The Clippers really don’t want to see the Warriors in the playoffs. We’d like it, but they certainly wouldn’t, not after Golden State beat them for the third time this season, 106-99. “There are shooters and then there are just the indescribable.” You could’ve hooked that phrase to Stephen Curry‘s after-shot prancing last night, but it worked with his shooting, too. Read More »

The NBA is synonymous with style. Whether it’s the prime kicks the players are rocking or the clothes they’re wearing before games, after games or on red carpets, basketball and fashion have teamed up more and more as the game has achieved a larger prominence in American popular culture (bizarrely, this has all happened under the dictatorial watch of David Stern, but that irony is a post for another time). With all that being said, NBA players aren’t limited to just the clothes and accessories most people associate with style. They’ve also used their own bodies to showcase individuality that can be lost when everyone is wearing the same uniform on the court. Read More »

The Dark Knight Rises was one of the best movies of the year, and another sequel in the Batman line nearly broke out in MSG last night. Kyrie Irving did Christian Bale justice, carving up the Knicks for a career-high 41 points while donning a memorable black face mask to protect a broken bone in his jaw. Yet the Knicks survived by one when Anderson Varejao‘s potential game-tying freebie with one second left hit every part of the rim before bouncing out … Read More »

We joke around with the tag “Dunk Deathmatch” here every now and then but on these two dunks from Tuesday night, seriously, Jordan Hill and Marco Belinelli were lucky to escape without an injury. Hill missed out on being hit in the face from Anderson Varejao‘s nasty right-handed dunk in Cleveland, a dunk nasty enough to take away the play of the game title from Kyrie or Kobe’s feats. Read More »

At some point, the Lakers need to sit back and reassess everything. Waiting on Pau Gasol and Steve Nash isn’t going to cut it. Blaming the coach won’t work either, not after you just sent the last one to Chick-fil-A barely a month ago. The NBA version of Ocean’s Eleven is a mess right now, and last night, they were caught with their pants down against one of the worst teams in the Eastern Conference. During the first half of their eventual 100-94 win, Cleveland was hitting on all cylinders, going up by 15 and leaking out on the break at every opportunity. Read More »

BUY LOW Dwyane Wade After almost a decade of brilliance, it looks like Wade’s game is slowly starting to decline. Right now, he’s averaging just 19.4 points (his lowest since his rookie season), 3.9 rebounds and 4.5 assists. Most of his past fantasy value had come from a guarantee for 100 steals and 100 blocks per season, but 17 games into Miami’s season, Flash has a measly 17 steals and nine blocks. Read More »

It’s always a beautiful thing when you encounter a sports fanatic. I mean the ones who bleed their team’s colors and obsess over their city’s self-proclaimed dominance. The reputation of the Ohio State Buckeyes is irrefutable considering their prominence on both the court and the football field. Nobody can question that. Read More »

The current iteration of the NBA places very little onus on a big man. Even the All-Star game is now bereft of the one player who used to be thought of as indispensable to a basketball team: the center. Such is the increasing push toward smaller, faster, more dynamic multipurpose players. But centers still exist, and they’re not all obsessed with Superman, lob dunks, and living in LA. Contemporary big men must account for the trend toward quicker line-ups, and that means possessing some finesse from a position that’s more about plodding than prompt. The centers today need to be able to defend the rim and make the slip-pass to a cutting wing player. They need to be just as skillful at a give and go as they are at crashing the glass. Read More »

In basketball, not everybody can be an elite player garnering accolades, fortune and fan adoration. No, some guys… actually most guys are role players largely going under the radar. Some are even more so cleverly defined as specialists. Read More »

David Stern dropped a $250,000 fine on San Antonio on Friday afternoon, then said he doesn’t want to talk about it any more. Good luck with that – the topic of what a coach can and can’t do with his team will be white-hot because of mistakes both the league and the Spurs made with Starter-Gate. It’s wrong to meddle with a coach’s team but Gregg Popovich had ways to achieve the same result (resting his four best players) without sending them home on Southwest Airlines without telling the NBA, too. Read More »