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Basketball

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
4 Comments

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
3 Comments

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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