When Nazr Mohammed lost his mind on Friday night and put LeBron James on the floor with a two-hand shove, we were kind of shocked by the amount of people we heard from on the site/Twitter/Facebook calling ‘Bron an actor, saying he was flopping. Huh? Nazr is a huge, very strong guy, who in the moment was blind with rage – of course he’s strong enough to take down all 6-8, 250 pounds of LeBron when he’s not ready for it. But there it was from fans and Bulls players alike, mocking James for flopping.

So why the skepticism and outrage? Well, you can argue that James has brought it on himself. Some of his work in the flopping department over the years rivals the work of Manu Ginobili and Derek Fisher, the Obi-Wan and Yoda of Flopping [Check out The NBA's Top 20 Flops and Fisher's title as the NBA's Worst Flopper], and it seems to have ramped up in the last two years.

Check out LeBrons 11 Greatest Flops: Read More »

While the ghost of Derek Fisher nearly won this game for Oklahoma City — seriously, the Grizzlies probably expected anything else before expecting Fisher to go for 19 points — Kevin Durant was undeniably the best player on the floor. Read More »

The complex layers of the relationship between Josh Smith, Atlanta fans and NBA fans at large run deep, and they’ve been there throughout his entire career. Not quite an All-Star. Incredible all-around talent. Not a jump shooter. But he can make them. Not a building block. But building-block level talent. In the third quarter against Indiana last night, with Atlanta slowly blowing what should’ve been an easy win, the Josh Smith demons came to the surface again. Read More »

This year’s NBA Playoffs haven’t gotten off to a very exciting start. The home teams are 8-0, and the majority of those games haven’t been close. The best part of the weekend was actually probably Kobe Bryant‘s consistent tweeting. Read More »

Coming into a meaningful matchup with OKC, the Lakers were 1-9 against the top four seeds in the West, and 1-10 on the road against the top eight in the West. Maybe they saw a performance like last night coming? They looked rattled and nervous, like a bunch of freshmen making their first start in a JV game. The Lakers fell behind 10-1 before Kendrick Perkins even had a chance to scowl. Read More »

This NBA season has already seen a number of marquee players return to their teams well after the first game of the season. A few more joined this weekend in the Lakers’ Steve Nash and Dallas’ Dirk Nowitzki, with the Celtics’ Avery Bradley close to his first practice. Now that the Mayans were wrong and the world hasn’t ended, fans in Los Angeles, Dallas and Boston must face that they’re still stuck with deeply flawed teams. Read More »

Christmas came early for the Lakers. Steve Nash is back, and he brought one of the Lakers’ most impressive wins of the season with him. L.A. had to fend off a list of issues to win against the Warriors: Jarrett Jack (29 points, 11 dimes) torching them, Dwight Howard foul trouble, a 14-point deficit, and Kobe Bryant (16-for-41 shooting, 34 points, 10 boards) shooting so often they classified his arms as unregistered firearms. Read More »

The Dark Knight Rises was one of the best movies of the year, and another sequel in the Batman line nearly broke out in MSG last night. Kyrie Irving did Christian Bale justice, carving up the Knicks for a career-high 41 points while donning a memorable black face mask to protect a broken bone in his jaw. Yet the Knicks survived by one when Anderson Varejao‘s potential game-tying freebie with one second left hit every part of the rim before bouncing out … Read More »

They said they were going to stop the game in New Orleans once Kobe Bryant hit 30,000 career points. He did that just before the end of the first half, going off the dribble and hitting a running floater over Robin Lopez. But the game never ceased, and Bryant – fittingly, as always – didn’t stop either. He hit three more free throws in the final minute of the half to add to his total. The 30,000-point club also includes Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Karl Malone, Michael Jordan and Wilt Chamberlain. How would you rate that five? 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 »