Jeff Van Gundy is my NBA idol. I like to joke that Jeff is to me what Justin Bieber is to a teenaged girl. If Jeff was a cult leader, I’d not only join, I’d drink Jeff’s Kool-Aid in the jungle. The only topic I’ve ever vehemently disagreed on with Jeff is flopping. Jeff has been condemning flopping on national NBA broadcasts, on the biggest of stages, for years now. The league has gotten embarrassed enough to finally do something and boy, is
The Fantasy Spin is delighted to be partnered with FanDuel this season. Daily fantasy games are challenging, exciting and can be lucrative. Compared to 20 years of Roto and a dozen or more Head-to-Head seasons, I’m a novice at this. The FanDuel hoops game is beautifully simple: pick nine players — 2PG, 2 SG, 2 SF, 2 PF, 1 C — and whoever scores the most points wins. The scoring system is also uncomplicated: 3-pt FG = 3pts; 2-pt FG = 2pts; FT =
As the time for training camp reaches near, we will start to hear more in detail about about the mindset and the health status of players around the league. It’s a small dosage, but we have some updates on the health situations of Chauncey Billups, Earl Watson and Ronnie Brewer today. You can also dive into the mind of second year player Brandon Knight heading into the season, how Mitch Kupchak feels about his transactions over the summer, what Tyson
Team USA beat Spain for Olympic gold on Sunday with a roster of 12 men that embraced their respective roles. They shoved their egos aside for the good of the team and yada yada yada. Tired of the clichés yet? After watching Team USA’s big, happy family roll over opponents for two weeks, I am too. But hey, they deserved each one. Getting a group of superstars to agree to a 12-way split of the spotlight is tough, and Mike Krzyzewski managed
The Dwightmare saga suddenly and finally came to a close on Friday, as a reported four-team trade from Thursday came to a conclusion that sent center Dwight Howard to the Los Angeles Lakers. So who won and lost big in the trade? Chris Sheridan has the analysis here. The Lakers, without a doubt, become an epic team, and Mark Heisler explains how Howard is the newest version of Wilt Chamberlain and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. With such an unbelievable team assembled, can the Lakers win
Team USA won 59 straight basketball games after allowing NBA players to compete in the 1992 Barcelona Olympics. That included Olympic titles in 1992, 1996 and 2000 and a FIBA World Championship in 1994 (the U.S. sent a ragtag group of non-NBA players—Trajan Langdon, Brad Miller, Wendell Alexis—and picked up the bronze in 1998 during the NBA lockout). But ten years after Jordan and Barkley got things rolling in the right direction, the United States entrusted Baron Davis, Paul Pierce and Raef
Ruben Magnano coached a game that made all of his fellow Argentinians happy. Problem was, Magnano was coaching Brazil. Magnano made the curious decision to sit Anderson Varejao for the entire fourth quarter, and Argentina held off a strong fourth-quarter run by Brazil and defeated their South American rivals 82-77 Wednesday in the quarterfinals of the 2012 Olympics. Magnano, who coached Argentina to a gold medal at the 2004 Olympics in Athens but then had a falling out with the national federation, was
