Although no one has officially said so, it looks as if Ian Mahinmi is in fact out for the season. Jeff McDonald covers the story for the Express-News: Mahinmi originally injured the ankle in a pre-training camp workout on Aug. 4. When swelling refused to subside in a reasonable amount of time, the team commissioned [...]

I know a lot of people will be skeptical of my use of the term “rival” in this instance as we have only played the Hornets in one postseason series ever (last year) and we emerged victorious. But my use of the term is a conjecture about the future, not a description of the past. [...]

Brandon Hoffman is at the helm over at BallerBlogger and penned this bit for a Spurs-related post: Despite losing Tony Parker and Manu Ginobili to a combined 21 games, the Spurs sit 4.5 games behind the Lakers for the top spot in the West. The Spurs are notorious for sleepwalking through regular seasons and turning [...]

The Austin Toros continue to ply their trade as NBDL pace setter. Last night they etched a 17 into the W column by defeating Tusla 111-91. There are two interesting developments from this game, and I want to place each of them on your radar. To begin, Malik Hairston received a DNP-CD. As many Spurs [...]

I want to follow on the heels of Graydon’s excellent Notebook with a comment about a single play from last night. This post is a variation on a theme: the unraveling of a rival. With 38 seconds to play, down by 4, Steve Nash inexplicably fouled Bruce Bowen away from the ball. According to the [...]

Forgive the trendy title. Oscar Wilde once quipped that the only way to avoid temptation is to give into it. Not exactly sage advice, I know. But it holds true for post titles. Sham and I were exchanging notes on P.G Wodehouse when the conversation turned to Robertas Javtokas. He writes, I just watched Dynamo’s [...]

I’ll be honest: There is nothing I love more than beating the Suns. Some commenters have suggested that in order for a team to be a true rival they must have beaten us in the playoffs in recent history but in my opinion that is not the definition of a rival. Do they make your [...]

The Phoenix Suns have become a complete enigma to me. In some sense, they are struggling mightily. Compared to the gaudy regular season records they have posted for the last several years, their 25-18 record looks mediocre. As opposed to being in a race for home court advantage throughout the playoffs, they are in a [...]

All season long Spurs fans have been dealing with the anxiety-inducing idea that Manu Ginobili may no longer be, well, Manu Ginobili. That some nefarious combination of injury and age has left him in a place where we will never see the same intense and productive play night-in-night-out. These concerns have continually floated to the [...]

The embarrassment of D-League riches that is the Austin Toros have been plundered of late. In the last week, big men Andre Brown and Charles Gaines have left the team for contracts in Europe. It’s the price you pay for putting a good team on the floor. The Toros lead the Southwest Division at 16-7, [...]

Earlier this season, I wrote a piece called The Rise of the Red Rocket. At the time, Bonner’s PER was 18.76. He’s settled since then. Yet, his PER still stands at a laudable 17.29, which places him in the same class of player as Chris Kamam and Joel Przybilla. By any account, Matt Bonner is [...]

I was going to make the nightly match-up “Parker vs. Williams” but a) it’s just too easy and b) it’s really not the most intriguing match-up this evening. As the inimitable Tom Ziller has correctly noted, tonight’s Jazz-Spurs contest is about the battle between Tim Duncan and the up-and-coming Paul Millsap. Duncan has dominated the [...]

My posts (here and here) from yesterday morning will raise questions in the minds of some of our readers. I want to anticipate a few of those questions and provide answers below. But more importantly, I want to take a moment, just passing mid-season, for the second installment of our Countdown to 2010 series. This [...]