0 comments by Matt Zemek on 5/7/2016
Whether Dave Joerger fired himself, or the Memphis Grizzlies essentially made Joerger fire himself, one thing’s for sure: The Grizzlies remain one of the strangest organizations in the NBA — not necessarily in a bad way, but with a clarity which is impossible to ignore. Some organizations are well-run, others immensely dysfunctional. The Grizzlies just […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek
Oklahoma City had a chance to bring the Thunder against the San Antonio Spurs in Game 3 of their Western Conference semifinals series on Friday night. San Antonio didn’t look like a 67-win club in Game 2, and while Kawhi Leonard (31 points and the game’s biggest rebound in the final minute) and Tony Parker […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek
Americans are notoriously impatient, and no matter what anyone might want to say about Tyronn Lue, there’s only one responsible way to view his presence as the head coach of the Cleveland Cavaliers. Simply stated, we simply can’t say anything particularly profound about Lue — at least not anything which can be taken seriously — […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek
If you saw the comment once about the Cleveland Cavaliers on Friday night, you saw it a million times. “If the Cavs can play like this against Golden State in the NBA Finals, they could win.” That’s the kind of statement which is simultaneously accurate, understandable… and bereft of any real meaning. Such a statement […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 5/6/2016
The Cavs have won every day of the Eastern Conference semifinals, if you think about it. Monday. Tuesday. Wednesday. Thursday. Four days have come and gone in the two East semis, and Cleveland has emerged the winner at the end of them. Let’s not pretend to ignore the larger reality behind the first two games […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 5/5/2016
The NBA playoffs are nothing if not a two-month seminar on the importance of having extra options at the offensive end of the floor. The NBA playoffs, one could say, are a uniquely American creature because they magnify the blessing this country has afforded to many of its citizens over time: the ability to take […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek
For the second straight playoff season, the Atlanta Hawks are finding out how miserable an experience it is to face the Cleveland Cavaliers. David Blatt’s defense last year, Tyronn Lue’s offense this year – it doesn’t matter. An elite Kyle Korver last year, a mediocre version this year – it hasn’t made a dime’s worth […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 5/4/2016
Kyle Lowry’s shooting stroke is a huge problem for the Toronto Raptors… well, unless we’re talking about halfcourt shots: Despite any public claims — from Lowry or anyone else — that his elbow injury is not affecting his shooting stroke, the numbers don’t lie in this instance. An established pattern is too entrenched to ignore […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 5/3/2016
The Oklahoma City Thunder found themselves at the center of a storm Monday night in San Antonio, one they barely managed to survive. Most of America might hate the San Antonio Spurs, or at the very least, it might resent the Spurs’ longstanding excellence as the NBA’s closest approximation of a 21st-century empire. Yet, even […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 5/2/2016
The first round of the 2016 NBA Playoffs suffered from an abundance of games in which two teams couldn’t play well at the same time, but if you’re going to knock the level of play from the past fortnight, you have to factor injuries into the equation. Yes, few series displayed the best the NBA […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek
The play’s the thing, as Shakespeare taught us, and without players, we don’t have much of a drama — not in the NBA playoffs or in any other competition under the sun. The first round of the postseason presented, on many levels, the kind of portraits we expected to see. Paul George and — more […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek
The first round of the 2016 NBA Playoffs was a most peculiar fortnight filled with a number of upside-down occurrences. The central counterintuitive reality of the first round is that the losing coaches in many of the eight series were better than the winning coaches… certainly in a 4-1 series, and possibly even in a […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek
The city of Toronto is psychologically accustomed to losing in the playoffs. The hockey mecca doesn’t have any Canadian team to root for in the quest for the Stanley Cup, so the Raptors are the only show in town as the North American spring unfolds. Sunday night in the Air Canada Centre, as one predictably […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 5/1/2016
The Heat was on… and the Hornets were turned off. The Miami Heat profoundly struggled with the Charlotte Hornets over the past four games of their Eastern Conference first-round series, but when Dwyane Wade saved them in Game 6 on Friday night, a week of frustration gave way to a different mood and attitude. This […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 4/30/2016
Hey, wait a minute — why did Kareem Abdul-Jabbar make his way into the headline for an article about Game 1 of the NBA Western Conference semifinal series between the San Antonio Spurs and the Oklahoma City Thunder? Shouldn’t we be talking about the Spurs shooting 69 percent in the first half of Game 1 […]
