New Orleans Hornets

New Orleans Hornets

Mavericks Keep Title Hopes Alive with Rick Carlisle Signing: Fan’s Take (Yahoo! Contributor Network)

On Tuesday, May 15, 2012, the Dallas Mavericks took the first step in maintaining their championship-caliber team by re-signing their head coach Rick Carlisle to a four-year extension. Since joining the team in 2008, the Mavericks have gone 198-114 in the regular season. Despite fielding a winning team every year, and even capturing the franchise’s first championship last season, Carlisle is often overlooked when discussing the top coaches in the NBA.

Clippers-Spurs Preview Capsule (The Associated Press)

A look at the Western Conference semifinal series between the San Antonio Spurs and Los Angeles Clippers (with regular-season and playoff records):

Nuggets’ Andersen target of investigation (The Associated Press)

DENVER (AP) Denver Nuggets reserve center Chris ”Birdman” Andersen was excused indefinitely from all team-related activities after sheriff’s deputies searched his home Thursday as part of an investigation by the department’s Internet Crimes Against Children unit.

Pacers’ David Morway emerges as a frontrunner for Blazers GM job; to meet with owner (Yahoo! Sports)

Top candidates in GM search hint that Portland is changing team-building strategy

A former Seattle SuperSonics employee takes on what he calls his ‘spineless’ former boss (Ball Don’t Lie)

It’s a story that needs to be told and re-told. The Seattle SuperSonics aren’t in Seattle for various reasons, and most of them center around the fact that the city wasn’t keen to pony up to aid the team’s owners in creating a new, and profitable, arena. But the reason the Seattle SuperSonics aren’t in Seattle anymore is because of one man: Starbucks founder Howard Schultz.
Schultz bought the team in early 2001, and for those of us that were around to read the clips from his initial news conference, he went out of his way to slyly compare himself to Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, who was then in the midst of his successful first full year as Mavs owner. Schultz propped himself in the front row for various SuperSonics games over the years, oddly complaining about calls that didn’t seem all that outrageous. He lost money, and lost interest. And, after Seattle refused to help him in building a new arena, he sold the team to the absolute best pair of potential owners that could ensure a swift move of the team from Seattle, without caring for a second that he was handing the keys to a pair of men that worked out of Oklahoma City, with a new and NBA-ready arena idling back home.
Jeremy Repanich, writing for Deadspin, is a former employee of the SuperSonics. And, in a must-read feature , he destroys the man he calls “spineless” for the way he bought the beloved team seemingly on a whim, and then discarded it when it was clear that running things on the cheap wasn’t going to bring about a championship. Here’s one killer take from the piece :

Tyson Chandler is the NBA’s Defensive Player of the Year, and our best attempt to know the game better (Ball Don’t Lie)

Tyson Chandler won the NBA’s Defensive Player of the Year award on Wednesday , as Yahoo! Sports’ Marc J. Spears first reported on Tuesday evening, and the New York Knicks center has more than earned the honor. The veteran big man was gracious in his acceptance, calling his singular recognition more of “a team thing” during the press conference announcing his selection, while tweeting later on that he was “blessed” to be the first Knick in the team’s longstanding defensive history to be given the award.
Chandler has seemed to be the runaway winner for a few months now, especially since Orlando Magic center (and three-time winner) Dwight Howard seemed to flake out more and more. This allowed The Basketball Jones’ Trey Kerby, in a pitch-perfect column , to point out the fact that Howard’s team-based and individual defensive stats were actually on par or better than Chandler’s in several instances, and that Howard (even in an off year of his own design) may still have been a victim of voter fatigue, 12 missed games, and his own submarining of Orlando’s season. Trey’s correct, even as he points out that Chandler deserved the award.
With that point in place, it’s probably best to move on to another surprising element of Chandler’s turnaround, and one that tends to get lost as we tend to stay in the day-to-day realm of the NBA’s shifts and feints. Tyson Chandler was always supposed to be at that podium, accepting that award. Then he wasn’t. Then he was, again. Then he definitely wasn’t. Though Chandler probably doesn’t want to look upon this honor as a culmination and/or peak moment in his career, especially at just 29 years of age, he should be proud at what he’s had to overcome just to become the first Defensive Player of the Year in Knick history.

Silas dumped as coach of hapless Bobcats (AFP)

Paul Silas will not return as coach of the NBA Charlotte Bobcats after the team struggled to a 7-59 record in the worst season by any club in NBA history, the team announced on Monday.