Over the last two weeks, Doc Rivers the coach has done a fantastic job of covering for Doc Rivers the GM. The Los Angeles Clippers have won nine straight games, the last eight without superstar forward Blake Griffin, who – in case you hadn’t noticed over the past couple of seasons – has overtaken Chris Paul as the team’s best player. When Griffin got hurt, the Clippers appeared to be in trouble. They had just lost three straight games to San Antonio,
With the NCAA Tourament upon us, it seems like as good a time as any to remind everyone that there is a canyon between coaching in college and coaching in the NBA. There is more than a generation of evidence which clearly illustrates that any NBA team hiring a head coach directly from college is making a huge mistake. P.J. Carlesimo. Tim Floyd. Leonard Hamilton. Lon Kruger. Mike Montgomery. Jerry Tarkanian. Rick Pitino, who failed twice. Even John Calipari, who is
Mike D’Antoni has coached his last game with the Los Angeles Lakers. With so much assurance from the front office throughout the year, most expected the coach to return next season. However, there were certain conditions he hoped Mitch Kupchak would agree to, and those conditions weren’t met. ESPN has details: The Lakers and D’Antoni have been discussing his future with the team since the season ended, multiple sources told ESPN.com’s Ramona Shelburne. Last week he asked them to pick up the
The 2014 NBA All-Star Weekend is well behind us, in the rearview mirror as we streak away towards the end of the regular season and the NBA Playoffs. For some teams the playoffs may be out of reach. The New York Knicks, for instance, are only six games back of the 8th-seed with 25 games remaining. However, with only two wins in their last 10 outings and the team in effective disarray—Raymond Felton facing gun charges, Metta World Peace being released,
The Derrick Rose injury saga has been going on, well, since Rose got hurt in Game 1 of the first round against the Sixers last year. First he was supposed to be back around Christmas, then sometime in January, and now it’s mid-March and he’s been close to coming back for several weeks. But we still don’t have definitive word, which has to be frustrating for Bulls fans waiting for their franchise player. Not having played a minute so far this
A day after watching Kobe Bryant go down with a severely sprained ankle due to Dahntay Jones’ “aggressive” defense, there was much debate about whether the play was dirty and if a foul should have been called on the play. Lets take a look at some of the reactions from around the league. Here is one from Mark Jackson and Bruce Bowen (ironically), from Eric Pincus of Los Angeles Times: [Read more…]
Quite the night it was Wednesday in the NBA, from Miami reaching 20 consecutive wins to Denver reaching 10 in a row to Kobe spraining his ankle and then e-mailing his favorite national columnist to whine about what he claims was a dirty play by Dahntay Jones. So let’s look a little further into each of those items. _ Everyone is now looking at the Heat’s upcoming schedule (they are currently one game into a five-game road trip) and wondering if they
It was a very busy night in the NBA last night as 11 games were on the schedule. For those of you who enjoy choices, you had your share of stars in NBA sky last night, as nine of the top 10 scorers and seven of the top 10 rebounders were in action. The Heat make any argument about them going undefeated for the rest of the season more and more legitimate with their 20th straight victory last night in Philadelphia,