LeBron James Says Paul Pierce is His Biggest Rival

By Mark Evans | Yahoo! Contributor Network

COMMENTARY | Throughout his time in the NBA, people have been looking for the perfect rival for LeBron James. At first, it appeared that Kobe Bryant would fit this mold. Then, the media was quick to build up a potential rivalry with Kevin Durant as Durant was developing into one of the league's best players. Of course, the matchup between the two in last year's NBA Finals played into this.

With this being said, a clear cut rival hasn't quite emerged for LeBron. This is fine, and part of this is certainly the media trying to create hype.

When asked who his biggest rival is, LeBron James had an interesting answer: Paul Pierce.

This makes sense, as the Boston Celtics for a little while were the team that LeBron could never seem to get by, particularly while he was a member of the Cleveland Cavaliers. Also, James and Pierce had an epic battle in the Eastern Conference Semifinals the year the Celtics won the championship. James is clearly the better player, but Pierce has always found a way to step up his game when the two square off.

Is LeBron right here?

Obviously, players such as Durant and Bryant are closer to being on LeBron's level. However, LeBron has never faced Kobe's Los Angeles Lakers in the playoffs, thus making it hard for them to be true rivals. Prior to last year, the same could be said with LeBron and Durant. The Miami Heat clearly dominated Durant's Oklahoma City Thunder in the process of winning a championship, making it hard to call Durant a true rival.

It's probably safer to say that the Boston Celtics as a whole were LeBron's greatest rival in the earlier parts of his career, including Ray Allen, Kevin Garnett, and Rajon Rondo along with Pierce. Even as recently as last year, it took LeBron's Heat a full seven games to knock Boston out of the playoffs. With Pierce being the leader of most of these teams, it's not too much of a stretch to indirectly call him LeBron's closest rival.

Looking forward, one would have to believe that Kevin Durant is the most likely candidate to become LeBron's rival. The Thunder and Heat look fit to arrive in the NBA Finals multiple times over the next few seasons, possibly setting up some more battles between the two. Additionally, it appears that James and Durant will be the top two players in the league for the foreseeable future.

For now, this is a huge compliment for Paul Pierce. When the best player in the world talks about you like this, you must be doing something right.

Mark lives in the Boston area and has been covering the Celtics for 3 years. He has been featured on Fox Sports Yardbarker, Fox Sports, and Sports Illustrated "Hot Clicks", and has been published on Celtics 24/7, Bleacher Report, and Sports-Kings .

source yahoo.com

Why can’t NBA teams fill arenas, even after giving away free tickets?

By Kelly Dwyer | Ball Don't Lie

So, why aren’t you going to NBA games?

Is it because you’re a weirdo, and don’t like the league? That can’t be the case, because you’re reading this website. Is it because you live too far away from an NBA arena? Fair enough, though there are 28 cities to chose from, including two teams apiece in New York and Los Angeles. Parking prices? Concession ripoffs? Poor sight lines? Can’t stand that guy that yells “ev-ry-bo-dy clap your hands?” All of these make sense.

It can’t be the ticket prices, though. For a few teams, at least. More and more NBA teams are basically giving away tickets to games, offering free ticket specials or $1 deals on ducats. Several ticket pricing websites are often reduced to selling tickets for literal pocket change on game days, and yet fans still aren’t showing up. From a report from TIME, as put together by Bill Tuttle:

    According to ESPN statistics, the Pistons are averaging 13,272 tickets sold per home game, and they play in the 21,000-seat Palace arena. Some of these “sold” tickets are given away free, and many more ticket holders simply don’t show up. The net result is a sea of unoccupied seats in the Palace, as fans who watch the games on TV can attest.

    Essentially the same scene is being played out at several NBA arenas this season. The Pistons are hardly the only team finding it difficult to attract fans. To boost attendance, the Milwaukee Bucks (fourth-worst in league attendance) have been hosting promotions like “Buck Night,” when tickets for kids 14 and under are $1, and hot dogs sell for just $1 as well. (Naturally, the event took place when the Bucks were playing the Pistons.)

