It is pretty rare when an elite superstar, a player at the top of their game, is traded off by a team. Circumstances have to reach a boiling point where the team is not going anywhere or the player sees greener pastures and nothing will stop that fixation. In the NBA today, superstars (and those who think they are superstars) are all built the same. If their team has not won a championship or when they see their friends winning them in a brief amount of time, they see it as a need for a new setting. Read More »

We’ll call this the list Gary McGhee loves to hate…

I’ve been on both sides of the coin before. But it’s the embarrassing times you remember. One in particular stands out for me. College. Sophomore year. Preseason. Every fall at a D-III college is always the same: there are the returning players and then there are dozens of kids from high school, all coming together and all believing they’ll be one of the three or four kids who actually make the team. They all have some game – or at least a little bit – and they’re all cocky. Read More »

Dwight Howard hears your concerns, especially you Magic fans out there. He appreciates the Stay Dwight campaign, and doesn’t seem like he really wants to leave. It’s as if he’s slowly being pulled away towards the big city – L.A. or New York. He wants to show he cares. So come Nov. 13, he’ll be throwing his own charity game, which has so many former or current Magic players, we might as well just call it a preseason scrimmage. Everyone from DeShawn Stevenson to Ryan Anderson will be in the house, but the one guy I want to see – no, must see – is Steve Francis. Stevie Franchise… or whatever’s left of him. Read More »

Did the Heat lose in the Finals last year because LeBron played like he was scared? Did they lose because J.J. Barea went off? Did they lose because Dirk did everything outside of morphing into Larry Bird to stop them? Dwyane Wade doesn’t believe any of that was the real reason they lost. The Heat lost because of misplaced emotion. Wade and his teammates wanted to win to spite people because so much of the public actively hated them. Public Enemy No. 1. Even Ice Cube in his heyday never felt this hated. And yet Wade told Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski on his radio show that the team was wrongly fueled by hate, and didn’t win the championship because of that. Do you buy it? Read More »

Honestly, there are few things that feel better than dribbling a basketball. Very few…and those are all outside of basketball. It seems natural: Basketball in hand. The basketball pounding against the gym floor. The sneakers squeaking. On the court, it’s art. Dribble low. Dribble high. Fast. Quick. I know it sounds corny, but for me it’s true. I could be in the gym for hours, and do nothing but push the rock through drills. Read More »

Daaaaaaamn. That’s all a fourth grader could say. And it wasn’t even like I actually spoke the words either; my nine-year-old cheeks would’ve gotten smacked if I had. I was young, but I wasn’t stupid. Still, I knew special when I saw it. Allegany Community College. Cumberland, Maryland. Steve Francis was ill even before the NBA, even before Maryland. Back then, in case you forgot, The Franchise was just beginning his takeover. Read More »

Has it really come to this? Derrick Rose can drop a 40-ounce on the best team in the League, the team with a 13-time All-Defensive pick patrolling the paint, and it’s not even a big surprise? At least it wasn’t to D-Rose, whose reaction at the end of his 42-point torching of the San Antonio Spurs last night had all the enthusiasm of a guy stuck in morning traffic … Chicago was up by seven at halftime, when Rose already had 21 points. He opened the third quarter in a brief jump shot duel with Tim Duncan, then took a backseat as Luol Deng and Carlos Boozer got theirs. Read More »

Although his reel of in-game dunks is about as short as he is, it’s hard to argue with that fact that Nate Robinson is one of the best dunkers in NBA history. He’s competed in four of the last five dunk contests, and won three of them – making him the only three-time dunk champion in NBA history. And when you think about it, at 5-9, it would be incredible if he just did dunked, period. So in anticipation of this year’s All-Star Saturday Night, we got up with Kryptonate to talk about his dunk legacy and this year’s contest. Read More »

Less than two weeks after his debut with the Beijing Shougang Ducks of the Chinese Basketball Association, former NBA All-Star Steve Francis is being cut.

According to reports confirmed by Francis’ agent, the 33-year-old is done with the Ducks after four games where he averaged 0.5 points in 14 total minutes. Francis was originally signed to a two-year contract. He made headlines last week when he was given a warning by the CBA for waving his middle finger while sitting on the bench. Read More »

What happened? When we heard that Steve Francis agreed to a two-year deal to play for the Beijing Ducks in China this season, we couldn’t fault the guy for getting his. But when we hard that the Chinese Basketball Association issued a “serious warning” for waving his middle finger as he sat on the bench, well, that’s a little much. Read More »