Basketball Archives - Hal Phillips

Ernie D Built the Big East, One Local College Basketball Broadcast at a Time

Hal Phillips — Thu, 05 Feb 2026 20:46:39 +0000

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (Jan. 5, 2024) — It’s never too late to mark and quantify the impact of Ernie DiGregorio. Not in New England. Not when the subject is college basketball. Yet here’s the immediate news peg, the reason to contemplate Ernie D and his attendant rabbit hole early in 2024: It was 50 years ago […]

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Draft Kings Rule: Nuggets are the NBA’s top talent evaluators. And it’s not close.

Hal Phillips — Sat, 17 Jun 2023 21:07:45 +0000

In hailing the all-world talents of Nikola Jokic, now an NBA champion and the most influential Serb since Gavrilo Princip, let’s also recognize that this cornerstone figure was taken #41 in the 2014 NBA Draft. He was chosen after Doug McDermott, whom the Nuggets took that year at #11. They are two of 20 Nugget […]

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Universal NCAA Bids: Let’s Qualify every D1 Team for March Madness

Hal Phillips — Thu, 09 Feb 2023 15:37:46 +0000

Another bout of March Madness has come and gone. And now the money-grubbing power conferences are looking to further sully its pristine symmetry. From the moment the play-in gambit was instituted, in 2001, the slope got very slippery indeed. At first, just two small-conference champions squared off for the right to get boned, on 36-48 […]

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NBA Bubble Splendidly Unmoored from Post-Season Predictability

Hal Phillips — Tue, 29 Sep 2020 22:06:35 +0000

When I sat down in late August to write this essay — about neutral courts and how they’ve made the 2020 NBA Bubble Playoffs the most wide-open, unpredictable tournament the league has ever conducted — turns out I didnot know the half of it. Less than 48 hours later, police in Kenosha, Wisconsin shot Jacob […]

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Villanova-Georgetown 1985: Still Crazy After All These Years

Hal Phillips — Thu, 16 Apr 2020 13:08:13 +0000

Much of my COVID-19 replacement sports-viewing has concentrated on vintage soccer films via YouTube (those Dutch teams of the ’70s were really something). But I did indulge earlier this month in a replay of the Villanova-Georgetown 1985 NCAA Championship, on the CBS Sports Network. Wow. This game and performances, on both sides, really hold up. […]

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With Marcus Back, the Smaht Money’s on Boston

Hal Phillips — Thu, 26 Apr 2018 19:05:02 +0000

When Patrice Bergeron returned from injury during the Maple Leafs series, he made the Bruins better. But I wouldn’t say he was the difference. Too many hockey players (20 to 22 of them from any one team) participate in playoff games to connect the dots through any non-goaltender, unless that man’s name is Gretzky or […]

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Palestra Tales, 40 Years in the Making

Hal Phillips — Sun, 18 Feb 2018 21:14:48 +0000

PHILADELPHIA — When we learned my daughter Clara would matriculate at the University of Pennsylvania, naturally her dad was thrilled: Here was my chance to make a proper pilgrimage to The Palestra, the most storied college basketball venue of the 20th Century. As I’ve written here before, while my hoops allegiance today favors the overtly […]

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King James Can Restore Vitality to Dunk Contest — By Entering and Losing

Hal Phillips — Fri, 14 Feb 2014 20:01:23 +0000

LeBron James can do basketball an honorable and valued service by entering the 2015 NBA dunk contest, not to win necessarily, but to eradicate the stigma of losing. Today we can agree that All-Star dunk festivities — once the highlight of the NBA’s mid-season bacchanal — have lost nearly all their luster. The big names […]

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Jordan Homecoming Recalls Rutgers Hoops Heyday

Hal Phillips — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 19:47:04 +0000

Interesting confluence of events both personal and national last week when embattled Rutgers University — struggling to salvage its basketball cred prior to moving from Big East to Big “10” in 2014 — hired NBA veteran Eddie Jordan to replace head coach Mike Rice, who was jettisoned after video surfaced early in April showing him […]

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Speak the Unspeakable: Celts should deal KG for Howard

Hal Phillips — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 05:09:14 +0000

You heard it here first. Tell me what doesn’t make sense about this trade. With Rajon Rondo out for the season with a torn ACL, the Celts are done this year. Maybe they’ll make the playoffs, but it’s time to turn the page. The Lakers and Dwight Howard are not proving a good fit, and […]

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