On Saturday night, while most basketball fans were watching the Final Four, the NBA playoffs got under way. Not officially, of course. That doesn’t happen until April 16. But for the Detroit Pistons, Chicago Bulls and other teams fighting for the bottom of the brackets, the postseason already has started. Detroit’s 94-90 victory at Chicago on Saturday wasn’t quite a Game Seven. The Pistons aren’t quite home free just yet, and the Bulls aren’t quite dead. But it sure looked an awful
In case you didn’t notice, the transition into a new era for the San Antonio Spurs hit a milestone of sorts this past weekend. For the first time in 1,360 career games, Tim Duncan did not score. Coming off a three-game absence – one for rest and two due to knee soreness – the no-brainer Hall of Famer played just 13 minutes Saturday, missing all three of his shots and failing to get to the line. And it was no coincidence that in
This may become one of the most entertaining seasons in Utah Jazz history. The prospect of Quin Snyder coaching a talented young core led by growing stars Gordon Hayward, Derrick Favors and Rudy Gobert has elicited quiet whispers about making the playoffs. Will the Jazz’s supporting cast lift them up or let them down? What is GM Dennis Lindsey doing, and will his risks pay off in the long term? Basketball enthusiasts should watch the Jazz this season just to see how
The best prospects stayed away from the NBA Draft combine in Chicago. The next tier of prospects are jockeying for leverage and position while their agents push them to anyone willing to listen, and there are some seniors who go against the grain of one-and-done prospects who deserve a closer look. This has been a strange year in the sense that so many big names pulled out of Chicago’s NBA Draft Combine earlier this week, including Andrew Wiggins, Joel Embiid and