rockets Page 4 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

The Spurs like to mess with us, but it would have been unwise to use Victor Wembanyama to do so
Look at the San Antonio Spurs doing their part to properly sell the NBA. For a time there was a chance that Victor Wembanyama might be making his handful of NBA Summer League games in Sacramento and not during the league’s big event in Las Vegas....

The Reggie Evans Bad Basketball Basketball Hall of Fame 2023 inductees
Studies have shown that negative news garners more of the public’s attention than positive news, so with that knowledge, I propose an alternative to the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame. The Basketball Hall of Fame has the prestige, but it doesn’t generate as much conversation as Twitter ramblings f...

The Rockets are the NBA’s most ambitious offseason franchise
After the Denver Nuggets championship parade, it will be the Rockets time to shine. The Houston Rockets’ ‘Light the fuse” mantra has encapsulated their offseason machinations since Jalen Green’s bold IG Live set the tone for the summer by vowing to reach the postseason in 2024. That’s easier said th...

James Harden wants to escape the NBA title rat race
In his prime, James Harden was the star of the show. His ball dominance was unparalleled. Harden’s expression of basketball is a sublime experience. His ball handling and passing artistry are one of a kind. During his penultimate season in Houston, Harden’s 40.3 usage rate in 2018-19 nearly set an N...

James Harden actually rose to the occasion with Joel Embiid out
James Harden deserved to take a bow on Monday night, even if he decided to wait until he put back on his enormous pants to do so. In a game in which the Philadelphia 76ers were undermanned with their MVP candidate dealing an injury more serious than what was first made public knowledge, Harden was t...

The James Harden and Houston Rockets reunion is a pie-in-the-sky dream
James Harden is a deeply unserious franchise cornerstone. However, in the midst of a pivotal, legacy-defining season for his career, Harden may be eyeing a return in free agency to the Rockets franchise he forced his way out of two years ago, according to a report from ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski. ...

The San Francisco move has been Golden for the Warriors
This Golden State Warriors in San Francisco thing will never sit right with me. ...

Some day, not now, Jabari Smith Jr. will know what it’s like to have a true point guard
For as much tanking and general thirst that the top three picks of the 2022 NBA Draft garnered, they haven’t merited that attention quite yet. In Chet Holmgren’s case, it’s impossible because he’s out for the season. Paolo Banchero is going to win Rookie of the Year, and little else on an Orlando Ma...

A decade after the Thunder traded James Harden, regret should linger
A decade after Oklahoma City traded James Harden on the eve of the 2012-13 regular season, it still stands as an atrocity upon the art of dynasty-building. As the central players involved in that deal wind down their Hall of Fame careers in bleak situations, there is no more denying it, Oklahoma Cit...

Ten players that teams in the 'Lose-O-Rama for Wembanyama' should ship
After the matchup between Victor Wembanyama’s Metropolitans and Scoot Henderson’s G League Ignite teams earlier this month, where the projected No. 1 and No. 2 picks faced off in must-see-TV, half the NBA should have shifted into full-on tank mode. Why meddle in mediocrity if you’re the Orlando Magi...

The NBA’s tanking problem is more perception than reality, and a relegation system won’t fix that
During NBA Commish Adam Silver’s apology tour session with beleaguered Phoenix Suns employees this weekend, he was confronted with another concern. In addition to apologizing for suspended team Governor Robert Sarver and his decades of misconduct, Silver was also besieged by a flood of questions abo...

For NBA MVP, the value bet is Zion, but who will actually win is obvious
It’s easily forgotten that NBA is actually an acronym that stands for National Basketball Association. For a casual observer that follows the league’s personalities and news breakers on social media, the league can be viewed as a multiplatform action/drama that sparks the audience’s adrenaline with ...

Sam Presti, mixed bag
Sam Presti is lucky he’s in Oklahoma City. He would be held accountable for his screwups if he were in charge of a larger market franchise with a longer-tenured and demanding fanbase. But, before we tackle those, Presti has proven to be one of the best judges of talent and character. He has crushed ...

College Football Week 5: A veritable smorgasbord of appetizing games
There’s no more hiding for college football teams. The tune-ups are over, and now conference foes are getting thrown together like peanut butter and jelly. Don’t like that? How about Bell pepper, meet onion? Cereal, meet milk. Alabama, meet Arkansas. NC State, meet Clemson. Oklahoma State, meet a po...

Don’t celebrate just yet, SEC fans, there’s another independent who could claim a CFP bid
For the segment of college football fans who blackout with anger every time Notre Dame makes the College Football Playoff, this season could not have started better. Marcus Freeman’s team came up short against Ohio State and then stumbled trying to get back up against Marshall, and there’s really no...

The NBA found its pretense to probe the Philadelphia 76ers
Over the last few years, jilted NBA Governors have raised a bigger stink over their players mingling with other teams’ representatives before the free agency period has officially begun. In 2019, the NBA passed stricter tampering rules, including an increase in the maximum fine for tampering to $10 ...

John Wall got a Brinks truck full of money from a bad team, now he gets to join a contender in LA
The Houston Rockets and John Wall have agreed to a buyout of his contract where he’ll take a pay cut of about $6.5 million. That’s not a bad deal considering Wall just sat out an entire season and made over $44 million to do so....

Thunder, Magic luck out in a top-heavy NBA draft
After three years of embarrassing tanking, GM Sam Presti and the Oklahoma City Thunder have returned to relevance. They came into the NBA Lottery with the sixth-best odds at the top pick in the 2022 NBA Draft and ended up with the second pick in the draft. The Orlando Magic won the first pick and wi...

So the James Harden-Ben Simmons trade looks like a dud
Upon hearing the news of any trade, the first reaction is to think about which team won the trade initially. In the NBA court of public opinion, that distinction usually goes to the side that obtains the more prominent name or superstar player. With Ben Simmons (and others) being traded for James Ha...
