Posts by Ben Detrick
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Can the Sixers’ Middle-Class Dream Be Saved?
Tuesday night, in a boring game few people watched in person or on television, the 76ers battered the Nets by 19 points. With minimal coordination, both teams could have left the arena at halftime and enjoyed Skinnygirl margaritas in the Prudential Center parking lot while the first half was rebroadcast on the YES Network. At […]
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Syracuse Survives … Again
When Fab Melo, Syracuse’s starting center, was declared ineligible for the NCAA tournament for undisclosed academic reasons, the potential for humiliation was high. Would the Orange be the first 1-seed to topple in the opening round? If not, Kansas State’s horde of rebounders would pillage the offensive glass. And barring that, Wisconsin’s patience and perimeter […]
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Homer Series: Syracuse Orange
It’s a depressing time for people who love interesting basketball. Last week, Ricky Rubio, the blossoming Spaniard who treated us to pinpoint passes and a haircut befitting every SXSW musician plinking a vintage Moog, was lost for the season with a shredded knee. Then, earlier this week, the clumsy butchers who run the New York […]
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The Knicks Go Down the Carmelo-Brick Road
Even during the glory days of Linsanity, when hearts across New York sung with optimism, the return of Carmelo Anthony was regarded with apprehension and fearful shudders. The Knicks are now a slovenly 2-7 since he reentered the starting lineup, and Anthony has assumed a position of popularity that lies somewhere between Joseph Kony and […]
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Syracuse and UConn Play for History
Before the season began, Syracuse and UConn were deemed two of the finest teams in the land. Since then, fate has flung the two powerhouse programs in very different, but equally chaotic, directions. Coming into Thursday’s meeting in the Big East tournament, Syracuse had experienced a charmed season — on the hardwood, at least — […]
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Statement Game: Knicks-Mavericks
For the remainder of the NBA season, The Triangle will be breaking down the biggest games of the week. Up first: Knicks-Mavs, a game in which Tyson Chandler returned to Dallas and faced the team he won a championship ring with last season. In Dallas’s 96-85 victory, Dirk Nowitzki resumed his single-footed heroics and Carmelo […]
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Stop the Linsanity?
Back in the summer of 2008, when Republican presidential candidate Senator John McCain named an inexperienced Alaskan governor as his running mate, the nation was collectively stunned. But while pundits on the left regarded the move as a desperate attempt to rejuvenate a limp campaign, many conservatives found the magnetic candidate with an unlikely backstory […]
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And You Will Know Us by Our D-Leaguers: The Staying Power of the Spurs
If you thumbed on ESPN last night to catch some of the nationally televised matchup between two of the NBA’s finest teams, you might have seen these formidable names simultaneously on the floor for the Spurs: Anderson, Bonner, Green, Neal and Splitter. Let’s see. Which Anderson is that? Kenny? Nick? Sparky? And Green. OK, is […]
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The Philadelphia 76ers and the NBA’s Middle-Class Dream
During the NBA lockout, the narrative unspooled by the vipers on the ownership side was that the league was in danger of being cleaved into two types of franchises. A small number were big-market teams in glittering, spired metropolises that collected superstars with the craven lust of billionaires taking trophy wives. The rest were clubs […]
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A Big Night for the Big East’s Best Rivalry
As any adult who was raised in upstate New York knows, there were two athletic rivalries that always made the mullet-topped locals quiver in anticipation. One was the annual struggle for AFC East supremacy between the Buffalo Bills and the Miami Dolphins. These teams had no natural animus rooted in pre-Louisiana Purchase territorial disputes or […]