UNDER CONTRACT: F LaMarcus Aldridge, F Nicolas Batum, G Wesley Matthews, F J.J. Hickson, F Luke Babbitt, F Jared Jeffries, G Elliot Williams, G Nolan Smith, G Ronnie Price, G Sasha Pavlovic DRAFT PICKS: F-C Joel Freeland (2006), F Victor Claver (2009), G Damian Lillard, C Meyers Leonard, G Will Barton FREE AGENTS: G Jonny Flynn, F Craig Smith, F Shawne Williams, C Dan Gadzuric MOVES: The Trail Blazers needed a real center – no, not rookie Meyers Leonard – to take the pressure off
The Orlando Magic have tried a number of two-team trades with Dwight Howard that haven’t worked. There has been talk of at least one three-team trade that did not work. Now there is apparently a four-team trade involving Howard being discussed. According to a report Thursday by Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo!, Howard would go to the Los Angeles Lakers in a true blockbuster deal also involving Philadelphia and Denver. From Yahoo!: “A deal is not considered imminent, but the talks have grown serious over
Since when did going after another player’s “jewels” become the act of frustration or retaliation in basketball? Just two days after watching Carmelo Anthony take a “cheap shot” to the groin from Argentinian guard Facundo Campazzo, we saw another hit to the groin take place on Wednesday when a frustrated Nicolas Batum threw a vicious shot at Juan Carlos Navarro. Check out what went down between France and Spain, along with how Team USA defeated Australia to move onto the semifinals below.
csprtContainer(); Can a Molten be split in thirds? Because the game ball for Wednesday’s 119-86 quarterfinal win over Australia should be divided up between Kobe Bryant, LeBron James and Kevin Love. You knew there was eventually going to be an eruption from Kobe, even when he was scoreless at halftime. And erupt he did, going for six 3-pointers and 20 points in the second half, a bunch of those points coming in rapid succession as the U.S. team pulled away with a furious
Ruben Magnano coached a game that made all of his fellow Argentinians happy. Problem was, Magnano was coaching Brazil. Magnano made the curious decision to sit Anderson Varejao for the entire fourth quarter, and Argentina held off a strong fourth-quarter run by Brazil and defeated their South American rivals 82-77 Wednesday in the quarterfinals of the 2012 Olympics. Magnano, who coached Argentina to a gold medal at the 2004 Olympics in Athens but then had a falling out with the national federation, was
The French went down flagrantly, with a nut shot from Ronny Turiaf on Rudy Fernandez and a felonious foul by Nicolas Batum against Juan Carlos Navarro. France missed 11 consecutive shots before getting a meaningless one with 9 seconds left, and a new chapter of crunch time failure was added to Les Blues’ history book in a 66-59 quarterfinal loss at the Olympics in London. Batum committed an intentional foul that was so flagrant, a hard, long-armed swipe that knocked Navarro to
Remember when Andrei Kirilenko was young, precocious and was a nightly threat to produce one of those statistical anomalies known as a 5X5 — reaching at least five in five statistical categories? The old AK-47 was back in the Olympic quarterfinals on Wednesday, producing a beastly line of 19 points, 13 rebounds, three assists, three steals and three blocks as Russia defeated a Lithuania team that would not quit, 83-74. Timofey Mozgov also had a very strong game with 17 points, and
