After 50 years of watching basketball games, I’ve already forgotten more than I can remember about the different changes the sport has undergone. Globally, the game is as popular as it’s ever been, and many of the changes have improved the overall quality of the game, but there are some … Read more
Today we honor those basketball cats with the peripheral vision, the ability and desire to deliver the ball to teammates when and where they want it. These are the guys who “play well with others”, the ones whose teammates will expend the extra effort to get open, confident that it won’t … Read more
As I get older, I find myself getting watching college and professional basketball games with a slightly heightened level of anxiety. As the sport continues to evolve, we’ve seen a change in player behavior over time, as we have in all sports. For example, we’ve witnessed players in almost every … Read more
Photo by Pro Church Media on Unsplash And just like that – to steal a line from play-by-play guy Mike Breen – Thanksgiving Day is here and the 2017-18 NBA season is already about 20 percent complete. Many teams have struggled to find their groove, but every team is blessed with talented players and … Read more
Now that we’re about a week into the 2017-18 College Basketball season, we’ll begin to focus on some of the lesser-known programs in Division 1 and scouring for upsets courtesy of schools from the smaller conferences and divisions. The first few days of the season did not disappoint, with several … Read more
Photo by Andrew Itaga on Unsplash A couple of Saturday mornings each month, a childhood buddy of mine and I venture out to a nearby park with a basketball court to shoot some middle-aged hoops. We’re both 57 years old, he’s in better shape than I am, but neither of us would be … Read more
Just a few weeks into the 2017-18 NBA season, we’re already hearing talk regarding potential league Most Valuable Player candidates and hearing the “MVP” chants at arenas throughout the league. It’s a bit early for that, but recent trends suggest that the eventual winner will NOT be a traditional low-post … Read more
With the 2017-18 season almost three weeks old, it’s time to offer first impressions on what has already been a strange first 2.5 miles of the 82-game marathon known as the NBA regular-season. Most teams have played between seven and ten games already, and, as usual, there have been some … Read more
Scorers. They rule the NBA. They shoot more. They score more. They get paid more. Their moves are copied on playgrounds. Coaches design game plans around them. They sell more jerseys. Win or lose, they get mentioned in the post-game wrap-ups and media accounts. They take the shots with the … Read more
The homework was done. The chores weren’t, but for the teen-aged sports junkie in the pre-cable television era, priorities tended to come in second to the possibility of finding a live sporting event on a slow night. As I began my search for the rare live sporting event, I had … Read more
