With the news that Kansas’ Joel Embiid had surgery Friday to repair a stress fracture in his navicular bone, the NBA draft among lottery teams has become quite intriguing. It is rare to have a consensus No. 1 pick experience such untimely misfortune. The top pick will earn a rookie salary of $5.51 million. The No. 5 pick will earn $3.61 million. And that is just in Year 1 of a four-year rookie scale deal. Taken out over the full four years,
This is the best time of the year in the NBA. The draft is only days away, opt-in and opt-out decisions are due a couple days later, and free agency courtships can begin July 1. We are currently in a holding pattern in which Kevin Love rumors, Carmelo Anthony speculation and Joel Embiid-Greg Oden comparisons are being wildly thrown around. You can lose track of yourself trying to keep track of all the rumors, so try to remember that rumors are
With Kevin Love no longer having much interest left in staying with the Minnesota Timberwolves, Flip Saunders has been exploring his options – most notably with the Golden State Warriors. The Warriors can offer David Lee to help replace Love at the power forward position and have the luxury of including young stud Klay Thompson – a player Minnesota definitely wants included in a Love deal – or Harrison Barnes. Marc Stein of ESPN has full details on the discussions the
As someone who wrote these here blog things during the Dwightmare, I have mixed feelings on the incredibly protracted trade dramas that the NBA is so often subjected to. On the one hand, they take forever, they’re basically one big headache, they’re never resolved in a satisfying manner, and after about a week more people are talking about how they’re sick of hearing about the trade possibilities than are actually talking about said trade possibilities. On the other hand, they make
All anyone wants to talk about in the NBA today is LeBron and the air conditioning in San Antonio. Speculate, theorize, whatever you want about whether how suspicious the timing of the malfunction was and what might have happened had LeBron played at the end of the game, but no matter what, mocking an injury, even one as temporary (and thus perceived to be non-serious) as cramps, is not what’s known as “taking the high road.” There’s no reason Spurs
Much has been made of Tim Duncan’s comments following a Game 6 victory against the Oklahoma City Thunder when he declared that his team would beat the Miami Heat this time. It’s understandable because the words came from Duncan, and he rarely ever says things that are headline-worthy. More importantly, LeBron James assumed that the Spurs don’t like the Heat based on Duncan’s comments. Still, Duncan and others on the team mostly believe nothing out of the ordinary was said. Tony Parker,
Wednesday the All-NBA Teams were announced, and with them came a slew of congratulatory, confused and frustrated tweets. Oklahoma City Thunder forward Kevin Durant led all vote getters as the lone unanimous selection to the First Team, followed by Miami Heat forward LeBron James, Chicago Bulls center Joakim Noah, Houston Rockets guard James Harden and Los Angeles Clippers guard Chris Paul. Much to the chagrin of 124 NBA writers with voting privileges, Chris Sheridan, our esteemed Editor-in-Chief, was the lone vote preventing
Scandal, scandal everywhere. If it’s not Donald Sterling, it’s Mark Jackson feuding with the Warriors’ front office. Or maybe it’s the Grizzlies’ management structure suddenly collapsing. It seems everywhere you turn, you get smacked with another piece of dirty laundry. And if you just want to watch the games? Get ready for controversy after controversy over flops, out-of-bounds calls, arguments between teammates. Anything people can complain about, they will. With all that – combined with louder than usual cries of fixing at