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| Second Round Is Short on Drama |
(Fri, 12 May 2006)
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| Eight teams have been sent home, are gone fishing, are off to Cancun or whatever cliché you want to use. Eight teams remain -- seven if you've already eliminated the Cleveland LeBrons, who breezed past the local five in six but look to be exiting in four.
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| The Best and Brightest of the NBA's Season |
(Thu, 20 Apr 2006)
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| The regular season comes to a close tonight and what have we learned? That the dress code was the most overblown non-story of the season. That thanks to Kobe Bryant, Jerry Stackhouse, Dwyane Wade, LeBron James and Allen Iverson men don't have to be ashamed to wear tights anymore -- until next season when the league cracks down and begins fining players for embracing their inner ballerina. And, that the league was too concerned with dress codes and tights to actually make a playoff seeding system that makes sense.
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| Mediocrity Is the Name of the Game in East |
(Tue, 11 Apr 2006)
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| The Eastern Conference really has no business being this bad.
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| Pistons in Need of a Challenge |
(Tue, 14 Mar 2006)
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| The Detroit Pistons are bored. Saturday night at Verizon Center, the Pistons didn't look like a team that was absorbing an 18-point beat down to the Washington Wizards. A few players were laughing in the final minutes when reserve forward Carlos Delfino made an awkward drive toward the basket. After the game, forward Rasheed Wallace was cracking jokes with guard Richard Hamilton and kidding point guard Chauncey Billups about wearing a corduroy sport jacket on a warm day in Washington. If the loss stung, it didn't show.
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| No Answer for No "Answer" |
(Tue, 07 Mar 2006)
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| Go down the list of the all the words. Insulting. Embarrassing. Disrespectful. Shameful. Inexplicable. They all are correct when describing Allen Iverson's omission from the list of 23 players who will vie for a spot on what should be, in theory, the world's best basketball team.
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| Mavs Finding Challenges, Meeting Them |
(Tue, 28 Feb 2006)
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| Team of the Week
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| After 17 Attempts, a Second-Half Look |
(Thu, 23 Feb 2006)
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| This goes out to New York Knicks rookie Nate Robinson, who needed only 15 attempts to complete his game-winning dunk in the Slam Dunk competition on Saturday night. Robinson gives hope to everybody, and not just because the 5-foot-8 chunk of dynamite showed ridiculous hops while climbing 1986 Slam Dunk Champion Spud Webb and making a 360-degree dunk but because he proved that you should never give up.
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| Scott Has Hornets Playing Inspired Ball |
(Tue, 14 Feb 2006)
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| With the New Orleans/Oklahoma City Hornets exceeding the expectations of the city they left behind, the city in which they temporarily dwell, and people throughout the NBA (including the team's owner George Shinn), Coach Byron Scott could easily gloat. He could wag his finger in the face of those who criticized him on the way out of New Jersey for being too lazy and overmatched, and to those who privately giggled at his dismal 18-64 record in New Orleans last season.
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| Best Players Not Always on Best Team |
(Tue, 07 Feb 2006)
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| There once was a time when being an elite player meant being on an elite team, or at least lifting your team to elite status. But take a look at the 10 starters for the NBA All-Star Game in Houston next weekend. Half of them are playing on teams that are either well below .500 (Houston's Yao Ming and Tracy McGrady), dead even (Philadelphia's Allen Iverson) or within one game from having a .500 record (the Los Angeles Lakers' Kobe Bryant and Indiana's Jermaine O'Neal). Miami's Dwyane Wade and Shaquille O'Neal, Phoenix's Steve Nash and San Antonio's Tim Duncan are the only players from teams that are currently leading their division. LeBron James' Cleveland Cavaliers are nine games above .500 but they trail the Eastern Conference-leading Detroit Pistons by 11 ½ games in the Central Division (the Pistons, by the way, don't have any players elected to start -- although one will likely be thrown in to replace the injured O'Neal).
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| Bryant Is Capable of 19 More |
(Tue, 24 Jan 2006)
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| Kobe Bryant has to go for it. He has to shoot for 100.
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| Dixon Leading Blazers' Surge |
(Tue, 17 Jan 2006)
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| Look back, look ahead:
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| Look Back, Ahead |
(Tue, 10 Jan 2006)
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| Evaluations, rankings and upcoming matchups of note:
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| Pistons-Heat Rematch Seems Inevitable |
(Wed, 04 Jan 2006)
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| Can we fast forward to May, already? The Detroit Pistons and Miami Heat are on a collision course for Game 7 of the Eastern Conference Finals once again and if last Thursday's matchup on TNT revealed anything, it's that the next 50 or so games remaining in the regular season are practically irrelevant (with the exception of the Pistons' lofty pursuit of 70 wins).
