Tag: NBA

So Long, Big Fella.

The Knicks honor their 15-year man in the pivot as Patrick Ewing’s 33 is retired tonight at the Garden. Despite the diatribes by Jordan-jocking naysayers like David Halberstam, Ewing was truly one of the greats, along with Hakeem the best center of his generation. If Johnny Starks hadn’t stunk up Game 7 in ’94 or if David Stern hadn’t gotten suspension-happy in ’97 after PJ Brown (of the Heat) attacked Charlie Ward, we wouldn’t even be hearing all this no-title nonsense every time Pat’s name comes up. Ah well…I just wish Ewing could’ve finished his career in NY. However bad he looked in those last two seasons in Seattle and Orlando, he could’ve brought more to the Garden every night than Glen Rice and Luc Longley ever did…and we wouldn’t be saddled now with overpaid, underachieving players like Shandon Anderson and Howard Eisley. At any rate, so long, big fella. It’s your night. Update: Thanks to some triple-double heroics by Spree, the Knicks won in double OT on Ewing’s night. Other than the somewhat tacky gift of a 2003 Humvee, a nice night all around.

Payton’s New Place.

So the NBA trade deadline passed with only one mega-trade: Gary Payton for Ray Allen. I know the Glove is in his waning years, but I still think this is a great trade for Milwaukee, despite the point guard glut. GP is a out-and-out baller, and he single-handedly makes the Bucks serious contenders in the East. As for Seattle, they’re clearly calling this year off. The Knicks made no moves again, but I’m glad we didn’t pull the trigger on the rumored Spree-for-Cassell trade.

Old School Knicks, New School ESPN.

In the midst of finding the appropriate Knicks beat Lakers at home link, I discovered that ESPN.com’s gone hi-tech. I’m really not too big on registering for anything, of course, but since I’m there pretty much every day I’ll give the Motion bit its chance. Hopefully it’s more useful than the annoying Bottomline they were offering a few months ago.

Put Out to Pasture.

So who else watched the NBA All-Star game last night? In case you missed it, the West defeated the East 155-145 in 2OT, after the East spent entirely too much time trying to get Jordan the last shot. In fact, I’ll go ahead and incur the wrath of Bulls fans the world over (a solid percentage of whom I’m sure are now avidly following the Lakers, since they’re the winning team these days) by saying the level of MJ-jocking last night was ridiculously excessive. It’d be one thing if the league hadn’t already said its goodbyes before the Wizards return last year. And it’d be another if this is the usual protocol for sending off long-time hardfloor warriors (Stockton, Malone, Olajuwon, and Ewing all come to mind.) But it seemed as if even Jordan got sick of all the kudos being sent his way by the end of the night. To say nothing of the fact that the East blew the game because Jordan had to take every game-deciding shot rather than T-Mac or AI. Look, I’ll be the first to admit that MJ was a history-making athlete, one whose only peers may be Babe Ruth and Muhammad Ali. But this will be his third retirement. Can we please stop treating him like the pope? Update: David Aldridge concurs.

Mormon Justice.

Scott Layden and the Knicks throw the book at Sprewell for failure to disclose his yacht party punch. Put simply, Layden is a moron. The worst thing you could do right now is separate Spree and the rest of the team. Plus, broken hand or no, Spree works hard. If you want to start throwing around exorbitant fines, why not charge holy-rollin’ model citizen Allan Houston a quarter-mil for constantly disappearing in the clutch?