I always wait until the final game of the NBA season is in the books before handing in my postseason awards ballot, and the reason is twofold: If the deadline is not until Thursday afternoon, what’s the hurry? (This is how journalists work when it comes to deadlines. Most of us, anyway.) The second is because you always want to wait and see if something happens on the final night of the season to change either your ballot or your
The Golden State Warriors are about to complete the best regular season in NBA history. The Warriors are going to win 73 games, one more than the 1995-96 Chicago Bulls. Even Warriors coach Steve Kerr, a reserve on that Bulls squad and one of the great winners in league annals, is blown away by his team’s accomplishment. “I never imagined when I was with the Bulls anyone would ever come close,” he said. “We’re close.” [Read more…]
The team that passed on Stephen Curry oh so many years ago got beaten in the NCAA championship game by what else? A 3-pointer. You have to believe the folks at Davidson, especially one particular ex-student, took a little extra gratification from Kris Jenkins’ title-winning 3-pointer at the buzzer that lifted Villanova over North Carolina. Because it was Davidson, you may recall, that benefited most from the decisions by North Carolina and Duke to take a pass on the player who
We publish these rankings roughly twice a month, an exercise in futility tantamount to being a 50-year old on a beach in Panama City looking to re-live his conquests of the mid-1980s back when Fort Lauderdale and The Button were the hot spots. So now that I have revealed my Easter weekend plans (not really, but it is not 100 percent out of the question), I will reveal my mid-April plans: I am going to fill out my MVP ballot, and
What is the takeaway from David Blatt’s shocking dismissal as coach of the Cleveland Cavaliers? A few things, all of them related to the Cavs being weak-minded. (Hey, you make a move like that, and you open a window into dysfunction junction.) 1. The East is now a lot more wide open than people might have realized. Exhibit A was the Cavs’ mail-it-in effort in Saturday night’s home loss to the Chicago Bulls, with new coach Tyronn Lue explaining afterward that his
This is the time of year when we give out our midseason awards. But before we get to the drudgery of Sixth Man Award and Most Valuable Player, let’s start the festivities with a special award for individual achievement that goes to Rashad Vaughn. Vaughn is a shooting guard for the Milwaukee Bucks and the second-youngest player in the NBA. He is one of the dozens of rookies who have made virtually no impact in their first season. He is averaging 2.5 points
Pre-Christmas week brought a foreshadowing of what was coming, as an e-mail from columnist and NBA Encylopedia author Jan Hubbard (who lives in Dallas) included a notation that he was in Los Angeles, where the locals are still infatuated with Kobe Bryant to an extreme degree — or so it seemed to an outsider and objective observer, as Hubbard was. Christmas then brought the news that Bryant is running away with the lead in All-Star balloting, which is always a popularity
Ever heard of a racehorse named Twice a Prince? Ever heard of a young woman from Nevada named Nia Sanchez? Or how about the poker player Joshua Beckley, who had a whole bunch of TV time in November. Any of those names ring a bell? Probably not … and you know why? They all finished second. Twice a Prince finished a mere 31 lengths behind the legendary Secretariat in the 1973 Belmont Stakes. Sanchez, despite a controversy over whether she qualified for Nevada residency or