The NBA All-Star Game is a showcase normally reserved for the great players who actually win games, and yet we haven’t heard one complaint about how Jrue Holiday is going to Houston next month. He’s been so good this season (remember, this cat is still only 22 years old) that everyone forgets his team kind of sucks. In a 17-point beating of New York, Holiday had 31 points at the end of the third quarter, finishing with a career-high 35. Read More »

Damian Lillard (photo. USA Today Sports/Instagram)

Now that the Trail Blazers have rid themselves of Raymond Felton, it looks like their heir apparent to the point guard position is Damian Lillard. The sixth pick in the 2012 draft, Lillard has been making a name for himself at Summer League and showing everyone that although he went to a small college, Weber State, being picked that high was justified. After scoring 31 points in last night’s Blazers win against the Atlanta Hawks, Lillard now leads the summer league in scoring with 27.7 ppg and has three games of 25 points or more. Read More »

It’s true what Thomas Wolfe wrote, that you can’t go home again. OK, so saying New Orleans is Chris Paul’s home is a definite stretch, but when you spent your whole career someplace, it’s more than just a stop on a map. Read More »

Buy Low: J.R. Smith has been all over the place this season. The good news is that he’s finally getting a steady diet of minutes for the Nuggets. The bad news is that it’s hard to predict when he’ll do much with them. However, Smith remains a solid source of threes and steals, despite his low field-goal percentage, and should Carmelo Anthony be dealt away in the coming weeks (which seems increasingly possible), Smith will have more minutes and shots fall into his lap. Read More »

Could you, with a straight face, make an argument that Robin Lopez is more valuable to the Phoenix Suns than Steve Nash? If you watched the Suns get dropped into the proverbial oubliette last night by the Magic, you could. Nash missed the game with a groin injury (maybe or maybe not the byproduct of somebody’s reaction to Nash announcing his divorce the same day his wife had a baby), but perhaps more important, Lopez was out with a knee injury that will keep him sidelined for about a month … Without Lopez, the Suns were using guys like Earl Barron, Earl Clark, and somebody named Garrett Siler to man the post. Read More »

As expected, the majority of the mainstream covered last night’s Celtics/Heat season opener from the “Miami lost” angle more than the “Boston won” perspective. So rather than focus on what went wrong for the Heat — Dwyane Wade played like Dwayne Wayne, and the team generally played like they’d first met at shootaround that morning — show a little appreciation for what the Celtics did right. Like Paul Pierce (19 pts, 9 rebs) being clutch all night, or Ray Allen (20 pts, 5-8 3PA) hitting a huge three in the final minute to snuff out Miami’s late rally … Read More »

In the NBA’s offseason, coaches are just like fantasy owners: Tinkering with their roster at home like kids would arrange and re-arrange battalions of plastic Army toys, to the point where some already have a rotation in place by the time training camp begins.

Brand-new Golden State Warriors coach Keith Smart, for example, said he has his lineup in place less than a week into camp: Stephen Curry, Monta Ellis, Dorell Wright, David Lee and Andris Biedrins. Meanwhile, other coaches will use camp to let players compete for jobs. Read More »

Our business is prone to over-exaggeration: It was the best dunk ever, the worst trade ever, the sickest pair of sneakers ever, etc. We have to grab your attention and we have to get advertisers and, well, that’s just how it goes. But taking away all hyperbole and being totally straight — the NBA TV announcer calling yesterday’s Spain/Lithuania and France/Canada games at the World Championship was the WORST ANNOUNCER IN THE HISTORY OF BASKETBALL … Seriously, what soccer game did they steal this guy from? We would have been better off with Moses Malone and Darryl Dawkins on the mic. Read More »

For the basketball-starved among us tired of reading free agency and trade rumors, this summer’s biggest on-court hoops event is finally ready to tip-off. The FIBA World Championship (Aug. 28-Sept. 12) brings 24 international teams together for two weeks in Turkey to fight for gold medals, global bragging rights, and an automatic spot in the 2012 Olympics in London.

In Dime #58 we previewed the World Championship with 10 teams to watch, but since our press time, injuries and roster tweaks have given the field a different look. Here is the updated WC primer: Read More »

Pretty much every wing player — i.e., a two-guard or small forward, typically someone who can play both — in the NBA is athletic. It’s one of the job requirements. And if they’re not very athletic, they can at least compensate by shooting your face off. So simply being able to do a YouTube-friendly dunk or knock down a rack’s worth of threes isn’t always enough to make an impact in the League.

The key is expanding your game. Here are five wing players who have added pieces to their original arsenal and are poised for a breakout season in 2010-11: Read More »