The NBA preseason is underway, meaning it’s time again for Dime’s team-by-team season previews. Last year we debuted the “Highs and Lows” system — predicting the respective ceilings and basements for each team. In other words, what is the realistic best-case and worst-case scenario for the 2009-10 campaign?

Added: Jamal Crawford, Joe Smith, Jeff Teague, Juan Dixon, Courtney Sims Read More »

Nobody on this magazine/website’s staff is dumb. We’ve been at this game for years now, and believe we have a pretty good read on the pulse of both the industry and the fans. So we knew that by populating the site with several posts yesterday that were directly or indirectly about LeBron James, there would be some heavy backlash from some readers. But the level of some of the hating was crazy … Over the weekend, Dime’s Aron Phillips went to a Nike media summit/sneaker launch in Akron, Ohio, dedicated to LeBron, so naturally he returned Monday with tons of photos and stories. And naturally, not everybody was a fan. But before you accuse Dime of turning into a vehicle for LeBron, consider this: Read More »

With the biggest of the big-name free agents quickly finding homes, the next phase is all about reactionary replacements. Example: The Blazers thought they had Hedo Turkoglu the other day, but now that he’s going to the Raptors, Portland has turned their sights on David Lee. They can offer Lee the same $50 million over five years they offered Hedo, but is Lee even worth that much? He’s only had one good year (16 ppg, 11.7 rpg) as a starter, and those numbers were put up in Mike D’Antoni‘s stats-on-crack system where he was the only rebounder on the Knicks. And do the Blazers really need to spend $10M a year on LaMarcus Aldridge‘s backup? … Read More »

Facing elimination, Dirk Nowitzki played like Video Game Dirk last night. And not just because his numbers were ridiculous (44 pts, 13 rebs), but because video games can’t account for things like heart and nerves and a conscience, there was no trace of the big-game/crunch-time meltdown Dirk critics had come to expect. He was closer to a machine in the fourth quarter, scoring 19 in the quarter including the go-ahead bucket on a pretty fadeaway over K-Mart. Read More »