Photo. Chenoa Maxwell
Other than Shaq dominating Marcus Camby on the game’s first few possessions — or as Suns announcer Eddie Johnson called it, “gangsta’ing” Marcus Camby — Phoenix couldn’t get anything going against the Nuggets in the first quarter last night. Guys were forcing too many bad shots on offense and giving up too many […]

Carmelo Anthony (photo. Mannion)
They looked good for a half, but the Mavs eventually folded under Denver’s hailstorm of buckets and dropped another game to a playoff-contending team. (They’re 0-9 against above-.500 squads since the Jason Kidd deal.) You don’t want to harp on Dirk’s absence, especially when Josh Howard scored 30 and the Kidd-Terry-Stackhouse backcourt […]

Trevor Ariza (Photo. Lynette Estair)
Popular sentiment following the NBA’s latest batch of Christmas Day games is that the Lakers are now a legit contender. Are they really? For now, we’d have to say so. The Lakers have the best player on the planet in Kobe. They have arguably the best coach in the game in […]

Channing Frye (Photo. Jeff Forney)
The NBA’s hottest team finally fell in Portland last night. The Hornets were leading the Blazers at halftime behind a monster performance from David West, but once the second half started, Martell Webster force-fed Peja a faceful of jumpers, and the next thing you know, N.O. was down double-digits. A frustrated […]

Topic of Tuesday conversation
(Photo. Jonathan Mannion)
It’s like Christmas Eve around here, today being is the day before Opening Day. Pretty light schedule tomorrow: Spurs vs. Blazers, Lakers vs. Rockets, and Warriors vs. Jazz. The first two are on national TV, so if you don’t have League Pass, don’t worry. And not only is the Utah […]

J.R. Smith (Photo. Stephen Hill)
Your J.R. Smith Trade Watch update: With ‘Melo, Iverson, Nene and K-Mart among those sitting out for a short-handed Denver squad in last night’s game against Detroit, J.R. got about 25 minutes of burn with which to help or hurt his trade value. (The illustrious trio of Von Wafer, Anthony Roberson […]

Photo. Gary Land
A few days after copping MVP of the FIBA Europe championships, Andrei Kirilenko is stirring things up in Utah. Going off a translation of his Russian-language blog, AK-47 says Jerry Sloan’s “style and system is not suitable” for him, and says he’s already gone to the Jazz front office and told them he […]

Good for Charlie Bell. We’ve been arguing his case in Smack for a while now, and it looks like he’s finally about to get paid and be able to stay in the States. The Heat stepped up with a 5-year, $18 million offer sheet, which is bigger than the offer Charlie was getting from Greece […]

CP’s second Dime cover
It’s getting a little ridiculous how everyone is not only taking the “Portland shouldn’t have drafted Greg Oden” stance now, but acting like they were saying Oden was the wrong pick back in June. Come on. The vast majority of you were saying Oden should have been #1 at the time — […]