(Boulder-CO) Today's date is January 15th, and on this day: 1892- The 13 original rules of basketball were printed in the Springfield YMCA training school newspaper. '57- Attempting a length-of-the-court pass to Bob Cousy, Bill Sharman stunned an NBA All-Star Game audience in Boston Garden when his 70-foot pass swished through the net. After the shot, Cousy asked Sharman, Dont you ever pass?  read more »

Amid all the talk about Maggette and Posey and Andersen and all the other free agents, there hasn't been a lot of mention of some other very important free agents, the Celtics assistant coaches. All 4 of Doc's assistants' contracts expired on July 1, making them all free agents. Doc has one more season on his contract and Danny has begun negotiations to give Doc an extension. More important, though, should be signing their assistants to new contracts before another team lures them away. Tom Thibodeau is the architect of the Celtics' defense which was the main reason that they won the championship.  read more »

Game 6 goes down this evening in San Antonio, with the Spurs needing a win to avoid elimination at the hands of our Hornets. Here's the usual bunch of notes, quotes and anecdotes from around the web...

Let's start it off with updates on the injuries to Tyson Chandler and David West. Here's words from Tyson himself, who blogged his ass off on NBA.com yesterday...  read more »

A few posts back Wes quoted Phil Jackson last week after the Lakers game. Jackson made this rather provocative claim:

"So when you come in here, there's a lot of fouls called. The Mavs play that kind of game, so you've got to be real careful because it can change the concept of how you are playing."

But is this true? Do the Mavericks animate the referees so much that more fouls are called when the Mavericks play than when other two teams play? I decided to look into this. To answer the first question, I looked at the average fouls called in games for each team in the league. If Jackson is right, the total number of fouls for the Mavericks and their opponents should be much higher than average.

Here is what we have:  read more »

The Mavericks handed the Pistons their second straight loss, and they did convincingly. Dallas, led by Dirk Nowitzki, had this one right from the start. The closest this one got was when the Pistons went into halftime down by just five points. That's about as good as it got for Detroit who tried to play catch up all night.

The final score of the thrashing 102-86.

Key Points:  read more »

The streaking Dallas Mavericks attempt to extend their winning streak to five games, as they visit the Boston Celtics tonight at TD Banknorth Garden.