Halfway through this play Sunday night at Staples Center, Dwight Howard points to Laker teammate Jodie Meeks — slightly ahead of him — motioning where Meeks needs to be to cut off Terrence Jones in the open court. Meeks never got there in time. Without anyone to stop him, the Rockets’ rookie blew up Meeks with the full facial slam. Read More »

Back in the preseason when the Lakers had all five starters together (a rare occurrence, we know), there were stretches where they were cooking better than Walter White on Breaking Bad. Mike Brown‘s failed experiment hid for a time what we saw once more Sunday night at Staples Center: In barely third gear, this team is dangerous once again. They had 40 points after one quarter without Steve Nash, who was off doing Gangnam Style, a Dwight Howard (28 points, 13 rebounds) who claimed afterward he’s still at best 80 percent healthy and a Pau Gasol who hasn’t decided to really play. Read More »

The recipe for winning the NBA Rookie of the Year award is a mixture of ability and opportunity. A player has to demonstrate immense talent that then results in solid numbers to separate himself from the pack. Of course, in order to stand out as the best rookie in the league, the player has to be in a situation where he can get considerable playing time. All coaches deal with allocating minutes to rookies differently, so the situation has to be right for the rookie to get the opportunity to shine. Read More »

Friday meant the final day of the preseason, which means there are no more chances to prove why fringe players are worthy of making a 15-man roster. There are about three dozen guys or so around the league keeping their cell phones charged and nearby in the next 24 hours. Stressful? Yeah, we’d say so. Read More »

Are you ready to get Pabloco? There’s a new unsung backup point guard in New York that’s waiting to take the world by storm, and his name is Pablo Prigioni. The 35-year-old rookie from Argentina — currently below Ray Felton and Jason Kidd on the depth chart — dropped 11 assists in the Knicks’ 97-95 overtime win against the Brooklyn Nets last night, including dimes to Steve Novak on a pair of huge three-pointers in the extra session. (And if you recall, Linsanity was born in a Knicks game against Deron Williams and the Nets.) Read More »

In their last preseason win over Memphis, Kirk Hinrich morphed into a red-faced monster for a five or six minute span of the third quarter, and while he had the whole crowd in the Windy City on its feet, they have to know it’s not always going to be that easy in the CHI this year. Luckily for Bulls fans, Derrick Rose told ESPN Chicago he’s not only ahead of schedule, but also that he plans to come back when he’s ready to play as opposed to sitting out the season. Read More »

As part of our blowout rookie class and NBA Draft coverage in Dime 70, we ranked the top 30 first-year players coming into the league. To see this feature in its entirety, check out the issue now on newsstands nationwide.

As the NBA Draft is now over and rookies are infiltrating organizations throughout the league, you need to be able to keep up heading into next year. Here, I ranked the top 30 prospects of the 2012 NBA rookie class, regardless of position… Read More »

The learning curve for rookies is a sliding scale even if every rook enters the NBA dreaming of 20 and 10 a night. Only eight rookies in 2011-12 averaged more than 10 points per game. The guy who becomes the rookie of the year is one of the few whose role can make or break his team, but there’s a huge gap in the roles the rookies will be asked to tackle. While many will be given scraps of playing time, these are the 10 who will be asked to do the most in their first year in the NBA. Read More »

The NBA isn’t in Seattle anymore, of course. Not that it mattered for Terrence Ross much last summer. A year before the Washington Husky became one of the biggest risers in the NBA Draft, the league came to him. He stepped into runs that were as much a test of his pro future as much as his college present, playing against Seattle natives or former players Nate Robinson, Spencer Hawes, Nick Collison and Jamal Crawford, to name a few. When I talked with Robinson last fall about Ross, he said he walked out impressed about the young guy of the group. It was at least an important step toward making GMs impressed, too. Read More »

The NBA Draft process is a once in a lifetime experience for those who go through it. While there are many broad similarities between the experiences of players during this process – like hectic travel schedules and grueling pre-draft training – each player takes something different away from the process. I decided to talk to 10 different eligible prospects to ask them all the same set of questions to use as a means of comparing their experiences. Read More »