When it came time to separate the men from the Mavs, last night’s Dallas/San Antonio game was decided by the grizzled vets who have been through these wars before: Tim Duncan, Dirk Nowitzki, Manu Ginobili, Jason Kidd and the rest.

But leading up to crunch time, two of the most valuable players on the court were 23-year-old George Hill and 22-year-old Rodrigue Beaubois. Read More »

David Stern knew better than to seriously compete with the NFL conference championships on Sunday, putting only three games on the NBA schedule. And good thing the Vikings lost, because if Brett Favre had made the Super Bowl, the media hype over the next two weeks might lead the NBA to suspend their operation altogether until after the entire world hopped off Favre’s jock. Peyton Manning/Drew Brees — plus some Kim Kardashian sprinkled in — we can deal with; a 24-hour, 14-day Favre love fest would be too much to handle … The Mavs faced the Knicks at MSG, and, well, Dime reader JHUSTLE can explain it best: “Aight Dime the next post has gotta be how my Mavs just destroyed the Knicks by 50. FIFTY POINTS???!!! Woooooooow just burn the Garden to the ground after that one. That team should be ashamed of themselves. That’s a 2K10 score, not a real life NBA game score. SMFH.” … Read More »

Ever since the end of the 2009 NBA Dunk Contest many NBA fans have been chomping at the bit over the idea of LeBron James entering the dunk contest. What seemed like a lock last February, is now 50-50 at least that is what King James told USA Today.

“I’m like 50-50 right now, I don’t know if you can get it back to the 80s and like in ’98 when Vince (Carter) was in it. It was more about the dunks and less about what was going on around the dunks. We’ll see what happens.”

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Judging NBA talent is in Ryan Blake’s blood. The NBA Assistant Director of Scouting is the son of legendary scouting guru, Marty Blake. On top of overseeing scouting reports for the NBA, Ryan can also be found on NBA TV around draft time, analyzing college and international prospects. Blake sat down with Dime recently and gave his two cents on which rookies you need to keep an eye on for the 2009-10 season. Read More »

Even more than in last week’s Orlando summer league, we’re seeing a trend develop in Vegas: The star rookies aren’t just getting the green light to fire away, they’re having the entire offense run through them. Guys like Tyreke Evans, Stephen Curry and DeMar DeRozan are getting 20-plus shots a day, and consider these are shorter games where almost everyone else on the court is trying to earn an NBA job … In yesterday’s big head-to-head matchup, Steph and Tyreke were like Allen Iverson and Steve Francis circa 2001: Curry put up 29 points (8-22 FG, 10-11 FT) and six boards, while Evans had 25 points (8-19 FG, 7-12 FT), 10 boards and five assists. Read More »