Posts Tagged ‘Juwan Howard’

It’s So Hard To Say Goodbye, Says Brad Miller

April 27, 2012  ·  1:38AM

by Micah Hart

With the conclusion of the NBA’s regular season, it means the end of the road for many basketball players. Some will lose their spots to rookies, some will take deals in Europe that might provide more money or stability, and for a few lucky ones, they will go out on their own terms after long and productive careers. Brad Miller is one of those players. Miller has said he will retire after the season, which meant when he checked out of the Timberwolves game against the Nuggets tonight with 5:04 left in the fourth quarter, he was checking out for good. At least he got one last three-pointer to drop before the final curtain:



I can only imagine the emotion of a moment like that, when you are forced to give up the one thing that has been a constant in your life since you were a small child. It’s no wonder we see so many athletes get choked up in these environs.

Congrats on a wonderful career Brad, and congrats as well to other NBA veterans who have likely played their last games, including Ben Wallace, who has said he will call it quits, and perhaps others like Grant Hill, Jason Kidd, or Kurt Thomas, who might choose the same when all is said and done. I’d include Juwan Howard as well, but he appears to be shooting for Jamie Moyer territory at this point.

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Introducing the Bragging Rights Bracket

March 17, 2011  ·  10:14AM

by Micah Hart

Here’s a popular conversation around this time of year:

Sports Fan A: Oh man, imagine how good School A would be if Player X had just stayed one more year. They might have won the NCAA Tournament!

Sports Fan B: Tell me about it. And look how good School B could have been this year. Player Y and Player Z would both be seniors!

If you watched the two amazing basketball documentaries last weekend — ESPN’s “Fab Five” and HBO’s “Runnin’ Rebels” — you know what I’m talking about.

Nowadays, Chris Webber would never have called his infamous timeout in the NCAA title game because he’d almost certainly have left after his freshman year — as would have Jalen Rose and Juwan Howard. Larry Johnson, Greg Anthony and Stacey Augmon — all of whom were first-round picks in 1991 — returned to UNLV after winning the 1990 national championship. The only guys who have done that recently were Florida’s ’04s of Corey Brewer, Al Horford, Joakim Noah and Taurean Green — and even then, everyone knew they were the exception.

While we’ll never know if Syracuse could have repeated as national champs in 2004 had Carmelo Anthony stayed, or what kind of ridiculous stats Kevin Durant might have put up had he stayed four years at Texas, we do know they became stars in the NBA.

Which leads us to a new series we will be running on All Ball over the course of the next few weeks:

Bragging Rights: The Ultimate Battle for School Pride

The premise is simple:

We want to know which school has the best NBA players. Over the next few weeks, we will pit every school with at least five players currently on active NBA rosters against each other in a hypothetical, March Madness-style, single-elimination bracket.

We’ve seeded the teams (see below), and we’ll roll out a few games each week. You vote for the winners.

We’ll start this afternoon with Stanford vs. LSU.

Why spend your time wondering how good your favorite college team could have been when your favorite players are still in action today? Once a Dukie, always a Dukie, right?

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