We’re only a few days away from one of the best weekends in college basketball. With Louisville, Michigan, Wichita State and Syracuse set to go to battle this weekend, expect to hear a whole lot of Cinderella, zone defense and Trey Burke talk. It’s inevitable. Hopefully, the games live up to the billing. But in all likelihood, none of them will make this list. Read More »

I’m not sure what we’d do without the Internet. In past generations, they had the newspaper and Sunday afternoon matinees. Now, we have forum threads, we have Twitter, ESPN, rumor wires, we have pretty much everything. It’s easy to spread gossip. If you’ve been hanging around the Interwebs for a while, then you’ve probably heard tremors about what I’m going to tell you: Jerry Stackhouse is a bad mother. Some NBA players are known for being crazy (Ron Artest/Metta World Peace). Others are known for rolling super deep (Stephen Jackson/Chris Mills). Then you have a guy like Charles Oakley, who gets a category all to himself. But Stack might be one of the few everyone knows you don’t mess with. Read More »

Finally, we’ve seen the Monte Carlo tapes. I can speak only for myself when it comes to seeing “The Dream Team” documentary that NBA TV debuted on Wednesday that had been 20 years in the making, but watching the full-court scrimmage between one of the greatest groupings of talent, ever, was a long-awaited highlight. Read More »

Not much has changed in the 24 hours since Kevin Durant pulled out the baby powder on LeBron and Miami in the fourth quarter of Game 1… you know, other than the fact that everyone is writing the Heat off already and crowning KD as the greatest thing ever. Since that 17-point fourth quarter in his first ever NBA Finals game, Durant is now a 6-11 Kobe, the future all-time leading scorer and the greatest thing anyone in professional basketball has seen since Hot Sauce. We all need to calm down. While that’s all possible true, and OKC is looking like prohibitive favorites to walk away with rings this year, all Miami has to do is steal Game 2 and they’re in the driver’s seat with three straight home games. Read More »

Carmelo Anthony had that George Gervin flow going once again last night. Not that ‘Melo was dropping mid-range finger rolls or squeezing his skinny body in between some poor team’s Swiss Cheese defense — it was more that Carmelo’s 23-point effort in the third quarter against Indiana was awfully reminiscent of the 33-point quarter he had a couple years ago that tied Iceman’s record for most in a quarter in NBA history … You could say ‘Melo (36 pts, 14-27 FG) channeled Iceman in that there wasn’t as much of that usual bully-style in his buckets. Read More »

There would be something universally appealing, even to members of the Basketball Atheists Society, about the hoop gods arranging an NCAA championship game pitting UConn against BYU.

Unlike the NBA, rarely in college basketball do we get to see the two best players in the sport go head-to-head to decide the biggest prize. We missed out on Durant vs. Oden in ’07, Carmelo vs. D-Wade in ’03, Shaq vs. Laettner in ’92, and Ralph Sampson vs. whoever could have challenged him during the three years he was the reigning MVP of the NCAA. Read More »

Coach K‘s four national championship teams at Duke University have been defined by threes. Christian Laettner, Bobby Hurley and Grant Hill ran the show in the ’90s; Shane Battier, Jay Williams and Mike Dunleavy Jr. won it in ’01; and in 2010 it was Jon Scheyer, Kyle Singler and Nolan Smith.

With Scheyer gone to graduation and a few younger players taking aim at that vacant spot in the Big Three, this season’s leadership responsibilities for the Blue Devils (11-0) have fallen on seniors Smith (17.1 ppg, 5.4 apg) and Singler (17.0 ppg, 5.5 rpg) to lead a talented group aiming for a repeat. Going into tonight’s game against UNC-Greensboro (7 p.m., ESPNU), Smith talks about how experience wins championships: Read More »

Grant Hill’s ankles once looked to be made of glass. But nearly eight years after his last ankle surgery, he has reinvented himself to be an ironman in, of course, a place called Phoenix.

Where has the time gone? Not on Hill’s body, which is holding up better for the 38-year-old Suns forward than perhaps had his All-Star career not been put on hold for more than three seasons in Orlando. Hill played in all 82 games in 2008-09 and 81 last season, feats that not only underscore his remarkable recovery but his belief he’ll be playing a few more seasons yet. Read More »

If Kemba Walker hadn’t decided to turn into Tiny Archibald in Maui, tonight’s Duke vs. Michigan State matchup (ESPN, 9:30 p.m. EST) would be a meeting of the No. 1 and No. 2 teams in the nation.

Despite their blemished record, No. 6 Michigan State is still considered a Final Four favorite and regarded as the toughest challenge the defending national champion Blue Devils will face in the regular season. Currently, these are the top two teams in college basketball. How do they match up historically? Read More »

As NBA training camps get underway, we preview the upcoming season with the “Highs and Lows” system — predicting the respective ceiling and basement for each team.

Added: Jordan Crawford, Josh Powell, Etan Thomas

Lost: Joe Smith, Randolph Morris, Mario West Read More »