nba

Last year, Take-Two Interactive secured Los Angeles Lakers shooting guard Kobe Bryant to be the cover athlete of its annual installment in the NBA 2K series of basketball sims.

So how does the company top having arguably the best current basketball player in the world on its cover? It goes out and gets perhaps the best player of all time, a 14-time All-Star with six championship rings and five league MVP awards on his resume.

There go the last bragging rights NBA 2K5 cover star Ben Wallace had on Jordan.

Take-Two on Thursday officially announced that Chicago Bulls legend Michael … Read more

I cannot predict (though I can dream it) Kobe Bryant being sunk by Los Suns de Phoenix in the NBA playoffs. Can the alleged Superman Dwight Howard defeat those hardy assailants from Boston? My heart says probably not. My brain says absolutely, positively no way in this lifetime or any other.

But these are mere emotions. They fail us. And the more our emotions fail us, the more money the left-brainers make. (Look at Google, having invaded our laptops, now marching its armies toward our TVs.)

Yet what is lovely about some left-brainers, especially mathematicians beyond Wall Street, is that … Read more

The fact that Twitter is making all tweets easily embeddable is on the surface benign, but it does give pause when you think about a tweet being used as a quote.

It gets under my skin when a news broadcast uses tweets and Facebook screenshots as an indication that the network is "interactive." That isn't real interactivity. That is anecdotal proof of what a producer has already decided is the narrative of the story. Twitter's new feature will facilitate this a bit more easily across various media platforms: broadcast news, online news, blogs, etc. I'm … Read more

Everyone has an iPad app--or it just feels that way since I've been inundated with press releases about them since Thursday--but the NBA's is interesting for a few reasons.

First, it's free. And second, the NBA is looking at the iPad as a different use case than every other mobile platform. Pro basketball has more than 100 apps, if you count each variation of them released for iPhone, Android, and BlackBerry. But the iPad app, called NBA Game Time: Courtside, is not just a reformatted iPhone app for a larger screen.

"It's completely different from the ground up," said Bryan Perez, the president of the NBA's Digital Group. "One you pull out of your pocket, the other is sitting on your desk or coffee table."

The iPad app is supposed to be a companion to people watching the game, or in this case, the NBA playoffs, which start in just a few weeks. Unlike the iPhone app that you're probably using to stay updated on a game you're missing while you're at the airport or work or on the bus home, the Courtside app assume you're watching on TV.

It's really for stats geeks who don't want to rely on the announcers for all their information.

"We give them the info our TV analysts would have at their fingertips," said Perez.

With some finger swipes you can watch a game and delve into the type of live-updated stats that NBA analysts Doug Collins or Reggie Miller would have while they're sitting courtside calling a game. You can tap any player or team on the screen and see his/their stats as well as shot charts and shooting percentage from different areas on the floor. There's also real-time scoring, updated video highlights, play by play, news updates from around the league and tweets from the NBA's official Twitter account.

You might be thinking, "Bad timing, since the NBA season is basically over." And yes, it is in about two weeks. But this application is specifically for the playoffs. You can get it Saturday, and until the postseason begins, it will show the current playoff picture, and update depending on how the last games of the season go down.

Additional screenshots after the jump:… Read more

Monday I, along with many other lost, delusional human beings, will be watching the NBA's Golden State Warriors play the Phoenix Suns. It will be particularly difficult not to reach for an additional beer or an additional embrace from whoever happens to be seated next to me.

For, according to the Associated Press, the team has finally announced that it wishes to be sold. This is terribly important for San Francisco Bay Area sports, for the tech industry, and for every Warriors-committed resident of this world whose ears have become assaulted daily by the mocking laughter of their friends, … Read more

This is like the iPad. Except it's a lot more personal.

I have the faintest wishful whimsy that Oracle co-founder chose Wednesday to finally admit that he is trying to buy the Golden State Warriors in order to upstage the Steve Jobs Traveling Band debuting their little gizmo.

Please allow me to disclose that I have followed the Warriors for quite a few years. I have been present as they have assailed the sporting world with a product that might best be described as, well, Vista. Or AOL around 2000.

The Warriors, over the years, have possessed the ability … Read more

Arguably the best arcade sports game of all time, NBA JAM will be make a comeback in 2010. The 1993 classic featured 2-on-2 basketball with over the top dunks, flaming basketballs, shattering backboards, and little regard for the rules of the game. It was also one of the first games to feature commentary that sneaked its way into mainstream pop culture.

EA Vancouver, the game's developer, has promised to stay true to the original all while delivering a fresh take on the franchise. These updates include "true-to-life body types, updated physics and visible player emotion."

While developer … Read more

It's one thing for a man to be denied his opportunity to work. It's quite another for a man to be denied his opportunity to Twitter.

The microblogging site, a bastion of free, spontaneous speech, has lost one of its more amusing denizens.

Perhaps you have been buried so deeply in the machinations of your new Nexus One to breathe, wipe the pizza stains from your shirt, or notice that Gilbert Arenas, the slightly waning star of the Washington Wizards, has been suspended indefinitely without pay by the NBA.

The Wizards' hometown Post has described in some delicious microdetail … Read more

He calls himself Agent Zero. His shirt number is a big, fat zero. And this accurately reflects the number of tweets Gilbert Arenas has posted to his Twitter account.

It's not that Arenas, the Washington Wizards point guard, isn't confident of his literary skills. Oh, no. Just look at his finely sculpted blog.

However, according to The Washington Post, Arenas has no interest in being a small time Twitter player. He wants 1 million followers before he will start to offer tweets from his copious and wondrous life and imagination.

Just last week Arenas told the Associated Press … Read more