Today is Will Leitch’s last day at Deadspin. If you don’t know who Leitch is, he’s not only a sheepish Midwesterner who shamelessly imposes his love of the St. Louis Cardinals on all of Blogfrica, but he also happens to be a pioneer and an articulate and gracious defender of my chosen medium. He is [...]

I watch a lot of college hoops so I feel reasonably familiar with this draft class, but having been raised in Austin I am a huge University of Texas fan and therefore am very familiar with D.J. Augustin. Maybe its just increased media coverage, or Eamonn Brennan’s insistence that every team from slots 9 to [...]

Today William Rhoden had a piece in the New York Times about Brandon Jennings, a top high school prospect out of Oak Hill Academy in Virginia. It seems Jennings, who has signed a letter of intent with the University of Arizona, is considering playing in Europe for a year or two before coming to the [...]

I am conflicted about a recent development in professional basketball: European players actually choosing to play in Europe over the United States. Although soft and floppy, foreign players bring a really dynamic element to the American game- they pleasantly combine classical form with an expansive vision of their position (for example, all the foreign combo [...]

So YouTube completely bailed on me and I had to rewrite this post. If you want to see Garnett’s psycho/reflective/inspiring post-game interviews go here and here. There are so many classic lines in both those clips I don’t even know where to begin, so I’ll just let KG’s statements stand on their own. I will [...]

Wow. I’m blown away by the Celtics’ performance this evening. I try my hardest to shy away from hyperbole, from epic ruminations on “champions”, etc… But what we witnessed this evening was beyond dominant, it was transcendent. It was a horrible basketball game. Lopsided and lacking any sense of drama. But it was simultaneously a [...]

Rivers: So I love to hate on Doc Rivers, I really do. I think his in-game personnel and time management are mediocre at best (i.e. Sam Cassell), but I haven’t been being honest with myself. The Celtics always come out at half and play a great third quarter. Obviously part of this is just the [...]

The Iceman and Pistol. Great Stuff. Gervin’s style was so smooth, but I love/am not surprised that Maravich is the more inventive of the two. Why don’t they still do this at the All-Star game? A game of horse between Chris Paul and Allen Iverson would be legendary.

A couple of weeks ago I wrote a piece questioning why the Celtics and Spurs, two teams who play extremely similar basketball, are oftentimes understood so drastically differently. The overriding narrative of the Celtics circulates around the lauded concepts of “hustle” and “unselfish play”, while the Spurs are derided as “boring,” which they aren’t, and [...]

Last night Paul Pierce collapsed to the floor at TD Banknorth Garden, writhing in pain from a collision he and Kendrick Perkins had under the basket. Pierce was gripping his knee and clinching his teeth, suggesting that he was in considerable pain. Eventually he was carried from the court by some teammates and assistants and [...]

They have blessed us with that rarest of occurrences: There is actually basketball on tonight. I know, I also forgot the playoffs were still going on. I just figured the NBA and ESPN made a deal to suspend the Finals indefinitely so they could milk a seemingly endless stream of hype and just hoped nobody [...]

So I don’t typically like to talk about politics on this blog. Or at least not partisan politics. I would argue that the intersections of sports and politics are more numerous than people acknowledge (in the off-season I plan to explore quite thoroughly the site at which aesthetics, politics and sports collide). But sometimes a [...]

The celebrity of athletes is a unique phenomenon. Few other occupations that command notoriety do so on such a meritocratic basis. Actors need not be accomplished thespians in order to acquire the adoration of fans or the endless pursuit of paparazzi. Politicians can be unthoughtful, inarticulate and ineffective while receiving the votes of millions. Contemporary [...]

(How likely is it that Garnett will murder someone to become a champion?) Game 1: Lakers +2 ½; Celtics -2 ½ Derek Fisher hits a game winning shot: 10 to 1. Fisher’s a clutch shooter, and as fine a player as any to take a last second shot. But it will be hard for the [...]