As much as everybody nit-picked and scrutinized along the way, when you look at what really matters, Team USA put together a pretty impressive performance at the World Championship. Bottom line: They took care of business and won the gold medal. Kevin Durant was dominant, Lamar Odom and Russell Westbrook and Andre Iguodala and almost every member of the team played their roles like they were supposed to, and the U.S. won each tournament game by an average of 24.5 points and only had one close call … Read More »

Other than Nate Robinson making history as the first three-time champion, there really wasn’t anything memorable about last night’s NBA All-Star dunk contest. It was like one of those comedy movies that’s funny enough to get the job done while you’re in the theater, but 30 minutes after you leave you can’t remember any of the jokes … If there was a signature dunk from Nate, it was probably his last one in the finals, when he threw it off the glass and did a reverse jackknife, then went over to the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders and danced with their pom-poms. Read More »

Clearly, the Dallas Mavericks don’t measure up to the Celtics or Sixers in terms of NBA tradition. So that’s why, in contrast to earlier discussions about Paul Pierce and Allen Iverson, I’m going in a different direction with this one.

Last night, Dirk Nowitzki dropped a baseline jumper in the third quarter of Mavs/Lakers to crack the 20,000-point mark for his career. The moment was significant enough that it almost eclipsed the fact that Dallas eventually lost the game; Dirk even (maybe) got a haircut in preparation for the special day. Read More »