Everybody has a few albums they know of where it was like Midas was controlling the mic, the mixing booth and the beats, all at once. Half the album in you’re still nodding your head so much people around you are just assuming you have a tic. Then the inspiration falls off and the last half is just OK — it completes the album but it can’t hold a candle to the revelation you just heard for the first half hour. That was the Clippers’ game Thursday night against Portland on the road. The master of those can’t-look-away first cuts? DeAndre Jordan. Read More »

After 10 years in the NBA, big man Mehmet Okur is retiring at the age of 33. He walks away with a ring (2004 Pistons) and career averages of 13.5 points and seven boards.

Rather than show you pick-and-pop highlights of Okur bombing threes, we thought it’d be more fun to honor his retirement with this amazing clip of Tracy McGrady dunking on his head. Adding to the awesomeness of this video is ESPN interviewing teenager LeBron James right after the dunk. Enjoy. Read More »

Deep breath. Deep breath. Don’t let that anger or jubilation or frustration boil over too much. Everyone’s ecstatic that the Dwightmare is finally over, but no one’s too pleased that the Los Angeles Lakers, once again, reeled in the best center in the league. George Mikan, Wilt Chamberlain, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Shaq, Andrew Bynum, now Dwight Howard. But it’s not really over, because, as ESPN’s Marc Stein put it last night on SportsCenter, he wants to “test drive” Los Angeles. Read More »

The Spurs are now officially old. Okay, so their average age (26.9) is actually the lowest of the Tim Duncan era. But Danny Green, Tiago Splitter and Kawhi Leonard are not the Spurs. Duncan, Manu Ginobili, Gregg Popovich and Tony Parker are. Up until today, whenever you talked about age with the Old Reliables, you could always add a “but” at the end. But Tony Parker is still young. Well, he finally hit a milestone today. Parker is now 30 years old. Read More »

We pushed for the Blazers to make a move in Smack, and it appears they’ve done something to clean up the mess of a season they’ve created. Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports reports Portland is sending Gerald Wallace to New Jersey for Mehmet Okur, Shawne Williams and a protected 2012 first-round pick. Read More »

This might be the year Josh Smith finally makes the All-Star Game. We don’t want to jinx him – everyone knows the type of luck he has when it comes to this – but his game has matured, he has his body in the best shape it’s ever been in and the Hawks figure to be, at worst, a No. 6 seed in the Eastern Conference playoffs. Last night in Atlanta’s 92-75 drubbing of Charlotte to end the preseason, Smith had 21 points and six rebounds, hitting 10 of 15 shots in the game. Read More »

Yesterday’s ambush of trade and free agency talk tipped off with a rather awkward rumor: The Celtics weren’t actively shopping Rajon Rondo, but that they’d be open to a deal should anything materialize. In the sports world, that’s basically code for other teams to start calling so they can start the bidding. Danny Ainge and Boston were hinting at something. We just didn’t know what it was yet. So naturally the response from most fans was: WTF? It didn’t help that Rajon Rondo trade rumors are an offseason rite of passage by this point. It doesn’t feel right unless we get a few of them. Read More »

We were soooo close. Imagine if the proper etiquette when you went out to eat or hit up happy hour was to tip two percent. That would feel like nothing. Well in what was considered to be the biggest day thus far of the lockout – the first one where a good percentage of those involved legitimately believed a deal could get done – the guys ended where they started: with nothing. The talks broke down on the dreaded BRI when neither the players nor the owners would move off their stances. The players wanted 52 percent; The owners were at 50. Of course, it’s pretty stupid to compare tipping $6 with a CBA for the NBA but still in the context – with millionaires fighting billionaires, you get our drift. You are two percent away. You want to know how easy it is to fix that? Each side give up a point. Read More »

The Utah Jazz are a frontcourt-heavy team. They have about 3-4 big men capable of producing usable numbers if given sufficient minutes, which means that unless a trade happens to free things up there, some frustrating minutes-based limitations are in the cards. That said, the Jazz have a nice balance of productive veterans and up-and-coming players ready to make an impact on fantasy basketball whenever the NBA starts again. Read More »

Pau Gasol got revenge. Well, not really. But he did get the better of Dirk Nowitzki and Spain got the better of Germany in the EuroBasket second round, beating them 77-68 behind the two Gasol brothers (Pau: 19 second-half points and Marc: 24 points). Dirk matched the All-Star with 19 of his own, but didn’t make a shot during the last nine minutes of the game. When you’re playing a team like Spain that can bring five or six different guys who have the capability to be their team’s best player on any given night, it’s difficult. Besides Chris Kaman (15 points, 12 rebounds), Nowitzki didn’t get enough help. Read More »