BROOKLYN – Mikhail Prokhorov will reportedly be in Turkey on Sunday celebrating his 50th birthday with legions of $20,000 models hoping to console him after his American playtoy’s season came to a crashing halt at the hands of the Atlanta Hawks in Game 6 Friday night. So what does the unabashed playboy do with this broken playtoy? A little more than five years ago, Prokhorov vowed to bring a championship to Brooklyn or get married if that didn’t happen within five years. Now,
Twenty teams already are into their offseason and will be joined by two more this weekend. That means those teams already are looking at a free agent market that will be the last as we have come to know it. The projected salary cap for teams this summer is $67.1 million with a projected tax line of $81.6 million. The cap is rising more than 6 percent from last summer’s $63.065 million, which is actually a smaller increase than the jump
The mix of beige and off white dominating DeAndre Jordan’s post-game wardrobe was appropriate. All the color, after all, had drained from the Los Angeles Clippers following a critical, emotionally brutal 111-107 loss to the San Antonio Spurs Tuesday night at Staples Center, giving the Spurs a 3-2 lead in this titanic opening round matchup. At this point, you sympathize with Clippers fans who must feel like they’re being trolled. San Antonio isn’t the dominating force of last season, but even beat
BROOKLYN— Barclays Center may never have been louder than it was on Monday night. Normally, the Brooklyn arena is filled with many fans of Nets opponents and it would take something extraordinary or abnormal for the crowd to really get to a decibel level worthy of the postseason. After a three-game stretch that signified one of the lowest points in his disappointing tenure with the team, Deron Williams energized the Brooklyn Nets and this arena like nothing before seen in this
In Game 1 of the Western Conference first-round series between the Clippers and defending champion Spurs, San Antonio was overwhelmed by the energy of the home team. Los Angeles, even when making mistakes in defensive rotations, did so with so much speed and commitment that it often didn’t matter. The Clippers, with an assortment power dunks from Blake Griffin and power spikes from DeAndre Jordan, had the capacity crowd at Staples Center in a frenzy all night. The Spurs didn’t have an
Five top sleeper free agents are all playing in the playoffs with the hope of cashing in big this summer as I outlined in a previous SheridanHoops column. With the NBA projected to increase the salary cap to roughly $90 million in 2016, teams will spend big this summer with the hope those deals will be bargains in retrospect once the new salary cap kicks in. Despite the anticipated gold rush for free agents in 2016, there are some players who would
Many teams are preparing for a free agency bonanza in the summer of 2016 when the salary cap is projected to rise to roughly $90 million with stars such as Kevin Durant, LeBron James, Chris Paul, Dwight Howard, Joakim Noah, etc. all potentially be available. However, teams that aren’t in the running for a superstar in 2016 will spend big this summer on players who are valuable but not household names. Any deal signed this summer will ultimately be considered below
A funny thing happened on the Clippers’ way to continued ignominy. Imagine finishing the season on a 14-1 surge that takes you to the third seed in the brutal Western Conference and finding yourself facing the sixth-seeded booby prize, the defending NBA champion San Antonio Spurs, who are favored in the series opener on your floor. What else is new? As one buzzard said to another, “I’ve been having Clipper luck.” Oh, you say the Clippers won? Fairy tales can come true; they just