As much as we want to give credit to Kobe Bryant for icing the Lakers win in Brooklyn last night, L.A. should throw the Nets a bone. Brooklyn did everything they could outside of express mailing the W to Hollywood. Down the stretch, the Nets endured a couple of bad shots from Brook Lopez – one was an ugly airball – on poorly executed plays. Then, Gerald Wallace threw away an inbounds pass. Read More »

Yep, another night, another wild J.R. Smith highlight. Watch what he did to Ian Mahinmi last night when the big man tried to get in his way on a drive to the tin: Read More »

Portland fell into a lull for a quarter and a half — usually a death knell against a team like Miami — but still knocked off the Heat, 92-90, because they awoke twice at key moments to get back into position to stuff the champs at home. The first came to end the third quarter to slice into Miami’s 12-point lead, and then another finished the fourth. Read More »

As Seth Rosenthal of the great Knicks blog Poasting and Toasting says: “Twitter has single-handedly made the NBA offseason much, much more tolerable. We used to just sit and wait for news while the Knicks were off doing whatever it is they do during the summer. Now, the players report on their own activities and we get a pretty regular window into their offseason activities.”

This was proved true last week, when we brought you DeShawn Stevenson’s kitchen ATM which may be topped this week by either Jordan Crawford, JaVale Mcgee or Ian Mahinimi. Read More »

The NBA unveiled their NBA All-Defensive First Team yesterday and it looked like this: Tony Allen and Chris Paul at the guards, LeBron James and Serge Ibaka at the forwards, and Dwight Howard in the middle. No Andre Iguodala. No Tyson Chandler – the NBA’s Defensive Player of the Year. That doesn’t make much sense right? Now, the NBA has released their 10 best defensive plays of the year, and Chandler doesn’t make that list either. He’s not feeling the love at all. Read More »

Washington had another typical run in Dallas last night: While they did lose to drop to 9-32, they provided a couple of sick highlights. Here’s Nick Young absolutely owning Ian Mahinmi on the baseline like he disrespected his family or something. Young had 15 in 33 minutes off the bench last night. Read More »

All things being equal, the NBA’s best sixth men would rather be starting, of course. On other teams, there’s a chance they certainly would be. You don’t have to look much further than Jason Terry. He’s been the second-best player on a championship team and one of the fourth quarter shoulders the Dallas Mavericks have leaned on for the past eight seasons. Is he good enough to start? Of course. Even though his numbers are down this year (13.9 points, 41 percent shooting), Terry’s been hitting big jumpers and spot up threes for the past decade. As a starter, he’d be a nice player. As a bench player, he became a staple of what it means to be a great sixth man. Read More »

You had to know it would happen with 66 games in 120 days. Someone was going to fall off. Surprises are a double-edged sword; Somebody has to fall. Besides Miami – who despite the loss last night look like the runaway best team in the NBA – who else can you say has really been dominating? I’ll give you Chicago. But after that Portland has been blown out at home and on the road to two dysfunctional teams with superstars on the edge of town (Phoenix, Orlando). Denver is feasting on the weak but struggling against talent. Atlanta, who knows what’s going on with them? Read More »

Say hello to the bad guy. We have a new beast in the West. In probably the most physical game of the NBA season so far, the Blazers showed why everyone is so frightened of playing them up in the Northwest by punking the Clippers and Blake Griffin, 105-97. With the NBA’s newest A-List team threatening them over and over, Portland answered every call. Between Gerald Wallace, LaMarcus Aldridge and Marcus Camby, they did work on Griffin, holding him to the most up-and-down 18 and 12 night you’ll ever see. Read More »

The first task for fantasy owners looking at the Dallas Mavericks is to take extra care to separate reality from fantasy. Yes, the Mavs were the underdogs-turned-NBA-champions in June, but that means absolutely nothing for fantasy basketball purposes. Assuming the team can reassemble itself into something resembling the 2010-11 champs, the Mavs will have one first-round stud and a handful of other usable parts, many of whom will be well into their 30s when the next season starts. Get those coughs out of your system and read on to see what the Mavericks can offer to fantasy owners next season. Read More »