Say what you will about the Heat’s rebounding problems against bigger teams such as Indiana this season, but the Heat’s turnovers are reliably the larger indicator for its wins or losses. That’s why its 102-89 loss to Indiana was a little worrisome even if LeBron (28 points) and Dwyane Wade (17 points) sounded afterward as if they’d just lost a charity game, insisting it’s no big deal at all. Read More »

While things are getting dicey in Los Angeles because the Lakers will rely on D-League call-ups and 10-day contracts to get them through the next few weeks, it’s the opposite in Utah. It has been all season. Before the year began, I noted that Utah’s imposing frontline was a double-edged sword: too much talent, too many bodies, not enough playing time. Read More »

It’s not that Blake Griffin is having a bad season. It’s just that he hasn’t been THAT Blake Griffin, the guy who breaks souls, backboards, YouTube view counts and the player who single-handedly helped make SportsCenter worthwhile for the past two seasons. For two straight years, he was consistent, would get the Clippers around 21 and 11 every night, and never went more than a few days in-between turning a defender into mashed potatoes. This year, L.A. has so much talent that sometimes he drifts in games (and think about this: has he had even one great dunk this year? Weird right?). Read More »

In one of those dreaded Saturday afternoon Atlantic Division games (seriously, who came up with these?), Boston turned a close game against Toronto into a rout during the second half of a 107-89 beatdown. Jason Terry, still starting in the Bean, went off for 20 points, and Rajon Rondo had a dozen assists just a few minutes into the second half. He’d end up with 20 in just 32 minutes, his streak of consecutive regular season games with double-digit assists now at 33. Is anyone in the league dominating a single statistical category like Rondo is assists? Read More »

It’s not every day you see the defending champs get completely outclassed. But it happened in the Staples Center last night as the Clippers rolled over the Heat, 107-100. The game was never that close – a late Miami run turned what was nearly a 20-point game into a more respectable score. But it was obvious, especially in the second half, that Miami has real problems with L.A.’s size and athleticism. Blake Griffin went for 20 and 14, Chris Paul (16 points, 10 dimes) dominated a third quarter stretch that put the game away by scoring the last 13 Clipper points of the quarter, garnering “CP3!” chants from the crowd, and Jamal Crawford led the team with 22 points while adding four or five ankle tendons to his collection of victims at home … Read More »

This dunk that Jeff Green put on Al Jefferson tonight in Boston lit up Twitter. Read More »

Al Jefferson is hardly the second coming of Reggie Miller, but he flexed his clutch shooting muscles last night against the Toronto Raptors. With 2.2 seconds remaining in regulation, Jefferson rattled home a miraculous three-pointer to tie the game, 104-104. It was only the second triple (26 career attempts) of Big Al’s career. Read More »

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Slightly less complicated than ranking the best centers in the NBA is determining who should and who shouldn’t be called a center.

In this faster, more fluid and more versatile NBA, where more coaches are using three-guard lineups and embracing “small ball,” players once pegged as power forwards are not only playing center, but they’re also admitting it. Yao Ming is out, Chris Bosh is in, and suddenly the stigma of the center as a lumbering behemoth quarantined to the low post is gone. Read More »

In the last week or so, Enes Kanter has pretty much become my favorite NBA player. The rundown of what this guy used to eat for breakfast alone basically made him a superhero, but I just came across this video from the last regular season game for the Utah Jazz last season. How did I miss this?? Read More »