If you’re purely interested in the best interest of Allen Iverson, you’re glad the Grizzlies had one of their business-as-usual losses against the Clippers last night. Having gone 0-3 since A.I. joined the lineup earlier in the week, for Memphis to win after Iverson had left the team for undisclosed personal reasons — even if it was against the Clips — would have brought up all the same criticisms of Iverson you saw in Detroit and at various points throughout his runs in Philly and Denver. Mainly, that A.I.’s team is better without him, and that certain young stars (i.e. O.J. Mayo in this case) are better off when he’s not in the picture … Instead, the Grizzlies did what they typically do with or without Iverson, putting up a lot of points while giving up even more. Read More »

Beast of the Night: Carlos Boozer pummeled the Spurs with 27 points, 14 boards, 3 assists, 2 steals and 2 blocks. He shot 60 percent (12-20) from the floor and a perfect 3-3 from the line while turning the ball over just once. He’s been a roller coaster all season but last night’s line against Tim Duncan and the Spurs, one of the teams favored to get to the Finals, has to inject some confidence in his owners. The window to buy low on Boozer might be closed. 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: Richard Jefferson, Antonio McDyess, DeJuan Blair, Theo Ratliff, Keith Bogans

Lost: Bruce Bowen, Kurt Thomas, Ime Udoka, Drew Gooden, Fabricio Oberto, Jacque Vaughn Read More »

Today we’ll continue our week-long look at late-round players who can help you fill in the statistical gaps you find yourself with near the end of your fantasy drafts. This doesn’t mean these players will necessarily help you in other categories (though most do), but they should at least offer some value in these respective categories. Without further ado, let’s look at players (in no particular order) who will likely be drafted in later rounds and could help you catch up in the rebounding department. Share your perspectives below. Read More »

It’s kind of odd that the once-dreaded Texas Triangle seems overlooked these days, and for good reason. The Rockets’ quick fall from grace (with key losses in Yao Ming and Ron Artest) now leaves them for perhaps an 7th seed at best, and that’s just because they still have most of last year’s team. Read More »

For NBA teams, the quest for a title starts right now as training camp opens this week. While the Lakers are the champs and arguably the favorites to win it again this year, the rest of the league did not sit idle during the offseason. A lot of teams - especially the ones in contention for the chip - made some bold moves during the summer that strengthen their roster. I ranked the five teams who I thought made the best offseason upgrades. Read More »

When you work in an office with basketball junkies, the conversations sometimes can get very heated about very specific things. For example, yesterday the trivia question floating around out there was seeing if you could name all 14 active NBA players that are in the Top 100 on the all-time scoring list. While there are definitely some obvious ones (Shaq, Iverson, Kobe), there are others that took us a minute to figure out (Finley, Stackhouse, Juwan Howard). While we jokingly put it out there that LeBron could be in the Top 100 despite just playing six NBA seasons, we decided to look it up and see where he stands. The results are kind of amazing. Read More »

In the end, the fact that Bruce Bowen was essentially sacrificed so that the San Antonio Spurs could have a better chance at winning another championship was somewhat symbolic of what he meant to the team.

When Bowen was traded to Milwaukee this offseason as part of the deal to get Richard Jefferson, I expected he would eventually get bought out and return to the Spurs as a minimum-salary player, similar to Antonio McDyess spending five minutes on the Nuggets last year before returning to the Pistons. Read More »

After putting together the modified Top-50 list of players from the ‘08-09 season, I had about 50 leftovers who just missed the cut. And from that, there could’ve been a whole sub-category titled “Wait ‘Til Next Year.”

Going position-by-position again, here are five centers who look the most ready to crack the 2010 Top-10 with their performances next season: Read More »

White Chocolate signing with the Magic yesterday likely signaled the last offseason move by any of the NBA’s legit championship contenders before training camp. (Assuming the Marquis Daniels-to-Boston deal is just a paperwork formality at this point.) So now that we know who’s working with what, why not start handicapping the field? … Orlando could very well run through the Eastern Conference postseason bracket again, but they probably won’t be doing it as a #1 or even a #2 seed thanks to Rashard Lewis‘ 10-game suspension. Read More »