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| Nash, Marion and Defense Equals Suns' Success |
(Fri, 30 Dec 2005)
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| With the Washington Wizards trailing by one point Wednesday at MCI Center, Gilbert Arenas darted into the lane, where Phoenix Suns forward Boris Diaw rejected his shot and batted the ball directly to guard Steve Nash. Nash pushed it up the court, took a few steps past halfcourt and delivered a pretty alley-oop lob from about 40 feet away to the high-flying forward Shawn Marion for a game-clinching dunk.
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| Three Observations From the Past Seven Days |
(Fri, 30 Dec 2005)
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| 1. Camby could open the door for Duncan
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| First Quarter Scores |
(Tue, 20 Dec 2005)
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| The first quarter of the NBA season is complete and while certain things have gone according to plan -- Detroit and San Antonio, the two participants in the NBA Finals, remain the top two teams; the Raptors, Hawks and Blazers are duking it out for the No. 1 pick in next June's draft; Allen Iverson is still scoring buckets by the boatload and Pat Riley has replaced Stan Van Gundy as coach of the Miami Heat (What? No matter how it was explained, who didn't see this coming?) -- there have been a few alterations to the script.
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| The Top Five Destinations for Ron Artest |
(Thu, 15 Dec 2005)
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| The Pacers spent all of last season patting all-star Ron Artest on the back after he embarrassed the franchise -- and the entire league -- with his mad dash into the stands at the Palace of Auburn Hills and subsequent 73-game suspension. Artest has since pulled a switcheroo, grabbing the Pacers' consoling arm, twisting it and demanding that it scream "Uncle!" Artest asked to be traded over the weekend and the Pacers have elected to comply, deactivating the former Defensive Player of Year for three games and making available one of the best values in all of sports -- a top 15 talent earning a salary that's slightly more than the league average. Few teams appear concerned about the excess baggage that comes with NBA's version of Terrell Owens -- more than half of the league's other 29 teams have contacted the Pacers to express interest in Artest. The Pacers are expected to make deal by Monday, but here are a few suggestions:
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| Riley Stepping In Was Inevitable |
(Wed, 14 Dec 2005)
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| He spoke of the misery and drudgery of being an NBA coach, of the constant wear and tear on both mind and body. "When you're down there in the trenches as a coach, the grind is very difficult. It's in only the two hours a night that you play that you are in a joyful experience. Only the games, I think, for guys who like to compete, are the fun," he said. "In between games, and the road trips, and the preparation, and the practices, and the fact that everything is rushed, you get fatigued. Planes. Buses. That's joyless. Absolutely joyless. That's something I don't have to endure anymore."
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| A Decade Later, Iverson Rises to New Level |
(Thu, 01 Dec 2005)
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| BOSTON -- While most everyone seems prepared to anoint LeBron James as king and Kobe Bryant launches jumper after jumper in his black leotards until his arm turns to rubber, the NBA's leading scorer is another familiar face, with that trademark cornrowed hair and continues to dive head-first toward the basket at age 30 with the same ferocity he did at 20. You remember Allen Iverson?
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| Moving at a Strange Pace |
(Tue, 29 Nov 2005)
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| The Washington Wizards have been able to leap tall buildings (San Antonio and Detroit) and trip over small pebbles (Orlando, Charlotte) in a single bound. But while the Wizards' inconsistency has been perplexing at times, no team in the NBA has been more schizophrenic than the Indiana Pacers. Predicted by many in the preseason to win the Eastern Conference and by others to take win the NBA title, the Pacers last week gave the latest reason as to why they are far from being a team that can be taken seriously in the playoffs: The day after they soundly roasted Cleveland -- ending the Cavaliers' eight-game winning streak -- on Thanksgiving, they become the turkeys and lost at home to the Atlanta Hawks. Then, two days after losing to Atlanta, the Pacers recorded an impressive win in Los Angeles against the Pacific Division-leading Clippers (that still is pretty funny to write), which leads to the question: Who are these people? Losing to the Hawks might've been forgivable considering the Pacers were playing without Ron Artest -- except the Hawks entered the game having won just one game on the season, they hadn't won back-to-back games in more than a season and they hadn't beaten the Pacers in more than two years. More troubling, however, is that the loss came less than two weeks after they were blown out by 32 points in Charlotte -- with Artest.
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| Timberwolves Should Free KG |
(Tue, 22 Nov 2005)
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| The Minnesota Timberwolves have to start being honest with themselves.
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| Ford Driving Bucks in the Right Direction |
(Thu, 10 Nov 2005)
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| In his first game after missing the previous 20 months with a spinal cord injury, Milwaukee Bucks point guard T.J. Ford fell hard on his tailbone. He sat still, back hunched over, legs spread out on the court for about 30 seconds. His teammates crowded around, but Ford waved them off.
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