Leave it to my city to turn a friendly game of basketball into a political battlefield.

At the same time that a legitimate proposal to build a new NBA arena is being kicked around the Seattle City Council, an event like the Jamal Crawford Summer Pro Am All-Star Game takes on a heavier meaning: A community rally of sorts for arena supporters and starving Supersonics fans to point out basketball’s role in the fabric of the Emerald City, but also an opportunity for arena opponents to say, “Why do we need to build a $400 million basketball facility when you guys seem perfectly happy here?” Read More »

Did the Heat lose in the Finals last year because LeBron played like he was scared? Did they lose because J.J. Barea went off? Did they lose because Dirk did everything outside of morphing into Larry Bird to stop them? Dwyane Wade doesn’t believe any of that was the real reason they lost. The Heat lost because of misplaced emotion. Wade and his teammates wanted to win to spite people because so much of the public actively hated them. Public Enemy No. 1. Even Ice Cube in his heyday never felt this hated. And yet Wade told Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski on his radio show that the team was wrongly fueled by hate, and didn’t win the championship because of that. Do you buy it? Read More »

What’s the difference between 82 and 78? Four. In the grand scheme of most things, that’s not a whole lot, especially if we’re talking NBA games. An 82-game schedule pretty much went out the window after last week, but the NY Post is saying if a deal is finalized sometime this week, we could be looking at a 78-game affair. We’ll take it. They’re saying it has to be an even number of games, and that David Stern is willing to push the season back enough to fit in as many games as possible, maybe even push a possible NBA Finals Game 7 to just a few days before the draft. That might affect the way the games are played, but for us it just means more basketball packed into a shorter time. That wouldn’t be such a bad thing … Read More »

Parity is real in college basketball. For the Dime editorial team, that was never more clear than a couple days ago when somebody pitched the idea that we make up lists of our Top-10 favorite players from each the Sweet Sixteen programs, and we quickly realized there aren’t that many tradition-rich options on the board. Ranking your 10 favorite Baylor basketball players would be like making an all-time Charlotte Bobcats team. Read More »

The Washington Huskies are stacked this year. Let me start over. The Washington Huskies lost arguably their two best players from last season and are still stacked.

After saying goodbye to seniors Justin Dentmon, the 2009 Pac-10’s most improved player, and Jon Brockman, UW’s all-time leading rebounder, Washington is still predicted to roll through its west coast rivals thanks to freshman phenom Abdul Gaddy. Read More »