Welcome to The Now

Steve Nash ain't happy .

Jason Whitlock lays the bad play of Phoenix and Orlando on the feet of Amar'e Stoudemire and Dwight Howard, respectively: These guys are clueless. They’re the most talented and important players on their teams and they have the maturity level of 13-year-olds. They set a terrible tone for their teams. Howard just wants to have fun. Stoudemire just wants to score points. Neither is interested in giving a playoff-level defensive effort. You don’t learn how to play great defense in summer/AAU basketball. You don’t learn how to compete at a championship level in AAU basketball. Before summer basketball replaced high school hoops as the most important training ground for a teenage baller, kids used to be taught how to compete, how to accept coaching and that important games pitting equally talented players are most often decided at the defensive end. Howard and Stoudemire are full-blooded AAU Babies. They were raised in the era where the penalty for a high school ph...

And here's the most significant bad news for the Cavs: With Shaq stationed in the paint, there'll be precious little room for LeBron's powerhouse drives. In fact, the presence of Shaq will mostly limit LBJ's offense to the least efficient aspect of his game -- his jump-shooting. Also, if Shaq is such a desirable player, why did Miami trade him 16 months ago, and why is Phoenix so willing to deal him now? In sum, since it's virtually inconceivable that even with Shaq the Cavs can total more than the 66 wins they posted last season, this trade is exclusively geared to enable Cleveland to beat Orlando in the playoffs. Amen ; this trade certainly wasn't for wins: Cleveland had home court advantage for the entire Eastern Conference. If the Cavs did this just to beat Orlando, they may get their wish; but now they're going to have to deal with the non-Orlando teams who have players that will wear Shaq down. And if you see stories about how James has been reduced to...