ESPN NBA

Posted by Kevin Arnovitz

• First Cup highlighted Tim Kawakami's post about the De-Mullinization of the Warriors.  Over at Dime, Patrick Cassidy expresses his sadness.
• Chris De Luca in the Chicago Sun-Times: "Global financial crisis or not, baseball's old guard plans to stand firm against letting [Mark] Cuban into the club. 'There's no way Bud and the owners are going to let that happen,' a Major League Baseball source said this week. 'Zero chance.'"
  
• CSKA Head Coach Ettore Messina blogs about his team's jaunt to the United States.  Among his many observations of the American game: "48 minutes is a lot not only for the players, but for the coach as he has to imagine completely different rotation from the one he is used to. For instance, when we played against Toronto we were tired after 36 minutes. In Europe, we'd only have the last 4 minutes to play, but here we started a completely new quarter and it was very difficult for us to find energy..."
  
• Free Darko says that zany, all-hands-on-deck freewheeling that Don Nelson employs as a coach is now starting to reveal itself in his personnel management style. 
• On the other hand, GSW could run their offense through their big Latvian.
  
• Is Josh Smith emerging as one of the league's best defenders?  He's always been 'active,' now he's just plain nasty. 
  
• The Spurs have some holes in their aging roster, and 48 Minutes of Hell has done a nice job examining them in recent posts.  Among their many needs, The Spurs "lack a big who is quick enough to come away from the basket and man-up on the likes of Dirk Nowitzki, David West and Amare Stoudemire."
• Ian Thomsen nominates the Celtics as "Sportsmen of the Year." [Hat Tip: Celticsblog] 
• Third Quarter Collapse runs the numbers and finds that, contrary to what Otis Smith seems to believe, Antonio McDyess would fit in nicely in Orlando.