This week’s pickups list comes with some good and bad news. Let’s just get the negative stuff out of the way first. You could probably do better than this edition’s Fresh Pickings. After having such a thick waiver wire for the last couple weeks, things have slimmed down, and will probably stay that way until the trade deadline opens up opportunities for more players. Read More »

FRESH PICKINGS Devin Harris (26 percent owned in Yahoo!, nine percent in ESPN) Lou Williams, one of the NBA’s biggest spark plugs, recently suffered a devastating knee injury which will keep him out for the rest of the season, and perhaps the beginning of next season, too. So who on the Atlanta Hawks will step up? You can expect an uptick in minutes from DeShawn Stevenson, Anthony Morrow and rookie John Jenkins, but I think the one to own is Devin Harris. Read More »

While everyone’s focused on the new year ahead, some players still have business to finish on New Year’s Eve. This is the countdown of the five players who did it the best in the final game of the year, ranging from two Clippers, to one of Dime’s favorite players of all time, to the GOAT. All of them closed out their calendar years in the best ways possible. There may be six games on today’s schedule, but it’s going to be hard to beat these performances. Read More »

The Lakers and Pacers tilt last night in L.A. was so bad it was almost comical. There was Dwight Howard missing clutch free throws and laughing about it. There was Joey Crawford making awful calls left and right. There was Indiana fumbling away nearly every opportunity to close the Lakers out. There was Kobe attempting to win the game by himself. In the end, George Hill (19 points) hit one more big shot than Bryant, and Hill’s high underhand shot off the glass that dropped in with .1 seconds left won it for the visitors, 79-77 … Read More »

In February of 2005, the Philadelphia 76ers made what was thought to be a blockbuster deal when they acquired Chris Webber from the Sacramento Kings. It was their last effort to pair Allen Iverson an All-Star-caliber player. The Sixers failed to do so in prior attempts with guys like Glenn Robinson, Toni Kukoc and even Dikembe Mutombo (although they had to make that deal and every Sixers fan knows why). C-Webb was 30 years old and only played in 23 games in the season prior due to knee injuries. Read More »

Some of us in the Dime offices are super excited about the Sixers’ potential moving forward, and a lot of that stems from their offseason moves. They became more conventional, dropped the small-ball approach, and now have a legitimate post-up option. But that doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll be as exciting. As this tape shows, they (which means “mostly Andre Iguodala“) put together some extra saucy highlights last season. Read More »

Building an Olympic team shouldn’t be like constructing an All-Star team. A one-off All-Star team doesn’t need chemistry, role players or defense (definitely not any defense). An Olympic U.S. team requires all that and a dose of humility, too, a point underscored after the 2004 bronze medal Olympic performance and the World Championship failures surrounding it. This summer has broken out the nostalgia from the 1992 team, and the otherworldly talent on it. Picking that squad must have been like having a dozen straight first-round picks in your fantasy league. No team, though, is perfect, even with that much leeway. Try as a committee might, there are always deserving players left out when it comes time to represent a country at the Olympics. Here then, are the best 20 players of the last 20 years who never made a U.S. Olympic team. Read More »

We’ve written a lot in this space about the league’s “one more try” theme going into this next NBA season with the amount of older players getting contracts. One of the more intriguing teams trying to put it together is Dallas. On Friday they won Elton Brand off waivers to join Chris Kaman and Darren Collison as new additions in Mavericks blue. We’re sure they’re excited to have a home but it’s only temporary: all those contracts are for one year just in case the Magic hold onto Dwight Howard and he enters free agency next summer. Read More »

Note to self: never ask an NBA star if his team, team A, can beat team B. These guys don’t become the greatest players in the world without having an overflow of confidence, blinders atop their eyes and extreme tunnel vision. If that’s a rule we should all live by, especially those in the sports media who have the access to routinely ask these questions, then an absolute law needs to be this: never ask Michael Jordan whether a team he’s on might lose. Just don’t do it. Well, someone did yesterday, repeating what Kobe Bryant said about the aforementioned Dream Team vs. Team USA argument. What was MJ’s response? Laughter. Read More »

Crank up the Willenium because Ray Allen is Miami bound and needs a welcome. Just when we thought all the pieces were coming back together for the Celtics, their sharpshooter is bolting for the Heat to win a title, at albeit lower price. It’s kind of a shock considering how comfortable he’d been in Boston and how well his group of teammates had worked together to get them to three conference finals and two NBA Finals during their time. And it’s another coup for Pat Riley and the Heat, even though we all know Allen, who turns 37 this month, is diminished physically and his defense was exposed like a glass house without curtains in the playoffs because of ankle trouble. Read More »