I always wait until the final game of the NBA season is in the books before handing in my postseason awards ballot, and the reason is twofold: If the deadline is not until Thursday afternoon, what’s the hurry? (This is how journalists work when it comes to deadlines. Most of us, anyway.) The second is because you always want to wait and see if something happens on the final night of the season to change either your ballot or your
It’s the final edition of the Sixth Man Award Rankings, and we know that fans out there are going to be devastated. I’ve only been writing about the Sixth Man award for six weeks, and like an NBA player coming off the bench, I feel like I’m just starting to find my rhythm, and coach is taking me out again. The season is just too short (said no one ever). In the last edition of the Sixth Man Rankings, we reached our
It’s that time again. We’ve come to the end of another unforgettable season of the Most Improved Player Rankings, and like John Kasich, I’ve already made a pact with myself that I’m not going to cry, no matter what happens. It’s been a great season in this column space. We’ve written classic poetry, made fun of Kobe Bryant, checked in with presidential candidates, wondered if Steph Curry is really just an elaborate Old Spice commercial, kicked LeBron while he’s down, and quietly made
Loud people may not understand this column. But as Rocky Balboa once pontificated, there is such a thing as “the disease of being shy.” It’s a tough thing, really. You can’t easily overcome shyness, and it doesn’t really go away over time. Shy people don’t always get everything they deserve, because non-shy people often mistake their shyness for docility or indifference. In our extrovert-dominant, squeaky-wheel-gets-the-grease society, being quiet can hurt you. You don’t see a ton of shy people winning Academy Awards, or running for President,
It’s March. And for those of us basketball junkies, that means it’s the most glorious time of the year. March is filled with sneaker-squeaking, channel-flicking, mini-hoop jamming madness. It’s a time when we fill out brackets until the blood from our paper cuts advances to the Sweet 16. We place an inordinate amount of self-worth into our clicker skills and hear buzzers sounding in our sleep. During media timeouts, we chase down the leftover pizza in the fridge down like LeBron
Dearly Beloved: As we gather together once more in this special column space, we can’t help but daydream about the beautiful matrimony between man and award. It’s wedding season (I don’t know if that’s true or not), so we thought it would be interesting to explore some of the similarities between “sixth men” and best men. It’s not just because they both have the word “man” in them. OK, maybe it is. But still, there are a lot of similarities. [Read more…]
There are a handful of NBA superstars to choose from in daily fantasy on an 11-game Wednesday. In real life, the matchup between Chris Paul $9800 and Russell Westbrook $11200 is compelling stuff. James Harden $10400 leads the Rockets into New Orleans, where Anthony Davis $10100 (toe) is expected to return after missing just one game. [Read more…]
Happy Leap Day! February 29 comes around only once every four years, so DraftKings is celebrating with a massive contest. The $400K Mini Leap Million features a $50,000 top prize, plus another $350,000 in guaranteed payouts to a total of 25,000 winners. Entry fee is $4 per team. [Read more…]