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
As long as there is sports talk radio and avoidable TV programs like “First Take,” there will be a debate on who is the greatest basketball player who ever lived. The following is going to make this writer look like a big, fat hypocrite, since there was a June article on this site, by this very writer, with the headline “Please stop comparing LeBron James to Michael Jordan.” But we can’t help it, can we? LeBron James now has two NBA
The NBA futures market has opened up across many different sports books and shops, not only in Las Vegas but also across the offshore markets as well. In this column, I am going to list all of the different odds and current opportunities between these shops to see if there are any differences worth noting and where the biggest discrepancies lie. Here are the two Las Vegas Sports Books that we will be comparing: The Las Vegas Hilton and William Hill;
Two significant things will happen this NBA season: David Stern will step down as commissioner, probably five years too late. And for the first time in 20 years, the 76ers, Celtics and Lakers all will be out of the playoffs. We know the first to be true. The second is pure conjecture, but it’s more likely than not that three of the top NBA franchises in terms of tradition, history, titles and outsized personalities will be booking trips to ping-pong festivities
This is the time of year where everyone and their mothers offer up a series of fearless prognostications about the upcoming NBA season. Here’s what I can tell you about my skills at predicting the future. If I was really any good at it, I wouldn’t be wasting it on the NBA season. And neither would anyone else. I am not reading tea leaves, interpreting tarot cards, gazing into crystal balls, holding seances, poring over analytics or buying classified information on the
With NBA training camps now open, every team will be using October to try to answer questions about their rosters. But for teams with injured stars, the questions have greater significance. Like, how long can the Lakers stay afloat without Kobe Bryant? Is Danny Granger going to come off the bench for the Pacers? Are the Warriors really a better team without David Lee? No less than nine current or former All-Stars will start the 2013-14 season with doubt swirling around them because they
The dust has settled and the NBA offseason has officially hit its conclusion when it comes to the futures market. [Read more…]
This could be the league’s toughest division from a 1-2 standpoint, as outlined in our August Power Rankings. Adding Luis Scola, not to mention Chris Copeland, for the price of next to nothing amounted to balance-tipping moves by Indiana Pacers executives Donnie Walsh and Larry Bird. Remember, these guys took the Miami Heat to seven games in the Eastern Conference finals – and they did it with Tyler Hansbrough and Gerald Green as two primary options off the bench. Throw that