SI.com's NBA writers analyze the latest news and address hot topics from around the league each week. (All stats and records are through Feb. 8.)
What's going on with the Celtics?
PLAYER OF THE DECADE: Tim Duncan, San Antonio Spurs The greatest power forward in NBA history, Duncan was the reason San Antonio became the only team to make the playoffs every year of the decade. He was the most valuable team player of his era, an active defender who chased pick-and-rolls out to the three-point line and yet hustled back to protect the rim and control the boards. Offensively, the Spurs played through him as a passer in the post, and his dependable mid-range jumper off the backboard will be part of his highlight reel when he checks into Springfield.
Each week SI.com's Richard Deitsch will report on newsmakers from the world of TV, radio and the Web.
• Their friendship declined on the court. In his upcoming book, When The Game Was Ours, co-written with Larry Bird and author Jackie MacMullan, Magic Johnson admits that his close friendship with Isiah Thomas began to suffer when the two met in the 1988 NBA Finals.
As the Denver Nuggets prepared for their final preseason game, their locker room in the antiquated San Diego Sports Arena lacked one small thing -- lockers. All they had were 13 steel folding chairs cramped into a room the size of most players' home closets. When Carmelo Anthony walked in, he picked up his jersey from the concrete floor, placed his valuables beside a brick wall and shrugged his shoulders and laughed.
Sports Illustrated's annual NBA predictions can be found in this week's magazine, and once again you can blame me for them. Here are my explanations for why I think ...
PHILADELPHIA -- The Toronto Blue Jays won the World Series in 1992 and 1993, but it was not until their final act that they earned true acceptance and appreciation. They had 96 wins one year, 95 the next, a very good team that fell just short of great. Then Joe Carter came to the batter's box in the bottom of the ninth inning in Game 6 of the 1993 World Series, sent a moonbeam over the left-field foul pole, and took his delirious lap around the dirt cutout at Skydome. By the time he reached home plate, the Blue Jays were a dynasty or at least something close to it.
Here are the most sophisticated predictions you're likely to find for the coming season, as once again I've polled a half-dozen NBA advance and personnel scouts for their thoughts on the upcoming conference races and the playoffs.
1. Charlie Manuel caught a break. The postponement of tonight's Phillies-Rockies game saved the Philadelphia manager from having to throw his worst cold-weather pitcher on the coldest of days. Pedro Martinez had been scheduled to start, despite a forecast calling for 34 degrees and the always-unpleasant "ice pellets." Not the best of scenarios for the 37-year-old native Dominican, who has had arm trouble in recent years and has often spoken about his affinity to pitch in warm weather.
SI.com's NBA writers analyze the latest news and address hot topics from around the league each week. (All stats and records are through Feb. 8.)
What's going on with the Celtics?
PLAYER OF THE DECADE: Tim Duncan, San Antonio Spurs The greatest power forward in NBA history, Duncan was the reason San Antonio became the only team to make the playoffs every year of the decade. He was the most valuable team player of his era, an active defender who chased pick-and-rolls out to the three-point line and yet hustled back to protect the rim and control the boards. Offensively, the Spurs played through him as a passer in the post, and his dependable mid-range jumper off the backboard will be part of his highlight reel when he checks into Springfield.
Each week SI.com's Richard Deitsch will report on newsmakers from the world of TV, radio and the Web.
• Their friendship declined on the court. In his upcoming book, When The Game Was Ours, co-written with Larry Bird and author Jackie MacMullan, Magic Johnson admits that his close friendship with Isiah Thomas began to suffer when the two met in the 1988 NBA Finals.
As the Denver Nuggets prepared for their final preseason game, their locker room in the antiquated San Diego Sports Arena lacked one small thing -- lockers. All they had were 13 steel folding chairs cramped into a room the size of most players' home closets. When Carmelo Anthony walked in, he picked up his jersey from the concrete floor, placed his valuables beside a brick wall and shrugged his shoulders and laughed.
Sports Illustrated's annual NBA predictions can be found in this week's magazine, and once again you can blame me for them. Here are my explanations for why I think ...
PHILADELPHIA -- The Toronto Blue Jays won the World Series in 1992 and 1993, but it was not until their final act that they earned true acceptance and appreciation. They had 96 wins one year, 95 the next, a very good team that fell just short of great. Then Joe Carter came to the batter's box in the bottom of the ninth inning in Game 6 of the 1993 World Series, sent a moonbeam over the left-field foul pole, and took his delirious lap around the dirt cutout at Skydome. By the time he reached home plate, the Blue Jays were a dynasty or at least something close to it.
