The upside to getting an English-language-based TV package, here in the south of France, is that it allows me to look at about 50 sports channels broadcast in a language I more fully comprehend. The downside is, when sports events are live in the U.S., it is some time after midnight in France. When, in […]

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Even before his first full day as Lakers president of basketball operations ended, Magic Johnson pulled off a trade that will help the Lakers in what figures to be a long climb back to respectability. Journeyman guard Lou Williams to the Houston Rockets for journeyman forward Corey Brewer and a Rockets first-round draft pick. Some […]

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Jerry Buss died on February 18, 2013. Two months later, the team he owned, the Los Angeles Lakers, completed a 45-37 regular season and qualified for the NBA playoffs for the 31st time in the 33 seasons played since Buss bought a controlling interest in the club, ahead of the 1979-80 season. Buss left his […]

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DeMarcus Cousins was traded by the Sacramento Kings to the New Orleans Pelicans today in what seemed like a lopsided deal. The Pelicans got perhaps the league’s most prominent big man (and currently the league’s No. 4 scorer, at 27.8 ppg) in exchange for a whole lot of not much — rookie wing Buddy Hield, […]

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Remember when Jimmer Fredette was required viewing? I once watched him play in the wee hours of an Abu Dhabi morning … because I just wanted to see his act. It was March of 2011, during the NCAA playoffs. That was the season in which he led the NCAA in scoring at 28.9 points per […]

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Kyrie Irving, formerly of Duke University, currently LeBron James’s wing man in Cleveland, recently did a podcast with two Cavaliers teammates in which he repeatedly declared that the Earth is flat. Flat. As in … sail long enough and your boat will go off the edge of the world. Flat as in “not round”. Flat […]

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Do you remember when you first heard about free agent Kevin Durant allegedly negotiating with the Golden State Warriors, last summer? Our original reactions were, pretty unanimously, “he can’t be serious.” And, “No one quits his team to join his arch-rivals.” But Kevin Durant really did walk away from the only team he had known, […]

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When we last lived full-time in the U.S., the Lakers were good and the Clippers were awful. Same-ol’ same-ol’, that is. Now, the Lakers are awful and the Clippers are … pretty good. Not as good as some thought they would be, certainly not champion contenders, but the best team in Los Angeles and a […]

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The NBA’s election for All-Star Game starters is silly. Any system that can overlook Russell Westbrook, he of “averaging a triple-double” fame, clearly is screwed up. That’s what happens when the league allows fans to account for 50 percent of the vote, players 25 percent and media “only” 25 percent. Let the media pick the […]

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Demetrius Walker ranks high among the sad list of “most abused kiddie hoopsters” who were sucked up by the hype of age-group basketball only to be discarded and largely forgotten before they had turned 21. Much of his early life was exhaustively documented in the 2010 book “Play Their Hearts Out”, which followed the one-dimensional […]

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