There is an NBA team that started this season with a roster that included an MVP winner from this decade; a recent Defensive Player of the Year; the runner-up in the most recent Rookie of the Year voting; and two All-Stars, including one deemed the league’s Most Improved Player. The roster also included some highly promising youngsters and a handful of savvy, playoff-tested veterans. The team seemed to be a lock for the postseason, having made the playoffs every year but
The New York Knicks have run the Love Triangle offense off the court better than Phil Jackson’s version on the court thanks to coaches Derek Fisher and Kurt Rambis. Will this be the final straw for Carmelo Anthony to waive his no-trade clause and for the Knicks to scrap the Triangle offense for a proven winner in former Chicago Bulls coach Tom Thibodeau, the best available coach on the market? Speaking of the Bulls, Derrick Rose is averaging 26 points, 5.7 rebounds
TORONTO– Carmelo Anthony is sick and tired of losing with the Knicks, but not yet tired enough to do something about it. Or so he says. New York stands at 23-32 at the All-Star break, 12th in the Eastern Conference. Unless the Knicks’ fortunes change rather dramatically over the final 27 games of the regular season, Anthony will miss the playoffs for the third consecutive season. “It’s tough,” Anthony told a horde of reporters in the basement of the Sheraton in downtown
We have two pieces of news to pick apart today: The announcement that USA Basketball has released a list of 30 finalists for the 2016 Olympic team, and the “non-commitment” from LeBron James regarding whether he will be part of the party. And yes, it will be a party. The games are in Brazil, after all. And LeBron, whose non-commitment is disingenuous at best, does not miss a good party. So let me tell you a little story about the Brazilians. [Read more…]
If you are like many Americans – middle-class, middle-aged males not unlike myself – and watched your first NBA games this season on Christmas, then you probably think the Chicago Bulls are just fine. If you have watched at any other time this season, then you know otherwise. On Christmas, the Bulls played perhaps their best game of the season. They went into Loud City without injured emotional leader Joakim Noah and never trailed against the Thunder, leaving with a convincing 105-96
The Los Angeles Clippers’ tumultuous season – at least by their standards – continued on Thursday when they lost to the Chicago Bulls on the road 83-80. It didn’t help that the team lost Blake Griffin due to a flagrant foul 2 while guarding Taj Gibson in the third quarter, but the Clippers had major droughts at various points of the game, managing to score just 11 points in the second quarter and 19 points in the third quarter. The worst part about
One of the new secrets revealed over the first two days of the regular season was that Derrick Rose is experiencing double vision. Leave it to the Bulls to be the first team to keep things rather interesting. One of the NBA’s worst-kept secrets in 2015 was Chicago management’s dissatisfaction with head coach Tom Thibodeau. Thibs was dispatched from the position in late-May, two weeks after losing to Cleveland in the Eastern Conference semifinals. His replacement, as expected, was former NBA guard
It’s been quite the summer for the Chicago Bulls as they head into the 2015-2016 season. It began with another disappointing postseason exit when they were dispatched by their nemesis LeBron James and the eventual Eastern Conference champion Cleveland Cavaliers in May. From there, a whirlwind offseason began. After falling to James in the playoffs for the third time under Tom Thibodeau and failing to make it past the seccond round for the fourth consecutive year – compounded with other issues –