At the half of New York’s 87-71 Game 2 win over Boston, Charles Barkley called for Carmelo Anthony to give him more, saying New York doesn’t have enough scorers to have off nights from Anthony and still expect to win. ‘Melo had made just three buckets in the first two quarters, and New York was trailing by six. Read More »

Every night in the NBA is its own minimovie, played out in any number of acts. Wednesday there were 14, and we could have called it, The Closers, for the way Kobe and Kyrie won after ridiculous comebacks in the fourth quarter. Friday would be The Takeover. Read More »

Portland was one of the season’s earliest surprises by knocking off the Lakers in the first game of the season, back when Portland was expected to do little and Los Angeles was projected to be a beast. Those polarizing projections led to a reality that’s much closer to the middle of the NBA — and for Portland that’s a good thing. Read More »

What makes San Antonio so frustrating for opponents and fun to watch for us, the fans, is the parallel personnel magic GM R.C. Buford and coach Gregg Popovich seem to always have working. Read More »

An NBA basketball team has more than five players for a reason. No matter how badly a coach may want to play his starters a full 48 minutes on any given night, he knows it’s not an option. One of his starters may roll an ankle. His center could commit two early fouls. Maybe he’s playing the Nuggets and George Karl goes small with four guards and a stretch four. A trustworthy bench allows a coach to adapt his gameplan and can be the difference between a good team and a great one. Without a good bench, a playoff team can be one inopportune ACL tear away from a potentially disastrous season. Read More »

Think about all of those games you remember that came down to a final shot, the ones where you thought you’d pass out if it got any more intense. Technically, San Antonio’s 111-106 win over Toronto on Sunday was the NBA’s most tightly contested win of all time. That the game went into two overtimes is notable, but not as much as this — according to Elias Sports, since 1954 this was the “first double-overtime game in which each of the first five periods was either tied or decided by a single point.” Polar opposites though they may seem, Toronto and San Antonio turned a matinee into 24 minutes of free hoops instead. Read More »

From last night’s NBA action, watch super rookie Damian Lillard push the fast break and toss a great alley oop to a streaking Meyers Leonard over the outstretched hands of Jeremy Lin.

Gotta love fellow rookie Leonard calling for the oop mid-stride: Read More »

Maybe it’s a good thing no one is talking about Portland. They have a rookie point guard, and while it’s obvious he’s both mature (during the preseason, he’s scoring 12.3 of his 16.3 points a night in the second half) and comfortable running high screen-n-rolls (he was a better-than-advertised distributor in college), Damian Lillard still has a ways to go to understand running a NBA offense. Read More »

Depending on who you talk to, Meyers Leonard either looks like Ivan Drago, or as we said in Smack, Triple H. He’s big, strong, ripped, and looks like he should be out there smashing heads. Instead, he struggled with consistency at Illinois, and who knows how much time he’ll get in Portland this year? Read More »

Watching the Trail Blazers beat the Nuggets in last night’s preseason action, we could see a lot of similarities between this year’s Portland squad and last year’s Denver squad. The Blazers will be led by a quick and fearless point guard (Damian Lillard), they will feature a raw 7-foot prospect overflowing with potential (Meyers Leonard), and those two are flanked by a small army of bouncy athletes and grinders who will play D and run the floor. The Blazers also have something the Nuggets don’t have, and that’s a certified All-Star big man named LaMarcus Aldridge. Read More »