Here are the most sophisticated predictions you're likely to find for the coming season, as once again I've polled a half-dozen NBA advance and personnel scouts for their thoughts on the upcoming conference races and the playoffs.
1. Charlie Manuel caught a break. The postponement of tonight's Phillies-Rockies game saved the Philadelphia manager from having to throw his worst cold-weather pitcher on the coldest of days. Pedro Martinez had been scheduled to start, despite a forecast calling for 34 degrees and the always-unpleasant "ice pellets." Not the best of scenarios for the 37-year-old native Dominican, who has had arm trouble in recent years and has often spoken about his affinity to pitch in warm weather.
WALTHAM, Mass. -- Of all the moves made by all of the ambitious contenders in the offseason, the most important deal may be one the Celtics declined to pursue.
Sixty years ago today, a future guard for St. Peter's College in Jersey City named Rich Rinaldi was born. Nothing very remarkable about that; Rinaldi played well enough to get drafted 43rd overall by the Baltimore Bullets in 1971 and played 79 games with them over two-plus seasons. After being waived in November 1973, Rinaldi hooked on for five games with the ABA's Nets, wrapping up his pro career with averages of 4.8 points and 10.5 minutes.
PITTSBURGH -- In their pivotal game of their playoffs, the Pittsburgh Penguins won the battle of wounded knee.
LOS ANGELES -- As the Lakers rolled to a 118-78 victory over the Rockets (RECAP | BOX) on Tuesday to take a 3-2 series lead in the Western Conference semifinals, they finally felt what it was like to win going away. They finally controlled a game from the opening tip and never allowed their opponent to come up for air.
ORLANDO, Fla. -- The tiny locker room smelled as if every grape in France had fermented and exploded at once. The empty Moet bottles sat on a table in the middle. The corks lay on the ground. Veteran reporters wore garbage-bag ponchos. Not-so-veteran reporters wore suds. As his teammates passed around the Larry O'Brien trophy and mugged for the cameras, Lakers forward Lamar Odom leaned back in a stall and smiled.
ORLANDO, Fla. -- Judging by their scorching early shooting percentages, it seemed the Lakers and Magic had made some tacit agreement to avoid playing defense in Game 3 of the NBA Finals. So it must have shocked Lakers guard Kobe Bryant when Magic guard Mickael Pietrus reached in and stripped away the basketball with 30 seconds remaining and the fate of the series in the balance.
This story appears in the June 15, 2009, issue of Sports Illustrated. To subscribe to the magazine, click here.
On the night of his league's draft lottery, NBA commissioner David Stern engaged in a little ping-pong of his own with reporters. During a lively Q&A session with the press, Stern was asked about the importance of LeBron James making the NBA Finals. "You mean as opposed to Dwight Howard, Carmelo Anthony or Kobe Bryant?" Stern said. "None. We have nothing but stars. We should be called NBS instead of NBA."
Every graduating class brims with hopes and dreams, as full of promise as so many of its members are full of themselves. In the NBA, in terms of thrilling, game-deciding big shots, the Class of 2009 has to rank among the best.
Here we are, a few days into the second round of the NBA postseason, and already I'm pining for the first round. And I don't just mean Boston-Chicago. Even Atlanta-Miami would do.
Rather than joining in the parade of people tripping over themselves to stamp just the right superlative on this first-round Eastern Conference playoff series between the Boston Celtics and the Chicago Bulls -- stunning, epic, incredible, exhausting, stupid and a hundred other adjectives that pale next to the videotape and memories still too wet to touch -- we'll stick with numbers, not words.
It's Sunday night during TNT's coverage of the NBA playoffs, and announcer Kenny Smith, aka "The Jet," is doing push-ups.
The deepening recession and a run of blockbuster deals in recent years have created speculation of another big movement of talent approaching the trading deadline Thursday. But don't count on it. The way the market is shaping up, there may be a number of minor money-moving deals but no blockbusters.
In honor of the extended holiday, here is an extended look at the simplest way I know to gauge NBA championship potential. Search the roster of any team for an MVP-level talent with the leadership and drive of Larry Bird, Isiah Thomas, Hakeem Olajuwon or (to cite the newest example) Kevin Garnett. Well more than half of the NBA teams are absent this kind of star, which means you can essentially write them off as championship contenders (unless they are the Detroit Pistons of a few years ago, as you'll see below). Here's a look at who makes the biggest difference in the biggest games -- and who may be next to join them.
