I like being proven right. So right now I’m liking Paul Pierce, who did his part last night to prove me right for ranking him the NBA’s 3rd-best go-to guy, ahead of crowd favorites LeBron and Carmelo. But lost in the beauty that was a vintage Truth performance was the fact that Pierce was only finishing what Rajon Rondo started. Read More »

This will not be your typical NBA recap, it is simply my random observations and thoughts on the game. These observations were made in real time watching the game, if you have random observations, comments or questions during any NBA game tweet it to @dimemag and I will choose the best to include in my random observations. Read More »

Last year we debuted the “Highs and Lows” system — previewing the NBA season by predicting the respective ceiling and basement for each team. Same theme, different season…

Added: Shaquille O’Neal, Jamario Moon, Anthony Parker, Leon Powe, Danny Green, Coby Karl

Lost: Joe Smith, Ben Wallace, Wally Szczerbiak, Sasha Pavlovic, Lorenzen Wright, Tarence Kinsey Read More »

The second game of the NBA preseason, Bulls vs. Pacers, kind of flew under the radar for a few reasons: Nobody cared as much because it wasn’t the debut for the League or the replacement refs, it was on a Friday night when people had better things to do, and the most notable “new face, new place” involved was Bulls’ first-round pick James Johnson — only the most generic (at least in name) first-round pick in this year’s rookie class. Johnson was terrible, by the way, going 1-for-6 from the field and fouling out in 20 minutes … Derrick Rose had 17 points and three assists in Chicago’s win, while John Salmons and Luol Deng (3-10 FG, 9-9 FT) scored 15 apiece. Read More »

NBA training camp is still a few weeks away, so Saturday was all about college football. Some basketball-related notes from the day’s action: Greg Paulus lost his first game as Syracuse’s starting QB, racking up 167 yards on 19-of-31 attempts with one touchdown against Minnesota, but he threw a crucial pick in overtime (’Cuse was also 1-for-12 in converting third downs); Javier Arenas (Gilbert’s cousin) had a handful of kick/punt returns in fifth-ranked Alabama’s win over No. 7 Virginia Tech, but didn’t break any for a long gain … With Ramon Sessions spoken for, the only two point guards anybody is looking out for in free agency are Allen Iverson and Ray Felton, and the former’s eventual destination likely has a big impact on the latter’s next move. Read More »

From the best (Shaq) to the worst (Russell Westbrook) on down to the weird (Stephon Marbury), NBA players who partake in Twitter are about to get put on blast. David Stern told Yahoo! Sports yesterday that he’s about to issue some restrictions on players using Twitter and other social media, similar to what the NFL has done. “You want to make sure that pop culture doesn’t intrude on what brought us here, which is the game, and that we show the right respect for the game,” Stern said. “We just need to make sure when it’s OK to Tweet and when it’s not OK to Tweet so it at least focuses around the game. It would look unusual for a guy sitting on the bench to pick up his cell phone, and I think we can agree that he probably shouldn’t be writing e-mails. It’s not about Twitter; it’s about the line of communication. That’s what we’re focusing on.” … Read More »

Like we’ve said before, the offseason is prime time for supreme optimism and high expectations. In Chicago, you’ve got a lot of people pegging the Bulls as a Top-5 team in the East. And from Derrick Rose specifically, he’s gunning for the likes of Chris Paul, Tony Parker and Chauncey Billups sooner than you might have expected — not to mention eyeing the crowns atop Kobe and LeBron’s respective heads. Asked in a Chicago Sun-Times interview about his Year 2 goals, Rose said, “To be the best player in the League at my position, and hopefully be the best player in the NBA. There’s no point of playing basketball if you don’t want to be the best — or doing anything if you don’t want to be the best.” Read More »

Rick Pitino is buggin’. Still firmly in the eye of the storm surrounding his sex/extortion scandal (with all sorts of salacious terms like “FBI” and “adultery” and “psychological evaluation” and “blackmail” being thrown around daily), Pitino called a press conference at Louisville yesterday to wag his finger at the media Rafael Palmeiro-style for covering this story. “[What] I don’t understand is why you keep fostering this behavior. On a day where Ted Kennedy died, the news here in Louisville broke in with Karen Syper’s (the woman in question) audio and the tapes and detectives. That’s a pretty sad commentary on us.” Read More »

Here we were, glad to see Isiah Thomas handling everything perfectly so far in his tenure at Florida International — even going above and beyond in recruiting — and then the reminder comes along that scandal (even if it’s silly) just seems to follow Isiah around like that jheri curl aroma followed A.C. Green for so many years … Here’s the story: FIU was scheduled to play in the early-season Coaches vs. Cancer tournament, and initially believed their first opponent would be Ohio State. But then they found out the tourney schedule had been changed, and OSU was replaced with North Carolina. Now FIU is pissed, and threatening to pull out of the tourney. Read More »

We’ll start with the Twitter-sponsored portion of Smack: Over the weekend Michael Beasley closed his Twitter account after he took some heat (no pun intended) for posting a pic that may or may not have been bags of weed. Nothing too major, but this is the exact kind of thing that kept Beasley from being a surefire #1 overall pick a year ago. No disrespect to Derrick Rose, but you take a lefty power forward with Beasley’s game and Tim Duncan or Blake Griffin’s personality, and the only thing he needs to worry about is getting a suit to match the team colors of whoever has the top pick. Instead, this is almost like watching the early part of Lamar Odom’s career replay itself … Ron Artest used Twitter as his bulletin board to spice up the next Lakers/Rockets game. Read More »