Think your team is making the playoffs in the West this season? If you don’t live in L.A., you sure about that? If your team is the Dallas Mavericks or Utah Jazz, you shouldn’t be so sure. The Western Conference has six teams that are postseason certainties and four teams that are locks for the lottery. That leaves five teams vying for two spots. The Oklahoma City Thunder, Los Angeles Lakers, San Antonio Spurs, Los Angeles Clippers, Memphis Grizzlies and Denver Nuggets are in. Each
Stan Van Gundy, who lost his coaching job as part of the “Dwightmare” saga that surrounded the Orlando Magic, said in a radio interview Monday that CEO Alex Martins showed “naivete” in his belief that the coach could not relate to players. Van Gundy appeared Monday morning on Orlando Sentinel writer Mike Bianchi’s show on 740 AM. He was fired by Martins after Orlando’s first-round playoff exit to Indiana – without the injured Dwight Howard – following his fifth straight winning
If you play pickup basketball at all, then you have come across the guy at every court or gym who always calls a foul when he takes a love tap on the arm. That same guy usually does all he can to disrupt the flow of the game by reciting the rulebook and calling every minor violation. According to Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, that guy is Mitt Romney. Not literally, of course. The Republican presidential candidate is 65 years old and appears to
NEW YORK — Former NBA Deputy Commissioner and Players Association executive director Simon Gourdine has passed away at the age of 72. Gourdine joined the NBA in 1970, and was named deputy commissioner in 1974, becoming the highest ranking African- American executive in sports at the time. In 1976, Gourdine was part of the landmark collective bargaining negotiations that created the NBA’s first free agency system, an agreement that also saw the NBA absorb four ABA franchises — the Spurs, Pacers, Nuggets and Nets. NBA
Having trumped up, er, written more intracity rivalry stories than I care to remember, there are three things I know. 1. They’re really no big deal. So what if the Clippers don’t like the Lakers, who don’t deign to notice the Clippers? The Clips don’t dislike the Lakes any more than the Suns or Warriors do, to say nothing of the Celtics. This isn’t high school. It’s not even USC-UCLA. This is the NBA, where only the Clips would remember if they swept the Lakers,
With the opening of training camps in late September, there is now more offseason behind us rather than in front of us. With six weeks to go, many teams are looking to fill the final spot or two on their rosters. And as we pointed out last week, there is not much to choose from. Although there has been talk about some of these teams possibly adding another player, Chicago, Dallas, Detroit, Golden State, Indiana, the Los Angeles Lakers, Memphis, New York, Oklahoma City
The Orlando Magic have tried a number of two-team trades with Dwight Howard that haven’t worked. There has been talk of at least one three-team trade that did not work. Now there is apparently a four-team trade involving Howard being discussed. According to a report Thursday by Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo!, Howard would go to the Los Angeles Lakers in a true blockbuster deal also involving Philadelphia and Denver. From Yahoo!: “A deal is not considered imminent, but the talks have grown serious over
We are down to the bargain bin of free agency. Reduced for clearance! Everything must go! Up to 90 percent off! Yes, we know Mickael Pietrus and Derek Fisher aren’t exactly scrap heap material. Both were key players for playoff teams last season, as were Leandro Barbosa and Kenyon Martin. But most of what is left falls into three categories: Olympians, amnesty victims and veterans too proud to take minimum deals. There is some variety remaining at both forward spots and shooting guard but