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As we noted on Friday, Donnie Walsh, the man who spearheaded the Knicks' turnaround from laughingstock to playoff team in just three seasons, is no longer a part of the organization after owner James Dolan asked him to take a major pay cut. A franchise that seemed to be turning the corner is now in another transitional period. No one really knows what will happen to them now.

That includes the players, many of whom came to New York under the assumption that Walsh would continue to make personnel decisions and build the Knicks into a championship contender. Carmelo Anthony is one of those guys, and he was taken aback by the news. From Newsday (via PBT):

The Knicks forward said Monday that he was getting treatment at the Knicks ' practice facility Friday when he heard that Walsh will be ending his tenure as team president.

"It was awkward,'' Anthony said when asked how he felt. "I was up in Westchester and someone pulled me aside and told me. It caught a lot of people by surprise, because no one knew what was going on."

Anthony said he has a good relationship with Glen Grunwald, who has been named the team's interim general manager. He also has a close relationship with Mark Warkentien, the former Nuggets GM who joined the Knicks as an adviser on Jan. 30.

On a basic level, Dolan probably should have told his two most important employees -- Melo and Amar'e Stoudemire -- about this decision before it was announced to the public. He didn't have to clear it with them ahead of time, but it's nice to keep your best players informed of major decisions so they feel like they're in the franchise's inner circle.

115259046As you've probably heard by now, the Miami Heat have a 2-1 lead in the NBA Finals heading into Tuesday night's Game 4. For the most part, they've done so by playing great defense, especially late in their Game 1 and Game 3 wins.

One of the key figures in that defense dominance has been LeBron James, who has covered Mavericks scoring guard Jason Terry quite well. Except, if you ask Terry, the Heat defense hasn't been so great. Oh, and it's not even the best that Dallas has seen in this postseason. From Jeff Caplan of ESPNDallas.com (via Eye on Basketball):

"They know to take me out of the fourth quarter, which they didn't do in Game 2," Terry said of the Heat's choice to turn to James defensively, "then they got a good chance."

Added Terry: "Let's see if [James] can defend me like that for seven games." [...]

But Terry still seems hesitant to give too much credit to the Heat, even going so far as to say the Portland Trail Blazers were better on defense in the first-round series than Miami has been in the Finals.

"Portland, by far, has the best D," said Terry, who added that the Heat has a "great scheme" that is "working for them thus far this series."

I'm not sure if JET is saying that Portland plays great team defense and Miami gets the job done despite not having stellar rotations, but I'm pretty sure he shouldn't anger the team that's currently two wins away from knocking him out of maybe his last chance of earning a championship ring with Dallas. The Heat play great defense and have for the entire playoffs. Terry can say that LeBron didn't stop him late in Game 2, but he also needs to admit that stopping a really good player twice in three games is a very impressive feat. One that validates a player's All-Defense selection, in fact.

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At this point, seemingly half the NBA is on Twitter. It's a wild world of training updates, questions as to which movies they should go see, and explanations of their Call of Duty prowess. Every so often, though, you also get a picture into the more interesting aspects of NBA life. This feature is your window into that world.

Daniel Gibson: #LetsBeReal ..I keep a couple numbers and names in my phone so when you call I know not to pick up.

Jared Dudley: Who is Wiener and what happened?

Ron Artest: everyone assumes cause I do other things Im not focused on bball? I work out 2 hours everyday. Dont u do other things when u leave work?

Gordon Hayward: Just figured out how to use ustream...gonna be streaming some of my Starcraft games later tonight...anyone interested?!?

Von Wafer: Was jus at the gym and some lady ran and grabbed her purse cause she saw me walking towards smh

You can also follow Eric Freeman on Twitter at @freemaneric.

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The 2011 NBA draft is set to take place in just 17 days, so all but two teams (can you guess which?!) are now setting up their draft boards and looking into a number of their most coveted prospects. It's an annual rite, a chance for teams to improve without spending money and hopefully find some diamonds in the rough. Due diligence matters.

