One sequence not only summed up Cavs/Celtics, it was also the moment an astute observer in the building would have started packing their stuff and heading for the parking lot: After Mo Williams had knocked down back-to-back threes midway through the fourth quarter, Ray Allen was looking to answer beyond the arc. But as the shot clock ran down and with nowhere to pass or dribble, Ray had LeBron stuck to his chest like Vicks VapoRub. Read More »

Last year we debuted the “Highs and Lows” system — previewing the NBA season by predicting the respective ceiling and basement for each team. Same theme, different season…

Added: Stephen Curry, Mikki Moore, Devean George, Acie Law, Speedy Claxton

Lost: Jamal Crawford, Marco Belinelli, Rob Kurz Read More »

Yesterday was weird. For the last year or so, one of the running jokes in the Dime office has been that the Magic are collectively too jacked for one NBA team. We’d already nicknamed Dwight Howard “The Centaur” for obvious reasons, then you got J.J. Redick looking like an MTV “True Life: I’m a Jersey Shore Bodybuilder” alum, Pietrus and Jameer on swole, Anthony Johnson dunking on cats at 49 years old, and even Skip seemed to get more cut-up as soon as he got to Orlando. When they picked up Brandon Bass, it kicked up the too-diesel talk all over again. But then yesterday, when news broke that one of the Magic players had tested positive for a performance-enhancing drug, it turned out to be one of the guys we never talked about: Rashard Lewis … Read More »

I can’t take credit for that headline. That would go to reader “brett” in today’s Smack, who, in reference to the Golden State Warriors trading Marco Belinelli to Toronto for Devean George, wrote: “pretty sure the warriors traded belinelli cuz they hate their fans.”

It would most definitely seem to be the case wouldn’t it? Golden State has a looong list of head-scratching personnel moves over the last 10 years, the latest being dealing a fan favorite in Belinelli – a guy who still has potential to be a serious, if one-dimensional, offensive weapon in the League – for a guy, if we’re being honest here, who has little to no ability to help an NBA team. George may be the greatest guy in the world, and he may still be able to play a little bit of defense, but the reality is that he hasn’t done a meaningful thing on a basketball court in many years.

So then why would Golden State do this? Read More »

While Miami waits for Lamar Odom to decide if he’d rather look at sun-dipped Rodeo Drive honeys or sun-dipped South Beach honeys during timeouts for the next 4-5 years, another possible Plan B in case they don’t get Odom became unavailable. The Hawks re-signed Marvin Williams for $40 million over five years — kind of steep for a guy who wasn’t gonna get $8M a year from anyone else, but not the worst move in the world considering Marvin is a big contributor for a still-developing core unit in Atlanta. Read More »