It’s the never-ending NBA dilemma: Young teams don’t win championships, but old teams don’t have bright futures. So how do you balance the roster if you want to win now and keep winning later? … The Spurs may be figuring it out. In last night’s win over the Knicks, we saw the old San Antonio regime mesh with the new: Tim Duncan (21 points, 16 rebounds, 5 blocks) turned in a throwback performance and dominated Amar’e Stoudemire (18 points, 15 rebounds, 4 steals). Those numbers might not show it, but Duncan and DeJuan Blair (18 points, 13 rebounds) had STAT flustered the entire game … Read More »
Kwame Brown was cooked before he even had a chance. While the No. 1 pick of the 2001 NBA Draft can be blamed for a lot of missteps on his road to becoming one of the most notorious draft busts of all-time, the biggest (and most overlooked) factor in Kwame’s stunted NBA growth was that the expectations for him changed in between the night he was drafted and the night his rookie season began.
The problem? Michael Jordan the front-office exec decided to come back to the League as MJ the player. Read More »
Nothing hurts like getting beat in a video game when someone like Richard Jefferson goes off for 14 dunks in one game. It’s a continuous, unending slap in the face. Being at the receiving end of a Kobe Bryant 65-point game is one thing. But losing because your opponent discovers the sweet spot for some scrub three-point shooter is worse than jury duty.
In real NBA games, coaches want certain guys doing certain things and everyone has a role. In the gaming world, if you want Kwame Brown to drop 25 a game, you could probably make it happen (he actually catches passes). Read More »
Surely you can understand why the Miami Heat have dominated so much of the NBA news coverage these days. More than just the LeBron hoopla, Miami is a big story because, well, we’ve never seen anything like this: A franchise trying to build a dynasty from scratch in one summer. Once he had D-Wade, LeBron and Bosh locked in (Chris Bosh might as well change his name to “And Bosh” from now on, ’cause only the first two guys will be switching spots on the marquee), Pat Riley had to set about building an entire rest of the team; it wasn’t like the ’07-08 Celtics where they had pieces in place before adding Ray Allen and Kevin Garnett. Read More »
With less than two weeks before the NBA Draft, The Commercial-Appeal is reporting that there are a number of potential lottery picks who refuse to work out with the Grizzlies: Read More »
The Grizzlies were one of my favorite teams to watch this season. Not just because they employed my main man Zach Randolph and helped him get his first All-Star nod, but because I like seeing a young team begin to realize its potential.
While the Grizzlies ultimately fell short of the playoffs after hanging in there with the best in the West most of the season, their 40 wins was the most they’ve had since 2006, when Pau Gasol was the face of the franchise and Mike Fratello was the coach. The Oklahoma City Thunder occupied the spot as the NBA’s shiny new toy this year, but the Grizzlies were the silver medalists.
Going into the ’10-11 season, making the playoffs is a reasonable goal. While a couple of Memphis’ key players will be free agents this summer, they can still improve with a few smart moves: Read More »
Not trying to take anything away from the Celtics and the completeness of their domination, but Boston’s win last night wasn’t nearly as interesting as Cleveland’s loss. You already knew the story line going into the tiebreaker Game 5 would be whether this was LeBron‘s last home game “deep in the Q,” but you also have to remember what city we’re talking about here. This is potentially one more year where Cleveland had a championship-caliber squad — the Cavs, the Browns, the Indians, Bone Thugs-N-Harmony — and something went terribly wrong on the way to what seemed like a certain ‘chip … Things were fine until the Celtics went on a 15-0 run in the second quarter, capped by Paul Pierce‘s and-one layup. Read More »
A couple months ago, it looked like the Memphis Grizzlies were headed back to the playoffs. But in the volatile Western Conference, when the season ends in two weeks, it appears they’re going to be on the outside looking in. The problem is, all the teams in the playoffs now keep winning, and the Grizzlies have lost three in a row and are just 5-5 in their last 10 games. So with eight games left in the season, Memphis will have to try and win without their star center Marc Gasol, who is out for the rest of the season due to a torn neck muscle. This is not good. Read More »
Every great modern NBA center has had one. Dwight Howard had Patrick Ewing. Andrew Bynum had Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Even Kevin Love had Chris Dudley in high school. Now, the Memphis Grizzlies are thinking about bringing on Dikembe Mutombo to help them with Hasheem Thabeet. And I couldn’t think of a better scenario for the No. 2 pick in the Draft. Read More »
In case you forgot what he looked like, here’s some video of Hasheem Thabeet dominating the NBADL yesterday.
Depending on how you cut video footage, you can make anyone or anything look better, but the truth is that Thabeet doesn’t look that bad in these clips. Read More »
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