When it was announced that LeBron James would collect his fourth Most Valuable Player award. No one, except the Boston Globe‘s Gary Washburn (and he’s entitled to his views), wanted to be caught with a stain on their ballot … and rightly so. However, does that mean Kevin Durant‘s work (50/40/90 shooting averages and the West’s top record) should go without a well-earned receipt?

For the uninitiated, pro baseball hands out trophies for their top rookie, best pitcher, leading manager and most trustworthy fielder. MLB’s major awards are akin to the four biggest accolades handed out in the NBA – Most Valuable Player, Rookie of the Year, Coach of the Year and Defensive Player of the Year – except that they’re given out in both the American and National League’s, respectively.

Given the NBA’s visible conference divide, isn’t it time that both the elite from the East and the best playing out West serve as different streams of power for their own lighthouses? If baseball, with clear distinctions between its two leagues, awards its players accordingly, shouldn’t the NBA look to do the same? Read More »

Lakers-Heat was Hollywood at its finest. The Heat’s 99-90 win had leading men, a duel as its storyline and a big budget (the Lakers’ payroll). Generally in a big game like Miami-Lakers the question after the game becomes was Team X that impressive or Team Y that bad? Miami’s first four field goals — all huge dunks off sloppy Laker turnovers from Miami’s wing pressure — left no doubt that Miami was just that spectacular at the start — and the finish, too. Read More »

Minnesota’s burliest player took over in the first half. Its smallest came through with a giant sleight-of-hand charge in the fourth quarter to ice the 99-93 win. Ding, dong, a pair of Thunder dozen-game winning streaks are dead — their overall streak, plus a 12-gamer just over the T-Wolves. The lesson: Good things happen when Nikola Pekovic scores 20 points — the Timberwolves were 5-0 when he hit that entering Thursday night, when Pekovic knocked down 8-of-12 shots in the first half alone for 18 points. He’d finish with 24 and 10. Read More »

Every year, NBA players, owners, coaches and general managers donate hundreds of thousands of dollars to charity. Not all of their philanthropy is voluntary. In the NBA, it’s a fineable offense to wear a headband upside down, to publicly criticize an official, or to execute a chin-up on the rim. As you can imagine, some of these things happen quite frequently. Read More »

David Stern dropped a $250,000 fine on San Antonio on Friday afternoon, then said he doesn’t want to talk about it any more. Good luck with that – the topic of what a coach can and can’t do with his team will be white-hot because of mistakes both the league and the Spurs made with Starter-Gate. It’s wrong to meddle with a coach’s team but Gregg Popovich had ways to achieve the same result (resting his four best players) without sending them home on Southwest Airlines without telling the NBA, too. Read More »

Gregg Popovich to send four of his best players home before their road game against Miami last night. It provoked David Stern to issue a missive criticizing the move, promising “substantial sanctions.” The debate about whether Popovich should have rested his most popular and important players before a nationally televised game is contentious, but it’s the reason Popovich rested them that provides David Stern an opportunity to swallow his (substantial) pride and improve the league by shortening the regular season. Read More »

Tim Duncan, Tony Parker, Manu Ginobili and Danny Green weren’t in Miami for Thursday’s nationally televised game. After 36 minutes of the big, bad Heat playing neck-and-neck with the Spurs’ second unit, the Heat’s biggest star showed up in a big way to stop the messing around. LeBron James wasn’t a miracle worker all night — ESPN reported San Antonio’s motley crew outscored Miami by one in LeBron’s 39 minutes of PT — but in the final eight minutes he was like a conductor. Read More »

Confidence is crucial when deciding to become a rapper. If you don’t exude a certain arrogance that drips off you, you might as well reconsider your career. Being brash and pretentious is actually a plus and not frowned upon in hip-hop. It’s cool to have the lyrics and flows, but being the quintessential rapper requires a dose of cockiness. Read More »

I don’t know how the segment of undecided voters who are also NBA fans breaks down, but it’s clear President Barack Obama has cornered the basketball crowd since 2008. Still David Stern, a “loyal Democrat,” wanted to speak truth to power recently about President No. 44′s game. It’s typical Stern. Read More »

By the time David Stern retires as commissioner of the NBA on Feb. 1, 2014, the dueling eulogies and celebrations of his reign will have long been written. Hell, still 15 months away, many have been written today after he announced he’ll retire on that date while at the NBA Board of Governors meeting. Read More »