There are less than three weeks left in the NBA season. Three weeks. And I’m having a breakdown. It’s up to me to rank the Most Improved Players in the league this season, but I might as well be tasked with coming up with the goofiest Lopez brother, the dumbest “Real World” contestant, or the craziest old lady on “The View.” Here’s the thing: I just can’t decide which of the candidates have risen above the rest. There are so many players
Back in November, the Spurs sat out their best players (earning a fine from the league) and almost won in Miami. Last night, the Heat turned the tables. [Read more…]
The NBA is full of incredible athletes. Some are more athletic than others, but most of them can handle and play against each other without feeling completely overwhelmed by one another, at least in terms of physicality. Among them, however, are some freak-of-nature types that no one can really contain. Shaquille O’Neal was one of these freaks. There’s no one quite like him these days, but we do have physical specimen like Dwight Howard and LeBron James, who are pretty much unstoppable
If you know the difference between a basketball and a bocce ball, you know that upstart Florida Gulf Coast has come out of absolutely nowhere to capture the nation’s attention and become the first 15-seed in NCAA history to advance to the Sweet 16. What does this have to do with the Most Improved Player Rankings? Well, FGCU coach Andy Enfield called his team “the most improved team in the nation.” You know that caught our attention. That. of course, and
It’s time for Week 3 of the Greatest Fake Tournament in the history of sports columns. Let’s get right to the games, with Gus Johnson and Bill Raftery on the call. GUS JOHNSON: Welcome back to Most Improved Player Madness. I’m Gus Johnson alongside Bill Raftery, and Bill, It’s been a thrilling tournament so far, and it has left our readers completely speechless. They can’t even click on the link because of all of the spontaneous excitement. I’m so happy I
It’s Week 2 of possibly the most ill-conceived bracket columns in sports history — the prelude, not the rankings. Last week, we introduced you to Most Improved Player Madness with a special three-page blowout edition of the Rankings. I sense a lot of excitement out there about Week 2. So without further adieu, we present to you the Most Improved Sweet 16! Let it fill your senses with indescribable excitement and joy! [Read more…]
It’s March. And for those of us basketball junkies, that means it’s the most glorious month of the year. March is filled with sneaker-squeaking, pizza-scarfing, mini-hoop jamming madness. It’s a time when we fill out brackets until the blood from our paper cuts advance to the Sweet 16. We place an inordinate amount of self-worth into our clicker skills, hear buzzers sounding in our sleep and showcase Usain Bolt speed in media timeout fridge runs. [Read more…]
Here at the Most Improved Player Rankings, we’re known for our hard-hitting journalism. We’ve been told that we make Anderson Cooper look like Ahmad Rashad. Woodward and Bernstein still wonder how we found out about Greivis Vasquez. So in that tradition, I decided to go ahead and interview our top candidate for the Most Improved Player award, Magic big man Nikola Vucevic. It hardly matters that Vucevic told me that he’s never heard of me or the column, or that he responded with