After having one of their family members break his leg in half right in front of their bench, it was only fitting that this tournament, this season would end with the Louisville Cardinals winning a championship for the school (its first in 27 years), for Rick Pitino (who found out yesterday he’ll be inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame), and for Kevin Ware (for obvious reasons). Read More »

After Carmelo Anthony hung 50 points on the Miami Heat, we asked whether he was filming his own “Better Basketball: How To Score From Deep” DVD. And again, last night, we don’t think Spike Lee was putting together any “Carmelo Doin’ Work” videos, but someone really should’ve capitalized off this. Anthony was clipping the wings off the Hawks, and had an assembly line of defenders getting buckets in the face. Read More »

We’re only a few days away from one of the best weekends in college basketball. With Louisville, Michigan, Wichita State and Syracuse set to go to battle this weekend, expect to hear a whole lot of Cinderella, zone defense and Trey Burke talk. It’s inevitable. Hopefully, the games live up to the billing. But in all likelihood, none of them will make this list. Read More »

Sportswriting often speaks about ephemeral events in inflated, grandiose terms. Just about all of us who love sports and attempt to write or speak about it are guilty of this at one time or another. Prisoners of the moment, we forget, as time passes, about the events that we once deemed so significant, the result of some combination of our collective societal attention deficit and the actual triviality of the events. Read More »

Despite Kobe Bryant‘s ruthless pursuit of victories — which translate this season into simply, “the playoffs” — he can live with an opponent playing just as hard as he. What he can’t stomach is an opponent straying from basketball’s unwritten rules to do so. Case in point, last night in Atlanta. Read More »

Jalen Rose told some funny stories in the past. But now he’s offering advice. Dwight Howard says he cries a lot, and admits he’s scared to shoot jumpers during games because he doesn’t want to disappoint everyone and miss. In this video, Rose gives the big man some advice on how to man up. Read More »

Just as it’s easy to start handing out 2013 championships rings to the Lakers in September, it’s also oddly not difficult to downplay their roster. Steve Nash is old, Dwight Howard has a dreaded back problem, Kobe shoots like he’s still playing with Smush and Kwame, and Pau Gasol might not play hard for months at a time. Read More »

We all know the stories about how Vince Carter‘s time in Toronto got ugly. Towards the end, it felt like we were seeing more pouting than dunking from Half-Man, Half-Amazing, and the friction on both sides became overbearing. Not long after he told the world he tried to hurt Kobe on purpose during the 2000 NBA Finals, Jalen Rose takes us behind-the-scenes again to talk about the time when his teammate, VC, and his coach, Sam Mitchell, got into a heated wrestling match. Read More »

From his comfy seat behind the mic at ESPN, Jalen Rose now feels okay admitting he probably took Kobe Bryant out on purpose during the 2000 NBA Finals. Let’s set the scene: Game 2 of the Finals, the Lakers are up 1-0 and looking like a sure bet to take home a ring because of the way Shaquille O’Neal was devouring Pacer body parts throughout the first game. Nine minutes into Game 2, Rose was just beginning a 30-point night when he stepped underneath a Bryant jumper. Read More »

For the first time since perhaps the days of the Human Highlight Film, people soon might actually want to go to Atlanta and check out the Hawks. The basketball team, stuck in the longest “decent but never good enough to scare anyone” mode of any NBA team, possibly ever, is apparently going to go after Dwight Howard if he becomes available as a free agent next summer. Since Howard can’t make up his mind and new Orlando GM Rob Hennigan struggles with the idea behind the word “trade,” the chances Howard plays out the year in Disney World, the Magic have the most dysfunctional NBA season we’ve ever seen, Dwight beats up three or four different Disney characters and ends up FINALLY leaving next summer are looking stronger than ever. Read More »