During my junior year of high school, I had a one-on-one sit down with my varsity coach who told me he didn’t think I was ready to play Division I college basketball. He claimed I’d have a much better collegiate career at a Division II or Division III school – especially if I was trying to obtain an athletic scholarship. Who tells their best player that? To be honest though, I’ve always admired the fact that he “kept it real” with me. But for as “real” as he kept it, I recall throwing in the towel. Read More »
All brackets are subject to infinite randomness, but not all strategies are created equal. College hoops’ weak shooters and trap defenses make for wild games, throwing all involved into a storm of coaching whims and player incompetence. There are untold permutations a bracket can take – slightly less for Duke fans – but is there a right way to do things? What follows is a list of better (and worse-than-average) strategies for college basketball experts. Some work, some don’t, though which exactly those are is up for debate. Read More »
I was headed to New Jersey. I’m never happy when headed to New Jersey. But this was different.
This wasn’t because I had squeezed my way into a job interview with a small telecommunications company, or because I had got caught doing 90 on the New Jersey Turnpike. Too cheap to buy tickets to see his appearance at the Garden, I was making a mission trip to Jersey (The Promised Land, in this case) to find Blake Griffin salvation. It would be the first and only time I’d get to catch his live show this year. Nets-Clippers in Newark: quite possibly the least sought-after NBA ticket at the beginning of the season, by game time, had completely sold out. It was going to be a spiritual experience. Read More »
If you know anything about high school basketball, you know that name Austin Rivers. And yesterday afternoon, the Winter Park (Fla.) High School shooting guard added to his legacy, winning the 2011 Morgan Wootten Player of the Year Award in Chicago.
“I’m very surprised to receive this award and it means a lot to me,” said Rivers, the top-ranked player in the High School Hoop National Top 50. “I’ve seen a lot of great players win this award so it’s a great feeling.” Read More »
We were hyped for the John Wall/Brandon Jennings head-to-head matchup of two of the league’s best young point guards last week, but the epic battle we hoped for never really materialized. Last night we were fired up for Derrick Rose to face off with Wall, but the results were about the same as last week. Both of those guys did their thing, but the Wizards are so bad, that it never really felt like the heated battle we were hoping for as Chicago rolled 98-79 … Rose is always impressive (23 points, seven assists). He’s so fast it’s impossible to keep him from going wherever he wants to on the floor – which is usually in the paint. With a defense as poor as the Wizards’, his effectiveness is magnified. He does his thing and the defense is left so out of position trying to help on him, guys like Kurt Thomas are left wide open to drill wide-open 10-footers at will … Read More »
If one thing is certain about this week, it’s that there is no shortage of March Madness challenges and groups. That’s why when something kind of crazy happens, it jumps out at you. Tournageddon is that crazy. And this isn’t your momma’s old bracket; this is Kenny F’n Powers’ bracket challenge. Read More »
At the age of 12 years old, I saw UNLV absolutely dismantle the Duke Blue Devils in the 1990 national championship game. It was a blowout I would never forget, as was the upset Duke pulled on UNLV the following March in the 1991 national semifinal. Runnin’ Rebels Of UNLV, which debuted this past Saturday evening on HBO, reminds us how Coach Jerry Tarkanian and a university and town never known for basketball, became both a national power and target of the NCAA between the early 1970s until 1992. Read More »
Go ahead. Make your jokes. Tell him he sucks. Laugh about T-Mac straddling him like a cowboy after dunking in his grill. Laugh about Space Jam. Say it was the highlight of his career. Forget about the 2,119 blocks. Forget that he always put himself in the way, even if it meant 20 or 30 posters. Death Stick don’t care.
Somewhere in Utah, there’s a man riding a custom chopper through the bucolic streets, completely at peace with the game of basketball. He doesn’t need your pity, and I’ll tell you why. Read More »
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