In a sports world where a coach can endure a couple of bad weeks and lose his job, Jerry Sloan has job security like Steve Jobs. Sometime in the next week or two, NBA.com is reporting that the Jazz will once again extend the legendary coach’s contract for at least one more season. This annual or bi-annual tradition between Sloan and the Jazz organization has been going for the past decade. Read More »

Harrison Barnes is the best high school ballplayer in the country. As the 6-6 wing from Ames, Iowa, navigates through the hectic recruiting process such a title entails, he agreed to chronicle his thoughts for us during each of his five official visits. After UNC, then Oklahoma, then Kansas, Barnes recaps his trip to Duke last weekend. Here’s an excerpt: Read More »

Who do you want your offense to run through with everything on the line? Counting down 30th to 1st (one per team), I’ve ranked the League’s go-to guys…

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#1: KOBE BRYANT, L.A. Lakers

Grown-man fear is a complicated thing. It’s not a pure phobia, nor the fear one experiences through startled shock, nor is it a fear that cripples, like that of failure or open spaces. Read More »

At this point, Coach K and the Duke Blue Devils are in that elite class of college programs who can pretty much pick and choose who they want to play for them rather than ever “settling” for certain recruits. But even then, it’s not so easy putting together a powerhouse.

For the majority of this decade, Duke hasn’t had the best luck with five-star high school point guards. Read More »

It’s hard to believe that John Wooden turns 99 today. The former UCLA coach is legendary for leading the Bruins to an amazing 10 NCAA championships in 12 years during the ’60s and ’70s. The Wizard of Westwood, who still attends UCLA games, plans to make it to 100. Read More »

Harrison Barnes, a 6-6 wing out of Ames, Iowa, is the best high school ballplayer in the country. As he navigates through the hectic recruiting process, Barnes agreed to chronicle his thoughts for us during each of his five official visits. First up is North Carolina, where Barnes visited on Sept. 3. Here’s an excerpt:

… At about noon, I got a tour of campus on a golf cart and got to see where the dorms were, where the Dean Smith Center was, and I saw a few classes and walked around a little bit.

After that I had lunch with Coach (Roy) Williams, and then I got to see the North Carolina museum. Read More »

In yesterday’s gold-medal game at the FIBA European Championships, Spain made their opening-round hiccup against Serbia look exactly like what it was — a random hiccup. In a rematch with Serbia, Pau Gasol’s crew waxed the opposition, going up by 15 in the first quarter, making it a 20-piece McNugget by the second quarter, and ultimately winning by 22. Big brother Gasol led the way with 18 points, 11 boards and three blocks, while Rudy Fernandez scored 13 and J.C. Navarro added 12 points. Ricky Rubio had 10 points and one assist. Spain dominated the glass, getting almost as many offensive boards (18) as Serbia had total rebounds (24). Read More »

The USA men’s basketball team’s well-documented shortcomings in 2002, 2004 and 2006 created a stone-cold sober climate before the Beijing Games in 2008. Players and coaches approached their commitment to winning gold with a sense of gravity largely absent from the years marred by defeat. However, amid all of the seriousness of Team USA’s run through Beijing, there were moments away from the media spotlight in which these 14 guys loosened up and became a team.

We sat down with the Redeem Team’s gold-medal winning coach, Duke living legend Mike Krzyzewski, for DIME 50 to talk about those lighter times when laughter and smiles became the backbone for gold. Read More »

Tonight HighSchoolHoop.com was the first high school basketball site to break the news that shooting guard Andre Dawkins, a Class of 2010 Duke recruit from Virginia, may have come up with a way to get to campus a full year early. Read More »

This was gonna be a list of Five Bold Predictions for 2010, but I couldn’t think of the other four. So here it is:

Pat Riley will be the Lakers’ next coach.

Championship or not, Phil Jackson is only coaching one more season. And there are only a handful of coaches who are (1) good enough to take on a team of the Lakers’ caliber and (2) strong-willed enough to handle all that comes with coaching that franchise in that city. Read More »