With about two minutes remaining in Saturday night’s Game 7 between the San Antonio Spurs and Los Angeles Clippers and still no clear indication regarding which team was moving on and which team was going home, Tim Duncan gave himself a break from the magnitude of the moment and offered some candid perspective. The All-Star forward and face of one of the handful of NBA dynasties approached Doc Rivers, who was in his 12th Game 7 as a coach. With one
Last I checked, soccer was a pretty popular sport around the globe. More popular than basketball, I might add. And if you’ve ever sat on the sofa and watched a soccer match, you’ve probably noticed that there are no TV timeouts. You get 45 minutes of action, then you can get up and make a sandwich, and then you go back and get 45 more minutes of non-stop action, commercial-free. Why can’t the NBA be quite as enjoyable? Don’t get me wrong …
Game 5 of the Clippers-Spurs series was a great one, going down to the final minute. But it lasted nearly three hours, ending just before 2 a.m. EDT on the East Coast. This, folks, is a problem. And the NBA needs to solve it. You simply CANNOT have the best basketball of the postseason being played when two-thirds of the country is asleep. What if there was a magic formula that could shave an hour off the game time? Would the NBA even consider looking
Adam Silver has been commissioner of the NBA for 14 months now. He has been forceful on one issue — the lifetime suspension of Donald Sterling, which led to the sale of the Los Angeles Clippers to billionaire Steve Ballmer. It is time for Silver to stand a stand again, and this time it has to do with reformatting the playoffs. I wrote an open letter to Silver about this very issue less than a month ago, and it is certain to
Dwyane Wade leads the NBA in fourth-quarter scoring. His team has defeated LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers twice during the regular season when the Cavs have traveled to Miami. If there is one potential matchup that is going to make the first round of the Eastern Conference playoffs interesting, it is Heat vs. Cavaliers. As the standings look now, a 2 vs. 7 matchup between the teams could take place. But Miami could still fall to No. 8 or rise
Good afternoon, Adam. Hope you are having a nice time filling out your NCAA bracket. I imagine you have Duke winning, since you got your undergrad degree there. A word of caution: Beware Larry Brown’s SMU Mustangs in the South Regional final. It’s fun filling out an NCAA bracket, isn’t it, Adam? So many games between teams that almost never play each other. That’s what makes it so special. Which brings us to the upcoming NBA playoffs, which are not going to be
James Harden rightfully led Monday night’s headlines with his second triple-double of the season and a virtual ankle-breaking move on Minnesota’s Ricky Rubio. After all, there’s a reason Harden appears to be the league’s probable MVP. But rookie swingman Andrew Wiggins served notice that he could very well challenge Harden and the NBA’s other elite players in the years ahead. On the night of his 20th birthday, Wiggins notched the third 30-point game of his young career, scoring 30 points on 12-of-24 shooting
My Great Grandma used to have a small plaque that she hung on the wall in her kitchen that, like many things about her, I’ve never forgotten. “Ve get too soon oldt, undt too late schmart,” it read, though I’m not sure why it was in half-English, half-German. She’s not even German. I think she hung it there to explain things like this NBA season. Gram always did love basketball. OK, maybe not. But she did say her spirit animal was a bluebird, and