Happy St. Patty’s Day to everyone out there! I figured today would be the perfect day to post my first assessment of this year’s Tournament field, and for three reasons: (1) because people will be drunk enough to actually read what I am about to write, (2) because when I don’t get enough comments I can blame it on you people being too drunk to type, and (3) because if any of what you’re about to read turns out to be completely wrong, I can blame it on myself being drunk. Which I’m not, or am I… Read More »
Granted, watching basketball all the time is part of my job, but it still amazes me how many people don’t (or rarely) watch college hoops until the NCAA Tournament. Because of such inexcusable ignoring of America’s best spectator sport (if you ask me), during the Big Dance I usually get peppered with “Who is that guy?” or “Who does [Team X] got?” questions.
Some of them make sense — even I can’t say I’ve seen Wofford or UC Santa Barbara play this year — but a lot of the players who slip under the mainstream radar don’t deserve the anonymity. After giving your four Players to Watch from the Midwest and South regions yesterday, here’s the West: Read More »
Yesterday was weird. For the last year or so, one of the running jokes in the Dime office has been that the Magic are collectively too jacked for one NBA team. We’d already nicknamed Dwight Howard “The Centaur” for obvious reasons, then you got J.J. Redick looking like an MTV “True Life: I’m a Jersey Shore Bodybuilder” alum, Pietrus and Jameer on swole, Anthony Johnson dunking on cats at 49 years old, and even Skip seemed to get more cut-up as soon as he got to Orlando. When they picked up Brandon Bass, it kicked up the too-diesel talk all over again. But then yesterday, when news broke that one of the Magic players had tested positive for a performance-enhancing drug, it turned out to be one of the guys we never talked about: Rashard Lewis … Read More »
Our friend J.E. Skeets of Ball Don’t Lie posted quotes from an interview that Lebron James did with the National Association of Black Journalists Sports Task Force on everything everyone wants to hear about from ‘Bron.
All this waiting and debating over Lamar Odom’s future, and he ends up getting about one Aston Martin more than Marvin Williams money? The biggest remaining free agent chip (again, all due respect to Allen Iverson) was taken off the table yesterday, as Odom agreed to a four-year, $33 million deal with the Lakers. That immediately puts L.A. back on top as the odds-on favorite to win the 2010 NBA championship, ahead of the Orlandos, San Antonios, Clevelands and Bostons who have spent the offseason making big moves specifically to topple Kobe’s squad. (Wish we could say the same for Denver, but they’re apparently in chillin’ mode.) … And speaking of teams not doing anything, what does the Odom signing do to Dwyane Wade’s psyche? 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 »
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 »
