Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski was adamant last August that his second Olympic gold medal as Team USA head coach would be his last. Essentially everyone took him at his word, until a report three weeks ago by ESPN said that his Team USA boss didn’t Read More »

The defending NBA champion Miami Heat are 22-8 and the top team in the Eastern Conference. They’re second in the league in offensive efficiency, trailing only the super-hot Oklahoma City Thunder, and they possess not one, not two, but three players that can score 30 points on any given night (remember that asinine meme?). Not only that, but they have one of the best basketball players in the last 20 years and certainly the most dominant player in the game today with LeBron James. Read More »

There are established patterns to winning NBA Coach of the Year. You either guide a team with high expectations to its expected goal, stun with an eye-popping turnaround out of the Lottery or take a team from the playoff fringe into a team no one wants to face in the opening round by catching fire. We’ll call them the Excellence’s Status Quo, Out Of Nowhere, or Next Step plans to earning respect, respectively. With the curtain being drawn on the 2012-13 season tonight, Dime is projecting the major awards all week, and today we look at the top coach. Read More »

Free Darko has been the joking rallying cry since he was taken No. 2 ahead of, well, a ton of All-Stars. He’s such a bust the list gets even longer when fans start mocking. Darko Milicic, wasn’t he the guy in front of Sam Bowie, who was in front of the GOAT? Read More »

We thought it, too. When the Lakers bowed out of the Western Conference Semifinals in 2011 in acrimonious fashion against the Mavericks, it was at the front of our mind: Phil Jackson can’t go out like this, can he? Jackson, with his children in the stands wearing hats commemorating his 11 NBA titles as a coach, had dominated with cool precision in Chicago and Los Angeles. But now the Lakers were frustrated, knocking over J.J. Barea and turning any thought of playing D in Big D into a joke. Read More »

Throughout his career in the NBA Pat Riley has won. Besides Red Auerbach and Phil Jackson, no coach has been more successful and certainly no man has won as much while wearing the tripartite hats: player, coach and now general manager. The only caveat to all that winning is attempting to duplicate the feat with everyone gunning for you in the next year. Riley has had three chances to repeat with the Lakers and once – before this year – to repeat with the Heat. The hard-nosed and dictatorial demeanor earlier in his coaching career has mellowed with time, and his front office tactics have allowed him both the distance and the experience to construct (rather than instruct) his teams. Now he’ll get another chance to repeat, and for once, he won’t be coaching. Read More »

The last time USA Basketball chairman Jerry Colangelo wanted to secure a coaching commitment from Mike Krzyzewski, he had a pizza and a bottle of wine with the Duke coach. After winning gold in 2008 in Beijing, Colangelo needed to get Coach K to coach again in 2012 to mirror the commitments many of the players had made. Colangelo joked with reporters that he’ll try the same meal again after London regarding 2016′s head coaching spot, but don’t think it’s a formality the 65-year-old will accept. Read More »

The proverbial Gatorade bath may be more of a football thing, but Udonis Haslem decided to bring it to Miami last night right after the Heat captured the title. Normally this is a two-man job, but lack of actual Gatorade in the cooler reduced the need for man power – that, and Haslem didn’t have to raise the cooler too high considering he towers over Erik Spoelstra. And, as expected, Miami was drinking red Gatorade. Spoelstra, for his part, took it like a man and didn’t even bat an eye. Read More »

This is when we knew. Not when Mike Miller (23 points, 7-of-8 threes) was pouring threes in like a South Florida tropical storm. Not when LeBron James hung in the air for impossibly tough buckets, twice. Not when Derek Fisher‘s “flagrant” foul turned the tide finally in Miami’s favor. We knew this game had become Miami’s when LeBron gave Mario Chalmers (10 points, seven assists) a staredown during an incredible third-quarter stretch, up 25 points, to tell him Not now. Hold it in, and finish. Read More »

Russell Westbrook has heard it all. From analysts to other NBA players to wannabe coaches. Everyone has an opinion on how one of the NBA’s best young players should play, and it almost always differs from the hectic, erratic, aggressive style that seems to come so naturally to him. He might be one of the deadliest killers in the league, and yet people want him to change. Now, he’s hearing it from Dennis Rodman. Yep, the former NBA menace took a break from drinking Long Islands to add to the criticism of Westbrook in Game 2. Read More »