The second round of the playoffs is underway and with only eight teams remaining, it means another eight have been eliminated from title contention. The offseason is the time for these teams to retool to prepare for deeper runs next season. The Brooklyn Nets finished the year with a 49-33 record, good enough for fourth place in the Eastern Conference. However, their first-round opponent, the Chicago Bulls, surprisingly beat them at home in a Game 7. Read More »

At the half of New York’s 87-71 Game 2 win over Boston, Charles Barkley called for Carmelo Anthony to give him more, saying New York doesn’t have enough scorers to have off nights from Anthony and still expect to win. ‘Melo had made just three buckets in the first two quarters, and New York was trailing by six. Read More »

With all of the intense, disturbing real-world stuff that went down in Boston all day Friday, basketball games don’t seem so important any more, do they? But here we are. It’s Saturday, the first day of the NBA Playoffs, and after the last week, we probably all need a major dose of basketball played by the world’s greatest athletes to take our minds off of current events.

This is what the schedule looks like: Read More »

Before 2007, the last time the Warriors had made the playoffs, Chris Webber was a rookie, Tim Hardaway was mesmerizing defenders with his potent between-the-legs/crossover combo, and Chris Mullin was sniping jumpers from long range, sporting his trademark military haircut. After coaching this group of future Hall of Famers, Don Nelson was fired the following season after a slow start. Read More »

In preparation for the start of this weekend’s NBA Playoffs, we thought that would be interesting to take a look at this postseason’s x-factors. While it is more conventional to say that Player X is the x-factor for their franchise entering the playoffs, you always need to dig a little deeper, go a little bit more in depth by taking a look at other specific variables within different team’s situations that have the capacity to swing a series. Read More »

We make jokes all the time about Kobe Bryant‘s evolution from “human being” into “basketball cyborg” but last night, all of these 48-minute nights finally took their toll. We’d list the leg injuries he packed on over the course of the game against Golden State, but screw it. Let’s just say the dude’s entire lower body was a mess (and he ended up leaving with what is probably the worst injury of his career). Read More »

According to the Oxford Dictionaries, a “journeyman” is known as “a worker or sports player who is reliable but not outstanding.” In the NBA, this title is used frequently to describe a player that has bounced around the league and struggled to find long-term real estate. While some of the NBA’s elite journeyman have put up All-Star numbers, they often have not received All-Star recognition. Read More »

Not everyone can be LeBron James. That’s okay, especially in the playoffs when just as many big games are determined not by the last shot, but by the defensive rebound or the charge or the swing pass or the block that set up that last shot. The club of playoff x-factors is long and memorable, and we’ll see some more names be inducted this year. Read More »

*With all of the recent events surrounding the Carmelo Anthony/Kevin Garnett feud, and the trash talk involved that lit the Internet on fire, we figured it was a good time to repost our piece on the top 20 trash talkers of all time, originally published in October of 2012.*

David Stern and the rest of the suits might be charged with trying to take the fun out of the NBA, but trash talk will never die. Read More »

As we said in Smack this morning, this likely makes Gregg Popovich absolutely livid. In the first quarter of last night’s Knicks’ blowout win over the Spurs, Stephen Jackson took a corner three and landed on a waitress who happened to be serving New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg. Read More »