Latest NBA trade winds
Jazz, Hornets, Knicks, Heat, Bucks, Mavericks, Lakers, Spurs, Suns, Rockets and Celtics ... all among the teams covered in this week's around-the-league notes as the Feb. 9 trade deadline draws closer
Before we get to the latest batch of around-the-league notes ...
As I continue to age in worrying fashion, I forgot to include a key planned passage in Tuesday's story about my recent trip to San Antonio for the Spurs' one-night return to the Alamodome and how it was the depths of the enmity spilling out of the intense Spurs/Lakers rivalry that helped make the dome such a special place in my memory.
While last Friday's game was going on, my old friend and former ESPN teammate J.A. Adande told a great story about his favorite Alamodome memory. It was after Game 2 of the 2001 Western Conference finals, when Adande pulled off an epic sidle — our journalistic term for successfully securing some one-on-one time with a prized interview target away from the larger press pack.
In this case, Adande convinced Kobe Bryant to let him join on the long walk from the visitors' locker room to the Lakers' bus. Reflecting on the game-sealing triple that Kobe sank to put the Lakers up 2-0 with a second straight road win and on course for a 4-0 sweep of the Spurs, Adande told him: "I think you hit an artery with that 3."
Kobe's icy response: "Let 'em bleed."
Yup.
As the last line of my Tuesday column stated: We just don't have rivalries like that in today's NBA and I'm not ashamed to say I pine for one.
On to the trade tattle …
