After months of waiting and a summer full of roster change and player movement, the dawn of the 2014-15 NBA regular season is now upon us. Play begins with three games Tuesday night. The New Orleans Pelicans host the Orlando Magic at 8 p.m. (EST). The game will air the local Fox Sports affiliates — FSNOLA and FS Florida, otherwise, you can find it on NBA League Pass. Meanwhile, the NBA on TNT crew will host a doubleheader, starting with the
Game 1 of TNT‘s season-opening doubleheader on Tuesday is headlined by the businesslike Spurs receiving and celebrating their championship rings in front of Mark Cuban and in-state rival Dallas. Game 2, on the other hand? That one, appropriately for the network, is all about the drama. [Read more…]
The New York Times brought the front page news recently that more people watched The Walking Dead and NCIS; New Orleans last week than Game 1 of the World Series. Which leads me to Prediction No. 1 for the 2014-15 NBA season: Commissioner Adam Silver is going to take on the national pastime, move up the start of the season by a week and see what happens. Which leads us to prediction No. 2: When Silver does this, his league will outdraw the
All the San Antonio Spurs could talk about last season was avenging their 2013 NBA Finals loss to the Miami Heat, especially the heartbreaking loss in Game 6. The Spurs made sure it didn’t get to a Game 6 in 2014 as they dominated the Heat in five games to win their fifth championship. Tim Duncan, who many assumed would retire after his fifth title, now enters the 2014-15 season looking for a ring for his other hand now. The Spurs brought
The return of LeBron James to the Cleveland Cavaliers has been lauded enough in terms of the impact that it means for the franchise for the upcoming NBA season. What has been lost in this is exactly how much this means for the Northeast Ohio community, specifically that in his hometown of Akron, OH. [Read more…]
Four months have passed since the masterpiece was finished with a throwback flourish that had purists spouting superlatives and invoking sacred basketball institutions like the Red Holzman Knicks, the Jack Ramsay Blazers . . . Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, James Naismith. The Spurs joined the pantheon of great teams when they mutilated the Heat dynasty in the 2014 NBA Finals, playing a brand of team basketball that Naismith would have found ideal, even if it was unimaginable when he invented the
The NBA has done a lot to make basketball a popular sport around the world. New Commissioner Adam Silver has followed the same plan as his predecessor David Stern. Although the global games first began in 1978 and into 1979, there was a five year gap until Stern entered as the Commissioner. NBA teams were matched against teams from inside and outside the league almost every year throughout his tenure, and there’s been at least one global game played since
Wednesday afternoon, or evening depending on which northern hemisphere you were in, saw the defending NBA Champion San Antonio Spurs in their first preseason exhibition. Their opponent, Alba Berlin (otherwise known as the Berlin Albatrosse). It was, for many, expected to be a blowout in the champs favor, much in the same way that the Cleveland Cavaliers so easily dispatched Maccabi Tel Aviv. Unfortunately, fortune favors the bold. Alba Berlin, though seemingly outmatched in talent, kept the game within striking distance the