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 »
Five matchups to watch on Tuesday’s nine-game schedule…
Denver @ Indiana: Carmelo Anthony vs. Danny Granger
Buckets, buckets and more buckets. By normal human standards, Granger is having a great start, averaging 26.5 points in two games. But ‘Melo is on some extraterrestrial level right now, dropping 37.7 points on 53% shooting and looking like an MVP in the making. Read More »
A couple of weeks ago, the Nuggets and Pacers flew halfway across the globe to play a pair of exhibition games in the Far East. The first game took in Taipei, Taiwan, and the second one went down in Beijing, China. The headliner for the two teams was undoubtedly Carmelo Anthony. On top of playing the two games, Carmelo was crazy busy promoting his new Jordan Melo M6 sneaker to his Asian fan base. Since we weren’t there to tell you about it, we had Melo pen his Asia experience… 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 VaughnRead More »
As I wrote the other day, every year I can’t wait to read the results of NBA.com’s annual GM Survey to get an insider look into what the people running the League are thinking. And with GMs not permitted to vote for their own team or personnel, you know they have to be objective in their responses. Of all the questions though, there was one that stood out to me as both a compliment and a diss at the same time: Read More »
While the Cavs figure out what they need to do about Delonte West and possibly keep some Plan B’s in mind, more details of Delonte’s arrest emerged yesterday. Most importantly from a basketball standpoint, Delonte’s first court date isn’t until late-November, about three weeks into the regular season. So it’s unlikely the NBA will take any kind of disciplinary action before then, and Delonte can start the season playing ball and keeping Anthony Parker away from his starting SG job. West is being charged with two misdemeanor concealed-weapon counts, which is about the best he could’ve hoped for … LeBron was in New York yesterday on the latest stop in his summer-long media tour, this time to promote his documentary More Than a Game. Read More »
On one hand, I absolutely couldn’t wait for that dude to get the heck out of the League so I’d never have to see or hear about him again; nobody puts Baby Steve Nash in a corner or knees him in the gonads on my watch. However, I also couldn’t help thinking that if I were a Spurs fan (I’m laughing as I type this since I can’t say that with a straight face), I’d be pretty bummed that Bowen is no longer on my team.
This led to an enlightenment of sorts – are there any players that I (from a fan perspective) can’t stand, but would welcome them with open arms on my favorite team? Well, apparently there are, and here are my top 5. Read More »
With Bruce Bowen retiring last week and John Stockton headed for the Hall of Fame this week, the concept of the “dirty” basketball player has been in discussion around the Dime office.
Even the casual NBA fans knows about notorious thugs like Bowen, Bill Laimbeer and Ron Artest, who wind up on “SportsCenter” with every elbow, slide-under ankle-breaker, hip check and hard foul they deliver. But you really have to watch the games to point out the guys who are sneaky-dirty; the ones less like Bowen and more like Stockton, whose slight-of-hand acts don’t get as much attention as the guys with reputations that precede them. Here are 10 of the sneakiest/dirtiest, a.k.a. The Wood Harris All-Stars: 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 »
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.
