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Say hello to the bad guy. We have a new beast in the West. In probably the most physical game of the NBA season so far, the Blazers showed why everyone is so frightened of playing them up in the Northwest by punking the Clippers and Blake Griffin, 105-97. With the NBA’s newest A-List team threatening them over and over, Portland answered every call. Between Gerald Wallace, LaMarcus Aldridge and Marcus Camby, they did work on Griffin, holding him to the most up-and-down 18 and 12 night you’ll ever see. Read More »

New Lakers coach Mike Brown is only a few months into his job, but he’s right when he said the Lakers can lay claim to a rivalry with everyone.

When Los Angeles goes to a visiting arena, it’s played by the hosts as a chance to take down one of the NBA’s storied franchises. Mike Bresnahan of the Los Angeles Times reports Brown saying so this week: Read More »

Just when you think you’ve seen it all, the NBA pulls one of the most unbelievable, inexplicable, outrageous moves any of us have ever seen.

Short of getting Rajon Rondo and a first-round pick or two, this Chris Paul trade is as good as it gets for a player walking out the door anyway. And if the NBA’s concern is “super teams,” they should have effectively addressed that in collective bargaining. Blocking a legitimate basketball trade because a few sore losers didn’t like it is inexcusable and bad for business. Read More »

And you thought the Shaq vs. Kobe beef was over? It’ll never end. This will go on longer than anything, linger longer than Brett Favre, and it’ll probably still have people talking 10 years down the road. All was quiet on the front for a while, but O’Neal has a new autobiography dropping on Nov. 15 – it’s called Shaq Uncut: My Story and it’s co-written with Jackie MacMullan – and the book gives some more inside info on O’Neal’s view of the feud between two of the most polarizing players in NBA history. According to Shaq, it was Kobe that destroyed the team’s shot at a title in 2004, the year they had Karl Malone and Gary Payton. Read More »

We were soooo close. Imagine if the proper etiquette when you went out to eat or hit up happy hour was to tip two percent. That would feel like nothing. Well in what was considered to be the biggest day thus far of the lockout – the first one where a good percentage of those involved legitimately believed a deal could get done – the guys ended where they started: with nothing. The talks broke down on the dreaded BRI when neither the players nor the owners would move off their stances. The players wanted 52 percent; The owners were at 50. Of course, it’s pretty stupid to compare tipping $6 with a CBA for the NBA but still in the context – with millionaires fighting billionaires, you get our drift. You are two percent away. You want to know how easy it is to fix that? Each side give up a point. Read More »

Kobe Bryant has maintained his spot as the best basketball player in the world because, even as his nagging injuries pile up and he moves into his 30′s, he relies more on his skills and fundamentals than simple athleticism and explosiveness.

Don’t get it mistaken, though: Kobe can still get up every once in a while, even if some analysts and fans talk about his hops like he’s Zydrunas Ilgauskas. Read More »

When we talk about the players just “man-ing” up, accepting a deal and getting on with the game, it doesn’t come out right. We seem like bitter fans – selfish fans – who just want our game back. We don’t truly care about the business aspect of it, don’t really care about the players’ lifestyles. We just want to see the NBA again. So we can’t blame the players for not listening to us. But when an NHL player says it, it holds more weight. Why? The league canceled their entire 2004-05 season because of a lockout, and former Dallas Stars forward Bill Guerin is trying to save the NBA players from themselves. Read More »

We know him as Mr. Clutch, the front office orchestrator of Showtime and the Shaq/Kobe drama-laden years. We know him as one of the greatest players ever, a country boy who became Hollywood. We know him as an unstoppable beast on NBA 2K12.

Now we also know Jerry West as a depressed individual, a fragile mind made more delicate because of the high stakes game he’s been playing all these years. When you swim with sharks – NBA players, owners, general managers, billions of dollars – you’re liable to get eaten alive. Read More »

Would you take Allen Iverson? We think most fans would speak up in favor of bringing the future Hall of Famer back into the NBA. But how many GMs would? If you go by their recent actions, not too many, and every year he’s gone from the game, the more likely it is that we’ve seen the last of him in an NBA uniform. The Answer still wants to fight his way back in, and it’s being reported that’s exactly what he’s doing in reaching out to some of the game’s best trainers and working his way back. He might make an appearance in the Impact Vegas League. We wish AI would get another shot – he did grace our first ever issue of Dime and still holds a special place for us – but the chances are about as good as us seeing basketball on opening night … Read More »