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 »

Christmas came early for the Lakers. Steve Nash is back, and he brought one of the Lakers’ most impressive wins of the season with him. L.A. had to fend off a list of issues to win against the Warriors: Jarrett Jack (29 points, 11 dimes) torching them, Dwight Howard foul trouble, a 14-point deficit, and Kobe Bryant (16-for-41 shooting, 34 points, 10 boards) shooting so often they classified his arms as unregistered firearms. Read More »

They say the only certainties in life are death and taxes. After watching the action Wednesday night, we can add one more: Carmelo is gonna give Brooklyn buckets. Three times Brooklyn and New York have matched up to battle for the rights to Gotham, and all three times, Gerald Wallace has walked off the court looking dazed and confused like he just took nine rounds of Money Mayweather hooks. ‘Melo wasn’t sure he’d even play last night because of an ankle, but said this was too big of a game to miss. Read More »

In all sports the basic concept is to beat your opposition. You never want to lose a game to anyone, but when your rival beats you there’s a different feel. When your rival beats you, there’s suddenly an everlasting second wind about you. When your rival beats you it feels like the whole world is laughing at you in shame. Read More »

The word “rival” is lost in the NBA today. Too often we see camaraderie between players on opposing teams. With the growing presence of AAU basketball, the players have gotten closer and closer.

AAU isn’t the only thing that brings the players together as one. The Olympic basketball experience has done it as well. Obviously when these guys are all on the same team, they must get along in some capacity, but the 2012 NBA champion Miami Heat were formed because of a rumored plan that was created during an Olympic run in 2008 by LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh. Read More »

It’s always been known that Knicks owner James Dolan loves Isiah Thomas, almost more than Dolan loves Cablevision. Thomas coached the Knicks into the Eastern Conference basement, got in legal trouble and generally sullied the name of one of the most famous franchises in all of sports, and yet the former Bad Boy floor general hanged above the heads of NYK execs and coaches all the time like a threat. Dolan even tried to hire Thomas back when he was still employed as a coach somewhere else (talk about a fall from grace — he was at Florida International) to be a consultant. Read More »

Colin Cowherd has really jumped on the anti-Michael Jordan train these days – not Cowherd himself, but bringing guests onto his ESPN Radio show to rebut the notion that MJ is the greatest ever. First it was Jim Boeheim making a mere suggestion that LeBron James might be a better player than MJ. And now it’s former NBAer John Salley, who said that MJ isn’t the greatest either. And, even worse, he names five players who he thinks were better. So for those of you counting at home, Michael Jordan isn’t one of the five greatest players ever. According to John Salley, that is. Read More »

Building an Olympic team shouldn’t be like constructing an All-Star team. A one-off All-Star team doesn’t need chemistry, role players or defense (definitely not any defense). An Olympic U.S. team requires all that and a dose of humility, too, a point underscored after the 2004 bronze medal Olympic performance and the World Championship failures surrounding it. This summer has broken out the nostalgia from the 1992 team, and the otherworldly talent on it. Picking that squad must have been like having a dozen straight first-round picks in your fantasy league. No team, though, is perfect, even with that much leeway. Try as a committee might, there are always deserving players left out when it comes time to represent a country at the Olympics. Here then, are the best 20 players of the last 20 years who never made a U.S. Olympic team. Read More »

These NBA Finals have twisted the narrative and archetypes we thought we knew going in like a double helix. We thought the notions of what the Miami Heat and Oklahoma City Thunder are were entangled deeply within them just like a strand of DNA. The pressure-cooker of these Finals has changed those so far. Miami has a 2-1 lead after the 91-85 win Sunday night at home, the first of its three there. Dwyane Wade (25 points, 7 and 7), Chris Bosh (10 points, 11 boards) and LeBron James (29 points, 14 boards) combined to score the final 15 points for Miami, which brought this thing back from the brink of a nine-point deficit. Read More »

Oklahoma City should show some love to Russell Westbrook for getting them back into first place in the West. The Thunder rolled on Milwaukee by 20 behind their superstar point guard. Westbrook destroyed the new look Buck backcourt, going for 26 easy points and seven rebounds in only 26 minutes. Kevin Durant added 19 and Thabo Sefolosha had a reverse dunk that even Kobe would’ve enjoyed … Who caught the Mike Dunleavy and Serge Ibaka tussle? Ibaka reached out to grab him by the shoulder, and Jr. busted out the most epic karate chop we’ve ever seen in an NBA game … The Thunder are back in first because Devin Harris got revenge, and Paul Millsap got freaky in the fourth. Read More »