About a year ago, I found an interview with an end-of-the-bench big who had just been traded. It caught my eye because of the frankness and wit of the player involved. He said that what kept him in the league was his ability to give fouls, and said he chose his number to make the refs hold up a lot of fingers. I don’t think I ended up including it in my blog, but it stuck with me nonetheless. That player
NBA fans do an awful job of protecting the image of their favorite sport. This is not the NFL, which has been America’s pastime for a generation and can do no wrong in the eyes of its fans. The only time the NFL has an image problem is when a storm affects satellite reception. This is also not baseball, which has a considerable image problem with its collection of prima donnas on PEDS. But it also has more than a century of
Who is crashing the playoff party in the East this season? Conventional wisdom says the two-time defending champion Miami Heat, Indiana Pacers, Chicago Bulls, New York Knicks and Brooklyn Nets are head and shoulders above the rest of the Eastern Conference and – barring a disaster – will secure the top five spots. At the other end of the conference, you can probably toss out the Orlando Magic, Charlotte Bobcats and Philadelphia 76ers, who could pool their rosters to come up with
Capping off a mediocrity-defining three-year stretch that saw them finish ninth, ninth and eighth in the East, the Milwaukee Bucks should have entered the summer of 2013 with change as the most obvious mandate. As in change everything. Despite a return to the playoffs and encouraging progress from big men Larry Sanders, Ersan Ilyasova and John Henson, the Bucks had little to show for their efforts last season, as coaching upheaval and a dysfunctional locker room motivated GM John Hammond to take a
The upcoming season is an evaluation campaign for the Phoenix Suns in every respect. They will introduce a new offense designed by former Sun Jeff Hornacek, a new defense spearheaded by Mike Longabardi and at least six new rotation players acquired via the draft and trades by new general manager Ryan McDonough. With the recent trade of Caron Butler – who never played a game for the team – the Suns have only one player in his 30s: Channing Frye, who
If you had to name some of the best up-and-coming general managers in the NBA, Bob Myers of the Golden State Warriors should certainly be on that list. One of the younger GMs in the league, Myers has made quite a name for himself in just one season on the job. He orchestrated an exceptional draft in 2012 and picked up key pieces in the offseason that helped propel the young Warriors to a wildly successful postseason run. Despite all the success,
Caron Butler was in Phoenix hardly long enough to work on his tan. Traded by the Los Angeles Clippers to the Suns earlier this summer, Butler was shipped to his hometown Milwaukee Bucks on Thursday in a deal that landed Ishmael Smith and Slava Kravtsov. The trade also created more cap room for the Suns, who exchanged Butler’s expiring $8 million deal for the combined $2.5 million of Kravtsov ($1.5 million) and Smith ($950,000). “This deal gives us significant cap space as well
Caron Butler could not have been a happy camper when he learned that he and Eric Bledsoe were traded by the Los Angeles Clippers to the Phoenix Suns back in early July. At the age of 33, the forward was likely less than interested in playing for a rebuilding team. Perhaps Butler had a word with the Suns organization about being moved to a better situation, because that’s precisely what they’ve been trying to do, according to Gery Woelfel of Racine