Uncontested Shots

If you truly believe in the old adage that it’s better to be lucky than good then you should probably stop reading this right now. If you’re also a believer in that good things happen to good people then you really should just close whatever tab this is on and go on with your day. I’m embarrassed to admit how much time I’ve spent over the past month wondering how in the world one of the world’s most despicable human beings lucked into one of the greatest chains of events imaginable. I’m talking about Donald T. Sterling – the admitted [...]

Nobody was surprised when Pat Riley was named a co-recipient of the 2011 Executive of the Year Award. You could make the case that Riley signed the top three names on any GM’s list of the top-10 available free agents. You could also make the case that Riley signed two more names off the top-20 list when he snagged Mike Miller and Udonis Haslem. The real reason that Riley was able to sign more than two guys off that list was because of a trade he’d made back in February of 2009. You’d have to go even further back to [...]

It shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone that the Los Angeles Lakers and owner Jerry Buss plan on retiring Shaq’s No. 34. That’s because even when the relationship between Shaq and the Lakers was at it’s most contentious, the Lakers still took the high road. Every time Shaq blasted the organization or went out of his way to diss the franchise by either declaring every one of his post-Lakers coaches or teammates as “the best he’s ever played for or with” the Lakers as an organization never took the bait. When Lamar Odom arrived in Los Angeles as part [...]

  If you’re a Lakers hater, then you’ve earned the right to laugh all you want at the demise of this year’s edition of the Los Angeles Lakers. If you’re a Lakers fan, take a deep breath. Next, watch a few of these remaining playoff games and forget about the Lakers for a couple weeks. Before you start messing around with trade machines and looking up player contracts, let the loss marinate a little bit before you start playing pocket GM. That’s because there are a number of reasons as to why nobody should be surprised that the Lakers were [...]

  When we look back on what Pat Riley did in the Summer of ’08 years from now, we’ll likely remember how Riles had the ability to retain Dwyane Wade and Udonis Haslem and sign LeBron James and Chris Bosh. We’ll even remember how Riley convinced Mike Miller to take a little less money to play for a ring. Heck, we may even remember how he gave Joel Anthony a five-year extension and sign veteran big men like Juwan Howard and Zydrunas Ilgauskas and give them a chance at the championship ring that has eluded them throughout their respective careers. [...]

I know it’s been a long time since I’ve written anything NBA-related. It’s not that there hasn’t been anything for me to write about. Quite the opposite. The last few months have been extremely busy for me. For starters, I became a first-time father. My NBA observations have been reduced to 140-character tweets and the occasional late night email chain. There are so many great NBA writers out there that if you procrastinate for an hour then there’s a good chance that one of them will tackle that same angle before your computer has had time to boot itself up. [...]

They saw Art Modell leave for Baltimore and there was nothing they could do about it. Same goes for Jim Thome. They saw CC Sabathia and Cliff Lee get traded and even though they understood it, there was nothing they could do about it. They’ve accepted that the current rules in Major League Baseball are designed to give the teams in the larger markets the greatest chance to not only retain their best players but to continue to poach the smaller-market teams of their best players as they near free agency. You could argue that the only league with a level playing [...]

The 2010-11 NBA season is finally under way. That also means that it’s time for all the NBA writers to make their predictions for the season. I tend to do a predictions piece every year but I never had the chance to do so. So instead I’ve decided to take some of the more popular predictions and tell you why these people are wrong. Myth #1: The Chicago Bulls will finish in fourth in the Eastern Conference. It’s not that I don’t think the Bulls will be a great team this year. I also don’t think it’s far-fetched for the [...]

Source: YardBarker.com For basketball geeks the summer can be almost as exciting as the regular season. This particular summer generated more buzz than usual due to the amount of free agents and the amount of teams with large amounts of cap space with which to make changes. While the Miami Heat can boast about snagging the top three available free agents, we shouldn’t forget they also got themselves another from the top-15 in Mike Miller, and another from the top-30 in Udonis Haslem. It would be hard to think that anybody could ever top the summer Miami has had. What [...]

  This has been the greatest off-season in NBA history. That’s because when it’s all said and done, it will be remembered as the shortest. You could count the number of days when there wasn’t anything NBA-related worth talking about on one hand. Free agency news, coaching hires, Team USA, endorsement deals, the draft, Summer Pro League, trade rumors, etc. There were plenty of obvious winners this summer. Joe Johnson, Wesley Matthews, Drew Gooden, and Travis Outlaw come first to mind. Nobody should be surprised those guys were winners but the extent to which they won has to come as [...]