DeJuan Blair played all of five minutes during San Antonio’s 105-83 blowout of Memphis in Game 1 of the Western Conference Finals on Sunday afternoon. But he made the most of his time. Both of his buckets were SportsCenter-worthy. One was a running tip-in that he somehow made even while falling out of bounds. The other was a spin move, up-n-under flip shot that you used to practice on your five-foot Nerf hoop. Read More »

“What ifs” in sports can run deeper than still waters. What can be a simple question or proposition on the surface, may also result in major changes to a player or players’ careers and, in some instances, even swing titles. Read More »

From Jordan‘s sneakers to Iverson‘s tattoos, the NBA and its players have long had an influence that reaches far beyond the basketball court… and today, the league’s focus on fashion seems to be climbing to entirely new heights. With resources like Twitter and Instagram at their fingertips, many players are captivated by a perpetual quest to promote the latest trend. This obsession with social media, in conjunction with a mass hipster movement and David Stern‘s implementation of the dress code, has resulted in a fair bit of questionable dressing. Read More »

With the emergence of Twitter, and now more importantly Instagram, never before have we had such access to NBA players. It’s fun when they tweet photos of their food or their sneakers. That stuff’s always cool. But when Halloween hits the real fun begins. Read More »

The Brooklyn Nets won’t be blaring “All of the Lights” as their theme song this season because, among other things, they’ll only be using some of the lights in the brand-new Barclays Center for BK games. And they’re special lights. We knew for a while that the Nets would use theatre-style lighting, which is what the Lakers and Knicks use, the kind of lighting that dims the crowd and puts the floor on an imaginary stage by highlighting the game. 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 »

From Jordan‘s sneakers to Iverson‘s tattoos, the NBA and its players have long had an influence that reaches far beyond the basketball court… and today, the league’s focus on fashion seems to be climbing to entirely new heights. With resources like Twitter and Instagram at their fingertips, many players are captivated by a perpetual quest to promote the latest trend. This obsession with social media, in conjunction with a mass hipster movement and David Stern‘s implementation of the dress code, has resulted in a fair bit of questionable dressing. Read More »

With sports, we’re all clock watchers. Its lure doesn’t go away once the season is over — it might even make it worse. The day after Miami won the NBA championship in June, power rankings were already being discussed for the 2012-13 season, much the same how a 2013 top-10 was already being mulled while Kentucky danced under confetti in April. Well, we’re looking ahead again. The free agency class of 2013 has been discussed since 2010′s sweepstakes finished, a discussion that has crept up again in light of Serge Ibaka‘s four-year contract with Oklahoma City over the weekend. Read More »

San Antonio’s DeJuan Blair thrived despite being born without ACLs. Turns out, it’s been much harder to thrive without playoff playing time. Blair got into just 76 minutes in the playoffs because of the Spurs’ pickup of Boris Diaw late last season — after starting 62 of 66 games in the regular season. It’s a situation that would have been laughable when Blair was 15.4 points and 12.7 minutes per 36 minutes his rookie season in 2009-10. It’s even weirder considering his minutes actually have increased by nearly three each game since his rookie year, but his spot ultimately disappeared late. Now, he thinks he’s gone. Read More »

You have to give Dwyane Wade some credit. Even though he’s refusing to use the word “defer” in regards to his relationship with the King, Wade has conceded once again that LeBron James is arguably the best in the world, and that Miami is only as good as James is. Wade said this weekend to NBA.com, “For our team to be as successful as we need to be, we need him to be the best player in the world.” It might be obvious to anyone who watches, but for Wade to accept his current status, even if everyone else in Miami is still willing to kiss his feet, it shows how far this team has come. Read More »