photo: slamonline.com

Basketball, broken down to its simplest compound, is about scoring more buckets than the team you’re playing against. The Semi-Automatic refers to players who leave bodies in their wake with their innate ability to get buckets. And few players can truly say that they are, or ever were, on the same level as the man known as “Mao Santa”, aka “The Holy Hand.” Read More »

photo of the unc’s dean dome: peterkrogh.com

The North Carolina Tar Heels. The legacy of this esteemed college basketball program conjures up words like prestige, championships, class and dominance, along with Hall of Fame names like Michael Jordan, James Worthy and Dean Smith. They’ve won 27 ACC regular season titles, 17 ACC tourney titles, competed in 18 Final Fours and captured five National Championships.

The question that begs to be answered is how did the program ascend to such rarefied heights. Read More »

photo: media.highschoolplaybook.com

Basketball, broken down to its simplest compound, is about scoring more buckets than the team you’re playing against. The Semi-Automatic refers to players who leave bodies in their wake with their innate ability to get buckets. And no player in the history of the college game was more offensively blessed, or prolific, than the incomparable Pete Maravich, aka The Pistol. Read More »

photo: my.nba.com

The Dunk! The Ram! The Slam! The Bong! Whatever you want to call it, it’s an art form, birthed on the playground, that has revolutionized the way the game is played. And few used the Bang! to make a bigger splash than Anthony Jerome Webb, aka Spud. Read More »

photo: weallbe.blogspot.com

For years, he contentedly stood in the shadows. Unlike his more celebrated teamates at the time, he didn’t walk through the b-ball corridors with a fancy nickname or a respected pedigree backed up by a blue blooded institution and some fawning media.

Far away from the bright lights, he morphed from a good high school player into an incredible college performer. And when the spotlight and eyes of the world finally cast their admiring gaze upon him in the pros, he’d completed his metamorphisis from role player to one of the finest all-around talents and greatest defensive players the world ever witnessed.

And through the entire journey from the hoops backwoods to the crescendo of the sport, he never stopped being “Boopie” to those who knew him way back when. Read More »

photo: krossovki.net

The Orlando Magic are back in the building, yet people seem to be a little confused. Everybody’s saying that they haven’t been to the finals since they had Shaq. How can it possible that mainstream media not fully understand how indescribably incredible a young Penny Hardaway was, and the role he played in the equation?

In early December of 1991, we received our first glimpse. We’d heard the whispers about the kid from the rough streets of Memphis, Tennessee a few years earlier while he was tearing up high school ball. But it was undeniably confirmed that the young man was, indeed, a supreme talent on the night of his NCAA debut as he collected 18 points, 15 rebounds, 4 blocks, 4 steals and 6 assists against DePaul. Read More »