Beast of the Night: Dirk Nowitzki not only hit the game-winner in Milwaukee last night, he also finished with 32 points, 1 three, 11 rebounds, 3 assists, 2 steals and 1 block while shooting 48 percent (12-25) from the field, 88 percent (7-8) from the line and didn’t have any turnovers. He’s the hottest fantasy commodity to come out of Germany since Heidi Klum. Read More »

As this edition of Smack is being written, ESPN’s 24-hour marathon of college hoops is underway. Writing about basketball in the middle of the night while live basketball is showing on TV with no end in sight for hours? This is the life … Are the Hawks really this good? When we ranked Atlanta 5th yesterday on Dime’s weekly NBA Hit List — maybe the highest we’d ever had them ranked, at least in the last 2-3 years — the response was surprisingly strong that Joe Johnson and Josh Smith and crew should have been in the top three, maybe even holding the No. 1 spot. True, the Hawks had won four straight going into Monday’s schedule, but they’ve always been one of those Zab Judah/Asafa Powell-type teams: Read More »

An NBA championship can do a lot of different things for a lot of different people.

If you’re a Hall of Fame-bound veteran who’s carried mediocre teams for years, e.g. Kevin Garnett in ‘08, a ring can be the final piece of validation to cap a stellar career. If you’re an up-and-coming superstar like D-Wade in ‘06, it’s a standard-bearer by which to set future goals and a quick booster into the next level of fame. Read More »

Going into this season, I honestly didn’t see much in store for the Dallas Mavericks. When we were putting together Dime’s NBA season preview for issue #53, one of my write-ups left on the cutting room floor was titled, “Last Chance Workout,” focusing on the Mavs. And while my Dallas team preview on this site put their ceiling at Western Conference Finals, I was thinking their destination was closer to the basement: “Quiet first-round exit.” Read More »

During the ‘09 conference finals, Shaq showed up at one of Orlando’s home games against the Cavs, to the chagrin of a lot of people associated with the Magic. Last night Shaq was back in the building; this time wearing a Cavs uniform. Throw in the tension leftover from when Diesel was talking greasy about Dwight Howard and Stan Van Gundy last year, and you know the fans had a lot of venom toward Big Witness Protection. He played into it, too, doing stuff like leaving his hand in the air extra-long after a free throw. And the crowd was even more pissed when Cleveland walked out with a win … Read More »

In honor of our country’s wonderful military veterans on this Veterans Day, today we’ll take a look at some NBA veterans, in no particular order, who have managed to remain relevant to fantasy basketball after all these years. For the purposes of this post, “veterans” will be defined as those players who have played at least 12 seasons entering this one. Read More »

Don’t let the fact that Chauncey Billups shows little emotion on the court fool you into thinking he’s any less fiery of a competitor than Kobe, Dirk, LeBron, Wade or any other big-time clutch player who punctuates his daggers by making funny faces. You have to be iceberg to have hit as many fourth-quarter threes and last-second free throws as Mr. Big Shot has hit, but you also have to have a fire inside you to show up in the kind of shape he does every year and bring it at the high level he brings it every night … After Chauncey (17 pts, 6 asts, 3 stls) made the go-ahead free throw with 0.6 seconds left in last night’s Nuggets/Bulls game, he missed the second FT on purpose, giving the Bulls only 0.3 to make a game-winner. Read More »

Erick Dampier was almost the headline photo for today’s Smack. Seriously. In the late stages of the fourth quarter of Mavs/Hornets, Damp (16 pts, 14 rebs, 3 blks) was the most clutch player in the building, getting a putback off a Dirk Nowitzki miss to break a tie, catching an alley-oop from Jason Kidd on the next possession, then scoring on another tip-in with 16 seconds left. That should’ve been the dagger, but Dallas killed themselves at the free-throw line in the final seconds: Jason Terry missed one after Chris Paul got T’d up for arguing a push-off call (CP had pushed off on J.J. Barea like 3-4 times in the fourth, but didn’t get called for it until what looked like N.O.’s last-chance possession), then Barea missed two freebies to keep the Hornets alive. Read More »

The worst part about preseason polls is that voters adopt a loyalty to those pre-determined spots even after the season shows us some of those picks were just wrong. College football gets it the worst, but the same often applies for the NBA; the only saving grace is that, at the end of the day, voter opinion doesn’t matter because the NBA has a playoff.

That said, we ignored making a preseason NBA Hit List power ranking, so as not to influence this first week’s edition. Counting down from worst to first… Read More »

Breaking down the first-week performances of the serious 2010 title contenders, Spurs announcer Sean Elliott messed up his words and said the Lakers took an “old-fashioned butt cooking” from the Mavs on Friday night. As it turns out, that was the best way to describe what the Spurs were about to do to the Kings on Saturday … Despite Sacramento starting probably the worst frontcourt in the League (Jason Thompson, Sean May, Desmond Mason), it was one of those nights where Tim Duncan didn’t have to do much and could let the smaller guys go to work. Read More »