0 comments by Cole Frederick on 12/1/2015
After defeating the Utah Jazz last night, 106-103, the Golden State Warriors are now 19-0 on the season. What we’ve seen thus far from Golden State – and particularly Stephen Curry – has been a spectacular display of basketball, and the Warriors are clearly the favorites to win the NBA title again. We know the […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 11/30/2015
The career of a giant — in sports or any other theater of human endeavor — is hard to encapsulate in a series of essays, let alone one. You should read the beat writers for the Los Angeles Times and ESPN.com, and the other national basketball writers you’ve come to respect, in order to get […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 11/29/2015
The 2015-2016 San Antonio Spurs could be likened to the 1996 Seattle Sonics. Viewed through one basic lens, that comparison is obvious and entirely legitimate. Yet, on another fundamental level, that comparison doesn’t hold. * Here’s why the Spurs can be compared to the 1996 Sonics: When the 1996 Chicago Bulls laid waste to the […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 11/28/2015
It’s only one month. It’s only one month. It feels like The Wizard of Oz, as Dorothy says over and over again, “There’s no place like home. There’s no place like home…” Say something often enough, with sufficient belief, and the world you long for might appear. In the 2015-2016 NBA season, can various teams […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek
Death. Taxes. The NBA Western Conference being conclusively and comprehensively better than the Eastern Conference. We have lived with this reality in the NBA for some time, and at the All-Star break, we could very well see it in evidence yet again. However, it certainly doesn’t exist right now. After one month of very uneven […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 11/20/2015
Life is full of contradictions and counterintuitive truths. The theater of athletic competition — unscripted and chaotic — is representative of this messy and inconvenient existence in a world that’s hard to understand. In the present-day NBA, no rivalry is harder to understand than the one between the Golden State Warriors and the Los Angeles […]
0 comments by CC Locker on 11/19/2015
Sweet mercy. Actually, no mercy was shown at all by DeMar DeRozan in this throwdown against Rudy Gobert on Wednesday night. Little Man Posterizes Big Man — details at 11.
Nov 18, 2015; Salt Lake City, UT, USA; Toronto Raptors guard Kyle Lowry (7) drives to the hoop past Utah Jazz guard Alec Burks (10) for two points in the final seconds of the second quarter at EnergySolutions Arena. Mandatory Credit: Jeff Swinger-USA TODAY Sports
0 comments by Matt Zemek
The Toronto Raptors are coming face to face with a fundamental truth about life, sports, and NBA road back-to-backs: none of them are even remotely fair. Lurking behind that up-front reality is a more specific truth about competition: You can acquit yourself well and have nothing to show for it; good process doesn’t guarantee good […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek
Wednesday night in Orlando, the NBA did not stage the Rising Stars Challenge, the annual part of All-Star Weekend which is more informally known as the rookie game or the futures game. However, the clash between the Minnesota Timberwolves and the Orlando Magic easily could have been mistaken for it. Youthfulness will produce inconsistency and […]
Dec 22, 2014; Houston, TX, USA; Houston Rockets forward Corey Brewer (33) during the game against the Portland Trail Blazers at Toyota Center. Mandatory Credit: Troy Taormina-USA TODAY Sports
0 comments by CC Locker
The Houston Rockets ended their four-game losing streak and gave interim head coach J.B. Bickerstaff his first win as an NBA bench boss Wednesday night. How did they beat the Portland Trail Blazers, roughly 13 hours after the dismissal of Kevin McHale as head coach? They dominated overtime, but in order to get to the […]
Remember this guy? The Heat could really use him. The idea that Miami could contend with Cleveland for the East without Bosh always seemed to be a case of wishful thinking. It remains as much… even if the Heat can survive Game 6 against the Charlotte Hornets.
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 11/18/2015
Tuesday night in the NBA, the Detroit Pistons simultaneously arrested a slide; got healthy at home; and knocked off the prohibitive Eastern Conference favorite. The Pistons’ victory over the Cleveland Cavaliers was one of the night’s most notable results. Yet, it felt notable because of what it said about one of the two teams involved […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek
It is true that when Pat Riley sacked Stan Van Gundy early in the 2005-2006 season, the Miami Heat went on to win the NBA championship. The brutally harsh and selfish move, drenched in ego as it was, did possess one fundamental advantage: The man who made the change was convinced that a better replacement […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek
Did the Houston Rockets fire Kevin McHale too early? That’s a legitimate question, but it’s a separate conversation. Daryl Morey has already made a decision. He now has to plot his next move and, accordingly, determine the future of this organization. * The interim coach of the Rockets, taken from the pool of McHale’s assistants, […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 11/17/2015
If we’re not at a true crisis point with the Houston Rockets, 11 games into the season, we’re at least at a stage in this team’s evolution which requires careful monitoring. With the Rockets making “matador defense” look active and aggressive by comparison, coach Kevin McHale is scrambling to get his players to change their […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 11/16/2015
My, my, my — we know that early-season basketball is tumultuous, but the 2015 portion of the new NBA season is giving us a November to remember in this regard. Last week, we mentioned how many teams had already managed to fit a three-game losing skid into two weeks of basketball. Teams basically played well […]
