Blogs

The Houston Rockets’ head coaching search is starting to…pretty much run in place. According to Jonathan Feigen of the Houston Chronicle, TNT analyst Kenny “The Jet” Smith is out of the running, as the team prefers to hire someone with sideline experience—a requirement that has led them to Ettore Messina, Jeff Van Gundy and Frank [...]

Channing Frye is busy draining threes and contending for a championship with the Cleveland Cavaliers. And that could have been Ryan Anderson. Speaking on the “Vertical Pod with J.J. Redick,” Anderson revealed to his former Orlando Magic teammate that the New Orleans Pelicans nearly traded his expiring contract to the Cavaliers at the trade deadline. [...]

Game 1 was everything we could have asked for and more in the Western Conference Finals as the stars came out to shine and the Oklahoma City Thunder came back from a 13-point halftime deficit to beat the Golden State Warriors and steal home court. As always there was a little controversy (the Westbrook travel) [...]

Jeff Hornacek will have a job by the start of the 2016-17 NBA regular season. What that job will be, we don’t know. But he is most definitely going to have one. Per ESPN.com’s Marc Stein: [tweet https://twitter.com/ESPNSteinLine/status/732287028218335232] Oh? The New York Knicks? That’s surprising, in a long-shot kind of way. No one really expects [...]

The concept of NBA players taking pay cuts in free agency to sign with certain teams is drastically overblown. Most players won’t willingly take less to re-sign with their incumbent team or to join new digs. When they do, it’s typically marginal (a la Carmelo Anthony with the New York Knicks in 2014 or the [...]

What do you get when you guide a Portland Trail Blazers team that was supposed to finish in the bottom three of the Western Conference to the second round of the NBA playoffs? A fat three-year extension. Terry Stotts is, expectedly, sticking with Portland, per The Vertical’s Adrian Wojnarowski: [tweet https://twitter.com/WojVerticalNBA/status/732374381205291008] Kevin Arnovitz of ESPN.com [...]

Larry Bird’s unexpected and uneventful coaching search came to an end Monday morning as the Pacers have announced they are promoting assistant coach Nate McMillan to their head coaching position. [tweet https://twitter.com/NBATV/status/732262055399448576] McMillan had been a Pacers assistant for 3 seasons after being let go as the head coach of the Blazers after the 2012-13 [...]

Game 1 of the 2016 Western Conference Finals tips off tonight in Oakland, as the two most talented and fast-paced teams in the NBA square off in an epic showdown for the right to play for an NBA championship. The matchup is a slight surprise as almost everyone acknowledged that the Golden State Warriors and [...]

The Boston Celtics bowed out of their first-round playoff matchup with the Atlanta Hawks for many reasons. And the status of Kelly Olynyk was among the biggest ones. Yes, Jae Crowder wasn’t 100 percent. And sure, Avery Bradley’s absence killed the Celtics’ spacing. But Olynyk, when healthy, is Boston’s second-best two-way player, someone who stretches [...]

Not so fast, Kurt Rambis. Team president Phil Jackson isn’t ready to name you the New York Knicks’ permanent head coach just yet. As first reported by the New York Daily News‘ Frank Isola, Jackson met with former Indiana Pacers head coach to talk about the team’s coaching vacancy: Phil Jackson met face-to-face with with [...]