If you thought last Thursday’s loss to the Cavs was a sign the Celtics don’t have enough in the tank to win a championship this year, Saturday’s loss to the New Jersey Nets — yes, we said the New Jersey Nets — was all the confirmation you needed … Tommy Heinsohn and the two psychos from Celtic Pride would have a hard time coming up with an excuse here: Boston was at home, they hadn’t traveled since last weekend, they weren’t playing a back-to-back, and Kevin Garnett (26 pts, 9 rebs) and Rajon Rondo (13 pts, 17 asts) didn’t play horribly. Read More »

There were just too many elements conspiring against the Mavs going into last night’s game in Denver. Facing the second part of a road back-to-back in the Mile High altitude is bad enough, but it gets worse considering the previous game was a grueling 48-minute track meet at Golden State. On top of that, Dallas was without Shawn Marion (back) and Erick Dampier (knee). And finally, Carmelo and Chauncey were back after missing time with respective ankle injuries. Stir it all up, and you have Dallas getting almost 40-pieced in what amounted to a scrimmage for the Nuggets … Read More »

You know the only way a preseason game between the Knicks and a team that isn’t even in the NBA would crack the sports highlights shows on an NFL and baseball playoffs Sunday is if something crazy happened. And in the third quarter of New York’s game against Maccabi Tel Aviv (Israel), things got appropriately insane. After Maccabi head coach Pini Gershon got himself ejected thanks to a couple of techs, he refused to leave the court — if you saw the Season 2 premier of “Tool Academy,” he pretty much acted like the dude who got kicked off that first week. The refs wouldn’t re-start the game until Gershon left, so it turned into a standoff. Read More »

Last year we debuted the “Highs and Lows” system — previewing the NBA season by predicting the respective ceiling and basement for each team. Same theme, different season…

Added: Andre Miller, Juwan Howard, Jeff Pendergraph, Dante Cunningham, Ime Udoka

Lost: Sergio Rodriguez, Channing Frye, Michael Ruffin, Shavlik Randolph Read More »

I know three things about the National Hockey League:

1. There are four Black people involved in the whole operation. 2. Sidney Crosby is the face of the League. 3. Alexander Ovechkin is actually the best player in the League.

Ovechkin made headlines last week when he bashed the NHL for not yet committing to modify its schedule to accommodate the 2014 Winter Olympics. (The League is putting its schedule on hold while players compete in 2010, but hasn’t decided if they’ll do the same for 2014.) Russia is hosting the Olympics that year; Ovechkin is Russia’s top player. Read More »

Here’s one straight from the Go Somewhere And Sit Down files: After Michael Jordan jokingly called out Bryon Russell during his H.O.F. speech, of course somebody had to go track down Russell for his reaction. And of course the 38-year-old Russell — who as recently as this summer was talking about trying an NBA comeback — had to go make himself look like the “Can’t let the game go” retired ballplayer, challenging MJ to a battle. “I’ll play his ass right now,” Russell told Yahoo! Sports. “This is a call-out for him to come play me. He can come out here in his private jet and come play. He’s got millions of dollars. He can pay for the jet. He can meet me at the Recreation Center in Calabasas. We can have Mark Jackson do the commentating. We can have Mitch Richmond do the officiating. We can put it on TV and see if Michael’s still got it.” Read More »

Back during his peak, one of the things we loved about Gilbert Arenas was that he’d randomly show up at D.C.’s famous Barry Farms court to play in the Goodman League, putting in work against the D.C./Maryland area’s best playground ballplayers with the same attitude that he’d go at Deron Williams or D-Wade on an NBA court. But then the injuries started to pile up, and even when he was healthy here and there, Gilbert understandably wasn’t as much of a presence on any concrete court while Kevin Durant took over the mantle as the NBA’s Barry Farms regular. On his way back from this latest injury, though, Arenas has not only looked like his old self indoors, he’s also back on the playground. Read More »

The Blazers were supposed to have a logjam at small forward last year, when Travis Outlaw and Martell Webster were expected to battle with rookies Rudy Fernandez and Nic Batum for minutes. But then Webster — the one initially penciled in to start — suffered a broken foot that pretty much forced him to miss the entire season, and everything somehow worked out fine.

This offseason, it’s about to get even more congested. Read More »