Ty Lawson has arrived. After shipping off Denver native Chauncey Billups to New York last February, the Nuggets saw a resurgence of both energy and speed to finish the season – ending as the fifth seed out West. At the helm of that spike was the 5-11 Lawson. He’s now resting comfortably in the Nuggets’ starting point guard slot and has taken the reigns of a suddenly refreshed squad. Read More »

“He’s wasted his talent.” “He’s soft.” “He doesn’t care.” Vince Carter has heard nearly every insult you could ever throw at a player. But none of that takes away from this: He is the greatest dunker this game has ever seen.

With the recent news that Suns coach Alvin Gentry was benching VC in favor of Jared Dudley, some are taking this as a sign that Carter’s career is pretty much over. But in Wednesday night’s loss against the Thunder, Carter went retro, scoring 28 points and giving us a nice baseline reverse. After that, I figured I would make a list similar to the one I did of Kobe Bryant. Here are the 10 greatest dunks of Vince Carter’s career (no dunk contest and no celebrity-game dunks). Read More »

What a game in Oklahoma City last night between the Thunder and the Blazers. It was a battle that had playoff intensity, physicality and atmosphere, great individual performances, and we saw the young core of a burgeoning NBA juggernaut take a formative step forward in their development. When it got down to winning time, the Thunder’s offense resorted to a two-man game focusing on Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook running pick-and-pops and taking turns on isos and clearouts. Westbrook (28 points) ended up as the closer, burying three monster treys down the stretch to give OKC the 99-90 win … This season, it absolutely feels like the Thunder are starting to belong to KD and Russ (have you seen Russel’s kicks?), as opposed to just being Kevin Durant and a bunch of sidekicks. Everyone can feel it, including those two. Case in point, Read More »

This past weekend, the Phoenix Suns came into L.A. looking to capitalize on a pair of games against the city’s two hometown franchises. While the Lakers would hand them a crushing 3OT loss this past Tuesday, two days earlier, the Suns were busy mopping up the Blakers for a nice 108-99 win at Staples Center. This was also the same Sunday that both Duke and North Carolina were fortunate enough to escape serious second-round upset bids from both Michigan and Washington, respectively. After the Suns’ victory over the Clippers, we were able to catch up with one of Tobacco Road’s most famed alums, Vince Carter, to get his take on the NCAA Tournament thus far. Read More »

After an efficient sophomore year in which he averaged 13.0 points on 45.5 percent shooting, including 47.4 percent from distance, Marquette guard Darius Johnson-Odom upped his scoring average by nearly three points this season and made big strides on the defensive end to became an All-Big East Second Team selection. On Sunday, DJO poured in 17 points, including the game-winning triple with 25 seconds left, to lift Marquette to an upset over 3-seeded Syracuse that clinched the school’s first Sweet 16 birth since the Dwyane Wade era. Friday, DJO will look to continue his hot play against No. 2 North Carolina, a school that he grew up about 40 minutes from in Raleigh, N.C, yet still wasn’t recruited by. Here are his words: Read More »

Like Georgetown, if you’re looking for a great program and some great swag in your college choice, North Carolina just may be the spot for you. As one of the few Jordan Brand schools in the nation, you know you’re going to get laced out. So with the Tar Heels still alive in the NCAA Tournament, check out the exclusive version of the Air Jordan 2011 that arrived on campus for them to wear. Read More »

Logging his fourth 20-plus point performance in a row, and coming off the best game of his short pro career (29 points, eight rebounds), Tyler Hansbrough seems to be carving himself a niche in the Pacers rotation. Despite his recent surge with the navy and gold, it’s still difficult to get used to him donned in anything but Carolina Blue. Not too far removed from his playing days as a Tar Heel – where he was regarded as a deity – you would think UNC would be the only No. 2 seed he’d be cheering for in this year’s tourney. Think again. Read More »

As the NCAA Tournament field was announced, we wanted hit you with some initial thoughts on the seedings and matchups. We will have a lot more content coming your way in terms of previews, features and more in-depth analysis, but this is what struck me off the bat. Let us know what you think and stay tuned for more…

- The four No. 1 seeds make total sense: Ohio State (No. 1 overall seed), Kansas, Pitt, and Duke. After watching all of these teams one after another this past week, it seems absurd to think of the other potential high seeds, specifically Notre Dame or San Diego State, as being among the top 4. The only legit case would have been North Carolina. They split the first two games with Duke and won the ACC regular season, but after getting cracked this afternoon, they more than took themselves out of the equation. Read More »

It wasn’t surprising that the Nets and Raptors saved their best of the year for a game in London that no one outside of their respective fan bases was watching on a Saturday afternoon. That was expected. But what wasn’t expected was that it could’ve been the best NBA game all year … Maybe David Stern knew what he was doing when he scheduled an international matchup in London with New Jersey and Toronto. Two teams that were a combined 35-88 coming in ended up playing in an epic game that took nearly three and a half hours with the Nets finally getting the win. It wasn’t until Andrea Bargnani‘s (35 points, 12 rebounds) jumper was off in the third OT that New Jersey was able to survive as the winner. The game probably should never have gone as long as it did, but crazy shots from Sasha Vujacic (25 points) and Deron Williams (21 points, 18 assists) kept the game going into into the final extra period. From there, Travis Outlaw took over in the third overtime, scoring the last eight points of the night for New Jersey, including the winning free throws with only 12 seconds left … Some other big lines from the game: Read More »

24-point comebacks are awesome. 24-point comebacks are great TV. But 24-point comebacks can also be disturbing because they take everything you thought you knew and turn it upside down. It appears as if someone needs to inject LeBron James with some tiger blood … Last night in Miami, the Orlando Magic snuck in and broke up a coronation of the Heat, dropping a monstrous “don’t forget about us.” After trailing by as many as 24 points in the second half, the Magic slowly cut down the deficit through a barrage of threes (16-29 on the night) and with some great defense from Quentin Richardson slowing down LeBron. Once Orlando took the lead, they held on for the final few minutes, including a final, frantic possession that saw missed threes from Chris Bosh and James (29 points) to win by three … The game was like watching a movie, and then watching it again backwards. Dwyane Wade (28 points) and James went from electric to ordinary, Gilbert Arenas went from dead to alive and the Miami role players went from deferential to commanding, taking a number of the biggest shots in the final minutes Read More »