We learned a few things while we all enjoyed ESPN and ABC’s quintuple header on Christmas with friends and family: the Lakers are back, the Clippers are legit, Houston seems to have found its legs, Oklahoma City still needs to figure out Miami, and LeBron James is unquestionably the league’s most dominant player right now. But we also saw Chicago and Brooklyn get whooped, and that former game featured one of Chicago’s former players, Omer Asik, dominating it on the boards and in the paint. Besides Asik’s big night in Chicago’s United Center, who else has gone off when they were going against their old team this season? Read More »

On one hand, you have Sunday being defined by a Seahawks team coming out of relative nowhere to crush the 49ers and become the NFL’s hottest team. In the NBA, its best team right now is on just the same kind of roll — 13 straight wins after Sunday — and even though you can say we’ve seen the Los Angeles Clippers coming for a couple of seasons now, it’s still remarkable that they’re the class of the West. Read More »

Having Kevin Durant on your team is probably good for about 10 extra wins a year strictly based on his talent and his competitive streak. You’re going to win games you shouldn’t only because he’ll get pissed off for some reason or another and start raining Hell on whoever’s guarding him. Read More »

The NBA season is just warming up, and like everything from Kobe‘s shooting percentages to Marcin Gortat leading the league in blocks, there are bound to be some statistical anomalies occuring out of sheer luck. Yes, sometimes, you can spot trends or improvements in a player’s game before they really happen (or at least get noticed on a larger scale). But five, six or seven games is a VERY small sample, and there are plenty of statistical numbers that are all out of whack through the season’s first two weeks. Read More »

As far as scintillating debuts go, James Harden’s first game with the Rockets fell somewhere between Cam Newton in Carolina and The Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show. Everything the Rockets could have envisioned when they traded for Harden and inked him to an $80 million deal, he put on display Tuesday: Harden had six rebounds, 12 assists, four steals and a block, and he dropped 37 points in a win over Detroit, shattering the Rockets’ franchise record for most points in a debut … Read More »

Randy Foye, the last serious three-point threat left on the free agent market, has reportedly agreed to a one-year contract with the Utah Jazz. Last season with the Clippers, Foye shot 38.6 percent from three-point range and averaged 12.8 points as a starter after Chauncey Billups went out for the year. Read More »

The Dallas chapter of Lamar Odom‘s NBA career is mercifully coming to an end soon. The Mavs have a Friday deadline to buy out the remainder of his contract for $2.4 million, and will spend the next few days searching for a trade partner. They don’t want to take money in return, but they’re also not trying to throw cash to make The Goods go away. Luckily, one team has stepped up to the plate, a playoff team with a couple of strong veteran leaders, an opening on their frontcourt and of course, most importantly, a beach. That’s the Los Angeles Clippers. Read More »

Every team believes they have unfinished business when they go down in a playoff sweep. It’s too sudden. Losing four in a row wraps the season up quite nicely, and everyone is left searching for excuses and answers. When you have the game’s most explosive power forward and one of the best pure point guards in the last 20 years, no one is expecting the broom… even if you are the Clippers, even if you had injuries piled higher than Barkley‘s dinner plate and even if your coach is Vinny Del Negro. Read More »

Chris Paul, Mo Williams and the Los Angeles Clippers (don’t call them “Lob City” around Paul) are the second postseason victim at the surgically precise hands of the San Antonio Spurs. And while Paul also took a reporter to task for a question laden with moral victory undertones, he and Williams did emerge with a consolation prize. They tossed up the two best shots all night. So good we had to ask, which was better? Read More »

Say what you want about Carmelo Anthony, but at least he competed. At the end of five games, he finished with the same number of point as LeBron James. The only problem was ‘Bron had four wins and he only had one. The Heat are moving on and the Knicks are going home after Miami put out the flames rather easily, 106-94. Miami and New York went the way we predicted: the Heat and LeBron James were just too good while Carmelo Anthony could do nothing outside of compete hard. Early on, neither team could get it down, and at one point in the first quarter, Mike Miller and Mike Bibby lead both teams in scoring. Read More »