by gordie | Aug 8, 2022 | NBA
In 1987, Bill Russell was not quite 20 years removed from his dominant days with the Boston Celtics when he embarked on an ill-fated 58-game run as coach of the Sacramento Kings. Sports Illustrated’s Jack McCallum came calling just as the season was getting under way,...
by gordie | Jun 20, 2022 | NBA
Pigeonholing Stephen Curry as a point guard seems foolhardy, a matter of placing limits on a basketball player who refuses to be limited, whether by his program height, the geometry of a game played on a 94-by-50-foot rectangle, 75 years of NBA history or, really,...
by gordie | May 29, 2022 | MLB, NBA, NFL
Roger Angell wrote long, long after it was fashionable to do so. Ray Didinger spoke evenly, even as hot takes became all the rage. You wanna call them dinosaurs, fine; have at it. I choose to believe that is true only in the sense that they have left (or are about to...
by gordie | May 14, 2022 | NBA, Philadelphia 76ers
One fine night in June 2013, reporters covering the Philadelphia 76ers gathered in the gym at the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine to cover the NBA draft, confident the team would select some serviceable player (or not) and continue to bumble along, as...
by gordie | Apr 20, 2022 | NBA
Rare is the day when the 76ers don’t give us something to fret about, but here we are. And here they are, up 2-0 against Toronto in their first-round playoff series. Joel Embiid is playing Gulliver to the Raptors’ Lilliputians (while “respectfully” giving Nick Nurse...
by gordie | Feb 14, 2022 | NBA
On Sunday night, we were reminded anew of the value of sports franchises taking big swings, when the Los Angeles Rams beat the Cincinnati Bengals to win the Super Bowl. The victory came not quite 11 months after the Rams traded their previous starting quarterback,...