While Grizzlies GM Chris Wallace stated this weekend that the signing of Jamaal Tinsley had “nothing to do with the Iverson situation,” AI’s absence in Memphis is like a giant elephant in the room. For Grizzlies owner Michael Heisley, he’s about ready to give up on the zoo altogether. Read More »

They’re panicking in Los Angeles. Or something close to it. While you could reasonably write off Friday’s blowout loss in Denver to tired legs from a back-to-back and the high altitude, there aren’t many excuses the Lakers can make after the Rockets (who were supposed to stink this year, remember?) went into Staples and thoroughly outplayed the champs … Trevor Ariza was the main story going into the game. He received his ‘09 championship ring in his first trip back to L.A. and was playing in front of his hometown crowd, but by the end it was all about Aaron Brooks. Read More »

Even with training camp starting next week, there are still guys out there looking for jobs. And while the opportunity to get a non-guaranteed deal for the chance to even fight for a roster spot gets slimmer and slimmer, there are definitely more free agents left on the market than jobs available. Take a look at who’s left: Read More »

While Miami waits for Lamar Odom to decide if he’d rather look at sun-dipped Rodeo Drive honeys or sun-dipped South Beach honeys during timeouts for the next 4-5 years, another possible Plan B in case they don’t get Odom became unavailable. The Hawks re-signed Marvin Williams for $40 million over five years — kind of steep for a guy who wasn’t gonna get $8M a year from anyone else, but not the worst move in the world considering Marvin is a big contributor for a still-developing core unit in Atlanta. Read More »

The summer league re-runs were fine, but nobody would’ve complained if NBA TV sent some cameras down to Vegas last night and aired the Team USA mini-camp exhibition game. Rudy Gay (27 pts) and Kevin Durant (20 pts, 8 rebs) were the stars of the show, with Brook Lopez (18 pts, 5 rebs) also turning in an impressive performance … There could be three or four spots open for the 2010 World Championship: We can see Boozer and Tayshaun being gently asked to step aside, Jason Kidd calling it an international career, and Kobe even taking a break after another long playoff run and finally getting that pinky fixed. Read More »

Everybody’s still waiting on Lamar Odom and the Lakers to reconcile — it’s like sitting through three seasons of “Flavor of Love” when you know Flavor Flav is just gonna stay with his baby’s mother in the end — but in the meantime, perhaps the second-biggest free agent left on the board is now off. Andre Miller agreed to a deal with the Blazers that is rumored to be worth $22 million over three years … Depending on what you think of Jerryd Bayless‘ game, point guard was one of the few weaker areas on a deep Portland roster. Miller allows Steve Blake to go from one of the lower-tier starting PG’s in the League to one of the best backups, and Bayless can step into that role of off-the-bench scoring combo guard that every team seems to need these days. Read More »

Thursday’s NBA news wire looked like the brainstorm meeting for an after-school special. First, with the promotion for LeBron James‘ quasi-autobiography (Shooting Stars, co-written with Buzz Bissinger of Friday Night Lights fame) underway, the big bombshell — and perfect cover-up for the Jordan Crawford thing — was ‘Bron Clinton revealing he smoked weed once in high school. In a book that mostly focuses on his high school career, LBJ also wrote about dealing with fame at a young age. “We had become big-headed jerks, me in particular,” James said. “And we are to blame for that, but so are adults who treated us that way and then sat back and smugly watched the self-destruction.” … Read More »

Classic example of why playing in New York makes you automatically more relevant than you should be: Stephon Marbury’s career from 2008 to 2009, a.k.a. As The Truck Turns.

While Steph was going through his soap opera with the Knicks, there was another (arguably better at this stage) NBA point guard (an NYC native, coincidentally) going through almost the exact same drama with his team and being similarly cast as the villain. But because that team was the Indiana Pacers, that player, Jamaal Tinsley, quietly disappeared. There were no “SportsCenter” updates, no newspaper blogs, no YouTube-friendly interviews, no uStream feeds, no Twitter followers. When the Pacers exiled Tinsley this past season, he simply ceased to exist on the NBA landscape. Read More »

As predictable as the mainstream media/gossip page hype was concerning the now-infamous Jordan Crawford-on-LeBron dunk tape (”OMG!! Lebron got dunked on by an AMATEUR!!”), even more predictable was the fact that when the dunk was finally revealed to the public, it would be supremely anticlimactic. If you haven’t seen it yet, check it out HERE … Long non-story short, it was a two-hander that Crawford caught while cutting through the lane while LeBron came over from the right side just a little too late. Nothing you haven’t seen LeBron do to 50 random guys around the League, but of course it got blown up 10-fold because of the LePruder Film controversy. Read More »

When the NBA rolled out its Top 10 plays of the ‘08-09 season, I thought it’d be cool to do my own list of the Top 10 players of the season. But when that got too bloated — I had like 30 “honorable mentions” — I decided to break it down by position and go beyond just the NBA.

Let’s (hopefully) clear up one thing first: This is NOT a “best players” list. If you see John Wall ahead of Chris Paul here, I’m NOT saying the high schooler is better than the NBA All-Star. Instead, I’m looking at the whole picture: Who had an overall better season? Who made the biggest impact on their level? Who put the biggest stamp on the game of basketball, from high school to college to the pros? Who made this season his own? So with that, here are my Top 10 — not “10 best” — point guards from the ‘08-09 season. Read More »