Contrary to what Chris Webber said last night, the Celtics are not going to win the 2010 championship because they picked up Rasheed Wallace. While ‘Sheed will definitely play a role, Boston isn’t winning jack (or Larry) unless Paul Pierce performs up to Paul Pierce standards. Last night was vintage Truth, as Boston downed the Cavs in the opening game of the new season, a rare home loss for Cleveland. With a little over a minute remaining in the fourth and the Celtics up by four, Pierce (23 pts, 11 rebs) ran a pick-and-roll with KG near midcourt against LeBron and Shaq. Advantage: Boston. Shaq reached, Pierce teached, then stuck a jumper from the top of the key that was essentially the dagger. Read More »
Who do you want your offense to run through with everything on the line? Counting down 30th to 1st (one per team), I’ve ranked the League’s go-to guys…
The best part is that he’s just getting started. The progression of Brandon Roy’s NBA career is hurtling toward H.O.F. status faster than the beaten paths of Kobe Bryant, Paul Pierce and Ray Allen, among other legends. Read More »
Principal D-Stern had to have been pleased with his product yesterday, as two of the NBA’s three preseason games took place outside the United States. In Taiwan, the Pacers blew out the Nuggets: Troy Murphy put up 20 points with four threes, and Brandon Rush (20 pts) knocked down six triples, but the real story was Roy Hibbert. The kid was a BEAST, going for 20 points, 11 boards and eight blocks. Granted, Nene being out meant Denver started Johan Petro at center, but he only played 10 minutes before Birdman and K-Mart assumed most of the duties inside. It’s just preseason, but in the Nuggets‘ two games against NBA teams (they smashed a team of kids from Belgrade), they haven’t looked good at all … Read More »
With Bruce Bowen retiring last week and John Stockton headed for the Hall of Fame this week, the concept of the “dirty” basketball player has been in discussion around the Dime office.
Even the casual NBA fans knows about notorious thugs like Bowen, Bill Laimbeer and Ron Artest, who wind up on “SportsCenter” with every elbow, slide-under ankle-breaker, hip check and hard foul they deliver. But you really have to watch the games to point out the guys who are sneaky-dirty; the ones less like Bowen and more like Stockton, whose slight-of-hand acts don’t get as much attention as the guys with reputations that precede them. Here are 10 of the sneakiest/dirtiest, a.k.a. The Wood Harris All-Stars: Read More »
When Gerald wrote last week about cities that deserve an NBA team, he focused on just North American cities. But after reading that Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Dominique Wilkins, Vlade Divac, Robert Horry and Tim Hardaway were going to touch down in Manila next week, I realized they weren’t just there for vacation. Turns out Filipinos are crazy about the NBA. Read More »
Just yesterday, I was watching an old Suns/Rockets game on ESPN Classic when I was reminded of the time Robert Horry threw a towel in Danny Ainge’s face when Ainge was coaching Horry in Phoenix. (The only team with which Rob didn’t win a championship.) Like a lot of older controversial sports stories, I always wonder how things would’ve played out differently had it happened in 2009 with today’s media climate.
I thought that same thing just now when I heard about Al Harrington’s interview with Bay Area radio station KNBR. Read More »
To clarify: Our NBA Fantasy Finals have nothing to do with the stat-driven “fantasy basketball” you play online. We’re taking NBA Finals teams throughout history and pitting them against each other to see what you think would happen. Assume both lineups are healthy, and the older team gets homecourt. Today it’s The Dream and The Glide versus J-Kidd and some guys who made a lot of money off of him …Read More »
Alright, so maybe we were getting spoiled by the consistently awesome awesomeness of these NBA conference finals. Before yesterday, it had been down-to-the-wire games and 40-point efforts from Kobe and LeBron in between dominant performances by ‘Melo and Dwight. But last night, the Nuggets simply laid the hammer down on L.A. for the first outright blowout of this round, coming one point shy of a 20-piecing in another dominant performance on their home floor … On paper, there’s no way the Nuggets should have dominated this game. Read More »
