Rick Bowmer / AP Photo

John’s back hosting this week, yay!

We begin with the depressing, depressing Blazers. Then, Chris Bosh, Michael Beasley, Julian’s “statgasm” segment, All-Star balloting, J.R. Smith & Marcus Thornton sitting at the end of the bench, Wagman’s “basketball bubble” segment, Sham’s point guard question, my “broner” segment, and “predictions on last night’s games.”

Click here to listen to the podcast.

Recommended links:

Woj on the Blazers
Noam Schiller on the Blazers
Art Garcia’s apology to Paul Millsap
Chris Dempsey of the Denver Post on J.R. Smith/Gary Forbes
Kevin Love’s GQ blog

Alex Gallard / AP Photo

Some week to inexcusably slack on my daily blog, right? Holy crap.

You’ve no doubt watched/read about all of this already by now, but let’s have a quick look at what happened over the past week:

The Jazz came back from double-digit deficits in four straight road games, after coming back to beat the Clippers in double-OT at home. Two of those wins were against the Heat and Magic on a back-to-back. Against Miami, Paul Millsap went Reggie Miller at the end of the fourth and ended up with 46 points. I’m still not sure that all of this really occurred. I’ve no idea how good Utah actually is. And I don’t think we’ll learn much from tonight’s game against the tired Thunder… but I do know they’ve been successful against teams with singular names recently.
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Danny Bollinger/Getty Images

In this episode, we begin with the Raptors and Suns after witnessing their 51-point pre-season blowout. Then, Julian rips into Charlie Villanueva, all of us discuss Michael Beasley’s inconsistency, and we briefly attempt to talk about the Lakers/Barcelona game we barely watched. Eventually we get to the two Wizards pictured above.

We finish off by examining the recent GM survey and playing “Who he play for?” with Wagman.

Runtime is 47:49.

Click here to listen to the podcast.

Recommended links:
Unconventional NBA’s Nick Flynt on Michael Beasley – Part 1 and Part 2
NBA Playbook’s Sebastian Pruiti on Beasley’s inconsistency
Dave McMenamin of ESPN LA – Kobe Bryant: FCB could compete in NBA
NBA.com – 2010-2011 GM Survey: Player Predictions
Jason King of Rivals.com – An old, but great article on John Wall
The Basketball Jones – Gilbert Arenas “Also Still Here” Poster
Kelly Dwyer and Trey Kerby on “Emo Gil.”

…and here’s Luke Babbitt doing the Dougie:

Hat tip: Ben Golliver of Blazersedge

David Liam Kyle/Getty Images

Just two games on the sched, Tuesday night, and I only watched one of them. This doesn’t feel right, and neither does being done with writing by 1:00 AM. A much quicker BfB than normal as we hit the halfway mark of the season. Continue Reading

Issac Baldizon/Getty Images

Hey heyyy, it’s the first BfB of 2010. I’m a bit pissed at myself for letting so many days go by without an update here, but at least I’ve been really active on Twitter, right? Right? Hope that’s okay. Anyway, 4 games on the schedule last night. There’s stuff to talk about. Continue Reading

I took a break from daily recaps last week, but trust me when I tell you I didn’t take a break from watching ball or reading about it. There’s no way I can let a week of action go by without sharing my thoughts, so here’s a mammoth recap. Continue Reading

Hey, check it out – a new feature! This is the debut of Basketball for Breakfast, my stab at a daily recap. I know, I know, there is already a wealth of excellent recaps in the NBA blogosphere. I read them all and that won’t change. This isn’t an attempt to compete with anyone; I’m simply trying to add something of my own. I’ll do my best to keep it fun and unique. Continue Reading

Remember how crazy the West was 2-through-9 last year? We knew no one would catch the Lakers, and we knew you’d have to win close to 50 games to make the playoffs, but we had no idea how everything would shake out in the end. There was one great team in the conference, a bunch of very good teams, and then a whole bunch of crap. No Western team won between 29 (Golden State) and 46 (Phoenix) games.

Well, the East is even crazier than that this year, but the action is all in the middle. I see three teams that should easily win more than 46 games as presently constructed and only two that might finish with fewer than 29. That’s almost what happened last season, but what’s even more interesting is that, if forced to predict team records this season, I’d argue that there are ten Eastern teams that could hover around the 40-42 win mark. Continue Reading