Rotoworld: Oregon RB LaMichael James and Oklahoma State WR Justin Blackmon among top 10 players who are being overhyped for the 2012 draft.
SportsTalk: Albert Pujols signs with the Angels and Prince Fielder joins the Tigers. Which team is better now?
The Detroit Red Wings equaled an NHL record with their 20th straight win at home, beating the Philadelphia Flyers 4-3 Sunday night on the strength of Johan Franzen's tiebreaking goal early in the third period.
PBT: Boston's Rajon Rondo continues to be named in trade talks, which is madness. The Celtics guard creates offense and makes everyone around him better, which was evident in Sunday's win over the Bulls.
Arc: Syracuse is among a solid group of No. 1 seeds in our latest tournament projections, but the middle of the pack is much more murky.
Miami coach Al Golden says the worst is behind him, but his headaches figure to continue now that former booster Nevin Shapiro, now in jail, says his involvement with the Hurricanes program will result in stiff penalties.
Phil Mickelson and Tiger Woods greeted their Sunday pairing at Pebble Beach with optimism. But the day would end happily only for one.
The United States completed a 5-0 rout of Switzerland in the Davis Cup on Sunday, with 19-year-old Ryan Harrison and John Isner winning closing singles matches.
Zambia has won the African Cup of Nations, beating pre-tournament favorite Ivory Coast 8-7 on penalties in a dramatic final at Stade de l'Amitie.
Tessa Worley of France fought off gusting winds to win a second consecutive World Cup giant slalom Sunday in the Andorran Pyrenees. Overall leader Lindsey Vonn was more than a second behind and finished eighth.
Robins: It’s the Year of the Dragon on the Lunar calendar, and this Chinese influence could extend to it also being the year of the Pekingese on the green carpet at the 136th Westminster Dog Show on Tuesday.
APIt's not a very large city, and now perhaps half of that. There are various estimates of about 465,000 residents before the storm and 265,000 now.
"We're optimistic but we're not Pollyanna-ish," Stern said in his annual preseason state of the league conference. "It's yet to be proven, (but) we want to be a part of proving it and be a part of New Orleans' revitalization. New Orleans used to be 400, it's only 200 (thousand). That may be the true, but that's not the base against which the Hornets draw. It's not just the city proper but from a broader array of parishes, wards, you name it. So there's some optimism on our part that this team can be supported by the business community, which is making large infrastructure investments, and is hiring more people and the like. Those people will be watching the team on television and attending their games. The businesses will view sports as an opportunity to demonstrate on an ongoing basis the vitality of the community."
Or perhaps not.
Look, the NBA is an expensive, eclectic buy. It's difficult for fans in much larger cities to pay the average ticket price of more than $50, usually close to $100 for the lower stands area. A team's fortunes turn, and attendance falls with Indiana Pacers, long successful, now among the lowest in attendance, just ahead of Philadelphia. Sure, the Hornets are a good team, but there's not a major corporate base in New Orleans to buy the tickets and a decimated economic base. Those people need help. They don't really need more expensive leisure time activities.
One insider said Hornets season ticket sales were about $12 million, a fourth or a fifth of most teams. It seems almost impossible they can compete economically in the long run.
But there is a conspiracy side to all this, as there always is in the NBA.
That's really why we also love this game.
There's a school of thought that the NBA is so sick and tired of Hornets owner George Shinn that they'll make him cry uncle in New Orleans to get him to sell the team.
Shinn moved the Hornets from Charlotte, where they were a regional success story and a perennial NBA attendance leader. But he became so despised by the community, there was a virtual boycott of the team that led to the move. The NBA since returned a team to Charlotte, which would accept one only without Shinn.
Shinn was involved in a highly-publicized sexual assault complaint, which a jury eventually rejected after a televised trial filled with salacious testimony and at the very least Shinn's admission of an affair with the woman. Shortly after the trial ended, the woman's husband committed suicide. Shinn went on to feud with the business community over attempts to bring in an NFL franchise and added outside partners that further alienated locals. He then made a major show of threatening to move the team and pitting bidding cities against one another before taking a sweetheart deal from New Orleans. Shinn has long been an embarrassment to the NBA as well for that behavior and erratic management of his team.
So the thinking in some quarters is the league forced Shinn back to New Orleans so he'll sell and then they can move the team and fill the deserving Oklahoma City market and perhaps work out something with Seattle for an arena with a local ownership group.
It's all highly speculative stuff, of course, but it's difficult to see how New Orleans is going to be able to support an NBA team at such a time of despair and rebuilding. It's going to make it that much more difficult for one of the better and more interesting young teams in the NBA.
PBT: Boston's Rajon Rondo continues to be named in trade talks, which is madness. The Celtics guard creates offense and makes everyone around him better, which was evident in Sunday's win over the Bulls.
Paul Pierce has been around long enough to know what Rajon Rondo's performance can mean for the aging Boston Celtics.
ProBasketballTalk tweets |
|
Source: Twitter. For more, follow @basketballtalk. |
 | Video: NBA from NBC Sports |
 Knicks, Lin still streaking Knicks coach Mike D'Antoni and point guard Jeremy Lin discuss the team and Lin's recent success. |
 | Slideshow |
 |
more photos |
Ask the NBA expert: Ira Winderman |
Do you have a burning NBA question? Submit it now, and then check back for our reader mailbag. |  |
 | Special feature |
 |
Who will be MVP? Interactive: Rank each player on a scale of 0 to 10 (10 = best player, 0 = barely worthy of consideration). NBCSports.com |
| Slideshow |
 |
more photos |
Zambia has won the African Cup of Nations, beating pre-tournament favorite Ivory Coast 8-7 on penalties in a dramatic final at Stade de l'Amitie.
Silva: Each NFL team enters the offseason with a series of pressing needs. Sometimes a team can address them all, sometimes they ignore them all. But if a team's smart, they'll listen to us. These are the most crucial aspects for NFC teams.
Wesseling: Each NFL team enters the offseason with a series of pressing needs. Sometimes a team can address them all, sometimes they ignore them all. But if a team's smart, they'll listen to us. These are the most crucial aspects for AFC teams.