinking change now that they are atop the Pacific Division? They
Forget Linsanity. That’s soooo two weeks ago. The hot new trend is Ersanity. Ersan Ilyasova, the improving young big man of the Milwaukee Bucks, was named Eastern Conference Player of the Week for the period ending Sunday. Golden State Warriors guard Monta Ellis received Western Conference honors. The Bucks went 3-1 as they were powered by Ilyasova, who averaged 25.0 points and 10.8 rebounds while shooting 63 percent from the field and 90 percent from the line. He had 18 rebounds in a
San Antonio Spurs guard T.J. Ford, who had an injury scare last week, is leaving basketball and may not return. The Spurs announced Monday that Ford, one of their backup point guards, is taking an indefinite leave of absence from basketball activities this season. He suffered a stinger in Wednesday’s home win over New York, when he was hit in the back by Knicks guard Baron Davis and accidentally kicked in the head by teammate Tiago Splitter. Ford remained on the floor
The bottom of the Western Conference playoff race just opened up a bit wider. The Houston Rockets, who currently hold the eighth and final spot in the West, announced Monday that will be without do-it-all point guard Kyle Lowry for two to four weeks due to a bacterial infection. The Rockets played New Jersey over the weekend, and Lowry was taken to a New York hospital with an illness. He underwent tests that revealed the infection and will remain hospitalized until Tuesday,
One of the minor effects of Magic Johnson’s revelation that he was HIV positive was that a new term was added to sports writing and we all had to learn how to spell it. Human Immunodeficiency Virus. Beginning with Johnson’s announcement that he was retiring on November 7, 1991, I wrote that term many more times than I would have preferred. HIV wasn’t supposed to be part of the sports section. It belonged somewhere else. Ultimately, however, the intrusion of HIV into basketball
The Bulls and the Knicks have something in common: They’ve both won a lot of games when the stars of their teams were out with injuries. The difference? Chicago kept winning when Derrick Rose came back while New York unraveled when Carmelo Anthony returned. The New York Knicks (18-23) look to find answers to snap a five-game losing streak against the league-best Chicago Bulls (34-9) in Monday night’s best game. The teams met back on February 2 — two games before the beginning
Of all the players in the NCAA tournament, heck, every school in the entire country, no one has asked me to do more homework and send in reports than on Iona’s Scott Machado. I’m not going to get into whether Iona should have been selected in the tournament. That’s not my world. I’ve seen this team dismantle opponents at times with a style that can be very fun to watch. It’s an up and down pace that centers around the decision making of Machado, who led the
BARCELONA — Between the NBA and the Euroleague lies an ocean. Over here, we may have some of the best NBA trade deadline assets that you might hear about by Thursday afternoon. More and more, teams are pushing their shopping carts across the Atlantic in hopes of stumbling upon a Gary Neal or Gustavo Ayon. Other teams did their legwork early, drafting and stowing Europeans whom they hoped would mature into NBA caliber players. Some of them have. Here are