“And now, the rest of the man’s legacy is on the line. Is Kobe a Top-10 player of all-time? Top five? We’ve created a glass ceiling wherein nobody can touch Jordan, Russell, Wilt, Magic and Bird — and often but not always, Oscar, Jerry West, Kareem and Doctor J — that Kobe is threatening to shatter.

“Why not? Kobe has more rings than Bird and more buckets than Magic; he’s better defensively than West, better offensively than Russell, more clutch than Wilt. His flair for the dramatic is exceeded only by Jordan.” Read More »

As the NBA trading deadline approaches, no name has been thrown around more than Amar’e Stoudemire. An All-Star starter two years running and once thought to be the future of the Phoenix Suns, now it appears certain that if Amar’e isn’t traded this month, he’ll sign with another team in free agency this summer.

Back in Dime #52 (Oct. 2009), Amar’e talked about facing criticism, injuries, falling short of a championship, as well as the trade rumors that have followed him for the last year. Read More »

Last week we examined where Paul Pierce fits into the hierarchy of all-time Boston Celtics. Yesterday, in the hours leading up to Allen Iverson’s second coming to the Sixers, reader Shaw32 asked where A.I. fits into Philly’s royal family.

Unlike Pierce, there shouldn’t be an argument against Iverson at least being in the discussion as possibly the greatest Sixer of all-time. Read More »

Following up all the drama and intrigue and controversy of Lakers vs. Rockets and Kobe vs. Ron-Ron and Derek Fisher’s shoulder vs. Luis Scola’s face, LeBron and the Cavs gave a long and kind of boring display — at the expense of the Hawks — that across-the-board domination can be pretty, well, boring. Cleveland has won every game this postseason by double digits, and the last four have been 20-piecings … Just like in Game One, LeBron (27 pts, 4 stls) tried to get the whole “competitive” part out of the way before halftime. Read More »

With the fact that King James will be named the NBA’s Most Valuable Player this afternoon at only 24 years old, this got me thinking: How many will LeBron have by the time he’s done playing? Read More »

In all honesty, Celtics/Magic wasn’t much to write home about; it was like one of those awful Knicks/Heat matchups from the mid-90s, only without the intensity. Of course, there’s a very good chance we’re just salty over here because Orlando took their brand-new NBA Hit List No. 1 ranking and flushed it like the remnants of a Thirsty Thursday hangover, but neither team played all that well. Doug Collins was right on when he said he couldn’t tell whether the defenses were so good that people couldn’t score, or if both offenses were just inept. Or maybe Dwight Howard said it best in his post-game interview: “It felt like a playoff game. For a minute.” Either way, Boston won their seventh straight, holding Dwight to just 11 points and 11 boards, and holding the Magic to a season-low point total … Offensively, all the Celtics needed was Paul Pierce, who was DESTROYING Hedo Turkoglu. Pierce (27 pts, 10 rebs) was throwing a constant series of fakes and jab steps at Hedo, who was bouncing all over the place and seemed confused the entire time. One time Pierce up-faked and drove past him for an uncontested dunk, after which Dwight and Hedo stood there yelling at each other … Read More »