We all know Blake Griffin is a rising star, but today it was announced the All-Star starter is one of 18 chosen for the 2012 BBVA Rising Stars Challenge during All-Star weekend in Orlando.

The Rising Stars Challenge is a switch on the former Rookie/Sophomore game, though it was still voted on by assistant coaches. Now, they’ll be mixed together with Charles Barkley and Shaq choosing and coaching the teams. Each squad gets nine guys.

Here are the players on the list: Read More »

There are few NBA players who enjoy this type of promotion more than Dwight Howard. Dude loves it. Here is DH debuting his new signature shoe, the adiPower Howard 2, that he’ll be wearing for the second half of the season. Read More »

It would appear that there’s really nothing that Kevin Durant can’t do. Over the last day or so, Durant’s full-fledged new rap song, “Worried Bout Tomorrow” started popping up in various places online.

The track features the rapper Privaledge, an artist we’ve seen associated with the Thunder in the past.

Check out the song after the jump and let us know what you think of it: Read More »

Tuesday morning, during an appearance I made on a West Coast sports radio station, I was asked by the host if I thought Kevin Love‘s “stomping” of Luis Scola on Saturday night was intentional. I had to pause for a second, because it never crossed my mind that it wasn’t intentional. Read More »

Last night’s Warriors/Thunder game was full of great highlights. Potentially lost in the flood of Monta Ellis craziness and Kevin Durant buckets was this Stephen Curry fake-pass-bullet to David Lee under the hoop: Read More »

Monta Ellis is without a doubt one of my favorite players to watch play ball. The guy is incredible. When rumors were surfacing last year that my Sixers were in talks to potentially deal Andre Iguodala for Ellis, despite the fact that I’m supporter of Iguodala, I was all about it. The idea of bringing in the best scorer in Philly since an Allen Iverson-in-his-prime to drastically change our sputtering offense had me fired up.

There are plenty of guys in the NBA who can score, but there are few players in the world who can do it like Ellis does. The guy is so fast, so explosive, so single-minded in his attack mode – he’s one of those guys who was put on this planet solely to get buckets. The show he put on against the Oklahoma City Thunder last night was just incredible. Read More »

The Clippers won the game last night against Orlando in overtime, but they may have suffered a devastating loss in the processs. Chauncey Billups left the game in the fourth quarter with a left Achilles injury and now it’s feared he may be lost for the season.

From the L.A. Times: Read More »

Showing up and getting 28 in Madison Square Garden in your first start for the Knicks doesn’t just happen. There’s a reason Jeremy Lin is in the position that he’s in, stealing headlines in New York City from the Giants the day after they won the Superbowl.

A lot of it is obviously a right-time right-place thing, but most of it is pure and simple hard work. Lin has worked his ass off to be the player we saw last night carving up the Utah Jazz‘s pick and roll defense. Read More »

Ahh, the pick and roll … the giver of the majority of NBA dunk highlights. Teams generally don’t defend it well, don’t rotate quickly, and the result is an offensive player rolling down the heart of the lane with nothing between him and the rim and the SportsCenter highlights in his head.

Example: Trevor Booker‘s cram last night on Aaron Gray and the Toronto Raptors: Read More »

When the NBA’s All-Star starters were announced last week, there was only one new face: Andrew Bynum as the West’s center, in his debut All-Star game. The other nine were the game’s biggest names, a list that included Bynum’s Laker teammate Kobe Bryant for a record-tying 14th consecutive year (The All-Star reserves will be revealed Thursday on TNT.).

Bynum may have bested Bryant when he entered the league as its youngest player ever, but he’ll have a hard time topping the Black Mamba’s bananas All-Star debut. Read More »