Defense wins championships. Over the years, the same concept is continuously preached… all the while Kobe Bryant, LeBron James and Michael Jordan rule the world with unmatched offense. However, in the end over the past 25 years, that theory has been proven correct more consistently than not. Read More »

Mike Conley‘s crossover here on Matt Barnes is so fast and tight, we’re not even really sure Barnes knows what happened – he wakes up and Conley is already by him: Read More »

What a battle last night between Chris Paul (24 and nine dimes) and Mike Conley (28 and nine). CP3 emerged victorious after knocking down a serious shot in the final seconds, but the PG face off up to that point was just great to watch.

Check out this video of the buckets and assists from the two of them – back and forth, up and down the floor, alley oops and gritty floaters for days: Read More »

Say what you will about the Heat’s rebounding problems against bigger teams such as Indiana this season, but the Heat’s turnovers are reliably the larger indicator for its wins or losses. That’s why its 102-89 loss to Indiana was a little worrisome even if LeBron (28 points) and Dwyane Wade (17 points) sounded afterward as if they’d just lost a charity game, insisting it’s no big deal at all. Read More »

David Stern dropped a $250,000 fine on San Antonio on Friday afternoon, then said he doesn’t want to talk about it any more. Good luck with that – the topic of what a coach can and can’t do with his team will be white-hot because of mistakes both the league and the Spurs made with Starter-Gate. It’s wrong to meddle with a coach’s team but Gregg Popovich had ways to achieve the same result (resting his four best players) without sending them home on Southwest Airlines without telling the NBA, too. Read More »

So LeBron to L.A. talk has already started. We couldn’t even get to July, when CP3 and Dwight Howard‘s current deals come to a close and they become free agents, or the tipoff of this season before the summer of 2014 was brought up. Executives, of course, can’t live like fans and live and die by each game; a grander vision is needed. Read More »

The Brooklyn Nets won’t be blaring “All of the Lights” as their theme song this season because, among other things, they’ll only be using some of the lights in the brand-new Barclays Center for BK games. And they’re special lights. We knew for a while that the Nets would use theatre-style lighting, which is what the Lakers and Knicks use, the kind of lighting that dims the crowd and puts the floor on an imaginary stage by highlighting the game. Read More »

The Heat need to call Kyra Sedgwick. Or Michael Jordan. They could even call Vince Carter; he made a couple of clutch shots last night. For now, the Heat might as well make Mario Chalmers their go-to guy down the stretch. He seems like the only one who can make shots for them when the game is tight. Their stars, on the other hand, are cold as ice … This season, in the last 10 seconds of a game that they are trailing by three points or less, Miami is 1-18 from the field, the worst mark in the entire league. The Heat added two of those misses yesterday after LeBron James (26 points) and Dwyane Wade (20 points) blew a layup and a jumper respectively in their one-point loss against Chicago. It was Miami’s fourth straight loss and another blown double-digit lead as Chicago made all of the big plays to come from behind in the fourth quarter … You can criticize the Big Three all you want for being unable to deliver clutch baskets, but look at the rest of the team as well. They scored just 17 points combined. Read More »

Before Evan Turner, Greg Oden and Mike Conley Jr. were Buckeyes, Scoonie Penn was the big man on campus at Ohio State (’98-00). Standing an inch or two short of six-feet, the stocky point guard was like Chauncey Billups the way he could pick apart defenders with his strength and speed. And just like Mr. Big Shot, Penn was cool under pressure and could close out games. Read More »

Understand that six days out of seven, I’d rather watch college basketball than the NBA; that I’ve been a Georgetown fan since I was a kid; and as a West Coast native, I’m both loyal and defensive when it comes to the Pac-10.

Also understand that I’m far from an expert at the X’s and O’s of basketball. I don’t run plays on NBA 2K10, and I would never coach at any level beyond the littlest of Little League. The kids deserve better.

That said, even I found myself wondering W-exactly-TF Ben Howland was doing in the latter stages of UCLA’s loss to Cal State-Fullerton last night. Read More »