NBA 2012: Running thread

james is a spoiled, indulged, shallow narcissist. But he has displayed outward signs of maturity this season, though its easy to be gracious and kind when you are winning every night. He's an entertainer, like all pro athletes, and derision comes with the territory. But even haters can't question his effort and play. He's a great player and a better teammate than Kobe ever was or will be. I still hope he doesn't win another championship, karma, but don't deny that he busts his ass every day.

 

This was pretty fun .... Hardly your run of the mill regular season game.

 

It's why Sportscenter devoted 21 of its first 23 minutes to it.

 

Pretty good breakdown of LeBron's shot selection and transformation over the last few years.

http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/9109245/how-lebron-james-transformed-game-become-highly-efficient-scoring-machine

Kirk Goldsberry has done a handful of these articles/illustrations this season.

 

Found this interesting - Tim Grover, Michael Jordan's and Kobe Bryant's trainer calls out Amare Stoudemire so to speak on a tweet:

@ATTACKATHLETICS"Can Amare get back to where he was? No doubt. His mental state is holding him back from physical gain.Fix the mind, the body follows."

I've always wondered about Stoudemire's conditioning. Doubt he will make it back this year but if he and Anthony could ever get on same page The Knicks could be a force.

 

Apologies if this is being discussed elsewhere and I missed it, but has any NBA executive ever released a statement telling another NBA executive to "Shut the fuck up" before?

http://espn.go.com/nba/truehoop/miamiheat/story/_/id/9113282/heat-prez-pat-riley-tells-celtics-ainge-shut-up

 

I just read it and laughed. He actually said something a lot of GM's have thought about other GM's, but never said.

 

My hunch is, Red Auerbach told a lot of fellow GMs to STFU or go eff themselves through the years but didn't bother to do it through a "media statement."

 

Oh yeah, I'm sure stuff like that gets said all the time, but I don't remember anybody ever having the PR people put it out in a statement. I would have like to have been in the room when the flack got the call from Riley.

 

That would have been great. It's always fun when people say and do the things we all think about saying or doing, but for whatever reason, chose not to.

 

New order in the Top 5:

Kareem, Malone, Jordan, Kobe, Wilt.

http://sports.yahoo.com/news/kobe-bryant-leads-lakers-past-043603667--nba.html

I thought he'd break Kareem's record but now I'm not sure his body will allow him to last another 3 years.