Think the Lakers have problems? Well, yeah, they do. But if you get all of your NBA news from the Worldwide Leader, you would think the Lakers are the only team that has problems. But this week, three teams with better records than the Lakers started showing some cracks in their foundations. Of course, they don’t have the same 12-car pile-up quality that the Lakers’ problems have, so their issues are overlooked. [Read more…]
Having coached high school basketball for the last two seasons, I have gained a true appreciation for the quality of officiating by NBA referees. Until this week. This was a bad week for the league and its referees, as the NBA admitted there were blown calls that changed the outcome of two games. [Read more…]
Pistons No. 1 draft pick Andre Drummond There is a developing groundswell of support for Andre Drummond as an alternative to Damian Lillard for Rookie of the Year. This is a borderline insane notion, of course. Drummond is a big man who doesn’t even start for the awful Detroit Pistons, who harbor only faint playoff hopes despite playing in the Eastern Conference. Lillard is a point guard, the toughest position in the NBA, and is playing it so
A dozen teams have played at least half their schedule and another seven will join them today, when the most of the most significant holidays in this country’s history becomes the season’s unofficial midway point. So Dr. Martin Luther King Day is as good a time as any to examine the current front-runners for the annual awards. Included are links to both our staff’s preseason picks and the current rankings. And as always, we’ve included snide remarks if/when necessary. [Read more…]
Toward the end of the film “Se7en,” two detectives are driving a serial killer to a supposed location of one of the killer’s victims. The serial killer, played by Kevin Spacey, tries to convince the detectives of the lasting importance of his acts. One of the detectives, played by Brad Pitt, dismisses the serial killer’s claims by saying, “You’re a T-shirt. You’re a Movie of the Week.” That pretty much sums up Jeremy Lin. [Read more…]
David Stern is disingenuous. How’s that for one of those million-dollar words that the NBA commissioner loves to use when talking to the hoi polloi about basketball? In slapping the San Antonio Spurs with a $250,000 fine for resting their trio of stars in a nationally televised game, Stern said in his customary, quite lawyerly fashion, “The result here is dictated by the totality of the facts in this case.” [Read more…]
Mark Titus and I have three things in common. One, we both write about basketball much better than we play it. Two, we both rely on sarcasm as the basis for our attempts at humor. Three, we both are fascinatingly enthralled by “trillions.” Titus is the author of Don’t Put Me in, Coach, a wonderful inside look at big-time college basketball through the cockeyed view of a benchwarmer. On the inside flap is a review from former Boston Globe columnist Leigh Montville that begins, “If
Andray Blatche is a knucklehead, and the Wizards better get rid of him if they want to keep John Wall. It is becoming next to impossible to prevent NBA superstars from flying the coop. They want to play in more attractive big markets. They want to play alongside other superstars. They want to win championships. And of course, they want to get paid. What they don’t want is to be stuck with a lottery-bound team. They don’t want to share a locker