The National Basketball Association’s staff tasked with creating the league’s annual schedule of games always face a daunting task. In addition to giving consideration to things like venue availability, the NBA schedule-makers must also factor in the league’s honest attempt to reduce the number of games each team will play … Read more
The NBA season is a marathon. Training camps, four or five pre-season games, an 82-game regular-season with an All-Star break tossed in, and four rounds of post-season play make the NBA as much about attrition as talent and coaching. Only the players can tell us what that grind is physically … Read more
NBA fans in Philadephia and beyond are eagerly awaiting the resolution of the Ben Simmons situation, one of the biggest stories in the NBA, where the player has allegedly vowed never to play for the hometown 76ers team again. Evidently, the feeling is mutual, and the pressure is on the … Read more
There’s that man again. Basketball lifer Al (pictured above), now a youthful 61 years old, is still launching midrange shots, making a fair percentage of them, and leaving his feet while doing it. After waiting out pandemic isolation and humid New York City summer months, we finally came upon a … Read more
In New York City, fans of local professional sports have always had plenty of options, With two franchises in each of the major team sports, there are increased odds, at least in theory, that a competitive team will emerge from so many entries. So here we are in late September … Read more
The National Basketball Association’s 2020-21 campaign has been full of surprises. The Phoenix Suns and the Utah Jazz finished the regular season with the top two records in the Western Conference. The defending champion Los Angeles Lakers had to survive a play-in game to qualify for the postseason. The Knicks … Read more
That’s right. The 2021 NBA Play-In Tournament is now over, and it’s time to assess. If pundits can grade a team’s draft performance on the very next day and before any draftee suits up for a game at the professional level, there’s no problem with handing out grades for the … Read more
For its 2020-2021 campaign, the ever-evolving National Basketball Association has decided to revamp its postseason format to include more teams. As a result, they’ve added some hurdles to playoff participation for some and offered playoff possibilities for others where they didn’t exist before without changing the number of playoff qualifiers, … Read more
It wasn’t too long ago that the NBA’s Golden State Warriors were the talk of the basketball world. Over the five seasons commencing with the 2014-15 campaign, the Warriors won 79 percent of their regular-season games, 75 percent of their postseason games, reached the NBA Finals all five years, and … Read more
Basketball fans will reminisce about the semifinal game of the 2021 NCAA Men’s Division 1 Tournament between the UCLA Bruins and the Gonzaga Bulldogs for decades. The fiercely-contested game that featured multiple lead changes and clutch shots appeared destined for a second overtime period before freshman — and soon-to-be millionaire … Read more
