The Brooklyn Nets won’t be blaring “All of the Lights” as their theme song this season because, among other things, they’ll only be using some of the lights in the brand-new Barclays Center for BK games. And they’re special lights. We knew for a while that the Nets would use theatre-style lighting, which is what the Lakers and Knicks use, the kind of lighting that dims the crowd and puts the floor on an imaginary stage by highlighting the game. Read More »

John Wall is that No. 1 pick whose team has never progressed out of the high first round picks around him. How much of that is on him now? It’s a subject we’ve written about at length when we put him on our cover twice in the last year. Today his college coach, John Calipari said it’s not all on Wall — even after conceding that he “must improve” in between the rim and the three-point line — and that a 19-year-old shouldn’t be saddled with “the weight of the world” on his shoulders. Read More »

Every NBA team has a go-to guy, and there’s really only room for one. And it’s not strictly who takes the last-second shot. It’s the guy who regularly gets the ball when things are getting tense in the fourth; the guy expected to calm things down when teammates are getting sloppy; the guy called upon to snuff out an opponent’s rally, or spark a rally of his own; the guy who’s not just supposed to make shots, but make the right decisions. Bottom line: Who do you want the offense to run through when everything is on the line? From #30 to #1 (one per team), these are the League’s best go-to guys… Read More »

Though Dwight Howard said that “it wasn’t like I was out there trying to hurt anybody,” Commissioner Stern’s office has cracked the whip, suspending the Magic center for Game 6.

Knowing full well the implications of taking away a dude who is averaging 24 points, 15.8 rebounds, and 2.8 blocks, the League must have felt his swinging elbow was particularly egregious. Read More »

When Smack reader “SwedishMooze” suggested that Andre Iguodala‘s game-winner against Orlando the other night doubled as a big F-U to Sixers coach Tony DiLeo — who’d called timeout when Iguodala had the ball where he wanted it a few seconds earlier and may have drawn up a different play than “Andre iso on Hedo” — I asked the biggest Sixers fan I know, Dime’s Pat Cassidy, who he wants coaching his team next year. Read More »