July 1 is almost here. Wait, it isn’t? You mean there is still two feet of ice, slush and snow piled up outside the home office in New York? Well, if you compare July to October, then July is almost here! And there is no bigger date on the NBA calendar than July 1 (although the May 19 draft lottery is a close second). Phil Jackson becomes relevant again for something other than his Twitter vitriol. Jeanie Buss becomes more interesting
There are seven games tonight, one of them attracting by far the most national attention. At 7:30, on NBA-TV, Houston must visit Atlanta without James Harden, who is suspended. [Read more…]
Why is the trade deadline different from all other nights of the year? It’s not. The West just got tougher. In the East, where there’s no life-or-death importance attached to getting better, the top teams sat this one out while the bad teams—your Knicks and 76ers—dumped, shut down or otherwise disposed of their best players in order to tank more definitively. [Read more…]
All-Star Weekend didn’t start out too well for my son, Andrew. On Friday morning, he had an argument with his first serious girlfriend a day before his first serious Valentine’s Day. With that hanging over his head, he had to go to work, where his primary job is to kick mallrats out of the store. And it was the last work day before the All-Star Game and we still hadn’t heard from someone who had said that maybe, just maybe, he
It was hard to win the big bucks at DraftKings on Big Wednesday unless you built around Kyrie Irving, who drained eleven 3-pointers — including the game-winner — for a career-high 55 points, best in the NBA this season. [Read more…]
NEW YORK – The Knicks should put the “tank” in tanking to give the organization its best chance to land one of the most heralded center prospects in recent memory – Duke’s Jahlil Okafor. The Knicks put on a full court press with Carmelo Anthony, team president Phil Jackson, general manager Steve Mills and Allan Houston all on hand at Madison Square Garden to watch Okafor in action. “I like him,” Anthony said. “I think he’s got a great feel for the
Friday was a rough night at the DFS office. That’s the NBA, where “huh?” happens. The ‘unstoppable’ DMC Express got derailed, causing every one of my lineups to crash and burn. The Wizards may have kidnapped by aliens and replaced with clones who had never played basketball. [Read more…]
BROOKLYN – You don’t need a watch to know the time for the Memphis Grizzlies to win a title is now. If you did, acquiring Jeff Green was the beeping alarm clock that woke up the rest of the Western Conference. With Green, Memphis has the missing piece to compete atop the vaunted West. [Read more…]