The youth movement at power forward has arrived in the form of Anthony Davis and Blake Griffin. Derrick Favors, a fellow rising talent who has improved across the board over the past five seasons, missed the cut in our top 10 rankings. However, don’t be surprised if Favors joins the rankings in a year or so from now. At 23, his best basketball is ahead of him and he is just scratching the surface of his ceiling as a player for
With no MLB contest tonight at DraftKings — see my Wild Card picks here tomorrow — our focus returns to the hardcourt. The fantasy department at Sheridan Hoops has doubled in size for the preseason, as my colleague Jeff Nichols has agreed to contribute to our Draft Prep series this month. [Read more…]
Superstars change everything for NBA teams. For any team without one, the goal becomes finding a way to get a hold of one, either via trades or in the draft. Once a team is able to land one, however, everything changes. For the New Orleans Pelicans, everything changed in the 2012 draft when they landed Anthony Davis. Last season, they watched him emerge as – at worst – the third best player in basketball, and everything changed again. Coming off their first playoff
What would it take for Kobe Bryant to win the 2015-2016 NBA MVP award? As we handicap the MVP race for the 2015-2016 season, we’ll take a look at last season’s top five finishers— Stephen Curry, James Harden, Russell Westbrook, Anthony Davis and LeBron James— along with Kevin Durant. But a question many Angelenos and basketball fans around the world have is what kind of numbers would Bryant have to put up in his age-37 season to take home the crown? To
Eric Gordon remains a great shooter and is key to spacing the floor. Among all players (min. 150 FGA), Gordon had the second-best effective field goal percentage in the NBA (69.5%) on catch-and-shoots. That ranked behind Kyle Korver (72.2%) and ahead of Stephen Curry (65.5%). [Read more…]
It pays to be patient. That is the financial lesson of the NBA’s offseason, which saw the biggest pay raises go to players who turned down contract extensions and gambled on themselves. Among the top 11 pay increases this summer, five went to players who felt like they were being lowballed by their teams — and proved it when they cashed in with bigger deals as restricted free agents this summer. Chicago’s Jimmy Butler, Orlando’s Tobias Harris, Detroit’s Reggie Jackson, Oklahoma City’s Enes
The silence following Jonas Valanciunas’ contract extension was deafening. When the Toronto Raptors gave a reported $64 million over four years to Valanciunas, there were no proclamations from pundits that the NBA’s financial sky was falling. Owners didn’t start forming plans of collusion. No one drew comparisons to Jim McIlvaine. On the other side, there have been no whispers that Raptors GM Masai Ujiri engineered another steal. Virtually no one has suggested that Valanciunas got fleeced. Agent Leon Rose – who days
It’s no secret that Anthony Davis is one of the most unique and gifted players the league has seen in quite some time. In just his third season in the NBA, Davis helped the New Orleans Pelicans reach the playoffs for the first time since the 2010-2011 season. Despite getting swept by the Golden State Warriors in the first round, Davis had a coming-out party of sorts, averaging 31.5 points on 54 percent shooting from the field, 11 rebounds, two assists, 1.3