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…]
Lets talk about the New York Knicks. By now, you all know that Phil Jackson fired Mike Woodson and hired Derek Fisher after failing to entice Steve Kerr to take the coaching job. You also know that the team’s roster still has plenty of familiar faces that played a role in what turned out to be a disastrous season last year, along with some key additions – most notably being Jose Calderon and Sam Dalembert. Carmelo Anthony, of course, re-signed with
Now for the annual post-season awards no one else has, by whatever means necessary. Kill this page if you’re looking for the Blue Plate Special featured everywhere else with Michael Carter-Williams as Rookie of the Year, Gregg Popovich as best coach, DeMar DeRozan as Most Improved, Joakim Noah as Defensive Player of the Year, etc. All are deserving… but it’s not as if the other candidates are chopped liver, as it seems these days when everyone compares picks over the internet and—
Donald T. Sterling Sterling World Plaza Beverly Hills, Calif. 90210 Dear Donald, Just thought I’d check in to console you, as I have always done at this point of the season when everything is lost, your coach is shaky and you’re about to lose however many players are on expiring contracts. Hey, it’s not easy being second fiddle to the Lakers here. If the Lakes eclipse the Dodgers and Angels, too, at least the baseball teams play in summer. You play in the same arena at
As it was in the beginning, so it will be in the end, an NBA without David Stern, amen. It’s true. There is going to be an NBA without its commissioner of the last 30 years, who’s handing over his axe, er, stepping down in favor of Deputy Commissioner Adam Silver on Feb. 1. It just won’t seem like the NBA, though. Not that the league won’t continue on its merry way. The stars will still be stars. The league will continue to
The Lakers retired Shaquille O’Neal’s number last night at Staples Center before going out and clobbering the Dallas Mavericks, putting some separation between themselves and one of their pursuers in the Western Conference playoff race. It is a new era now at the Staples Center, nearly a decade removed from when Shaq was the alpha dog of the Lakers. [Read more…]
As we all have seen, the basketball universe in Los Angeles is upside down. [Read more…]
csprtContainer(); The Oklahoma City Thunder are one of the youngest teams in history to reach the NBA Finals, where historically young teams do not do very well. Hall of Fame NBA writer Mark Heisler references the 1995 Orlando Magic, who knocked off Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls to reach the NBA Finals, only to be swept by the older Houston Rockets – who just happened to have the experience of being defending champions. Does Heisler believe the Thunder will crash and burn