As good as Damian Lillard has been this season, he is not good enough to be an All-Star as a rookie. Lillard plays for the wrong team in the wrong time zone in the wrong conference. The Portland Trail Blazers are not a glamour bunch. Their home games end when half the country is asleep. And most important, their half of the league is loaded with awesome backcourt players. [Read more…]
A dozen teams have played at least half their schedule and another seven will join them today, when the most of the most significant holidays in this country’s history becomes the season’s unofficial midway point. So Dr. Martin Luther King Day is as good a time as any to examine the current front-runners for the annual awards. Included are links to both our staff’s preseason picks and the current rankings. And as always, we’ve included snide remarks if/when necessary. [Read more…]
It’s not often that players in the league talk about playing one-on-one with other players from around the league, so when one starts giving you juicy details about it, you pay attention. Especially when it’s Kobe Bryant telling you stories about who he played against. During a notable interview with ESPN’s Chris Palmer – where the two touched on a variety of topics such as whether Bryant can score 50 points in a game again, or how the guard feels about his
Over the last four weeks in our Rookie Rankings, Toronto Raptors guard Terrence Ross ascended from ninth to sixth to fourth before plummeting entirely out of the table. That staged climb and quick descent somewhat resembles Ross in the open court, where he has unleashed some of the more memorable dunks this season. But dunks aren’t enough to get a spot in these rankings. Anyone who regularly reads this piece knows that I cut these kids very little slack. You don’t just
Lost among many stellar individual performances in the NBA on Friday, but nearly as impressive, “PaulinNYC” won the Freeroll and $100 cash, defeating 755 opponents without even using Kevin Durant. [Read more…]
There were more than a few folks wondering if Washington Wizards guard Bradley Beal had hit the Rookie Wall. To silence those folks, Beal broke through it. Right about the time rookies start to feel the rigor of their first NBA season – somewhere between 30 and 40 games, with back-to-backs and extended travel college players don’t face – Beal produced his best week of the season and showed why everyone was so high on him in June. [Read more…]
When will the league implement rules to keep things as far away as possible from the basketball court? Time and time again, we see players get tripped up or sprain an ankle from cameramen sitting closer to game action than they really should be. It’s not their fault because that’s what the job requires, and more importantly, no one tells them not to be that close. The fault lies in the league’s unwillingness to compromise for the safety of the players. Earlier
Over the last two weeks, readers of this weekly feature have let it be known that I am undervaluing Detroit Pistons big man Andre Drummond. [Read more…]