Portland fell into a lull for a quarter and a half — usually a death knell against a team like Miami — but still knocked off the Heat, 92-90, because they awoke twice at key moments to get back into position to stuff the champs at home. The first came to end the third quarter to slice into Miami’s 12-point lead, and then another finished the fourth. Read More »

Now that Lindecision 2012 is all over, and Jeremy Lin is going to be formerly introduced as a Houston Rocket sometime soon, we need to take a step back and look at the bigger picture. No, we’re not talking about how, for once, the Knicks resisted the urge to indulge as they have so many times before (even though, for once, there were PLENTY of reasons to do it). We’re talking about how we got here. Lin never wanted to leave New York, and opened up about it to SI.com yesterday. Read More »

In last night’s Suns/Bucks blowout game, the Phoenix announcers spent a chunk of gametime talking about Ronnie Price‘s hops after he took off on a layup from well outside the lane and then caught an alley-oop a few minutes later. The discussion led to them discussing this hellacious dunk that Price put on Carlos Boozer back in 2006 when Price was a member of the Sacramento Kings. Read More »

The Utah Jazz are a frontcourt-heavy team. They have about 3-4 big men capable of producing usable numbers if given sufficient minutes, which means that unless a trade happens to free things up there, some frustrating minutes-based limitations are in the cards. That said, the Jazz have a nice balance of productive veterans and up-and-coming players ready to make an impact on fantasy basketball whenever the NBA starts again. Read More »

If Jazz/Mavs had been played on Xbox Live, Jerry Sloan would have shut the game off midway through the first quarter and switched to Madden. Running an absolute clinic in offensive execution and shooting, the Mavs were up 26-4 after six minutes, getting (and making) whatever shots they wanted while the Jazz were getting 24-second violations and bricking point-blank looks … But that was right around the time Deron Williams said “F*** this,” scrapped the whole “distributor” thing and went into get-buckets mode. Read More »

Last night we saw the best and the worst of the Miami Heat. The best was on display as they built a 22-point first half lead against the Jazz: Nine or 10 Miami players got on the scoreboard, LeBron was collecting rebounds and directing the offense while letting the scoring happen naturally, and D-Wade attacked and put pressure on Utah’s defense. Miami took a 13-point lead into the fourth quarter, but as it slipped away, we saw their worst — namely, poor frontcourt and rotation defense as Paul Millsap was a steroid mix of Karl Malone and Sam Perkins, finishing with 46 points (19-28 FG) and 9 rebounds … Read More »

Too old. Too slow. By now it sounds like a recording for the Boston Celtics, but there’s a new problem beginning to surface that may be the real reason why this team is looking like a fake contender. Forget age and speed — these Celtics aren’t as hungry as they were in ’08 and ’09. During last night’s 20-piecing at home at the hands of the Grizzlies, the Celtics looked a lot like the UConn men’s team when they went through the motions before quitting in the Big East Tournament; maybe it’s something in the New England water … Rudy Gay (28 pts, 8 rebs) is exactly the kind of motivated thoroughbred giving Boston problems. Read More »

Two games. If you were in the office pool to get action on the first time Tracy McGrady would start showing signs in New York of why the Rockets never trusted him enough to give him a featured role this season, whoever had “two games” gets the pot. In the second half of last night’s home loss to Milwaukee — the Knicks’ seventh L in a row, by the way — McGrady was noticeably limping around. After the game Mac admitted his knee had taken some punishment and he wasn’t sure if he’d be able to play against the Celtics tonight … On top of the knee issues, McGrady got his first taste of what it’s really like to be a Knick in the 21st century. Read More »

Every good sports-movie plot twist came together at the right time to make Sundiata Gaines‘ game-winner on the Cavs last night feel like the Jazz had won an NBA championship and exorcised the Jordan-on-Russell demon all at once, not to mention getting a couple hundred starving screenwriters to crack open the laptop to get started on the Hollywood script. (Fredro Starr could play ‘Yatta. He’s got the NYC swagger and experience from Sunset Park, but him being 5-foot-2 might be an issue. To compensate, you’d have to get Don Cheadle to play LeBron and break out the 8-foot rims.) … With five seconds left, Utah was down two and missing Deron Williams, who’d re-injured his right wrist earlier in the fourth, plus Carlos Boozer, who’d fouled out. Read More »

For Chris Paul and Deron Williams to go head-to-head and put up underwhelming numbers isn’t a surprise anymore. For Devin Brown — the rare NBA starter who could also appear on “Who He Play For?” and stump Charles Barkley — to steal the show from both of those guys is definitely a surprise … Brown (30 pts, 5 threes) got it rolling early, scoring 10 of N.O.’s first 18 points, wetting jumpers and getting layups in transition off Utah turnovers. Despite Brown’s hot start, however, the Hornets struggled overall, falling behind by double-digits in a first quarter highlighted by C.J. Miles‘ 360 two-hand dunk. Read More »