After seeing Kevin Durant talk to the future, Amar’e Stoudemire shooting in an empty gym, Steve Nash practicing back home in British Columbia, and Chris Paul running in high school, check out the last “Encouragement” spot starring Stephen Curry. Watch as a young Steph shoots with his father, Dell Curry, when he was on the Raptors.

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By now, you’re probably well aware of the NBA’s “Encouragement” campaign, the latest iteration of Where Amazing Happens. Using archive footage of NBA superstars when they were younger, they’ve inserted a person via green screen as if they were talking to the player at the time, encouraging them. That new footage is then synched with the old footage to make it seem as if the person that was filmed is in the same shot. It’s like Back to the Future, but better.

With the new spot starring Chris Paul at West Forsyth High School debuting tonight, we got up with Danny Meiseles, Executive Vice President and Executive Producer of Production, Programming & Broadcasting for NBA Entertainment, to talk about the campaign. Read More »

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

CHRIS PAUL, New Orleans Hornets It’s probably unfair to judge CP3′s merits as a go-to clutch player the morning after his team lost to the Clippers.

In many ways, Paul has been than ever this year, leading the Hornets to an 11-2 record with a first-year head coach (Monty Williams) and one All-Star teammate (David West). Read More »

In front of an invitation-only crowd that included Kobe Bryant, Dell Curry, B.J. Armstrong and Jerry Colangelo, the United States senior national team got the better of China in today’s mid-afternoon scrimmage at Madison Square Garden.

Played in four quarters that were scored separately, the U.S. dominated the first three sessions, but lost the fourth in a close battle that came down to the last shot. We’ll have more details of the scrimmage in Smack, but afterwards I was able to get up with a few Team USA guys. Read More »

After the success of Stephen Curry this season, and watching his flawless jumper that has been passed down from his pops (Dell Curry), this got us thinking: If there were a father/son 2-on-2 tournament with current NBA players and their former NBA dads, who would win? You might already know the champ, but the competition would be fierce. Put it this way – Steph & Dell didn’t even make the Top 5. Read More »

Funny how the Celtics went from everybody’s new favorite team (this side of the Lakers) two years ago, to the most hated team in the League today (this side of the Lakers).

After KG, Pierce and Ray got their championship in ’08, it seemed all of a sudden people were turned off by KG’s so-called bully tactics, Pierce’s arrogant swagger, Ray’s sneaky-dirty moments, Rajon Rondo‘s blatantly dirty moments, Eddie House‘s sense of entitlement, and everything about Brian Scalabrine. Read More »

You saw it coming almost right away. Three minutes into Heat/Blazers, Greg Oden picked up his second foul — a questionable call where he got tangled up with Jermaine O’Neal and both seemed equally at fault — and had to sit down. So with LaMarcus Aldridge (knee) already sidelined, that meant J.O. and Michael Beasley could go to work against Joel Przybilla and Dante Cunningham (plus a Juwan Howard extended cameo). And that meant when Portland’s D wasn’t giving up points to the bigs, they were leaving shooters open all over the arc. Throw in the fact that Portland started off cold offensively, and they were in an uphill battle right off the bat … Read More »

Don’t let the fact that Chauncey Billups shows little emotion on the court fool you into thinking he’s any less fiery of a competitor than Kobe, Dirk, LeBron, Wade or any other big-time clutch player who punctuates his daggers by making funny faces. You have to be iceberg to have hit as many fourth-quarter threes and last-second free throws as Mr. Big Shot has hit, but you also have to have a fire inside you to show up in the kind of shape he does every year and bring it at the high level he brings it every night … After Chauncey (17 pts, 6 asts, 3 stls) made the go-ahead free throw with 0.6 seconds left in last night’s Nuggets/Bulls game, he missed the second FT on purpose, giving the Bulls only 0.3 to make a game-winner. Read More »

After having a father who ran through 16 seasons in the League and a brother who led the Davidson Wildcats to national prominence, you would expect to garner a little respect. Not the case for Seth Curry coming out of high school in 2008. Read More »