How often do you see it happen: a visiting team takes control in the fourth quarter before squandering a late chance to grab a W, and then end up getting pounded into submission in the extra session? Dallas is feeling the pain now after letting the Heat off the hook in Miami’s 119-109 overtime win. There’s not much to explain from overtime: Miami just ran Dallas over. The real fun was in the fourth quarter. In the final minutes, LeBron (32 points, 12 rebounds, nine assists) found Shane Battier for one of the biggest shots of the night, a corner three. Read More »

Preseason is when teams want to work through mistakes and identify the most pressing issues. Camps have now given way to games, which offer a different level of looking at a team’s identity. It would be asking for the impossible to have every problem identified, let alone remedied, by the end of October; the best-case scenario is to simply not carry too many from the start into the season. What should every team be asking itself during the preseason? We’ve got you covered. Today, we look at the Western Conference. Read More »

When he was smashing on cats’ heads back at Oak Hill, we doubt Josh Smith thought he’d one day have to play his way into a contract. Alas, that’s where he’s now at with Atlanta, the only NBA home he’s ever known. New GM Danny Ferry is running a tight financial ship – you can ask Joe Johnson about that – and giving Smith a new deal doesn’t totally make sense for him, at least right now. Read More »

O.J. Mayo could never quite find the right role on the Memphis Grizzlies. With Rudy Gay and Zach Randolph eating up shot attempts and Mike Conley controlling the ball at the point, Mayo never had a true opportunity to showcase his skill set. The Boston Celtics, meanwhile, are in desperate need of bench scoring, and Mayo might just fit that role perfectly. Read More »

If there was one player I wished I had been more like growing up, it’s Tony Allen. Not the line drive shooting part. I’m talking about the ruggedness, the defense, the “time to grind” bloodhound that never stops. Tony Allen isn’t a star. He’ll never be one. But even before Memphis… for Boston fans he was rather unique. Six long years, playing nearly the exact same role with the exact same PT every season. He wasn’t supposed to be a good enough shooter or decision-maker to make it full-time, and even when he was looking like he might finally make it, he went out and dunked during a stop in play, tearing up his knee in the process. Read More »

The lockout is just a memory, the NBA is days away from its glorious Christmas Day return, and fantasy basketball preparations are in full swing. But you can’t escape the past. This isn’t a life lesson from the fingers of someone wholly unfit to give you non-fantasy basketball advice – it’s a reminder that suspensions handed down late in the 2010-11 NBA season are going to affect some players’ availabilities in the early going this season. On top of those suspensions are injuries and health conditions that will have implications from the outset of the 2011-12 NBA season. Below is a rundown of early suspensions and injuries, and the players who stand to benefit from those circumstances. 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 »

With the sudden end to the NBA lockout and abbreviated training camps rushing guys through to a regular season jammed with lots of games in short periods of time, I have no doubt that we’re going to be seeing an uptick in injuries across the League. There’s just no way around it. Injuries happen all the time, even when guys are in incredible basketball shape – the effects of a significantly longer offseason running right into an NBA season are going to take their toll on guys.

One of the first big injuries hit the Memphis Grizzlies over the weekend when they lost rising star Darrell Arthur, most likely for the season. Read More »

The Memphis Grizzlies proved to be a pretty solid source of fantasy value last season, even after one of their stars went down with a shoulder injury. With just one significant free agent (a restricted one at that), this squad should be mostly intact for another run at NBA (and fantasy) relevancy whenever the season starts. Read More »

This sequence pretty much sums up last night’s Memphis/San Antonio game, and the series as a whole. Memphis is too big, too strong and too fast for the aging Spurs and it is exemplified in this sequence where Darrell Arthur hammers a Tony Parker shot and then beats every Spur down the floor for an easy alley-oop from O.J. Mayo. Read More »