On the surface, tomorrow’s Christmas Day showdown between the Lakers and the defending champion Boston Celtics has everything a basketball fan could ask for. A rematch of last year’s NBA Finals and a renewal of professional sport’s most storied rivalry, with both teams at the head of their respective conferences on a collision course for another Finals confrontation. This game has it all: rivalry, tension, history, hatred, excitement. But there’s one thing this matinee battle doesn’t have: The “NBA on NBC” theme song.
Any b-ball fan growing up in the 80’s …

One of my favorite sports writers, Mark Heisler, has just finished latest book “Madmen’s Ball” documenting the Shaq/Kobe/Phil Lakers. As all of us who love the Lakers know, this era ended far too early and with about 4 championships too soon. Why? Kobe was a spoiled prick and Shaq was ego-maniac slob, and the two simply never learned the lessons that Keith and Mick learned about putting aside personal differences for a greater cause.
Turns out the 2003-2004 season was the straw that broke the camel’s back and Shaq and Kobe …

This week marks the release of the top-flight documentary “The First Basket”, a film chronicling prominent Jewish basketball players of the 30’s and 40’s. As it turns out, before us Jews smartened up and decided to develop a stranglehold on sitcom writing, trial lawyering, and failing miserably in assessing the risk of credit derivative obligations, our best and brightest decided to express the early 20th century immigrant experience through hooping it up. One of those best and brightest was my private Hebrew school teacher, Jules Rivlin.
Not even the draconian administrators …