This has been a good week for obscene gestures, and the NBA’s coffers. On Wednesday, Orlando Magic forward Glen Davis was fined $35,000 by the NBA for flipping the bird toward heckling fans in Toronto. On Friday, it was Reggie Evans’ turn. Evans, the forward of the Los Angeles Clippers, was hit with a $25,000 fine for a middle-finger salute in a home win over New Orleans on Monday. Both Davis and Evans tried to make their vulgarity appear to be something else. Davis
Checking back in on that Battle for L.A. we were telling you about…. As in, “What battle?” The Lakers are still the Lakers, more or less, even if we still don’t know what they’ll wind up as, more or less. The Clips are no longer the Clippers, even if Clippers have always gone back to being the Clippers with mass desertions, heads rolling, lawsuits, etc. For the moment, the air has gone out of the Clips’ euphoric breakout—remember Lob City?–even with the team on
The Clippers finally got a win Saturday, and everything is hunky-dory again in Lob City. Yeah, right. The issues in Clipperland run too deep to be fixed by a matinee mauling of Memphis, which has problems of its own. It is hard to believe that a team boasting both Chris Paul and Blake Griffin may not make the playoffs, but that remains a distinct possibility. Didn’t someone around here say that a while ago? There are plenty of problems on offense. New faces are
Donald T. Sterling Sterling World Plaza Beverly Hills, Calif. 90210 Dear Donald, Well, you said to write again when I found work! As you may have heard, I’m no longer with the large, if not as large as it was once, metropolitan paper in Los Angeles. Of course, times are even tougher in newspapers than David Stern said they are in the NBA, although in our case, we have the casualties to show it’s not just woofing. But enough about moi, look at you! After all those years
Perhaps it is time to re-examine two beliefs that have mostly gone unquestioned during the first three months of this 66-game NBA season. No. 1: The Los Angeles Clippers are going to the playoffs. No. 2: The Philadelphia 76ers are going to win the Atlantic Division. Don’t be so sure of either one. Let’s start with the Clippers, the darlings of December and January who were surpassed in the Pacific Division standings by the Lakers nearly a month ago. They haven’t won a road
When he met reporters before Sunday night’s game, Miami Heat coach Erik Spoelstra was asked if the Orlando Magic are a title contender. “Absolutely,” the coach replied. “There is no doubt about it. Anytime you have an MVP candidate like (Dwight Howard) and then personnel that fits, you’re a contender.” Writers covering both teams took that quote and ran with it, but not in the way you might expect. In Orlando, Spoelstra was taken with a grain of salt. From Josh Robbins of the
Pencils down and papers forward, please. Here are my grades on how teams did at the trading deadline. We aren’t going to evaluate whether Dallas was helped or hindered by Thursday’s wheeling and dealing. The Mavericks – and 13 other teams – didn’t make a deal, so consider their grade to be incomplete. Or a withdrawal, if you prefer. No one got an F, although the Nets came awfully close. At the other end of the scale, the Rockets are officially the teacher’s
Sometimes a trade can be a bitter pill to swallow, but a sweetener of some sort can make it easier to digest. Sometimes, that sweetener comes in the form of $3 million in cash. Other times, a future draft pick or two can even things out in the minds of the men making the deal. With the NBA trade deadline is now 10 days away, cellphone minutes are being burned at this very moment as teams try to maneuver the moves that will either