Now for the annual post-season awards no one else has, by whatever means necessary. Kill this page if you’re looking for the Blue Plate Special featured everywhere else with Michael Carter-Williams as Rookie of the Year, Gregg Popovich as best coach, DeMar DeRozan as Most Improved, Joakim Noah as Defensive Player of the Year, etc. All are deserving… but it’s not as if the other candidates are chopped liver, as it seems these days when everyone compares picks over the internet and—
In these rankings, much like in life, you’ve got to be lucky to win. You can be the same exact person, with the same skill set and attitude, but if that ball doesn’t bounce the right way, you don’t get the recognition you deserve. Take UConn coach Kevin Ollie. If 7-foot freshman center Amida Brimah, who hasn’t played more than four seasons of organized basketball in his life, doesn’t complete a ridiculous three-point play with less than 25 seconds left in the first
As the sun fades into the North Texas sky (not sure why we can’t call it Arlington) on Saturday evening, college basketball will take center stage on the American sports landscape. Everyone except Chris Bernucca will settle in for the Final Four, where some of the NBA’s future stars will duke it out in a titanic stadium not meant for basketball with everything on the line. It is a spectacle that deserves America’s attention. And that is why we’ve decided to lend
It’s March Madness, and that can only mean one thing. I just spent the past 48 hours writing three paragraphs on all 68 teams in the NCAA Tournament for my blog, RoundballDaily.com. If I have to hit the parentheses button one more time, I’m going to lose my index finger (I put a lot of the stats in parentheses). Dammit. In the spirit of the Big Dance, I’ve decided to take a trip down memory lane and reminisce about the greatest March
A well-proportioned, wise Italian man with a radio show in New York once told me and a listening audience of probably hundreds that the NBA “goes into the clouds” in February and March. I can’t really remember his name, OK? So let’s just call him Ike Manfresca. Manfresca’s quote has always stuck with me, because: (a) it was so strange and (b) it’s the perfect way to describe the seasonal malaise that rolls in around this time of year, like a
The Oscars are over, and since I didn’t watch them or see any of the nominated movies, let’s get this Oscar-themed edition of the Most Improved Player Rankings under way! Because nothing says “balanced sportswriter” like a column full of misinformed pop culture references! The envelopes, please … Best Actor: Anthony Davis. This award goes to the best player in our group, and Davis is the clear choice there. He’s already one of the league’s best big men, and Pelicans fans have already started
It’s part of my nightly routine. First, I sit on the couch and watch hours of NBA basketball, blankly staring at the screen like a zombie or Kevin from The Office. Then, after the final buzzer sounds on the last West Coast game, I flip over to channel 7 and zone out during a late-night mini-marathon of Kevin and all of his friends on The Office. It’s gotten to the point where last night, I dreamt that Dwight crashed the Most Improved Player
I noticed recently that ESPN’s Bill Simmons had been using the term “Third Banana” when referring to the third-best player on a team. A simple concept, but it did get me thinking. Who are the best “third bananas” in the NBA? I decided to put together a list ranking every team’s third-best player, and then I’d put that player into an overall league ranking, from 1-30. Ultimately I was hoping to stumble upon a correlation between how high a teams Third Banana