OKLAHOMA CITY — Will Chris Bosh start tonight? Sure sounds that way. “The way we use Chris might be a little different, like the way we used him in the regular season,” Miami coach Erik Spoelstra said this morning at the Heat’s shootaround. “I think he’s gotten his feet wet enough and we’ll need him to be a little bit more of who he was.” Heading into Game 2 of the NBA Finals tonight, the Miami Heat are in the precarious position
OKLAHOMA CITY — Miami Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said it best Tuesday when speaking about the Oklahoma City Thunder, saying “they imposed their identity” on Game 1, and the Heat will need to dictate the “force, will and energy” in Game 2 in order to avoid falling behind 0-2 in the NBA Finals. Do you know what I take that to mean? They are going to knock Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook on their asses Thursday night, and they will test the
It feels like ages ago, but NBA basketball was almost taken away from all of us when the lockout threatened to wipe out the 2011-2012 season. With all the amazing events and drama that unfolded this season from Linsanity, Kobe’s resurgence to Dwightmare, it’s hard to believe they nearly let it all go to waste. The season did happen, though, and here we are at the final stage to watch two of the very best players in the league go
The Heat should be fine tonight, as long as none of them had an encounter with “Effie.” “Effie” is a ghost that is said to haunt the Skirvin Hotel, a 101-year-old downtown hotel that was built by an oil baron who, according to legend, kept a mistress named “Effie” on the 10th floor who jumped to her death holding the couple’s baby. When the New York Knicks stayed at the Skirvin a couple years back, Jared Jeffries and Eddy Curry were spooked
Amarillo Slim at the 1974 World Series of Poker
OKLAHOMA CITY — There is an age-old truism pertaining to the NBA Finals that pertains to the question of old age. Young teams rarely, and we mean very rarely, win NBA championships. If the Oklahoma City Thunder somehow manage to emerge from the NBA Finals victorious, they’d be the first team with such a young nucleus to win the title since the Portland Trail Blazers in 1977 — a topic that our Hall of Fame columnist, Mark Heisler, addressed in his column
// Watch the above video for my reasoning. And by the way, I am the only person on the SheridanHoops staff to pick Thunder in 5. For all of our staff’s picks, click here. (Disclaimer: The prediction business is a tricky one. I had Heat in 7 last round, but I also had Spurs in 5.) And back in the day when I was with ESPN, I was the only guy who said there was only a 10 percent chance that LeBron
Now to let the Young Guns shoot it out. … If you’re going to hear that a lot the next week or two, some of these guns are a lot younger than others. By 2007, when LeBron James and Dwyane Wade had both been in NBA Finals, Kevin Durant had yet to be drafted; Russell Westbrook was an unheralded UCLA freshman who had played nine minutes a game; and James Harden was even less heralded as a high school sophomore. Durant, Westbrook and