With just 10 days left in the NBA regular season, there’s still a lot to be determined and decided. Records can be broken, playoff fates will be sealed and the season will be mercifully be over for several hopeless teams around the league. With the regular season reaching its last days, we give you the 10 most important questions that needs to be answered before the postseason begins. It’s going to be YUGE. [Read more…]
Discussing the state of the modern NBA big man in a USA Today story on Monday night, Houston Rockets center Dwight Howard said, “It’s really like we’re dinosaurs, and they’re trying to extinct us.” Like any creature, company or concept claiming to face extinction, big men around the league should follow the wise words of Charles Darwin: adapt or die. And adapting is exactly what Charlotte center Al Jefferson did, which is one of the many reasons why the Hornets are the Eastern Conference’s hottest
For the first time in roughly two decades, the Eastern Conference is better than the Western Conference from top to bottom. Nine East teams are at .500 or better – nearly twice as many teams as last season, when sixth-seeded Milwaukee finished 41-41. And the East actually has a winning record against the West this season at 100-98 What changed so quickly from last season, when articles were written about how there was the greatest disparity in conference strength in recent memory? “I
Two points in time define the last several months for the Los Angeles Clippers. The first came in May, when the Clippers blew a 3-1 series lead in the Western Conference semifinals before falling to Houston. With DeAndre Jordan becoming an unrestricted free agent and Chris Paul pushing 30, there were worries that the proverbial window of opportunity for this team was beginning to close. That nearly proved to be the case over the July 4th weekend, when Jordan verbally agreed to
For the Charlotte Hornets, it has been a summer filled with excitement after yet another disappointing season of missing the playoffs. After the Hornets held some hope for the future by making the playoffs in the 2013-2014 season, last year was plagued by injuries to Kemba Walker and Al Jefferson and the team finished 33-49, 10 fewer wins than the previous season. A year ago, there was plenty of excitement and hope surrounding the signing of Lance Stephenson, but that plan didn’t work
Let’s get something out of the way here. Russell Westbrook is awesome. Westbrook is one of the game’s top five players, and I’ve felt that way for a couple of years. He may not be a better conventional point guard than Chris Paul or Tony Parker or Stephen Curry. But if any of those guys even dream about being a better player than Westbrook, they better wake up and get back to reality. I also love watching Westbrook play. I cannot recall
The team formerly known as the Charlotte Bobcats was supposed to be a heck of a lot better than they are. The Hornets begin this week with a nine-game losing streak, and compounding the misery is the fact that coach Steve Clifford has benched prized offseason acquisition Lance Stephenson in the fourth quarters of several games, including two last week. Under the “we’ve seen this movie before” theory, when a star play is at odds with a losing coach, there is
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