This summer I had the chance to attend a Five-Star Camp in Pittsburgh and I had the pleasure of attending a coaches workshop that Notre Dame head coach Mike Brey conducted. I was able to record this workshop and made it into a podcast that I’ve broken into three parts. Starting today I’ll be posting parts of that workshop and next week I have some other podcasts to drop here on MVN.
During this part of his coaches workshop Notre Dame head coach Mike Brey:

Starts off workshop by offering his condolences …

You know how print journalism is often compared to a dinosaur taking it’s last gasp? Don’t believe the hype.
I subscribe to Sports Illustrated partially out of habit and because every couple of weeks they drop an article that leaves me speechless. Tonight I was kicking around my place killing time before Canada battles Puerto Rico and I was amazed by an article that Alexander Wolff wrote called “Two Years After Katrina.” The article is phenomenal and makes it worth buying this week’s Sports Illustrated to read this article alone.
During the …

It’s that time again folks, the one time of year I like to call the “twilight zone”, that late-summer/early-fall part when you have nearly every sport imaginable on TV. You have your baseball (way to go Orioles!), NFL Preseason and finally, some basketball…with an international flair.
Finally, things have come around full circle for the Dream Team, from dominating fools in the early 90’s, to getting whupped by Greece and going into a rebuilding phase. I was lucky enough to catch the 2007 version of Team USA (can’t call it a …

Today I’m continuing my “Sketchy Recruiting Techniques” by including a snippet from the speech that Rick Barnes gave while trying to recruit Tchaka Shipp to play for Providence.
Frey documented Barnes’ “sales pitch” as being the following:
Rick Barnes does not have a monogrammed briefcase like the other college coaches. He does, however, have a deck of cards. Standing in front of Tchaka, the Providence coach riffles the deck one way - looks like the usual fifty-two. Then he riffles is another way - hey, they’re all the two of spades! With …

I have been going to the supermarket three times a week these past two months. By going to the supermarket more often you tend not to spend as much money and time in a place that can get pretty sickening after 20 minutes. You get sick of the promoters dressed up in weird color combinations blocking the already narrow aisles while trying to sell you fake looking canned meat or American style breakfast cereal. The more you go to the supermarket the less you want to stay in there, so …

It has certainly been a cool minute since I dropped my last Historical Glimpse for all you hoop aficionados, but today is your lucky day! I’m bringing the popular Glimpses back for 2007 and today’s is going to be a real doozy for all you finger-roll freaks. That’s right, this installment is dedicated to George “Ice Man” Gervin because the weather in Colorado has been icy and cold and nothing gets me fired up like a long range finger-roll!
Born on April 27, 1952 in Detroit, Michigan Gervin was one of …

Have you ever had friends try to tell you that basketball’s just a game? If you watch this video clip on Peace Players International with that friend then neither of you will ever think of basketball as just a game ever again. This powerful clip provides an overview of the war between the Protestants and the Catholics in Northern Ireland and how these two groups have lived in a war zone, how this conflict has effected families for generations and how two men are breaking down social boundaries by finding …

First and foremost, let me apologize to my hoop heads for not hitting you off with summer fresh scented NBA action from Sin City. My boss, (we’ll call him Mr. Spacely) has been hating big time on the whole web surfing-at-the-office thing, saying how back in his day, they blogged on stone tablets and threw them across rivers to reach their readers. But enough about all that, lets get into something I did manage to check out, the last game of the Wizards’ summer league squad.
For what its worth, you …

With the NBA getting its draft on in the Big Apple tonight, most basketball fans will tune in to see the glitz and glamour of David Stern’s version of the Price is Right, with young men, some fresh outta’ their freshman seasons, making their services available for millions.
Everyone knows pretty much that the top tier, lottery picks turn out to be pretty decent pros (in my mind, Kwame Brown never happened). But it’s the second round picks that’ll really surprise you.
Gilbert Arenas, Rashard Lewis, Manu Ginobili, the list goes on, …

On the late morning of Tuesday, May 22, 1984, two opposing groups of thoroughly superstitious team officials converged on the NBA offices in Manhattan to pray for good fortune, to flip a coin, and to redraw the league’s burgeoning road map for decades to come. They all hoped to win the big prize in the “Olajuwon lottery,” though there were certainly some intriguing alternatives. College basketball in 1984 was chock full of individual genius, a bushel of seasoned, polished upperclassmen eager to impact the league in their rookie professional season. …