By John Hollinger SAN ANTONIO—Sometimes one can’t appreciate a player with subtle skills until circumstances push him to the forefront. The recent play of the Denver Nuggets provides a good example.

The Indiana Pacers: What was the worst part of this game from Indy’s perspective? Take you’re pick: Was it that they a) fell behind 36-18 after one quarter, b) scored a mere 9 points in the fourth, c) finished the game with only 72 points on 33 percent shooting, d) ended up with a 44-5 disadvantage in free throw attempts while playing at home, e) lost by 21 despite the fact that Cleveland went 23-for-44 from the foul line (including 10-for-17 for King Crab), or f) BALL

Pound-for-pound, Ricardo Patton’s Northern Illinois Huskies might be the most talented team in the MAC. There’s little doubt that junior guard/wings Darion “Jake” Anderson and Xavier Silas are two of the more explosive players on the offensive side of the court in the MAC.

When we started the TrueHoop Network, we knew that if we did things right, a wonderful/terrible thing would happen. And that is that some of the best in the network would gain credibility and experience which would lead to real job offers from real sports journalism entities, and they would leave the network. As it happens, that just happened, to Kurt of Forum Blue & Gold

When we started the TrueHoop Network, we knew that if we did things right, a wonderful/terrible thing would happen. And that is that some of the best in the network would gain credibility and experience which would lead to real job offers from real sports journalism entities, and they would leave the network.

Now here ’s a guy who could actually make armpit-hair defense work (via Andy Gray’s SI Vault ) Ah, the weekend. Time for BAD, and time for bad basketball. We’re throwing the double-team on you tonight.

Fernando Medina/NBAE via Getty Images Close your eyes. I took four pages of notes during last night’s Celtics loss to the Magic. Mostly it’s really boring stuff

They did it, guys. They finally cloned a human, and as expected, something went wrong.

Photos by Elsa and Ron Turenne via NBAE/Getty Images.

17-year-old LeBron shirtless in a cornfield AKA: WTF?! (via Andy Gray’s SI Vault ) While I am still in a depressed state over the Nyets winning their fourth game of the season , I do have good news. Last night I decided to plunk down the $80 for the second half of the season’s NBA League Pass Broadband. I figured I owed it to you guys to better provide entertaining writing.