Many basketball fans grow up dreaming of one day owning an NBA team. They see themselves sitting in a luxury box or courtside for every game. They dream of building their own championship team and hoisting the Larry O’Brien Trophy. Mark Cuban is their idol. These few sentences aptly describe me, and I’m sure millions of others, but one man they don’t describe is Michael Alter. Read More »

In March, I wrote a story about the astonishing decline of former Tennessee head coach Bruce Pearl. I talked about how in one year’s time, Pearl had taken Tennessee the furthest they had ever gone, reaching the Elite Eight in 2010, to being mired in scandal. Pearl was eventually fired, along with his three assistant coaches. Pearl was the face of Tennessee Basketball for the six years he coached in Knoxville, and with his charisma and outgoing personality making him a hit in the college basketball community, most thought it wouldn’t be long before he was coaching in a position of prominence yet again. And that appears to be happening, with the D-League’s Texas Legends pursuing him hard to be their next head coach. Read More »

Last July, Amar’e Stoudemire made waves when he took a trip to Israel to research his Jewish roots. The trip was embraced by Jews everywhere, including myself, as it is not everyday that a 6-9 athletically gifted NBA All-Star declares himself to be a member of the tribe (a colloquial expression used by Jewish people to refer to other Jewish people). So when I saw former University of Florida power forward Alex Tyus tweet before the NBA Draft that he was hosting his Draft party at the UF Hillel, I thought to myself, “Is another 6-9 athletic power forward joining the tribe?” The answer to that question is yes. Read More »

In the month leading up to the NBA Draft, Dime had former Northern Illinois guard Xavier Silas video blog for the site. Before each of his workouts, Silas showed us the how to “look good, feel good, and play good”. I caught up with Silas this week to talk about going undrafted, getting an invite to the Philadelphia 76ers training camp, and Twitter. Read More »

Last week I was on Twitter when a good friend of mine, Vanderbilt shooting guard John Jenkins, changed his Twitter icon. I asked him where he his new picture came from, and he told me that Brendan Lunn (twitter.com/NBAguy11) had made it for him, and that he made wallpapers for a bunch of college and NBA players. I looked up his stuff on Twitter and was very impressed. After I followed Brendan, he reached out to me saying he was a big fan of Dime Magazine, and then proceeded to ask if some of his work could be featured in Dime. I responded that I would ask my editor. Read More »

Every year in March the NCAA Tournament rules the basketball world. And each year during March Madness there are Cinderella stories about teams that make magical runs well beyond what anyone would have expected of them. On each of these teams there is a folk hero, one player who defines the team’s magical run. In 2011 that folk hero was Butler’s Matt Howard. With his shaggy hair and long socks, Howard dominated the boards against any opponent who dared come his way and helped lead eighth-seeded Butler to their second consecutive national championship game. In 2008 there was Stephen Curry and his silky-smooth jumper leading Davidson to the Elite Eight. Last year, one that stood out to me was Montana’s Anthony Johnson. Read More »

Football is more than just a sport at the University of Georgia; it is like a cult that seduces the entire campus into a frenzy every Saturday each fall. Students and alumni alike, 92,000 of them in all, head to Sanford Stadium each Saturday to watch their beloved Bulldogs play “between the hedges.” The team has produced two national titles, 12 SEC titles, and 731 wins in its history. Recently the team has enjoyed enormous success under Coach Mark Richt (outside of this past season when the team finished with only six wins) and has recently been home to some of college football’s biggest stars including quarterback Matthew Stafford (Detroit Lions), running back Knowshon Moreno (Denver Broncos), and wide receiver A.J. Green (Cincinnati Bengals). With the success and popularity of football at Georgia so dominating on campus, the basketball program has struggled to make a dent in Athens. Read More »

Most of the time college and NBA analysts disagree, but there is one thing that most can garner a consensus about: the fact that rebounding is usually the skill that translates best from college to the pros. With that being true, former Maryland forward Jordan Williams is in great shape. Williams established himself as one of nation’s best rebounders as a freshman in 2009-10 as the second-leading rebounder in the ACC. This past year he averaged over 11 rebounds per game, good enough for third in the nation, to go along with 16 points for the Terrapins. I caught up with Williams at the Nets’ workouts last week to talk about rebounding, Greivis Vasquez and McDonald’s. Read More »

Last season there was a lot of hope in New Jersey about the Nets. The team had acquired a bonafide superstar in Deron Williams, Brook Lopez continued to make his way into the conversation as one of the best centers in the NBA, and Kris Humphries emerged as a double-double threat from the power forward position. However, there was one glaring weakness on the Nets’ roster this past season, and that was at small forward. Read More »

Two weeks ago, we did a profile on Northern Illinois’ Xavier Silas that included a video of how he gets ready for NBA Draft workouts. Xavier agreed to give us insight into his style choices for the remainder of the draft process, and combined his last two outfits into one video. Today’s destinations are Chicago and Oakland.

Read More »