Entertainment sways aside, there’s a good reason why a whole lot of fans don’t follow through on using those free or discounted tickets. It’s the same reason you just let a whole sheet of coupons expire, or declined to take advantage of the free local municipal entertainment your city surely offers.

It’s because it’s free. Who cares, when you’re not taking in entertainment you’ve already paid for? This is why the Pistons have cut back on free tickets. From the Detroit News:

    "If you rely on free tickets too heavily, it undermines the pricing structure," said Andrew Zimbalist, economist at Smith College in Northampton, Mass. "If you have a regular ticket and you're sitting next to someone who got theirs free, that undercuts the value of your ticket.

    "And you can, like the Pistons are, get away from that by offering other inducements that maintain the underlying integrity of the pricing structure."

    [President and CEO of Palace Sports Dennis] Mannion agreed, saying that giving away tickets generates "very low" revenue from parking and concessions.

    "You also have high no-show rates with free tickets," he said.

Which brings us back to the original point. If you can secure free or heavily discounted tickets through either the team or ticket brokering sites, why not take in that night’s contest? Even if it is against the Sacramento Kings?
For a lot of us, the secondary costs get to be way too much. Personally speaking, my family of four cannot afford to take in an Indiana Pacers game this year, even if we grabbed a batch of heavily discounted seats high in the rafters. The hour-long drive, parking and costs that go beyond the price of the actual ticket are too high. Because I’m not going to be the dad that sneaks snacks into the arena for his kids to eat surreptitiously on the cheap -- and I’m not going to make my wife sit through D.J. Augustin running sets off the bench without buying her a few beers to get through it. And YOU try saying “no” to your daughters when they want to buy another foam finger.

Teams have acted upon these issues, offering all sorts of concession and apparel deals, but the fair-weather fan isn’t going to spend time researching these things as they would research pricing out travel and lodging for a vacation. A $1,000 expense is worth studying. A $150 night out? Not so much.

Especially when you can lift your head from the laptop and look up to see an NBA game, likely in full high definition on a receiver your cable company gave you at an ever-cheapening rate, flickering for free on your local affiliate. You don’t even have to shell out nearly $200 for NBA League Pass to watch that same random midweek game, coming to you live or paused by choice with varying camera angles and impressive production values. Should your team’s high scorer limp off to the locker room during the contest, you’re probably better off at home anyway – because all the NBA news you’d ever need is yours immediately, just for the price of a computer and Internet connection. Updates come quicker in the living room.

You can quibble about the style of play all you want, but if you enjoy the game, you enjoy the game – and it’s much easier to enjoy regional NBA basketball for free than it is to check in on the local high school or college team on TV. To say nothing of the fact that even the most basic of cable or dish packages will allow you to see nationally televised games nearly every day of the week, often two times a night.

The fears that baseball owners expressed in the 1930s regarding radio airplay of games, possibly cutting into their attendance figures, might be finally realized. There’s no comparing sitting in the warm sunshine of a slow-as-molasses (but still enjoyable, in person) baseball game with huddling around a scratchy RCA radio dial. Basketball’s an indoor sport, though. A winter sport that is easy to follow on television. The experience isn’t nearly the same. There is nothing like taking in a live NBA game with your eyes acting as your own producer in the truck, but the TV experience ain’t half bad.

And even at half-cost, fans aren’t showing up. You can blame the lockout or slow-paced coaching or losing records or the economy all you want; these are all significant factors behind the lacking attendance. Even in the shadiest of shacks, though, with the most minimal of electronic setups, NBA basketball can still be a fantastic thing.

That’s bad news for teams that can’t help but turn a $1 ticket into a $100 night out.

