Welcome to another edition of NBA Nation Australia’s Roundtable! This week we’ll be tackling more hot topics from around the league including George Karl, the MVP award, the free agent debate in LA, most improved teams, Derrick Rose and Kobe’s mum (only because it’s Mother’s Day). We also welcome back podcaster and blogger Jabari Davis from The OpinioNation (theopnation.com), Brent Veale formerly of That Basketball Show and Tom Read from the #BelieveTheHype podcast!
It’s been some time since our last roundtable, so this week we’ve decided to bring in a couple of new contributors as well as a familiar face or two to discuss some of the recent hot topics in the NBA. We’ll be looking at everything from the Warriors playoff hopes, the Thunder’s challenge without Westbrook, The Knicks chances of taking the East, the Boston Celtics troubles, injures and Jason Collins’ recent news. To kick things off we welcome back Tom Read from the #BelieveTheHype podcast, as well as SidelineAgenda.com contributor and all round sports nut Alex Young, and Houston Rockets/NBA social media commentator Terry Goldfain to the party along with regulars from NBA Nation Australia Nick Caro and Sam Monaghan. Lets go!
Steph Curry vs. Carmelo Anthony Tonight in the Garden.
Not often we see Carmelo outduelled by a younger stud. A coming of age game for young Steph.
The NBA returns to the UK as the New York Knicks and Detroit Pistons battle it out at London’s O2 Arena! It’s the third regular season game trip the NBA has made to the country and it has always been a raging success. The Knicks are taking the East by storm, while the Pistons are still struggling to find some sort of relevance throughout a rebuilding period, but nonetheless it should go a long way in helping to showcase the game to fans in the UK. It’s a great expansion idea from the NBA’s marketing team who no doubt have high hopes that they can grow the game outside of North America. Carmelo Anthony and Tyson Chandler will return to the city where just months ago they claimed the gold medal and the 2012 London Olympics, and the Knicks will also welcome guard Iman Shumpert back into the lineup. With no tickets left, the average asking price for the event online is a whopping 335.23 pounds! That’s about $508 Australian.
The game will be available for all NBA TV League Pass Subscribers live at 7AM Friday morning (AUS)
Now, when’s the NBA coming to Sydney?
Welcome back for another edition of NBA Nation Australia’s Weekly Roundtable. This week we welcome to the table a good friend of ours, Nick Gelso. Nick Co-Host’s The Celtics Late Night Show on Boston Radio channel CLNS Radio. This we talk about the Pacers Away form, the Legend of LeBron, the struggling Mav’s, and a whole heap more.
1. Lebron James is in the midst of something special – 33 games in a row scoring 20 + points. What else does have to do to cement his place as one of the NBA greats? Is it all about Championships, or can we call LeBron a legend already?
Nick Caro: Nothing. Not to people who know what they’re talking about. Stars will always have their haters who wish nothing but disappointment on them, but the people who disagree with the fact that LeBron is a champion of the game are plain old nuts. Not only does he have the ability to change a game, he has just completed a year in which he won an NBA title, league MVP, finals MVP and Olympic Gold Medal. As mentioned in the question, he’s also on a 33 game streak scoring 22+. That’s ridiculous. Of course, the more championships LBJ wins the more people will have to accept the fact he is one of the best that’s ever played the game and it will go a long way to ensuring his legacy is upheld. Having said that people should know it already. C’mon, watch the guy play. It’s just mesmerising and he should be commended for that, not ridiculed. What LeBron did to Cleveland and ‘The Decision’ was horrible, but it’s time to move on, put it to bed and enjoy what may be one of the best careers we will ever see.
With the the season in full swing we have already seen some amazing performance’s from the NBA’s best.
Melo, Kobe, James, Paul, Rondo and Durant have all played out of their minds this season. We at NBA Nation Australia have taken a look over the league and wanted to suggest 3 candidates from each conference for MVP.
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February 10th 2012 was the day I went from being a “believer”, a term us Knicks fans have rather flippantly used over the long winters of the past decade to a BELIEVER! From today, we will turn the season around, turn all the doomsayers into dust. This was going to be our year. This was the player that was going to be the glue that will help bond our 2 All Star’s together and form the most potent offence is the league. Linsanity had truly arrived. Forget about his games against the Nets, Jazz and Wizards. Don’t get me wrong, these were huge and had all of the Big Apple talking, but if he was truly going to be the savior the Knicks fans craved, then the game on February 10th was going to be it. A nationally televised, prime time game against a team with history running through their veins and a superstar guard wanting to end the run of this little kid from the Ivy league . The Garden was rocking and every bar in New York was packed. I took myself down to my local in Brooklyn ordered some Buffalo Wings and set in to watch history in the making. The Knicks were playing the LA Lakers, but more importantly, Lin was playing Kobe.
Anthony, Stoudemire, Lin, Davis and Chandler. These are some of the names that dominate headlines around the world of basketball. They are some of the faces and figureheads of the world’s greatest game. They play their hearts out night after night for one of the NBA’s most famous and respected ball clubs. But for all their mightiness, are the New York Knicks the leagues most disappointingly dysfunctional team? Should they, for all the time and money invested in building a championship team, be performing at a higher or more consistent level?
