One was a top-10 pick in the 2011 NBA Draft. The other was the NBA’s version of Mr. Irrelevant; the last pick in the 2011 Draft. When the Kings selected Jimmer Fredette out of BYU the notion was that the pick coming 50 slots later wouldn’t mean much. Read More »

Some teams get rusty with a seven-day delay like Miami was coming off of. The Heat got nastier while still being down an All-Star with Chris Bosh gone. Portland got run out of its own gym, 107-93, as the team still trying to find itself ran into a buzzsaw of a team that’s discovering how vicious it can be. Dwyane Wade (33 points, 10 assists) had a big follow block that led to Mike Miller’s three on the other end to go up five in the second. If you liked that, the James-Wade combo platter included a two-on-one fast-break alley-oop to LeBron that had Portlanders covering their mouths. Read More »

Nothing hurts more than losing your spot at the gym because you lost to a bunch of random dudes. That’s what happened to the Lakers last night in Milwaukee. With Stephen Jackson corporate thuggin’ it off-court (suspended for verbal abuse of an official), Andrew Bogut out with his yearly injury and Brandon Jennings playing more passively than at any point over the past month, the Lakers took body blows from Drew Gooden, Mike Dunleavy and Ersan Ilyasova before finally falling 100-89. Read More »

Growing up, Jimmer Fredette always dreamed of playing in the NBA. Years later, after being named college basketball’s Player of the Year by almost every outlet, he achieved more than he could have ever dreamed. The Making of Jimmer tells the story of how Jimmer came to conquer the world of college hoops, as well as the trials and tribulations he encountered along the way. Check out the trailer: Read More »

Do you need a point guard? With so many little guys infiltrating the NBA these days, you’d think many teams would be aching to ship off some of their smaller contributors. But for every five me-first, get-my-own, shoot-‘till-my-arm-is-numb lil’ guys, we might have one legit point guard left. They’re a dying breed, even as teams line their benches with quick-hitting spark plugs. At this point, there are a few guys available, and you take what you can get – shoot-first or not – as long as they can run an offense. Read More »

When Kyrie Irving was chosen No. 1 in the 2011 NBA Draft, he knew his rookie year would be impacted by the league’s lockout. He just didn’t know how great that impact would be. After his close brush with unemployment, the Rookie of the Year front-runner can now resume the business of proving he belongs here. Read More »

Beast of the Night: Ty Lawson finished with 25 points, four rebounds, three assists, eight steals and two three-pointers last night in a loss to the Trail Blazers. He shot 63 percent (10-16) from the field, 75 percent (3-4) from the free-throw line and had two turnovers. Lawson is off to a very solid start in his first three games of the season. Though he’s not dishing out many assists (3.0 per game), he’s shooting like a center (62 percent from the field), hitting threes (1.7 per game) and thieving like a maniac (4.0 per game). There’s little standing in his way to giving his owners top 30 value this season. Read More »

When I first met Tyreke Evans five years ago, I came away unsure that the 6-foot-6 high school sophomore could dunk.

I mean, he could dunk – at his height, with natural athleticism and arms long enough to box with God, he could definitely get himself above the rim – but next to the aerial showmanship of Class of 2008 peers such as DeMar DeRozan, Willie Warren, Devin Ebanks and even little Brandon Jennings, Tyreke’s arsenal of jams was like Duck Hunt compared to Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. During an afternoon-long photo shoot for the cover of Dime #24, Tyreke wowed me with 30-foot jump shots. But when he was asked to dunk on camera for some mid-air shots, the letdown was jarring. Read More »

In the last decade, the NBA has transformed from being a big man’s league into a guard’s league. Although frontcourts have always, and will always be the foundation of a winning team, recently franchises have found it much more difficult to build an elite frontline than putting together a competitive 1-2 punch. Ultimately, putting together a dominant frontcourt is what separates the good teams from the great ones, because in today’s game every team has talented guards. Frankly, each team has a backcourt that can outplay its opponent on any given night, which is why it is so difficult to pick five particular tandems as the best up-and-comers in the League. Read More »

New Jersey will be coming for that NYC crown soon enough, but at least for now, the Knicks are still the big brother. Even if it was preseason, New York gets bragging rights for at least a few more weeks, beating the Nets in Newark 92-83. While we can’t take too much away from a preseason game – c’mon, Renaldo Balkman led everyone with 20 – both teams got some nice contributions from their role players. Rookie Iman Shumpert (16 points) outplayed every other perimeter player for the Knicks, and rookie Marshon Brooks (10 points) and Anthony Morrow (15 points) put in work from the perimeter … At least offensively, Amar’e Stoudemire (10 points) and Carmelo Anthony (17 points in three quarters) looked pretty in-tune for the first preseason game. Read More »