It seemed like perhaps the best of several improvements to the NBA All-Star Game. A schoolyard pick-em to determine teams! I loved this idea. NBA all-stars sorted out using the same system that we used back in elementary school. Two captains, and they take turns picking players until the last unpicked guy, head hung in […]

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Remember when Lonzo Ball looked special? Back during his one season at UCLA? Wow. Look at that pass. And he can make some threes despite that tragic shooting stroke! That kid is someone the Lakers can build their team around. Yeah. Yeah. And then the world got a load of Trae Young, likely a one-and-done […]

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Not a good sign when you just assume your neighborhood NBA team is tanking. Because they have been doing it so long. Take the Los Angeles Lakers, nuked 133-96 by the Oklahoma City Thunder tonight at Staples Center. Those acclimated to seeing a Lakers defeat and thinking, “ah, good” … well, it is sometimes difficult […]

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This is not an exercise in academic rigor. I did not have someone sitting with a note pad writing down literally the first 10 facts I could recall pertaining to sports in 2017. But … it is a fairly accurate recreation of a fairly quick trip through my brain to see what stuck from the […]

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No, not Lonzo Ball. The jury is out on him … and may remain sequestered for a year or three. No idea how that verdict will come down. Talking here about Kyle Kuzma, the 27th pick in the first round of this year’s NBA draft. The 6-foot-9 forward Kyle Kuzma who scored 38 points and […]

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Yeah, more LaVar. I don’t plan to do that. But we have so many teachable moments involved here that we feel the gravitational pull … of the worst Basketball Dad in the history of the game. A Bleacher Report story, by a reporter based in Israel, where European basketball is a big thing, offers little […]

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For a time, I could not help but feel some sympathy, and a little admiration, for LaVar Bell and his big plans for his sons and for himself. Here was a father deeply (very, very deeply) involved with his sons’ lives, overseeing their training and practice in an effort to see all three of them […]

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As a native of Southern California, I knew all about the Los Angeles Clippers. They were bad, except when they were horrid. They didn’t have fans, per se; their games were attended by bargain-hunters who could not afford to see the Lakers or were supporters of whatever NBA team the Clippers happened to be playing. […]

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Luc Richard Mbah a Moute‘s final season at UCLA, 2007-08, was also my last as a journalist in Southern California. I remember Mbah a Moute fairly well. He was a junior, a starter at power forward for a UCLA program that was riding high, and a regular contributor the previous two seasons. But he also […]

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It is fun when we discover a new sports star/superstar. Just when we get conditioned to the usual roster of the elite, boom, there he is: Another potentially great player. Which is where Joel Embiid comes in. Embiid is a 7-footer with quickness, dexterity and a fine shooting touch who plays center for the Philadelphia […]

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