Kobe Bryant calls ex-teammate Smush Parker ‘the worst,’ jokingly chides the Lakers for letting him ‘walk on’

Kobe Bryant confers with 'The Worst' (Getty Images)

By Kelly Dwyer | Ball Don't Lie

During the 2005-06 season, Lakers superstar Kobe Bryant averaged a career best 35.4 points per game, an astounding number only slightly pumped up by his famous 81-point outburst midway through that very potent season. Though the Lakers were downed in the first round, the campaign should have served at the very least as a personal highlight for Kobe, especially as he was back to working with coach Phil Jackson after the head man was exiled from the team during the 2004-05 campaign.

Instead, Kobe's still a little chippy about the lineups that surrounded him during that 45-win season. Up to and including calling former starting point guard Smush Parker "the worst," just before Wednesday night's exhibition loss to the Portland Trail Blazers. From Janis Carr at the Orange County Register:

    "I almost won an MVP with Smush Parker and Kwame Brown on my team," Bryant said before Wednesday's 93-75 exhibition loss to Portland. "I was shooting 45 times a game. What was I supposed to do? Pass it to Chris Mihm or Kwame Brown?"

    Bryant was referring to 2005-06 when the Lakers' roster included Brian Cook, Stanislav Medvedenko, Devean George and Parker, Mihm and Brown.

    Bryant continued, taking aim at his favorite whipping boy, Parker, calling him "the worst. He shouldn't have been in the NBA but we were too cheap to pay for a point guard. So we let him walk on."

Damn, dude. Daaaamn. Great players don't usually mind making indirect references to when their lives were tougher while working amongst less-heralded teammates -- "we've come a long way"-sort of nonsense. But rarely do you see players go on record with names like Kobe just did.

[Related: LeBron James' agent being investigated by NCAA]

About the talent surrounding him, or having to shoot 45 times (27.2, actually) a game, Kobe is spot on. Though Jackson was back to employing the triangle offense, the mismatched parts acquired to run an isolation-heavy attack during Jackson's one year away made it so Bryant had to break away from the offense continually just to keep the Lakers in games. They may have featured the best player in the world that year, though eventual-champion Dwyane Wade might disagree, but 45 wins for that lot was, well, a lot. Bryant was masterful as he led that team back to the postseason.

Calling the guys out, though? Parker, we can understand — he's been taking shots at Kobe for years, now, and any sort of contentious back and forth between the two is entirely Parker's fault. Players like Luke Walton and Devean George may have contributed less and hamstrung Kobe's efforts more than Parker in that season; but when you combine Smush's petulance towards Kobe, lack of professionalism, and play he truly does come off as "the worst."

Kwame? His effort was lacking, per usual, and he turned the ball over on nearly 17 percent of the possessions he used up. Could have played better, had he cared more, so it's probably fine for Kobe to call him out. Especially when a still-active Brown, now a Philadelphia 76er, can lay a hard foul on Bryant the next time the Lakers come through Pennsylvania.

(Though he totally won't.)

Chris Mihm? We're not feeling that as much.

Mihm at least tried, and played through injuries. Didn't have the greatest hands in the world, but he was serviceable in the wake of the deal involving Shaquille O'Neal that Bryant nudged the Lakers into (and Vlade Divac's injury-plagued 2004-05 campaign). Over ten points and six boards with a block in 26 minutes for the Lakers in 2005-06 — not bad. And, unlike Parker and Brown, he didn't try to cross the king with anything save for the odd dropped pass or 12.

(And, as far as the Lakers being "too cheap to pay for a point guard," Kobe's a little off there, as well. Though Los Angeles didn't pay the luxury tax that season, the team was well over the cap during the offseason and could only legally bring in a guard with an exception or on a minimum contract. Kobe, as well as Lamar Odom and the expiring Brian Grant, all played for over eight figures a year in 2005-06, so it's not as if Los Angeles had a lot of wiggle room.)

Life is a lot easier, now, with Steve Nash handling point guard duties and Dwight Howard ready to throw down as many lobs as Kobe will give him, so you can't blame the man for giddily considering how far he's come. Even with those two championships won in the space between.

But names, Kobe? Their names?

Cold. It's going to be a fun season in Los Angeles. And a hell of a lot of fun as Kobe gets older, and grumpier.