The Sixers are a top-five League Pass option right now. Until they win a game, they’re practically must-see, just for the historical importance of it all. And then even after they win, any time they’re close is worth flipping over to, because a loss to the Sixers will have more impact on a team’s playoff chances than a win over anybody. That said, it’s got to be a bad time to be a loyal Sixer fan right now, considering both the current
Leave it to Jeff Van Gundy to use the holiday season as another outlet for his vastly underrated sense of humor. During Wednesday’s ESPN telecast of New York-Dallas, the analyst said he was thankful that there were not two Eastern Conferences. But as Thanksgiving quickly morphed into the Christmas shopping season, perhaps Van Gundy could ask Santa Claus for another Western Conference. Because that would allow us to throw out the Eastern Conference with all the torn wrapping paper, ugly sweaters and
It wasn’t supposed to be like this for Kevin Love when news broke that he would be joining LeBron James and Kyrie Irving in Cleveland over the summer. Sure, he was supposed to sacrifice like everyone else. That’s expected when you build a super team like this because there is only one basketball to go around. Just ask Chris Bosh, who went from averaging 24 points in Toronto to never sniffing 20 points again (regularly in the 18-point range) when he
There were two pieces of bad news coming out of Loud City this weekend. And there was a disproportionate reaction to the wrong one. There was far too much hand-wringing to the news that Russell Westbrook will be joining fellow Oklahoma City Thunder superstar Kevin Durant on the sidelines after undergoing surgery on his broken right hand. The Thunder are going to survive November without Durant and Westbrook. They have 14 games between now and Dec. 1, the projected earliest return for
Championship contending windows in the NBA typically close a lot sooner than anyone thinks. Take the Indiana Pacers, for example. Entering last season, Indiana was considered an elite team perhaps still a year or two away from hitting its prime as a true title contender. The Pacers started out hot, became the early season championship favorites, bought into their own hype, made a couple of short-sighted trades and eventually fizzled. In the following months, Roy Hibbert went from All-Star center to meme extraordinaire,
The Detroit Pistons are in another rebuilding phase, with longtime president Joe Dumars out and Stan Van Gundy taking over both as chief executive and coach. He inherits a roster that remains largely intact, with the addition of some much needed 3-point shooting. Brandon Jennings, Josh Smith, Andre Drummond and Greg Monroe are all back. Jennings and Smith are either untradeable or Van Gundy isn’t interested in selling low, while Monroe took the somewhat unprecedented step of spurning long-term contract offers
Free agency has died down, the FIBA World Cup is in full swing and training camps open in less than a month, which makes it as good a time as any to look back at the NBA offseason and determine who were the biggest winners and losers. We didn’t limit ourselves to a round number. The list includes teams, coaches, players and even an executive. It is in alphabetical order and doesn’t have some secret analytic formula that determines the biggest
The NBA offseason continues to roll along, complete with Kevin Love trade talks seeming to have spiked to an all-time high. If you’re interested, our own Chris Sheridan spoke with Dan Bickley on KTAR 98.7 regarding the latest on a potential trade. The Detroit Pistons have had a rather busy offseason. Theirs began with the hiring of a new head coach and president of basketball operations, Stan Van Gundy. Lacking a first round draft pick, they drafted Colorado point guard Spencer Dinwiddie, whom