Never underestimate a marketing staff's ability to commemorate milestones, even ones that didn't exist before they created them. That explains how four NBA expansion franchises that entered the league in tandems a year apart all could be celebrating big, round anniversaries this season.
NEW YORK -- No Weekly Countdown today, I'm sorry to say, but there is plenty of mail rescued from the spam to which I'm glad to respond ...
If you thought ESPN executives were privately rooting for a Celtics-Lakers NBA Finals, you would be wrong. They were privately rooting for a Celtics-Lakers NBA Finals that extended to seven games.
The dominant team of the regular season and the No. 1 seed overall enters Game 6 on Friday in Cleveland as the only survivor yet to win a playoff game on the road. The Celtics' 0-5 record away from home -- versus opponents who had fewer victories at home than the Celtics had on the road this season -- is symptomatic of larger issues listed here. If the Celtics prevail in this conference semifinal and go on to beat the Pistons in the next round, then they'll have overcome these postseason concerns; if they lose, then here are some of the reasons why.
5. The NBA can't seed a single bracket. Based on the superior number of winning teams in the West, there has been a lot of complaining that the NBA needs to consider reseeding the playoffs without regard to conference. Invite to the postseason tournament the 16 winningest teams across the board and seed them in a single bracket from No. 1 Boston to No. 16 Toronto.
This year's Hall of Fame class will be announced Monday, and three NBA figures are considered a lock for enshrinement: Pat Riley, Hakeem Olajuwon and Patrick Ewing. Some others among the 15 finalists are considered to be on the bubble, including Adrian Dantley, Dennis Johnson, Chris Mullin and Don Nelson.
First the Pacers, and now the Bulls: It's as if an emerging virus is spreading through the Central Division, ruining contenders before they peak.
Also in this column: • HOF case for an ex-international star • More debate on European expansion
The Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame is the duck-billed platypus of sports' great shrines, a little-of-this, little-of-that place -- the organization, by the way, not the state-of-the-art facility in Springfield, Mass. -- designed by committee. As a result, it has too little of some very deserving potential members.
Some of the biggest stories so far in the 2007-08 NBA season have been made by its junior members.
Last summer a friend of mine did what he annually does: He went to Las Vegas and put $200 on the Celtics to reach the NBA Finals. That bet looks more promising now that they've teamed Paul Pierce with Ray Allen and Kevin Garnett, because the Celtics today are 5-2 favorites to win the East.
This week SI revealed its visions for the upcoming NBA season. My confession is this: I am responsible for the predictions. So when the Knicks are playing like an Edsel on a flat tire, blame me for picking them No. 6 in the East. (But I don't think that's going to happen.)
Advance scouts are the spies of the NBA: Every franchise employs one or more of them to travel the league and study opponents for weaknesses. Each year I interview a number of them -- anonymously and exhaustively -- to assess every team for Sports Illustrated's preview.
His golf cap does not quite hide his full head of hair, the typical paunch is absent from his flat belly, and a worn championship ring weighs down each hand as 73-year-old Bill Russell devours the plate of steak and scrambled eggs from the edge of the coffee table between his perched knees. He laughs as always with the decibelic force of a ghost brought back to life.
CLEVELAND -- Commissioner David Stern responded to the record-low TV ratings for the NBA Finals by saying that they were a sign of the changing media times.
SAN ANTONIO -- Being LeBron James isn't as easy as the Pistons made it look.
CLEVELAND -- A poster of LeBron James dunking over Spurs forward Tim Duncan was displayed in the locker stall of the Cavs superstar before Saturday night's Game 6 of the Eastern Conference finals.
DALLAS (Ticker) -- The Dallas Mavericks on Thursday signed center Kevin Willis for the remainder of the season.
A little bit of playground-style play calling from Boise State coach Chris Petersen, and now the entire country has more or less agreed on the desperate need for a playoff system in college football. Of course, everyone also agreed that Florida had no chance against Ohio State, that Tony Romo was the greatest quarterback who ever lived, and that Erik Estrada wasn't a real cop. The idea of a college football playoff certainly has its merits, but we all seem to be forgetting that we don't really like any of the playoff systems that already exist in other sports.
There have been more than 500 news stories in the last month alone that have mentioned both the names "Dwyane Wade" and "Michael Jordan."
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