In last night’s Suns/Bucks blowout game, the Phoenix announcers spent a chunk of gametime talking about Ronnie Price‘s hops after he took off on a layup from well outside the lane and then caught an alley-oop a few minutes later. The discussion led to them discussing this hellacious dunk that Price put on Carlos Boozer back in 2006 when Price was a member of the Sacramento Kings. Read More »

Weekend Wonder: Josh Smith averaged 24.0 points, 9.0 rebounds, 3.5 assists, 3.5 steals, 4.0 blocks and 0.5 threes in two games over the weekend. In that stretch, he shot 63 percent from the field, 60 percent from the free-throw line and turned the ball over twice a game. After a slow start to the season, Smith has really found his groove lately. In his last four games, Smith is averaging 20.0 points, 11.3 rebounds, 3.0 assists, 2.3 steals and 2.8 blocks. Read More »

Beast of the Night: Ty Lawson finished with 25 points, four rebounds, three assists, eight steals and two three-pointers last night in a loss to the Trail Blazers. He shot 63 percent (10-16) from the field, 75 percent (3-4) from the free-throw line and had two turnovers. Lawson is off to a very solid start in his first three games of the season. Though he’s not dishing out many assists (3.0 per game), he’s shooting like a center (62 percent from the field), hitting threes (1.7 per game) and thieving like a maniac (4.0 per game). There’s little standing in his way to giving his owners top 30 value this season. Read More »

Hype is a dangerous thing. Realistically, when you think about it, what does hype do? It creates pressure, problems, anxiety amongst organizations in an effort to reach expectations. Really, hype doesn’t do anything but divide and destroy. When was the last time hype helped a team win a title? Some squads are able to do it in spite of the hype, but words and predictions rarely mean anymore than what they are. With the hype of the NBA exploding through the creation of so many superteams, this year is promising to be one with many disappointments. Read More »

I’ll be honest with you. I’m waiting on Tyson Chandler to not live up to this new contract. It seems inevitable: big man who has career year at 29 years old, finds himself in a perfect situation, plays great D and rebounds but has it magnified because his team finally got through the West and won a title (seriously, if Dallas loses in the Western playoffs, is anyone talking about how great Chandler is right now?). Take it for face value: a 29-year-old, injury prone big man who’s coming off BY FAR the best year of his career, a guy who’s been incredibly up and down throughout his career was just given $56 million to come save the defense in the world’s most crazed media market. Read More »

No one can accuse Derrick Rose of lacking self-confidence. “Why can’t I be the MVP of the league,” Rose famously asked last September, before becoming the youngest MVP in NBA history last season. This year, he’s still not concerned with anybody else, and is now talking about bringing multiple championships to his hometown. Read More »

No one wants to come out and admit it right now, but is there a race going on between Dwight Howard and Chris Paul to get to Hollywood? Some believe so. How it came to this, we aren’t sure. But it suddenly feels like the two biggest pieces in this new age NBA and are both privately gunning for the same team. The only problem is, most likely, only one of them gets there. As Yahoo! Sports reported, the Lakers and Hornets have already talked deals. With Howard not coming out one way or another and with the Hornets’ front office determined not to have a repeat of what happened in Cleveland, the focus shifted to CP, and the Lakers reportedly offered New Orleans their pick: Andrew Bynum or Pau Gasol? Who do you want? Read More »

Yesterday’s ambush of trade and free agency talk tipped off with a rather awkward rumor: The Celtics weren’t actively shopping Rajon Rondo, but that they’d be open to a deal should anything materialize. In the sports world, that’s basically code for other teams to start calling so they can start the bidding. Danny Ainge and Boston were hinting at something. We just didn’t know what it was yet. So naturally the response from most fans was: WTF? It didn’t help that Rajon Rondo trade rumors are an offseason rite of passage by this point. It doesn’t feel right unless we get a few of them. Read More »

Those lucky Puerto Ricans. Oh well, we can’t really complain. We’ve had “Capital Punishment” (check out our latest issue – Dime #66 – for a behind-the-scenes recap), “The Big Payback,” that crazy Chris Paul charity game and even stuff like this past weekend when Michael Beasley nearly went for 60. As boring as the lockout’s been, we can be thankful for those games. But the NBA World Tour – as we’ve dubbed it – would exceed all of that in star power. We’re talking USA Baskeball Team-like star power. We’re talking Kobe vs. LeBron. We’re talking taking the game to people across the world who’ll treat each encounter as a once-in-a-lifetime event. Could it all start this Saturday night at San Juan Arena in Puerto Rico? Read More »

Horace Grant had some words for Carlos Boozer and his former team, the Chicago Bulls, recently. Here’s a small dose: “Boozer needs to be, for a lack of a better phrase, Scottie Pippen to a Michael Jordan.” Rose, in this case, is taking the place of Michael Jordan. Grant went on to say that Boozer needs to become more assertive and accept his role as the number two or three scorer on the team. He also said that Boozer needs to be more physical as well as a more dominant rebounder, that he needs to help out Joakim Noah and become more aggressive on the boards. Who doesn’t agree with him? Look, Boozer is an undersized four. He’s not one of those guys who can fly down the lane, catch a bounce pass and dunk on someone like Amar’e Stoudemire. What he can do is score from the low block, and hit the 15-18 footer. Read More »