When I left Southern California for Abu Dhabi, in October of 2009, UCLA’s basketball program wasn’t John Wooden-esque, but it was solid. Respectable. The Bruins had made the NCAA tournament 19 of the previous 21 seasons, and added their 11th national championship during that span. Wooden had won 10 championships in 12 seasons, ending in […]

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This is an interesting concept. A writer who is perhaps Australian, now in New York, who appears to have done mostly business writing over the past few years … has attempted to explain the Golden State Warriors guard Stephen Curry to readers of The Guardian, one of Britain’s quality newspapers. The piece has some nice […]

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It is not clear to me where this idea originated, but it’s ridiculous: Kevin Durant ready to sign on with the Golden State Warriors as a free agent this summer. I know this is a slow time on the U.S. sports calendar, and we might be willing to talk about really stupid ideas, given we […]

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Stephen Curry and the Golden State Warriors went up against the NBA’s best defensive team tonight, and that San Antonio team is also the clear second-best team in the league … and Curry and the Warriors destroyed the Spurs, 120-90. Curry played only 29 minutes but scored 37 points on 12-for-20 shooting, including 6-for-9 accuracy […]

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The NBA has taken over Christmas Day. Not long ago, this was a day ceded to second-tier college football bowl games. The Blue-Gray game was the first thing up. Maybe the Sun Bowl in the afternoon. Nothing that mattered much. For decades, the NBA didn’t do much to take the day away from the random […]

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In the previous post I fretted over the possibility that the Golden State Warriors could break the Los Angeles Lakers’ record NBA winning streak of 33 games. Within hours of that post going up … the Warriors lost, for the first time this season. And I will take some credit for that.

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Kobe Bryant’s decision on Sunday to announce his retirement, effective at the end of the current season, was timely and proper and even a bit quixotic, coming as it did in the form of a poem written by the player and posted on a somewhat obscure players forum. What he addressed in those words was […]

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How many more games do the Lakers give Kobe Bryant to demonstrate he has something left? How many more games does Kobe give Kobe? He was 1-for-14 with four points last night in the 111-77 humiliation at the hands of the champion Golden State Warriors, who set an NBA record by winning their 16th game […]

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The 2015 Fiba Asia Championships are going on in China, and the winner of the tournament goes to the Rio 2016 Olympics. For several Asian countries, that would be a big deal. For China. For Iran. For Lebanon and Japan. Each of them is serious, most of the time, about the game. But for one […]

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A topic that comes up, eventually, with everyone who plays fantasy baseball or football or basketball or soccer … When a player from your fantasy team meets up with someone from the team you support … to which side do you focus your psychic energy? Or, making it simple, whom do you want to come […]

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