The NBA playoffs got off to a good start today, with a competitive Nets-Raptors game followed by a thrilling Clippers-Warriors battle. The former reminded everyone why Paul Pierce is still a quality NBA player, and the latter was an intense battle between two rivals, albeit both playing below their potential. Blake Griffin only got 19 minutes due to foul trouble, which the Clippers have to be praying won’t happen in the rest of the series. Otherwise, they could be in
Phil Jackson won’t be awful as president of the New York Knicks. He certainly won’t be as bad as Isiah Thomas was in running the club. And he will almost certainly be better than David Kahn, Bryan Colangelo, Joe Dumars, Otis Smith and Geoff Petrie have been in recent years. But Phil Jackson isn’t Isiah Thomas, or David Kahn, or Bryan Colangelo. He’s Phil Jackson, with a reputation of all things basketball that he touches turning to gold. And that’s exactly what
I mentioned last weekend that I’ve been watching old NBA games on YouTube, and while Karl Malone, for obvious name-related reasons, is probably never going to be surpassed as my all-time favorite basketball player, Hakeem Olajuwon is making it pretty close. I mean, look at this: [Read more…]
Kevin Durant or LeBron James? That has been the question many have been asking since Durant’s incredible scoring run in the month of January. Prior to Oklahoma City Thunder’s matchup against Miami Heat on Wednesday, the forward had scored at least 30 points or more in 11 consecutive games, going 8-3 in that span – all without All-Star guard Russell Westbrook. For Durant, this stuff matters. He openly admit last season that being second to LeBron James in everything was not something
In his stated effort to upstage Knicks owner James Dolan, Nets owner Mikhail Prokhorov has become him. Like Dolan, Prokhorov desperately wants an NBA championship. Like Dolan, he has pursued that desperation with financial abandon, giving his GM an open checkbook. Like Dolan, he has overspent on overvalued big names. Like Dolan, he has mortgaged his team’s future by giving away multiple draft picks. And like Dolan, he appears headed down the abyss. In two months, the Nets have gone from contenders with
Where the hell has the time gone? It certainly flies as the days get shorter and darkness descends in the late afternoon. We’re already through the first quarter of the NBA season and almost at Christmas. The league has seen plenty of pleasant surprises, like the consistently stellar Portland Trail Blazers, and many disappointments, like the entire Eastern Conference besides Indiana and Miami. There have also been a whole host of players who have really progressed in a positive direction over the
The Knicks should really stop trading with Masai Ujiri. Ujiri set the Denver Nuggets’ franchise in the right direction with the Carmelo Anthony trade with New York, and now he achieved something that was once considered nearly impossible not even a month into his tenure as the Toronto Raptors’ head of basketball operations: getting a first-round pick in exchange for Andrea Bargnani’s contract. The team taking on the last two years and roughly $23 million on Bargnani’s contract? The Knicks,
Younger NBA fans have been spoiled by Game 7s. Tonight’s showdown in Miami between the Heat and Spurs is the third Game 7 in the NBA Finals in the last nine years. Prior to that, there had been just one in the previous 16 years. Game 7’s are like tax returns, pizza and sex; they’re never really bad. But they can be really good, and as Game 7’s go, we haven’t had a really good one in a long time. [Read more…]