San Antonio began the fourth quarter of this afternoon’s game against Phoenix with a three point lead. Over the next 12 minutes, the Spurs did not make too many defensive stops; Amare Stoudemire, Steve Nash, and Jason Richardson all scored with ease. Luckily the Suns aren’t exactly known for their lockdown defense either, and the [...]
Whenever teams in the Texas Triangle tussle (alliteration is fun), it’s not hard to get excited. There’s no motivation needed as most fans of the Spurs, Mavericks and Rockets intermingle. Fans of the Texas teams work with, are friends with and, hell, even date fans of their enemy teams. Everyone wants that one win to [...]
I was sitting on a couch in “the SoCos,” a housing complex at Vassar College, with my friends Erik and Eric, neither of whom are big basketball fans. They seemed a bit startled by the levels of my emotion: Make no mistake, I’ve always been an excitable guy but in this instance I seemed unexpectedly [...]
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. [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
This is the first edition of a new feature here at 48 Minutes of Hell entitled “Reflections on a Rival.” Some teams deserve more than a discussion of a single match-up. The Lakers are one of those teams. During the last decade the San Antonio Spurs have been one of the most successful franchises in [...]
