Talking About Practice

Tim Donahue of 8 Points, 9 Seconds talks Pacers on this latest episode. The holidays and this compressed NBA schedule wreaked havoc with plans to get more podcasts up, but here is the latest. It’s all Pacers all the time so be advised if you’re looking for leaguewide talk. And follow Tim on Twitter.

You can listen below, subscribe to Talking About Practice on iTunes or click here to listen.

Enjoy.

Zach Lowe of Sports Illustrated’s hoops blog The Point Forward stopped by to talk about Chris Paul and David Stern. Of course, this is the NBA story of the offseason, so we dug into the conspiracy theories and other possible explanations for why the commissioner of the league opted to veto the three-team trade that would have made Chris Paul a Los Angeles Laker.

In other chatter, we talk about the under-discussed juggernaut that is the Memphis Grizzlies, the unthreatening offenses of the Chicago Bulls and Indiana Pacers, and the sad end of the road for the Boston Celtics as a true contender. For stuff like this and more basketball talk all season, do follow Zach on Twitter as well @ZachLowe_SI.

You can listen below, subscribe to Talking About Practice on iTunes or click here to listen.

Enjoy.

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, I did an NBA podcast. Life got busier, this became seldom updated and I gave up trying to keep it going, however. Fast forward about 18 months and it is now back.

David West was signed to a two-year, $20 million deal by the Pacers yesterday. Me and Tim Donahue of our site 8 Points, 9 Seconds got on the horn to discuss the acquisition, among other Pacer-centric things.

You can listen below, subscribe to Talking About Practice on iTunes or click here to listen.

Enjoy.

Zach Harper of TalkHoops, Cowbell Kingdom and Hardwood Paroxysm stops by to talk about the Conference Finals-es (Finalsi?) and the Draft Lottery. We chastise punctuation, talk about Lucille 2 and compare one NBA superstar to Dolly Parton.

Enjoy.

And please be sure to subscribe to Talking About Practice on iTunes, where ratings and reviews are encouraged.

Rob Mahoney of The Two Man Game, NBC ProBasketballTalk and Hardwood Paroxysm joins me to talk about the Dallas Mavericks’ season that was (more like wasn’t, amirite?) and the future of the franchise.

This is the first in a “Playoff Post-Mortem” series of podcast episodes that will be debuting over the next week or so to discuss those teams that were bounced from the postseason already. Fittingly, the Spurs will be next up (tomorrow, baring a abnormally long whisky binge) and the Thunder and Cavs should follow along in short order.

Enjoy.

And please be sure to subscribe to Talking About Practice on iTunes, where ratings and reviews are encouraged.

Tom Ziller of NBA FanHouse and Sactown Royalty and John Karalis of Red’s Army stop by to talk about the puzzling Game 5 performance by LeBron James in the Cavs/Celtics series as well as prognosticate on what we will see tonight during Game 6. Ziller is on for the first half hour and also drops some knowledge on Lakers/Suns (with a Nash vs. Fish discussion getting some good burn) before John hops in around the 30-minute mark.

Enjoy.

And please be sure to subscribe to Talking About Practice on iTunes, where ratings and reviews are encouraged.

Kelly Dwyer of Ball Don’t Lie stops by to preview the Playoffs and wrap up the Regular Season. I know what you’re thinking, and I thought the same thing: That’s so Raven. It is indeed. Very ravenous.

As expected, Kelly brings the goods, dropping 50 minutes of funk while discussing the color of his couch, comparing willfully ignorant basketball announcers to Chicken McNugget connoisseurs and breaking down a hypothetical to-the-death duel between Trey Kerby and JE Skeets.

We also talk about basketball.

Enjoy.

And please be sure to subscribe to Talking About Practice on iTunes, where ratings and reviews are encouraged.

[gplayer href=”http://www.bothteamsplayedhard.net/wp-content/uploads/podcasts/Episode_9_Kelly_Dwyer.mp3″]Talking About Practice: Episode 9 – Kelly Dwyer[/gplayer]

Kyle Weidie of Truth About It talks about Gilbert Arenas and the Wizards in this episode … that should have been up online like five days ago since we recorded last Sunday.

Unfortunately, I’m pretty dumb and I messed up the recording during the second half of our conversation. Since Kyle had a lot of insightful things to say and we had a nice debate about Washington’s troubles this season vs. Indiana’s during the Jail Pacers era (which I wrote about last week), I tried all week to recover the audio, but it turns out that I don’t the first clue about how to do that.

My apologies. And that’s why this thing ends rather abruptly — it wasn’t just Kyle hanging up on me. I don’t think anyone wanted the big close to be about James Singleton. Oh well. Live and learn.

Most importantly, we still have a good half-hour talk about the Gilbert’s sentencing and what it means for the future of the Wizards, as well as Andray Blatche acting a little childish (the Adrian Wojnarowski article we talk about is here) and the team’s decision to trade away Antawn Jamison, Caron Butler and Brendan Haywood. Great stuff from Kyle on all this. (And here he is being great again with his piece on the Wizards who have departed the team this year.)

And in further, “Golly, I’m dumb” developments, you will also get to hear me drop some Bill Simmons-ian-level mispronunciation. I always laugh at commentators and analysts who speak improperly, so feel free to mock me as much as you want.

For learning purposes, let’s try these three again aloud:

Recidivist – Re – sid – eh – vist

Leonsis – Lee – own – sis

Wojnarowski – Still – have – no – idea

Enjoy.

And please be sure to subscribe to Talking About Practice on iTunes, where ratings and reviews are encouraged.

[gplayer href=”http://www.bothteamsplayedhard.net/wp-content/uploads/podcasts/Kyle_Weidie.mp3″]Talking About Practice: Episode 8 – Kyle Weidie[/gplayer]

Larry Coon of the world-famous CBAFAQ, the New York Times’ Off the Dribble Blog and Hoops World stops by to talk about how the trade deadline changed the Summer 2010 free agency landscape, the next Collective Bargaining Agreement and the potential of a lockout.

Larry has spoken to NBA Players Association President Derek Fisher on several occasions, so there are some great insights there about CBA negotiations. He also thinks that a lockout is “more likely to happen than not.” Scary, scary stuff. No NBA would make the baby Jesus weep with infinite sadness.

Regardless, enjoy.

And please be sure to subscribe to Talking About Practice on iTunes, where ratings and reviews are encouraged.

[gplayer href=”http://www.bothteamsplayedhard.net/wp-content/uploads/podcasts/larrycoon.mp3″]Talking About Practice: Episode 7 – Larry Coon[/gplayer]

Matt Moore of Hardwood Paroxysm, NBA FanHouse and ProBasketballTalk stops by to talk about his time in Dallas for All-Star Weekend, debate the Jazz as contenders, break down the Mavs trade and answer the dreaded Ten Questions.

We ran long on this one so I didn’t bother with any major intro to explain the long lay-off since Episode 5. Apologies. Tech difficulties and other projects. But we’re back now and you can expect a new episode roughly once a week. Maybe I’ll even bang out a bunch over the next few weeks out of guilt. We’ll see how ambitious I get.

And as always, be sure to subscribe to Talking About Practice on iTunes, where ratings and reviews are encouraged.

[gplayer href=”http://www.bothteamsplayedhard.net/wp-content/uploads/podcasts/Episode6_Matt_Moore.mp3″]Talking About Practice: Episode 6[/gplayer]