Four teams walked into Baruch College’s ARC Arena last night, but by the evening’s end, only two were left standing. After a pair of back-and-forth semifinal contests, the Nike Pro City championship matchup is now set: tomorrow evening, Sundiata Gaines and The Franchise will look to defend its title against Dyckman/NYAC. Read More »

NBA players may be locked out, and college basketball may not tip-off for another three months, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t hoops to watch.

After a regular season that featured overtime contests, a surprise appearance from Kevin Durant, and a 60-point performance from John Lucas III, Nike Pro City is just heating up as the playoffs begin tonight at Manhattan’s Baruch College. Read More »

Few things can match the power of a Darryl Dawkins dunk — that is, except for Dawkins’s personality. Known during his playing days for his backboard-shattering slams, Chocolate Thunder could most recently be found charming basketball fans across the country as an ambassador for NBA Nation on its eight-city summer tour which ended in Washington D.C. this June.

In addition to meeting with fans, Dawkins’ responsibilities on the tour included serving as a judge for the 2011 Sprite Slam Dunk Showdown, an amateur dunk contest. Chocolate Thunder’s credentials more than qualify him for the job. Dawkins earned the title of the NBA’s original power dunker during the 1979-80 season when he broke two backboards in less than a month. Read More »

When I read on ESPN last Friday that the Carrier Classic between North Carolina and Michigan State was set to be played on the USS Carl Vinson on Nov. 11, what I thought was a brilliant article idea popped into my head: I would list the strangest places that NCAA and NBA games had been played. But after some research (read: Google searches), the only cool stuff I found was a Suns-Bucks game played in a baseball stadium in San Juan, Puerto Rico in 1972, and a WNBA exhibition played at the Radio City Music Hall. Not too exciting. Read More »

If you’ve visited DimeMag.com before, you’re surely familiar with the Drew and Goodman Leagues. You know, the leagues that have brought us a 51-point performance from Brandon Jennings, a near triple-double from LeBron James, and an off the backboard slam from Kevin Durant. But D.C. and L.A. aren’t the only cities where basketball is being played this summer. Read More »

Meet the next big name in women’s hoops: Diamond DeShields. A 6-1 forward out of Georgia’s Norcross High School, DeShields is coming off a monster season in which she posted 19.1 points and 7.1 rebounds per game to lead Norcross to its second consecutive state title. The 2011 Gatorade Georgia Girls Basketball Player of the Year, DeShields is currently in Chile suiting up for the Team USA at the 2011 FIBA U19 World Championship.

Oh, and by the way, she’s only 16 years old. Read More »

The trendy thing to do these days if you’re an NBA player is to publicly announce that you are thinking about playing overseas. All the cool kids are doing it. Dwight Howard said he was thinking of jumping to Europe or China and Kobe Bryant was reportedly nearing a deal with Turkey’s Besiktas basketball club – the same team that recently signed Deron Williams. And why not? Playing overseas seems like a pretty sweet gig: you get to hang in some awesome foreign country for a couple months while playing against solid competition.

But that’s only if you pick the right league. Pick wrong and you could end up freezing your ass off on a bus in Siberia traveling from one empty gymnasium to another. That’s why we’re here to break down the five best leagues for NBA players looking to get some burn outside the U.S. Read More »

You may know Cappie Pondexter as the sweet-shooting New York Liberty guard – the one who has posted an 18.4 scoring average through the first third of the 2011 WNBA season. But that’s just her summer job. In the winter, you can find Pondexter in Russia hooping in the EuroLeague for UMMC Ekaterinburg. Or you can find her working for 4 Season Style Management, the image consulting company she co-founded. Read More »

What’s not to like about award shows? There are red-carpet mishaps, awkward jokes, and plenty of opportunities to gamble. Award shows are always entertaining, but they are even better when they are about sports. Unfortunately, now that the ESPYs have passed, we have to wait another 350+ days for the next sports-exclusive award show. But we at Dime are impatient. Read More »

For my first experience hooping on the streets of New York City, I knew I had to come in style. So when the rest of the Dime crew and I headed to Tribeca’s Nelson A. Rockefeller Park, I decided it was time to bust out some fresh kicks. Read More »