For those gentlemen – and who knows, maybe ladies, too – who aspire to one day reach the pinnacle of the basketball coaching profession, be advised that institutions you hope to work for may not be run in the most rational manner. And I’m reasonably certain that Jeff Hornacek, Lionel Hollins, David Blatt and Kevin McHale would agree with me. Hornacek just became the latest NBA head coach to lose his job, although compared to others, the Phoenix Suns looked positively patient.
Who is the MVP of the young 2014-2015 season so far? It’s only mid-December, so it’s easy to say that this particular topic deserves a discussion further down the road. That said, the narrative of an MVP is a progressive thing. The league pays attention to how deserving players are by watching their performance on a month-to-month basis, so evaluating them a quarter of the way into the season is only natural. Having said that, there are only two true candidates for
The first time the New York Knicks and Brooklyn Nets met this season back in Dec. 5, both teams were a total mess as they failed to meet expectations in monumental fashion. The Nets proved to be the bigger mess at the time, suffering a humiliating 113-83 loss on their own home floor. Just a little over a month later, not much has changed in the sense that both are still trying to find a way to reach the .500 mark.
It’s been an eventful few days in the NBA. First, the Warriors got better and the Celtics got worse, which seems like a win-win. Then Greg Oden played in an NBA game, which makes me pretty dang happy. [Read more…]
BROOKLYN — Can one quarter ruin a basketball team’s season? It could if that 12-minute span of poor play happens over, and over and over again — compounding the many problems the team has overall. The Detroit Pistons outscored the Nets 34-15 in the third quarter on Sunday afternoon at the Barclays Center in a 109-97 loss that dropped Brooklyn to an almost unfathomable 3-10 on the season. In the Nets’ 10 losses, they’ve been outscored by a total of 96
BROOKLYN– Brad Stevens is new to the NBA, and the Boston Celtics have had to grow familiar with his brand of coaching over the course of training camp and the preseason. With just about two weeks before the start of the season – and a new era for the franchise – the Celtics seem pleased with the progress the team is making under Stevens’ early stewardship. If general manager Danny Ainge’s plan for the franchise is for the rookie coach to grow
After a practice at the Team USA training camp in Las Vegas before the 2008 Olympics, Jason Kidd sat in the first row of the bleachers and talked about Chris Paul and Deron Williams, who were sitting on the opposite side of the court. At age 35, Kidd knew he would get limited playing time in the Olympics because of Paul (23 at the time) and Williams (24), who were extraordinarily talented although each still had much to learn. Kidd played the
When Mike Brown was hired by the Cleveland Cavaliers last week, there were multiple feelings of déjà vu. One was obvious – Brown was returning to a team that had fired him three years earlier. We have all been here before. But the other was more subtle and had to do with the fundamental reality not only of today’s NBA, but also of today’s professional sports. [Read more…]