April is supposed to be the time of the NBA season when the best teams gear up for the playoffs and head into it playing their absolute best basketball. The Heat must have missed that memo. And the Bulls’ starters, too. With the NBA regular season slowly but surely winding down, two of the top teams in the Eastern Conference are heading into the postseason with plenty of uncertainty and several important questions to still resolve. For the Chicago Bulls, the team with
As the truncated season winds down, teams are jockeying for playoff positioning and home-court advantage. One of those teams should be the San Antonio Spurs. But coach Gregg Popovich is playing a different game. Popovich, the silver-haired, long-tenured guru who is among the frontrunners for Coach of the Year Award, decided to sit out three of his top three players – Tim Duncan, Tony Parker and Manu Ginobili – for the second time this season. The result was the same as the last time
// You may have noticed that the Chicago Bulls are in a bit of a swoon, the Miami Heat have been going through their own lulls whenever they leave the comforts of home, and the Oklahoma City Thunder have been prone to letdowns. What about the fourth team among the NBA’s Big 4? Why do the San Antonio Spurs, who carry an 11-game winning streak into tonight’s game against the Utah Jazz, keep winning so consistently despite having so many different lineups
We could drone on and on in today’s roundup about what a huge victory it was yesterday for both Carmelo Anthony and the New York Knicks, being that this Web site is based out of the Big Apple. But we shall spare you. You know why the Knicks won Sunday in overtime? Three words: Derrick Rose choked. By my count, Rose is now 0-for-4 on game-deciding free throws in the final minute of the fourth quarter of Sunday afternoon ABC games, having gagged similarly
I have been an MVP voter for the past six years, and it remains to be seen whether my departure from the mainstream media will impact my chances of casting a vote for the seventh straight season (When I was the NBA writer at the Associated Press for 10 years prior to my six at ESPN, we were not permitted to vote — the same rule writers at the New York Times have to follow). The guy who sends out the
By Andy Roth Following the San Antonio Spurs’ first-round elimination in the playoffs last season, most NBA observers, including myself, thought their days as championship contenders were behind them. But Gregg Popovich’s team is firmly entrenched atop the Southwest Division with a 7 1/2 game lead over the Dallas Mavericks, and their 36-14 record is the fourth-best in the league. San Antonio has accomplished all this despite the fact that former All-Star Manu Ginobili has missed 29 games, and was the team’s leading
NEW YORK –The Chicago Bulls’ Tom Thibodeau and the San Antonio Spurs’ Gregg Popovich each were named Coach of the Month for the second time this season, winning the award for games played in March. Thibodeau led the Bulls to a league-best 13-3 (.813) record including a league-leading 6-0 mark on the road, holding opponents to a league-low 43 percent shooting. Thibodeau recorded his 100th career win on March 19 at Orlando (86-59), his 131st game as head coach, becoming the fastest coach
If there were rankings for the NBA’s overlooked and underestimated, the San Antonio Spurs would be No. 1. They are the contender people love to forget. That’s not to say they aren’t respected. Four titles since 1999 and the potent management duo of Gregg Popovich and R.C. Buford translates to a substantial bottom line. But the last few years, it seems that when championship aspirants are rated, any mention of the Spurs is followed with “yeah, well … but … they