It's time for the Knicks and the Nets to end this nonsense and stop teasing their fans. It's time to stop dreaming. All the salary cap room in the world this summer isn't going to save NBA basketball in the New York/New Jersey area.
The two worst teams in the Eastern Conference will remain the worst for the next few years. So get used to it.
LeBron James won't be walking through the door anytime soon. It doesn't matter how storied Madison Square Garden feels, or how many celebrities come to the games, or how wonderful the Nets-to-Brooklyn blueprint looks, or even the intensity of James' crush on rapper Jay-Z.
Every few weeks, FanHouse will offer a writer's opinion on the current NBA MVP Rankings. This time, Tom Ziller gives his top 20 through the season's first four weeks, as well as an assessment of the multitude of rookie point guards.
The surprising Atlanta Hawks -- and the way they were built -- should become required study for those NBA general managers who wheel and deal too fast, making change for the sake of change, always searching for the quick fix.
The Hawks are proving that patience does work.
The Hawks (9-2) have become the top team in the East, quietly moving past the freer spending Celtics, Cavaliers and Magic, the high-profile contenders who previously thought it was a three-team race to the top of the conference.
Every night there are some stupendous, silly, stupid, or downright outlandish individual lines from around the lig. Doing Lines lets you know which one tops the list.
It's not every day that we get to see a player hit for 40 points or more in an NBA game. So on Sunday, when we had three different players meet or surpass the mark, it's definitely something worth discussing.
Especially when two of them did it in the same game.
Joe Johnson wants to believe that his Atlanta Hawks are on the verge of being contenders in the Eastern Conference. They should be getting close.
But going into the start of the NBA's regular season next week, Johnson isn't so sure anymore.
"Sometimes, I can't tell if we really want it,'' Johnson told FanHouse after his Hawks were embarrassed by a 37-point loss Friday night in their final exhibition game by the Orlando Magic. "It's discouraging. Sometimes, you never know what you're going to get from this team. And that won't work.''
Since arriving in Atlanta in 2005, Joe Johnson has been the resident star of the Hawks. Josh Smith draws the oohs and aahs with the highlight reel dunks and eye-popping stat lines, but Johnson has been the only player to really approach greatness, his finest moment coming in the 2007 playoffs, which we mentioned a few days ago.
It's long been expected that Johnson would sign an extension within the last few weeks, to lock him up with the Hawks for the forseeable future, without any question of him going elsewhere in the summer of 2010.
Tip-Off Timer counts down the days until the first game of the 2009-10 season. On Tuesday, there are 35 days remaining.
Joe Johnson begins his eighth season in the NBA this year. During that time, he's barely scratched the radar of the average NBA fan. His biggest anecdote prior to 2007 was the fact that he was injured during a critical Phoenix playoff run. When he went to Atlanta, it was like he dropped off the face of the planet.
But in the spring of 2008, if only for a moment in the public's eye, Joe Johnson made himself a known man.
Every Tuesday this offseason, two of our NBA experts will go at it with a Debate in the Paint. This week, the topic is LeBron James and what he should do next summer when he becomes an unrestricted free agent.
LeBron James is no fool. Starting this season with uncertainty over his pending free agency would doom the Cleveland Cavaliers, bury them under a sea of unhealthy rumors.
Accentuated by Shaquille O'Neal playing alongside him, basketball would become more circus than serious in Cleveland this season.
All your oases are mirages. Word spread this afternoon that a ruling in the interminable fight within the ownership group of the NBA's Hawks and NHL's Thrashers had been handed down from the glorious mountaintop (or Maryland's Court of Special Appeals, at least). Sekou Smith of the Atlanta Journal-Constitutiontranslated the opinion, and came up with this:
"The partners are now placed back in the same position they were in before August 2005."
The judge in the case tossed out the ownership group's 2005 agreement on how to proceed with a buy-out of lightning rod Steve Belkin's share as "too vague." Belkin, you may remember, fought with the other seven owners of the teams over such vital issues as team plane access, arena tickets and public speaking engagements. Oh, also, the Joe Johnson trade.
There's some interesting chatter today about Joe Johnson potentially signing an extension this summer with the Hawks, choosing long-term security over rolling the dice as an unrestricted free agent in the summer of 2010.
Any way you look at it, the move makes sense. He'll be 29 years old next summer, much closer to the end of his prime than the more highly prized trio of LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh, meaning he'd be the fourth-place prize (at best) among teams clearing salary cap room.
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It's time for the Knicks and the Nets to end this nonsense and stop teasing their fans. It's time to stop dreaming. All the salary cap room in the world this summer isn't going to save NBA basketball in the New York/New Jersey area.
The surprising 
Every night there are some stupendous, silly, stupid, or downright outlandish individual lines from around the lig. 
Joe Johnson wants to believe that his 
Since arriving in Atlanta in 2005, 
Tip-Off Timer
Every Tuesday this offseason, two of our 
All your oases are mirages. Word spread this afternoon that a ruling in the interminable fight within the ownership group of the NBA's Hawks and NHL's Thrashers had been handed down from the glorious mountaintop (or Maryland's Court of Special Appeals, at least). Sekou Smith of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution 
There's some interesting chatter today about 
