The Charlotte Hornets are unlikely to keep swingman Matt Barnes after acquiring him with Spencer Hawes in the trade that sent Lance Stephenson to the Clippers, thus making Barnes a probable free agent by the end of the month. “It is unlikely Charlotte keeps Barnes, who’ll become a free agent,” wrote Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports, who initially broke news of the trade. Barnes would be owed $3.5 million for the 2015-16 season should the Hornets keep him, but only $1 million of
Drafted No. 4 overall in the 2004 NBA draft and suffering a potential career-ending knee injury in 2007, Golden State Warriors guard Shaun Livingston believes playing in the NBA finals is “a special moment”, especially for him. In 2007, Livingston, in his third season with the Los Angeles Clippers, tore his ACL, MCL, PCL, a lateral meniscus and had a dislocated kneecap all in one knee. Even the Clippers’ team physician hadn’t “seen a lot of these” happen in one knee.
21. Dallas Mavericks – Tyus Jones, PG, Duke If you watched any of Duke’s tournament games, you could see how big of an impact Jones had as a true freshman. Jones is a throwback PG that creates great scoring opportunities for his teammates, but he also has the ability to hit the big shot or convert when he’s open, sort of like Chris Paul. While Jones is not big, he has tons of heart and is a true leader. In a point guard-driven league, especially
Cleveland point guard Kyrie Irving is set to play in tonight’s crucial Game 5 between the Cavaliers and Bulls despite injuries to both of his legs. Irving’s right foot has been strained since Game 2 of Cleveland’s first round series against Boston, and now he’s said to be truggling with tendinitis in his left knee after overcompensating for the sore right foot. From Dave McMenamin of ESPN.com: “If the consideration is now, then, I mean, I should have been sitting out maybe about
Over the weekend, we saw a trio of buzzer-beaters from Derrick Rose, Paul Pierce and LeBron James win NBA playoff games. All three were certainly fantastic moments that ended intense, exciting postseason games. But before we get too excited about them, let’s consider these two factors. 1. The shots by Rose and Pierce were lucky. Yes, lucky. The next NBA player who actually tries to bank in a straightaway shot will be the first. Was some experience and skill involved in finding
BROOKLYN – Mikhail Prokhorov will reportedly be in Turkey on Sunday celebrating his 50th birthday with legions of $20,000 models hoping to console him after his American playtoy’s season came to a crashing halt at the hands of the Atlanta Hawks in Game 6 Friday night. So what does the unabashed playboy do with this broken playtoy? A little more than five years ago, Prokhorov vowed to bring a championship to Brooklyn or get married if that didn’t happen within five years. Now,
Through the first five games of the NBA playoffs, Paul Millsap has attempted 17 3-pointers and has hit on eight of them. With each shot, Millsap’s confidence from long range has grown. That confidence is well warranted. Since signing with the Hawks in the summer of 2013, Millsap has become an entirely different player in approach and efficiency. Once an undersized bruiser bounded to the paint and midrange in Utah, Millsap has evolved into an analytics-savvy stretch forward equipped with the grit and toughness that guided him to the NBA in the
ATLANTA –If the Hawks intend to live up to their reputation as the Spurs of the Eastern Conference, they will need Al Horford to be Duncan-esque throughout the playoffs. On Wednesday night, Horford fulfilled the tall task with arguably his best game of the season. Horford scored 20 points, grabbed 15 rebounds and tallied five assists as the Hawks maintained the lead from the start of the game and edged out the Nets by a final score of 97-87. For the first time