In basketball and every other major pro team sport, we always seem to be in the middle of a period where one position is enjoying a “Golden Era.” Right now, a lot of people would say this is a Golden Era for point guards in the NBA. And if you haven’t seen Dime’s NBA preview issue yet, there I wrote that we’re seeing the beginning of a Golden Era for small forwards.
At the beginning of this decade, though, we were in the age of the power forward. Read More »
An NBA championship can do a lot of different things for a lot of different people.
If you’re a Hall of Fame-bound veteran who’s carried mediocre teams for years, e.g. Kevin Garnett in ‘08, a ring can be the final piece of validation to cap a stellar career. If you’re an up-and-coming superstar like D-Wade in ‘06, it’s a standard-bearer by which to set future goals and a quick booster into the next level of fame. Read More »
During the ‘09 conference finals, Shaq showed up at one of Orlando’s home games against the Cavs, to the chagrin of a lot of people associated with the Magic. Last night Shaq was back in the building; this time wearing a Cavs uniform. Throw in the tension leftover from when Diesel was talking greasy about Dwight Howard and Stan Van Gundy last year, and you know the fans had a lot of venom toward Big Witness Protection. He played into it, too, doing stuff like leaving his hand in the air extra-long after a free throw. And the crowd was even more pissed when Cleveland walked out with a win … Read More »
Without Stephen Jackson or Ron Artest, with Shaq biting his tongue about Dwight Howard and the Washington Wizards officially swagless, the NBA had little trash talk last night. Hopefully with 16 games on the schedule tonight, including an Orlando/Cleveland showdown, there will be plenty of talk for tomorrow’s Reebok Still Talkin’ Quote of the Day. For today we go international and turn to the Israeli media and prep to Europe player Jeremy Tyler. We all know that Jeremy Tyler took the Brandon Jennings route (albeit for different reasons) to Europe and opted to forgo his senior year of high school to go pro. Thus far his European adventure has been less than impressive and according to Ze’ev Avrahmi (courtesy of Sports Illustrated’s Seth Davis) the team is growing sick of Tyler. Read More »
In honor of our country’s wonderful military veterans on this Veterans Day, today we’ll take a look at some NBA veterans, in no particular order, who have managed to remain relevant to fantasy basketball after all these years. For the purposes of this post, “veterans” will be defined as those players who have played at least 12 seasons entering this one. Read More »
Chosen 26th in the 2003 NBA Draft out of Westbury Christian in Houston, the slim and lanky Ebi was projected by many as next Kevin Garnett. Minnesota selected Ebi with its only first-round draft pick during a three-year span due to contract violations with Joe Smith and the League’s salary cap limit. Read More »
The worst part about preseason polls is that voters adopt a loyalty to those pre-determined spots even after the season shows us some of those picks were just wrong. College football gets it the worst, but the same often applies for the NBA; the only saving grace is that, at the end of the day, voter opinion doesn’t matter because the NBA has a playoff.
That said, we ignored making a preseason NBA Hit List power ranking, so as not to influence this first week’s edition. Counting down from worst to first… Read More »
Whether Chris Paul and Rajon Rondo like it or not, the two are going to be going at it for at least the next 10 years. Eastern Conference or Western Conference, it doesn’t matter. They could face each other in the preseason the postseason or a pickup game and the two might still feel the same thing: disdain. Read More »
Even with Vince Carter’s ankle keeping him sidelined for his latest return to Toronto (where he could get booed in an Orlando uniform this time), there were more than enough ready-made story lines going into Magic/Raptors: Hedo Turkoglu’s first game against his old squad, the next chapter in the Dwight Howard vs. Chris Bosh rivalry (quietly and consistently more exciting than Deron Williams vs. Chris Paul), and the intrigue of seeing which players would be visibly sleep-walking for a 1 p.m. EST tip-off the day after Halloween. So you can understand why nobody was ready for J.J. Redick to become the headliner. Read More »