However, as technology improves and game tape becomes more widely available, team-organized workouts mean less and less. That's why teams like the Portland Trail Blazers are cutting back on the amount of players they bring into town. From Joe Freeman (no relation) for The Oregonian:

Leading up to the 2008 draft, the Blazers released a calendar-like list of their planned predraft workouts before the process started. It featured 16 days of private workouts for more than 50 players. The following year, the number of workouts had been reduced to eight. In the summers since, the number has continued to decrease and the Blazers no longer bother releasing

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Pretty much any fan who attends an NBA game shows up to see their favorite players or team compete in a game with implications for their win-loss record. (This goes for the preseason, too, which gives fans a sense of what to expect during real games.) Yet it's also a spectacle, a chance for fans to watch some supremely athletic and talented players do what they do best. Style counts in addition to the final score.

So it should come as little surprise that fans take readily to the goofy and bizarre acts that frequent NBA halftime shows, a period that used to allow fans the chance to go to the bathroom and buy five more beers for the second half. Now, it's a hotbed of crazy tricks and stunts that provide fun for the whole family.

Patrick Hruby wrote about the performers and their art for ESPN's Outside the Lines:

On the floor, under the lights, you definitely need a shtick. Something to fill seven minutes. (Go a bit shorter for college games, halve the seven minutes for

By most metrics, Miami Heat forward had a terrible Game 3 despite his team's 88-86 win in Dallas. Over 37 minutes, Bosh logged totals of 18 points on mediocre 7-of-18 shooting, a mere three rebounds, and a -10 on the +/- scale. Oh, and he also spent a few moments on his back early in the game after sustaining a poke in the eye that initially looked like a potential knee injury. Overall, it was not one of Bosh's finer performances.

No one will remember those issues, though, because of the shot available for your viewing pleasure above. With 39 seconds left, LeBron swung a nice, partially obstructed pass out of a double-team to Bosh about 19 feet from the basket along the baseline. It's a shot safely in Bosh's sweet spot, but also one he'd missed several times in the game up to that point. To his credit, he didn't shy away and knocked it down with ease.

Bosh still didn't have a very good game, but this shot earned him some moment of redemption. It was a play that a team could only make

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Over his 12-year NBA career, Baron Davis has been a frustrating player, a guy loaded with as much natural talent as any point guard in the league but not always fully committed to playing his hardest at all times. He's suited up for four franchises, and it's likely he'll play for at least one more before his career is over.

Over that same period, he's been one of the more interesting players in the league off the court, with interests including social justice, business, film production, being friends with Jessica Alba, and usually some combination of two or more of those topics. Yet despite that attention to the world outside basketball, Davis never graduated from college, leaving UCLA after only two years to pursue his NBA dreams.

Now, he's looking to earn his degree. From Jason Lloyd of the Akron Beacon-Journal:

Davis hosted 18 boys at Thursday's Indians game as part of the B.R.I.C.K. program serving inner-city youth. Now Davis is following the message he's sending by going back to school to complete his history degree at UCLA.

Davis said the thought of completing his degree became more important to him following the death of his grandmother, who always wanted him to go back and finish. At 32, he's finally going to do it. Davis said he has about two years left to complete his degree.

''I'm not far, but I'm definitely not close,'' he joked. ''All the classes I'm signed up for are things I want to learn now. When you're in school, you're studying stuff wondering 'How am I going to use that in life' or 'What does that matter to me?' Then you get out in the world and you start traveling and history becomes one of the most important things. Now my brain is ready to receive that more than when I was 19 years old and I wanted to dribble [basketballs] all day.''

I'm not sure Baron is entirely right here, in part because history is typically considered to be one of those majors with no clear real-world applications. Whatever the case, it's nice to see Davis thinking about his life after basketball, especially considering his love for the woman who raised him. He's a man with a sense of the world at-large and has been for most of his career.

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During Thursday night's amazing comeback win for the Mavericks in Game 2, Dirk Nowitzki helped put to rest any remaining claims that he's never been clutch, scoring the last nine points for his team, including the game-winning lay-up off his injured left middle finger. It was tough, clutch, and virtually any other positive adjective the public usually assigns to a legendary playoff performance. No matter what happens over the rest of the NBA Finals, people will remember Dirk for these heroics.

Unfortunately, Nowitzki's moment of triumph was short-lived, because he literally walked into a steel pole after his postgame press conference. From Brandon George for the Dallas Morning News (via TBJ):

After addressing the media in an area that was squared off by black cloth, Nowitzki exited through the back and ran right into a steel pole with his head, letting out a loud, "Oh." He then addressed a swarm of German media members for about 10 minutes of more questions.

Oh man, that's just