Boston had every right to lose this game. They didn’t get into Atlanta until 4 a.m., and they fell behind big in the first half. By the second quarter, the Hawks’ announcers were asking, “Lets blow ‘em outta the building. Whadda ya say?” Lou Williams (28 points) came out and dropped 11 in the game’s first four minutes while hitting three triples, and Atlanta had the Celtics’ offense in a vice grip. Read More »

From Paul Pierce getting dropped multiple times to Chris Paul pulling off one of the nastiest crossovers we’ve ever seen against Cleveland, there were a lot of nice moves throughout the season’s opening month. Check out this list of ten. Read More »

Playing the role of Jeff Teague (a small Hawks guard viciously dunking on opposing big men) tonight is Lou Williams.

Watch him get Psycho T here: Read More »

The Miami Heat ascended to the NBA’s mountaintop this past summer, and now have an even larger target on their back entering the 2012-2013 NBA season. They stand firmly in the way of anyone else in the Eastern Conference who hopes to go to the Finals. What’s worse for the other Eastern Conference hopefuls is that the Heat have additional firepower in the form of Ray Allen and Rashard Lewis. But… the games still need to be played and in this NBA landscape, nothing is promised – not even a return trip to South Beach for next June’s Finals. Read More »

Preseason is when teams want to work through mistakes and identify the most pressing issues. Camps have now given way to games, which offer a different level of looking at a team’s identity. It would be asking for the impossible to have every problem identified, let alone remedied, by the end of October; the best-case scenario is to simply not carry too many from the start into the season. What should every team be asking itself during the preseason? We’ve got you covered. Today, we look at the Eastern Conference. Read More »

A new era opened Sunday for the Los Angeles Lakers. In Fresno. Any talk of being out of place, though, will have to not include Steve Nash from now on, as it was obvious it won’t take him long to get acquainted with his new teammates. Of anyone on the floor, Nash impressed us the most with his between-the-legs dime to Robert Sacre, his no-look whip to Kobe Bryant, his ankle-break of Jarrett Jack, and his overall smooth-as-silk shooting stroke. Read More »

Ryan Anderson. Kevin Love. Tracy McGrady. Gilbert Arenas. Dana Barros. Kevin Johnson. What do these guys all have in common? They all won the NBA’s Most Improved Player award.

What are we taught as young players? The summer is the time to improve, right? If you’re not improving, you’re losing, right? Well, as great as the NBA’s MIP award is – and IT IS definitely great when you consider how many things need to go right for someone to have a shot at it – it doesn’t necessarily mean future greatness. Read More »

Some of us in the Dime offices are super excited about the Sixers’ potential moving forward, and a lot of that stems from their offseason moves. They became more conventional, dropped the small-ball approach, and now have a legitimate post-up option. But that doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll be as exciting. As this tape shows, they (which means “mostly Andre Iguodala“) put together some extra saucy highlights last season. Read More »

We’ve seen a few rapper vs. NBA player beefs. J.R. Smith and Joe Budden had themselves a little girl fight over Twitter, and there were recent rumors suggesting Lil Wayne and James Harden were fighting over Trina. But for the most part, the two sides have lived in harmony. Thankfully, the whole Kanye West/Kris Humphries/Kim Kardashian love triangle didn’t pop open and burst because that one actually had the potential to do some damage. Kanye certainly tried to – claiming on Twitter that he had been with Kim K while Humphries was married to her – but when has Kanye ever been anything other than a completely classless fool? Read More »

Crank up the Willenium because Ray Allen is Miami bound and needs a welcome. Just when we thought all the pieces were coming back together for the Celtics, their sharpshooter is bolting for the Heat to win a title, at albeit lower price. It’s kind of a shock considering how comfortable he’d been in Boston and how well his group of teammates had worked together to get them to three conference finals and two NBA Finals during their time. And it’s another coup for Pat Riley and the Heat, even though we all know Allen, who turns 37 this month, is diminished physically and his defense was exposed like a glass house without curtains in the playoffs because of ankle trouble. Read More »