This all started a week ago when I stumbled on an old article about Rajon Rondo‘s freakish rebounding numbers. Friends got to talking. People got to arguing. Everyone got to debating. Now, I’m looking through box scores from all over trying to find the craziest numbers. Honestly though, it doesn’t get much more unique than a quadruple-double. Read More »

As practice gyms remain dark and abandoned, droves of NBA players are headed all over the planet to fine-tune their skills. European teams are champing at the bit as Americans have finally arrived to wow audiences overseas. With players from everywhere invading today’s NBA, the transition for these athletes should be seamless. However, it wasn’t so long ago that finding a foreign player on an NBA court was well, downright foreign. Over the past 20 years, the NBA has seen a mass influx of international stars, and this team is a compilation of the best. Read More »

I think the best way to ponder our own inevitable passage into physical decline is to watch it happen to those who would seem invincible to such mortal constraints – and observe how they handle it.

I stayed up late the other night watching a documentary on HBO on Sugar Ray Robinson, and though I was thrilled at the dizzying heights he reached during arguably the greatest career a prizefighter has ever known, I was more deeply affected by what came later. Read More »

When I had a chance to preview NBA 2K12 this week, I honestly came in ready for a let down. NBA 2K11 was out of this world, plain and simple. Without question the best sports game of the year, and arguably the best video game of the year. But even though the hype for 2012 was there, I wasn’t quite buying into it. Oh, how I was wrong. Read More »

An essential element in the cult of Michael Jordan is the fact that the man never lost an NBA Finals. It’s how we choose to remember him: Perfect. 6-0 in the endgame. Unassailable. In doing so, we place him in the tiniest of circles, that being multiple champions who never lost a title. Read More »

It feels funny actually writing about a player who ISN’T thinking about going overseas. As marcus the great wrote in Smack today: wouldnt it be more of a news flash if we reported on players NOT interested in playing overseas? i know its slow and all, but every day its like Player X might look into a foreign league.” Well, here you go: Dwight Howard, despite reports that he was interested in China, will not be looking to play overseas. The stipulations the CBA put in regarding NBA players (no opt-out clauses) has caused the big man to back off. So instead, he’ll do the only sensible thing it seems for NBA superstars to do nowadays: go to Hakeem Olajuwon camp. Read More »

Professional athletes are involved in a cutthroat business. In a profession where people believe too much is guaranteed, so much is not. Marquis Daniels is one of the recent players who fell tragically to the “what have you done for me lately” mentality. In a routine regular season game in February, Daniels collided with the Magic’s Agent Zero and the famed parquee floor of the Boston Garden. After being rendered temporarily paralyzed, doctors told Marquis that he bruised his spinal cord and, on top of that, was suffering from spinal stenosis, a narrowing of the spinal cord. Read More »

The best arguments are the ones you can’t prove. And today on First Take, Skip Bayless called Deion Sanders – the man who recently suited up his new Hall of Fame bust with his signature bandana – the best athlete of all-time. Neon Deion was by far the best cornerback of all-time, maybe the best return man, a great baseball player and in high school, he was an all-state basketball player in Florida which is like being the smartest kid at an Ivy. Read More »

By now you’re familiar with our “Pass the Mic” series – a feature where he give the pen and pad to some of our best readers to let them drop knowledge on the NBA. We’ve had previous posts on everything from game-saving rule changes to essays on how money is ruining the world’s greatest game to imagining what life would be like without Mike. Today, we’re turning the space over to Michael Kochan, who reflects on what REALLY happened in the 1994 NBA Finals. Read More »

After a season that saw him take his game to another level while everyone else around the Orlando organization dropped about four levels, Dwight Howard wants to meet up with Hakeem again. The Magic center says he plans to meet up with Olajuwon again at some point this summer because if he wants to continue to meet his goals and get better, meeting up with the Dream is necessary. Last year, Howard officially tapped into some of the incredible potential he has. And while it’s hard to expect guys who’ve been in the league for as long as he has to drastically improve, watching Howard all last year surely felt like he had turned a corner. Read More »