Beast of the Night: Dirk Nowitzki not only hit the game-winner in Milwaukee last night, he also finished with 32 points, 1 three, 11 rebounds, 3 assists, 2 steals and 1 block while shooting 48 percent (12-25) from the field, 88 percent (7-8) from the line and didn’t have any turnovers. He’s the hottest fantasy commodity to come out of Germany since Heidi Klum. Read More »

Beast of the Night: Dirk Nowitzki was an absolute animal last night, putting up 40 points on 55 percent (12-22) shooting from the field and 94 percent (15-16) from the line, chipping in a three-pointer along with 11 rebounds, 5 assists, 2 steals, 5 blocks and no turnovers. He scored 29 of his 40 points in the fourth quarter, playing like Mehmet Okur bad-mouthed David Hasselhoff. You can’t get much better than this in fantasy ball and Diggler is in for a great year. Read More »

Beast of the Night: Kevin Martin finished with 48 points on 52 percent (14-27) shooting from the field and 72 percent (13-18) from the free throw line, hitting 7 threes and adding 5 rebounds, 4 assists, 4 steals, 1 block and 3 turnovers. He was toying with O.J. Mayo during parts of the game, hitting a variety of difficult shots over his outstretched hand. K-Mart’s picking up right where he left off last season and the only major limitation to his value is his health. Read More »

Since you were probably preoccupied last night watching baseball and football, we took the liberty to give you some hoops highlights on the Columbus Day morning. During the Pistons/Hawks game last night, Detroit hit a buzzer beater at the end of each of the first three quarters. The first by Rip Hamilton, the second by Rodney Stuckey and the third by Ben Gordon. The Pistons 100-91 win over Atlanta last night makes them a perfect 3-0 in the preseason. While preseason records are not necessarily an indication of how the season will go, this is an impressive start for a squad that people think are on the decline.

Not every NBA squad was able to effectively handle their business during the offseason. Longtime Chicago NBA writer Sam Smith, who now blogs for Bulls.com, posted a piece about the five trades he think will happen first this season. Some of the potential moves he writes about aren’t so shocking - everyone in the world knows the Jazz would love to move Carlos Boozer (Smith even notes that the Jazz team shop is selling Boozer jerseys at a 50% discount and that he is nowhere to be found in the team’s marketing campaign this year).

Below are Smith’s predictions and some of the evidence he cites to illustrate that a deal is on the way: Read More »

When you work in an office with basketball junkies, the conversations sometimes can get very heated about very specific things. For example, yesterday the trivia question floating around out there was seeing if you could name all 14 active NBA players that are in the Top 100 on the all-time scoring list. While there are definitely some obvious ones (Shaq, Iverson, Kobe), there are others that took us a minute to figure out (Finley, Stackhouse, Juwan Howard). While we jokingly put it out there that LeBron could be in the Top 100 despite just playing six NBA seasons, we decided to look it up and see where he stands. The results are kind of amazing. Read More »

Rumors surfaced late yesterday that the Pistons are biting the bait that Ben Gordon laid out for all NBA teams during the Bulls/Celtics series. Gordon’s camp is spreading word that they’ve already secured an $11 million per year offer from Detroit.

The Pistons would reportedly pair Gordon up with Rodney Stuckey, preferring to ship Richard Hamilton out of town. Read More »

Lessons learned during the first round of the ‘09 playoffs: (1) KG makes a bit of a difference. (2) The Pistons cannot start next season with the same roster. Some parts of the Rasheed/Rip/Tayshaun trio need to go. (3) James Posey isn’t enough help for Chris Paul. (4) The Spurs are human.

We’ll hear a million rumors over the off-season about how to address these four problems. Here’s the first one - merging Nos. 2 and 3. Read More »

I’m not sure whether it’s fair to be critical of Detroit or not right now. On one hand, you’re looking at a team that was showing such little effort in games one and two against Cleveland that fans in the cash-strapped Detroit area wouldn’t dish out $11 for tickets to a playoff game at the Palace. You’re looking at a team that was resigned to getting swept before this series started.
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I really never thought we’d get to this point. In recent days when headlines have popped up around the sports blog-o-sphere, I thought that the media was kind of blowing the Allen Iverson-to-the-bench issue out of proportion. But it turns out that he really is as upset as writers say he is. That doesn’t mean that AI is being a baby, though. This dude cares so much about playing his best and winning, he’s worked himself into a dither. Read More »