Other than his days at Oklahoma, Eduardo Najera has never been as good a basketball player as he was during his days in Dallas. But at 34 years old, the 6-8 forward (who’s been playing for the Nets the past two seasons) is headed back to the Mavericks in exchange for forwards Kris Humphries and Shawne Williams. Read More »

Beast of the Night: Chris Paul edges out Kobe Bryant, Dwyane Wade and David Lee with his 39 points, 5 rebounds, 7 assists and 2 steals, along with 61 percent (14-23) shooting from the floor and perfect (8-8) shooting from the line. He also hit 3 treys in an overtime victory over Dallas. CP3 got off to a relatively slow start this season but has really turned it on for the past three games. He’s playing with some extra ferocity nowadays and that’s a great thing for his fantasy owners. Read More »

NBA training camps are underway, meaning it’s time again for Dime’s team-by-team season previews. Last year we debuted the “Highs and Lows” system — predicting the respective ceilings and basements for each team. In other words, what is the realistic best-case and worst-case scenario for the 2009-10 campaign?

Added: Rafer Alston, Terrence Williams, Courtney Lee, Tony Battie Read More »

OK, so the Shaq and Terry Porter experiment failed and now the Phoenix Suns are back to runnin’ and gunnin’ full time. Over the summer, Steve Kerr re-signed the quarterback behind the seven-seconds-or-less offense Steve Nash, re-upped with Grant Hill and acquired two slim and athletic big men in Channing Frye and lottery-pick Earl Clark. Under coach Alvin Gentry (who was one of D’Antoni’s assistants in Phoenix), the team will try to trying to rewind time back to the 2004-’05 season and attempt to put up 115 or more points per game. Read More »

I know three things about the National Hockey League:

1. There are four Black people involved in the whole operation. 2. Sidney Crosby is the face of the League. 3. Alexander Ovechkin is actually the best player in the League.

Ovechkin made headlines last week when he bashed the NHL for not yet committing to modify its schedule to accommodate the 2014 Winter Olympics. (The League is putting its schedule on hold while players compete in 2010, but hasn’t decided if they’ll do the same for 2014.) Russia is hosting the Olympics that year; Ovechkin is Russia’s top player. Read More »

We’ll start with the Twitter-sponsored portion of Smack: Over the weekend Michael Beasley closed his Twitter account after he took some heat (no pun intended) for posting a pic that may or may not have been bags of weed. Nothing too major, but this is the exact kind of thing that kept Beasley from being a surefire #1 overall pick a year ago. No disrespect to Derrick Rose, but you take a lefty power forward with Beasley’s game and Tim Duncan or Blake Griffin‘s personality, and the only thing he needs to worry about is getting a suit to match the team colors of whoever has the top pick. Instead, this is almost like watching the early part of Lamar Odom‘s career replay itself … Ron Artest used Twitter as his bulletin board to spice up the next Lakers/Rockets game. Read More »

Only a few second-rounders from the 2009 NBA Draft justify the “slept-on” label. DeJuan Blair slipped to the Spurs at pick No. 37 (of course), and Outback trailblazer Patty Mills plummeted all the way to No. 55 before getting seized by the Trail Blazers (of course), and also respect to Sam Young and Jermaine Taylor.

As for the rest, “carry-on” is probably more appropriate — before you get too attached to your second-round additions, you should get to know the second round: Read More »