Remember when Greg Monroe signed his qualifying offer to stay with the Pistons for one year? Did anyone really think that was going to turn out well? The Pistons’ frontcourt is still ridiculously clogged, and now Monroe’s going to leave next summer, possibly for nothing. Any chance of him being coaxed into staying by a great season seems impossibly remote at this point. Shams Charania of RealGM has more on the Monroe conundrum: Over a dozen teams should have the necessary cap space to
The Sixers are a top-five League Pass option right now. Until they win a game, they’re practically must-see, just for the historical importance of it all. And then even after they win, any time they’re close is worth flipping over to, because a loss to the Sixers will have more impact on a team’s playoff chances than a win over anybody. That said, it’s got to be a bad time to be a loyal Sixer fan right now, considering both the current
As you’ll probably notice from the headline, Andrei Kirilenko’s time with the Nets may be drawing to a close. What makes this interesting, apart from how good Kirilenko used to be, is that he turned down a sizable contract from the Timberwolves to come to Brooklyn in the first place on a veteran minimum deal. Kirilenko has barely seen the floor this year, and last year was easily the worst of his career, but you’ve got to imagine there’s an NBA
Growing up in Baltimore, I didn’t really have a natural NBA team. Sure, I watched a few Wizards games, and I always watched the Finals, but by and large I gravitated more towards the sport with a true hometown team: baseball. Being a fairly bright kid, I of course took an interest in advanced stats. Once I started following the NBA more in earnest, that interest in advanced stats carried over. While I’m certainly not an expert, I always take
Before I get started with the news roundup, make sure you’re all caught up on who did and who didn’t get an extension before the deadline via Chris Bernucca’s extension scoreboard. The one guy that I was particularly surprised to see miss out was Reggie Jackson. He showed last year that while he’s not James Harden, he could probably start at point guard on most NBA teams. Adrian Wojnarowski looked at the Jackson situation as well: As rival teams evaluate restricted free-agency candidates
News broke today that Victor Oladipo will miss the first few weeks of the season with a facial fracture. Here’s Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports’ report: After undergoing surgery to repair a facial fracture, Orlando Magic guard Victor Oladipo is expected to miss a month of the season, a league sources told Yahoo Sports. Oladipo, the 2014 runner-up for the NBA’s Rookie of the Year award, sustained an elbow to his head in practice on Thursday. He had the surgical procedure on Saturday. Oladipo
Yes, we’re still in preseason. That doesn’t mean anyone wants to get dunked on. So when Trevor Booker saw Griffin going up for a classic Blake Griffin dunk, he did what every basketball player is taught to do: make him earn it at the line. Maybe it was a little rough, though. Griffin certainly thought so, as evidenced by the above clip. Booker got a flagrant-1 for the foul. After the game, he seemed to regret even escalating it as far as
A while back, there was a bit of a verbal skirmish between the Wizards’ and Cavaliers’ backcourts over who was the best in the NBA. For my money, neither is as good as the Warriors’ duo, but that’s beside the point. The point, of course, is that the first Cavs-Wizards game is Nov. 21, and it looks like one of the key players won’t be involved. Jorge Castillo of the Washington Post: Washington Wizards starting shooting guard Bradley Beal could miss 6-8 weeks