NEW YORK – Some of the 2016 NBA draft’s top prospects were in town for the 2K and Legends Classics with executives drooling over their potential, including Philadelphia’s Sam Hinkie and Boston’s Danny Ainge. With Brooklyn holding the third-worst record in the league (3-12), Ainge should give Nets GM Billy King a Thanksgiving turkey for sending him Brooklyn’s unprotected first-round pick next summer as part of the 2013 trade for Kevin Garnett and Paul Pierce. However, Hinkie – the man who puts
In the classic war movie Apocalypse Now, Marlon Brando plays a decorated American colonel who has abandoned the war in Vietnam to set up his own dystopian military conclave in Cambodia that features random missions, animal sacrifices and human beheadings. Martin Sheen plays an American captain sent on a classified mission to assassinate the colonel. When Sheen arrives at the camp, he is asked if he believes the colonel’s methods are unsound. And Sheen replies, “I don’t see any method at all,
One of these days, the Philadelphia 76ers will win a game. And once of these years, Sam Hinkie will find a better-that-decent player who is not 6-foot-10 or taller. And in the meantime, folks in Philadelphia will suffer. Our message to them comes in the form of an acronym — H-O-P-E. It stands for “hang on, pain ends.” Monday night’s loss to the Dallas Mavericks in another winnable game that got away moved the Sixers to 0-11 on the season and 0-21 since
Talk is cheap. Just ask the slumping Houston Rockets, whose locker room is starting to resemble a presidential candidates’ debate. “We’ve been talking,” slumping superstar James Harden said. “We’ve been doing too much talking.” “We’ve had a lot of heart-to-hearts,” coach Kevin McHale said. “As a matter of fact, we talk too much. Talking doesn’t win basketball games.” Last season, the Rockets surprised more than a few folks by crashing the Western Conference finals, a spot thought to be reserved for the San
Once again, to the dismay of GM Sam Hinkie and the rest of the folks running the Philadelphia 76ers,.the NBA will insist the franchise play all 82 games this season rather than just skip straight to the only part they seem to care about: the draft lottery. After all, no team has seemed to make less of what goes on between the lines from late October through mid-April than the team that has openly flaunted the rules, believing it is the
The silence following Jonas Valanciunas’ contract extension was deafening. When the Toronto Raptors gave a reported $64 million over four years to Valanciunas, there were no proclamations from pundits that the NBA’s financial sky was falling. Owners didn’t start forming plans of collusion. No one drew comparisons to Jim McIlvaine. On the other side, there have been no whispers that Raptors GM Masai Ujiri engineered another steal. Virtually no one has suggested that Valanciunas got fleeced. Agent Leon Rose – who days
Kristaps Porzingis has become the trendy name among NBA executives since dominating at his ASM Sports workout a week ago. “I think there is a strong chance he lands in the top four picks,” one Eastern Conference general manager told SheridanHoops. “The Lakers, Knicks and 76ers are all possible options. He has the length and athleticism of Andrei Kirilenko and stroke and footwork like Dirk Nowitzki. He will be the best prospect in this draft while also having the best upside.”
If Jahlil Okafor is available at No. 4, the New York Knicks will take him. If Okafor is gone, somebody is going to take the No. 4 pick from the Knicks. This is the intel I am hearing from points near and far as we count down the days to the 2015 NBA Draft. Phil Jackson has a bare cupboard when it comes to future draft picks, and he is inclined to trade down in exchange for multiple picks in this year’s