Los Angeles Clippers forward Trey Thompkins is about to begin his second NBA season. Drafted early in the second round of the 2011 draft, Thompkins appeared in 24 games last year for the 40-26 Clippers squad. A stud for three years at the University of Georgia, Thompkins finished with more than 1,000 career points as a Bulldog and his 17.7 PPG and 8.2 RPG earned him a spot alongside John Wall and DeMarcus Cousins on the coach-selected first-team All-SEC as a sophomore. Thompkins is ready to step up his role on a Clippers team with deep postseason aspirations. Read More »

What do NBA players do during the offseason? If you’re Caron Butler, you’re challenging your daughters to games of Hungry Hippos and thumb wars, and signing “Call Me Maybe.” The NOC YouTube channel has brought us some recent gems, including the Baron Davis Brian Davies alter ego. This video with Tuff Juice is just as good. Read More »

Actually it was more like Caron Butler serves up the facial, but in the process hits Tim Duncan across the face with his off arm, thus forcing Duncan to go reeling. Watching this play live, I didn’t notice that and started laughing at Duncan’s walk of shame. At the end of the night though, none of this mattered. The Clippers were destroyed and Butler didn’t do anything outside of one tiny third quarter run. Read More »

Indiana gave the Heat enough chances, missing more freebies than a Ben Wallace practice session, and yet the two best players in the world (supposedly) couldn’t finish the job. At home. With mismatches all over the court. The Pacers worked off a terrible first half to tie the series up with their 78-75 Game 2 win, which didn’t become official until Miami let Mario Chalmers seal their fate in the closing seconds (this ain’t college). Down three, South Beach’s starting point guard and LeBron‘s personal whipping boy decided it was his time, and lofted up a triple that was too ugly to have a chance. Read More »

Oh, we want to put an asterisk by this so, so bad. But damn, Chris Paul is just too, too good. We can forget that CP and Blake Griffin will probably wake up today with whiplash from all of their flopping and flailing. Paul dropped eight overtime points, cooked half the Grizzlies roster, and finished with 27 points, nine rebounds and seven assists as the Clippers went up 3-1 on Memphis, 101-97. After not having a single second-chance point all game, L.A. had two buckets in a row off misses in overtime, and even with Mike Conley (25 points, seven rebounds, eight dimes) playing the game of his life, the Grizzlies couldn’t finish. Again. … Read More »

Why are we dropping Part III of the Tyson Chandler video series on a Saturday morning? Because the Caron Butler-less Clippers play tonight. Listen to Chandler talk about how in many ways, Caron can mean just as much to a team in his absence than he can on the floor.

Chandler’s description of just how badass Caron Butler can be is pretty ridiculous: Read More »

The only thing seemingly happening more often than freak injuries through the playoffs first two days are blocked shots. We saw Roy Hibbert sending away all sorts of shots from the Orlando Midgets. Kevin Durant somehow had four of them. And Serge Ibaka was just… Serge Ibaka. But only one guy this weekend tied the NBA Playoff blocked shot record, and that was Andrew Bynum. By the four minute mark in the third quarter of the Lakers’ blowout win against Denver, 103-88, Bynum already had seven rejections and before the night was over, he not only had a triple-double (10 points, 13 rebounds, 10 blocks), but he had also broken the franchise playoff record and tied Mark Eaton and Hakeem Olajuwon for most blocks ever in a playoff game. Read More »

Beast of the Night: Russell Westbrook finished the 2011-12 NBA season with a bang, producing a pretty line of 30 points, six rebounds, nine assists, three steals, four blocks and a three-pointer. He shot 50 percent (10-20) from the field and 90 percent (9-10) from the free-throw line, and had two turnovers. Westbrook is finishing the season with top 20 value, which falls short of expectations. The most noticeable stat is his 5.5 assists per game this season, well below the 8.2 assists he dished out per game last season. Read More »

The fight would’ve been classic: Tyler Hansbrough vs. Blake Griffin. But as we pointed out in Smack, not much made sense in this whole thing. The two big fellas in the middle of it get techs for supposedly taunting, but Caron Butler can play Charades out there and it’s cool? Something’s wrong with this picture, and it’s not even Butler pulling a stunt that really didn’t make sense. Read More »

Don’t hurt ‘em LeBron. We guess all it took for James to deliver a near-perfect performance was the possibility of being swept this year by Milwaukee because he unleashed fury on the Bucks in the second half. The NBA’s MVP at this point tried to tear apart the rims three or four different times, forget if anyone was in his way. To cap the end of the third, LeBron had one dunk where he split a double-team and flushed it (he covered 30 feet with one dribble) faster than a fat man going over a waterfall. That could’ve been expected. What wasn’t was his post game, scoring every…single…time against Carlos Delfino in the post. Read More »