“If you look closely at the various forces at work in basketball at every level of the sport—the AAU programs that funnel players to college programs, the agents looking to land players as early as NBA rules allow, the shoe companies, coaches, franchise owners, front-office executives, players—it eventually dawns on you that they have one […]

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As he begins Year III in his reign over Big Blue World, King John is a wonder to behold. He’s easily the most popular and powerful ruler the kingdom has seen since Adolph The Great, who built the empire a zillion years ago. His style is a wondrous admixture of arrogance, charm, defiance, imagination, and […]

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I don’t know about you, but, frankly, I’m thrilled that the national basketball team of the Dominican Republican is training in Lexington for the FIBA Americas Tournament Aug. 30-Sept. 11 in Mar del Plata, Argentina. I am not sure what this tournament is all about, but I think it has something to do with the […]

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Good morning, class, and welcome to Character Building in College Sports 101. Our topic today is Mr. Tony Woods, a former student-athlete at Wake Forest University. When Mr. Woods was in high school, he was branded with a five-star rating in the recruiting meat market, at least partly because he stands 6-feet-11 and can run […]

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Kentucky’s first appearance in the KFC Yum! Center turned out to be a crisp and efficient victory not so much because the Wildcats have superior talent, which they do, but because John Calipari did the finest job of preparation and coaching in his short tenure in Lexington.
In crafting a 78-63 victory before a record […]

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Mr. Digger Phelps
ESPN Studios
Bristol, Cn.
Hey, Digger, this is your old pal Billy Reed. I just wanted to let you know that I thought about you during Notre Dame’s come-from-ahead loss to Kentucky Wednesday night in your least-favorite place in the world. Of course, I’m talking about Freedom Hall, the arena where you went 2-9 against […]

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I know, I know. The name of the University of Louisville’s new $248 million arena is as unbecoming and unwieldy as Freedom Hall was classy. The world’s largest food company, which is based in Louisville, coughed up $20 million for 10 years for the right to call the state-of-the-art, 22,000-seat hoops palace the “KFC Yum! […]

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Since the line between pro basketball and big-time college basketball is virtually non-existent, I don’t see the big deal about whether University of Kentucky recruit Enes Kanter got paid to play in Turkey.
In fact, the way I see it, there’s a very simple solution: UK should agree to pay off the rest of Kanter’s contract […]

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Over the years I tried several times to tell S.T. Roach how much I admired him, how much I owed him, how much I cared about him. But I finally desisted because it embarrassed him. Oh, I think a part of him was flattered. But Mr. Roach – that’s what I always called him — […]

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By saying that his dream job is athletics director at the University of Kentucky, as opposed to Governor or Lieutenant Governor, Richie Farmer gave us something to think about. Such as, if the UK A.D.’s job was put on the ballot, who would win an election between Farmer and incumbent Mitch Barnhart?
Barnhart couldn’t run on […]

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