All things being equal, the NBA’s best sixth men would rather be starting, of course. On other teams, there’s a chance they certainly would be. You don’t have to look much further than Jason Terry. He’s been the second-best player on a championship team and one of the fourth quarter shoulders the Dallas Mavericks have leaned on for the past eight seasons. Is he good enough to start? Of course. Even though his numbers are down this year (13.9 points, 41 percent shooting), Terry’s been hitting big jumpers and spot up threes for the past decade. As a starter, he’d be a nice player. As a bench player, he became a staple of what it means to be a great sixth man. Read More »

Right before Christmas, Lou Williams found himself in an attempt to be robbed at gunpoint. Luckily for him, he was able to use his celebrity status to avoid any harm. This situation got us to thinking, what if Lou Will had any of his basketball buddies with him? Which current athletes would make the best bodyguards? Although Shaq might have topped this list if he was still playing, there’s still plenty of security to be found in these ten players. Read More »

Weekend Wonder: Derrick Rose averaged 22.5 points, 5.5 rebounds, 11.0 assists, 1.5 steals, a block and 1.5 threes in two games over the weekend. He shot 50 percent from the field, 95 percent from the free-throw line and turned the ball over three times per game. These averages include his somewhat mediocre line from Sunday in a 40-point blowout victory over the Grizzlies. After a rocky start, Rose is calming the nerves of his insecure owners. Read More »

About halfway into the fourth quarter last night, Norris Cole had everyone in the building and all who were watching on national television wondering Who Dat? By the end of the night, Cole was the hero and he had national columnists asking the following morning if straight up, we were really going to love him forever… or was it just a hit and run? Is he for real? In just his second game as a pro, Cole dropped 14 of his 20 points in the fourth quarter, didn’t shy away at all from the big shot and unlike the starter, Mario Chalmers, he stayed within his game, not constantly dribbling into the lane and turning it over. Read More »

And they say NBA players are all thugs, bad guys and don’t do anything for the community. Our man Lou Williams does a lot. He stopped an armed robbery yesterday. On himself. With a free meal. Yes, before he went out and dropped 25 last night in a close loss in Portland, Williams was approached by a man with a gun this weekend. But instead of getting robbed, Williams says the man noticed who he was and stopped because of all the work Williams does in the community. Read More »

Didn’t we kinda sorta predict this? Stephen Jackson hasn’t been practicing up in Milwaukee because of some back spasms, but some are saying he’s been sitting out for entirely different reasons. Reportedly, Jackson isn’t happy with his contract, one that will pay him over $9 million this season and $10 million next season. He wanted an extension in Charlotte – as a 33-year-old, you know the guaranteed years are weighing heavily on him – and the Bobcats decided to ship him out instead of offering one. Jackson hasn’t said a word about it during training camp. Read More »

So they think they need a committee to study this stuff huh? It shouldn’t take a genius or even a formulation of a number of basketball minds to figure this one out, but as Yahoo! Sports is reporting, the NBA and the Player’s Association are discussing whether to form a committee to study the age minimum for the NBA draft with “the possibility that no immediate changes to the ‘one-and-done’ rule will come in the finalization of the new collective bargaining agreement.”

Good. Maybe they’ll finally discover what I’ve been saying all along. Read More »

What we got on Friday night in MSG was a tale of two oddly similar yet completely different teams. Arizona has the hype, and the high ranking. They came in at 4-0 but still playing a little bit over their heads, a good team that appeared to be playing better than they actually were. On the other side was Mississippi State with enough talent that most experts see them as one of the most dangerous unranked teams in the country. Despite that, they started the year somewhat unassumingly. So if you told us pregame that the Bulldogs would finish with a flurry and take over the game late to win by 10, grabbing the 2K Sports Classic, we wouldn’t have been surprised. Read More »

The other day, our friends at Converse held an event in NYC to showcase their two new basketball sneakers – the Converse DEFCON and Converse Pro Leather 2K11. Hosted by Bobbito Garcia, Converse athletes Chris “Birdman” Andersen, Lou Williams and Kyle Korver were there to represent. After about a 30-minute Q&A with Bobbito, the athletes had the opportunity to interact with the media, and I got the chance to catch up with Birdman and Sweet Lou. Read More »

It’s not just us, and it’s not just you. It’s everyone. Everyone is sick of charity games, of celebrity games and nights ending up 170-168. It was cool for a while. That got us through the summer of no basketball, trade rumors or signings: “Capital Punishment,” “The Big Payback,” and all the rest. But Jamal Crawford and Lou Williams are promising something different. Seattle and Atlanta are two consistently overlooked hoop hotbeds. But now we’ll have the chance to see which city is better. Expect it to be heated. Expect it to be real. Read More »