If Derrick Rose wants to sit out games because he doesn’t feel 100 percent healthy, that’s fine. If Rose wants to go to the coaching staff, training staff and management of the Chicago Bulls and develop some sort of maintenance program which allows him to sit out games from time to time, that’s fine, too. In fact, given what the San Antonio Spurs and Miami Heat have done with their aging stars over the last several seasons – and the success that
Important NBA news and player movement has mostly been dwindling over the past few weeks as the offseason begins to wind down. No matter. There are still plenty of interesting stuff going on around the league, starting with the continued ridiculousness of Dennis Rodman and his bizarre friendship with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un. The former rebounding machine visited Kim back in February and did so again, this time providing plenty of specifics, from Brian Mahoney of The A.P.: Dennis Rodman is
Danilo Gallinari’s season-ending injury this week put the Denver Nuggets in a club whose membership seems to get larger every day. Playoff teams missing key players. There are very few teams who will be at full strength when the playoffs start two weekends from now. But two of those teams are last year’s NBA Finals combatants, which could make for a relatively mundane postseason. [Read more…]
This column was originally going to be a convincing piece as to why Maurice Cheeks (full disclosure: my favorite player of all time) deserves to be in the Hall of Fame. Then Stan Van Gundy decided enough was enough and exposed for all of us Dwight Howard’s true character – a selfish brat whose childish demands and indecision make him utterly impossible. When this mess in the Magic Kingdom shakes out sometime in May, Van Gundy will be unemployed, because that’s what
MIAMI – OK, he did it again. LeBron James, the talented and tormented Miami Heat forward, declined to take a late-game shot Friday at Utah. He saw a double-team coming and passed to forward Udonis Haslem, who missed a jumper. The Heat lost, 99-98. You’d be tempted to think it was the All-Star game all over again. It wasn’t. This wasn’t some made-for-TV pickup game. It was a regular-season game. It mattered. Now, the LeBron debate can continue. “At the end of the
In the last week, Kobe Bryant became the fifth-leading scorer in NBA history and Paul Pierce surpassed Larry Bird and now trails only John Havlicek as the leading scorer in Celtics history. Although each achievement was exceptional, such feats are not allowed to stand on their own. Not in sports. When records are set, there is a larger discussion – is that player the greatest of all-time in that sport or for that franchise? And if not, it is absolutely mandatory
Is Paul Pierce part of the Boston Celtics’ all-time team? On Tuesday, Pierce passed Larry Bird on the team’s career scoring list, moving into second place for the most historic franchise in the NBA. He is creeping up on 22,000 career points and still going strong. Pierce has a ways to go to catch Celtics all-time leader John Havlicek, whose total of 26,395 is even more remarkable when you consider he began his career as a sixth man. If Pierce passes Havlicek