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NBA 2013-’14 Season Preview: Northwest Division

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October 26, 2013
Basketball, Sports
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KDRW

In this installment of the TwH NBA preview, we look at what will be one of the most competitive divisions in professional basketball, the Northwest. Kevin Durant has the weight of the world on his broad shoulders in the biggest small market in the league, Kenneth Faried is a double-double machine and Damian Lillard will drastically improve upon one of the finest rookie campaigns in recent memory as he returns the Pacific Northwest to basketball relevance. When they can avoid the infirmary, the Minnesota T’Wolves are one of the funnest teams in the league to watch, and the Utah Jazz are, under no circumstances, one of the funnest teams in the league to watch.

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NBA 2013-’14 Season Preview: Atlantic Division

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October 10, 2013
Basketball, Sports
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LBJ

I love the game of basketball for its subtle artistry and the supreme level of skill necessary to exceed at it, not unlike being a musician, a physician or an astronaut. In no other basketball league in the world is the competition greater, obviously, than in the National Basketball Association. These people are the absolute best of the best, and the webs they weave nightly, from Kyrie Irving’s magisterial through-the-legs assists to Ray Allen’s legendarily perfect follow-through on a jump shot, can drive a fan up the wall with wonder, reducing him or her to an adolescent curiosity in which questions become essentially rhetorical. With the NBA preseason right around the corner, the time has come for everyone with a voice to chime in with predictions and perspectives. We at TwH are no different.

We (I) will break down each division, listing the teams in the order in which I believe they will finish the regular season. There will be plenty of room for dispute, as there always is, and from the start I must concede that this is an imperfect art. There are far too many variables involved in an 82-game season to know everything, but we will do the best we can with what we know now. Sometimes it may only take a gut feeling to push one team over another. Prepare for anything. And so we begin, in the Atlantic Division.
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The Retirement of Tracy McGrady, and What Comes Next

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August 28, 2013
Basketball, Sports
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“One thing about T-Mac: I have everything here that I want, and am happy with it so I don’t go out that much. I have my own chef, I don’t have to go out to shoot a basketball or workout; I have my friends and my family here. I’m real simple, you know? …As far as going out to bowling alleys and just doing fun things, I don’t do it ’cause I’m lazy. There’s the truth, I am lazy.”

– Tracy McGrady (ESPN.com, January 27, 2005)

On Monday, August 26, former NBA superstar Tracy McGrady announced his retirement from American professional basketball rather unceremoniously on ESPN’s First Take. The NBA career which had come in like a lion went out like a crippled lamb, sustaining itself off the morsels of much more powerful, hardworking creatures. The seven-time All-Star and two-time scoring champion, a prep-to-pro guard-forward whose mercurial wizardry and innate natural basketball ability brought him comparisons to Jordan and Gervin at various points in his career, simply moved on from the game to which he had committed the previous two decades of his life, at least nominally. Read More

A Night at the Opera – The EBC at Rucker Park

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August 21, 2013
Basketball, Sports
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“The first game you got in on this court right here and played like a bum, you was a bum.” – Richard ‘Pee-Wee’ Kirkland, from NBATV’s The Doctor

From its humble beginnings as a playground for New York City’s P.S. 156, Holcombe Rucker Park has become the singular epicenter of layman basketball, particularly streetball and its derivatives, as well as a proving ground for rising stars and established legends alike. Located at the corner of 155th St. and 3rd Ave. in East Harlem, Rucker Park grew from one man’s vision of getting kids off the streets when it was opened on February 23, 1956. When Holcombe Rucker established a basketball league for the neighborhood children when he worked as a playground director in the Parks & Recreation Department for the city, he could not have anticipated the symbolism which the park attached to it would eventually carry. Perhaps no single place on earth is more closely identified with a sport than Rucker Park is with basketball, and for good reason. The people there are more passionate about basketball than most political revolutionaries, and without the unnecessary violence. Mostly.  Read More

What Will I Tell My Kids about LeBron James?

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June 26, 2013
Basketball, Sports
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I will always remember when I saw Ken Griffey Jr. play in Yankee Stadium. To this day, I have never seen a better athlete in person than The Kid. Even at a young age I knew I was watching something special, just by the way he carried himself on the field. Watching him tracking down deep fly balls to make them look routine, whacking a double down the left field line without a hitch in his swing, and playing the game with a true love that made you want to get out there and join him is something that I will never forget. Someday I will say to my kids, “Ken Griffey Jr. was the best athlete I ever saw in person.”

But what will I tell them about LeBron James?

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The Decline and Fall of LeBron Hate

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June 22, 2013
Basketball, Sports
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People that hate LeBron James piss me off. You want to know why? Because very few of them, nay, NONE of them, have a good reason to hate LeBron James. Reading this, keep in mind I am a LeBron lover. I am partially biased because I do like the guy, but I’m also right. Nobody you know has a good reason to hate LeBron James.

If you ask a random LeBron hater why he hates the greatest basketball player on planet Earth, the same terrible reasons will probably come up. People will call him cocky and arrogant. They will bring up “The Decision” and the choice he made in “The Decision.”

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