Martin Luther King Day is more than a day of celebration and reflection for the NBA, which probably has done more positive things for race relations than any other sport in the Civil Rights Era. It also has become the unofficial midway point of the season. By the completion of Monday’s action, more than half of the league’s 30 teams will have played half their games. With that in mind, we present our midseason awards with this reminder from the bookie of hopeless
Everyone knows the NBA preseason doesn’t mean anything. And everyone is wrong. The preseason is supposed to be when coaches are evaluating their offensive and defensive schemes and players are familiarizing themselves with their teammates. Veterans sit out entire games. Journeymen on make-good deals fight, scratch and claw for minutes to show they deserve that final roster spot. Games are played in exotic faraway places like Taiwan and Rio de Janeiro and domestic outposts from Biloxi to Boise and Asheville to Jacksonville. Referees overuse
Who is crashing the playoff party in the East this season? Conventional wisdom says the two-time defending champion Miami Heat, Indiana Pacers, Chicago Bulls, New York Knicks and Brooklyn Nets are head and shoulders above the rest of the Eastern Conference and – barring a disaster – will secure the top five spots. At the other end of the conference, you can probably toss out the Orlando Magic, Charlotte Bobcats and Philadelphia 76ers, who could pool their rosters to come up with
In a teleconference last week, we asked NBA analysts Chris Webber and Greg Anthony to pick a Western Conference team which missed the playoffs last season but will make the playoffs this season. “Dallas, mainly because of Dirk Nowitzki,” Webber said. “He’ll be back healthy. What he does, with spacing, getting guys involved … We take his game for granted.” “I would go with the Pelicans,” Anthony said. “I think that’s a team that could make sizeable leaps and surprise a lot
Daily Trivia: During the 2009-10 season, which team became just the fifth team in NBA history to lose 70 games in a single season? Pau Gasol unlikely to take a pay cut to remain with the Lakers Posted 4:15 pm ET With his free agency pending once the 2013-14 season concludes, Pau Gasol has made it clear that his chances of taking a significant pay cut to remain with the Los Angeles Lakers are slim to none. Gasol has recently talked openly about keeping
Counting down to the exciting 2013-14 season … And counting, and counting, and counting. The preseason may be on, but I’m holding the excitement until something happens. By that I mean something bigger than media day, where all involved tell us what they’d like most, as if sitting in Santa Claus’ lap, asking for a pony. The tipoff is they have media day in Charlotte, and everyone is just as optimistic there. Personally, I try to measure my (yawn) excitement level, according to the
Two significant things will happen this NBA season: David Stern will step down as commissioner, probably five years too late. And for the first time in 20 years, the 76ers, Celtics and Lakers all will be out of the playoffs. We know the first to be true. The second is pure conjecture, but it’s more likely than not that three of the top NBA franchises in terms of tradition, history, titles and outsized personalities will be booking trips to ping-pong festivities
This is the time of year where everyone and their mothers offer up a series of fearless prognostications about the upcoming NBA season. Here’s what I can tell you about my skills at predicting the future. If I was really any good at it, I wouldn’t be wasting it on the NBA season. And neither would anyone else. I am not reading tea leaves, interpreting tarot cards, gazing into crystal balls, holding seances, poring over analytics or buying classified information on the