A better basketball site.
For intelligent readers, from veteran writers.
Keep scrolling down. Good stuff here.
Of course, the Clippers didn’t shop Eric Bledsoe.
If you haven’t been paying attention, no one ever shops anybody. It’s just that other teams call and you have to listen in the interest of improving your club.
Kind of makes you wonder how talks get initiated if no GM ever says, “Yeah, we called them up, asked for Kevin Garnett, and offered them Eric.”
Not that the Celtics were shopping KG, either, but Danny Ainge had to listen in the interests of his club, too.
Just what the Lakers needed – a new era.
For the Lakers, the old era was paradise, from 1979 when Jerry Buss bought the team and as his first official act got to draft Magic Johnson.
The team that went 1-for-9 in the Finals in its first 20 seasons in town and lost all seven meetings with Boston made 16 more Finals and won 10 more titles in the next 30 years, replacing the Celtics as the NBA’s dominant franchise from that point.
There have been three true NBA dynasties, but only one that is attributable to an owner. Red Auerbach, a coach and general manager, gets all the credit for Boston’s dominance in the 1960s; Michael Jordan merits the same in Chicago for his pair of three-peats with the Bulls, and Jerry Buss, who died Monday at age 80, deserves major props for what he did with the Lakers.
And what a first half it was!
Even crushing the Thunder in Oklahoma City to finish it on a 7-0 run left the defending champion Miami Heat with the No. 3 record, although – unlike the days when every misstep prompted charges that LeBron James was a choking mercenary – there was no outcry at all.
Bron ended that with last year’s title before going to heights he hadn’t even been to – and no one else may have – scoring at least 30 points and shooting at least 60 percent six games in a row.
In the classy part, James let it end in garbage time against the Thunder, missing his last shot to dip under 60 percent at 14-of-24, while going for 39 points, 12 boards and seven assists.
A slow start for Moneyball, NBA style.
With 34-year-old Grizzlies owner Robert Pera shocked – shocked! – to learn the team he paid $377 million for in June was in financial peril, they began shopping Rudy Gay, even if moving him would break up the group that had risen from No. 15-14-11 finishes from 2007-2009 to within one win of the Western Conference finals in 2010.
