The rookie player Thornton who is currently in rich vein of form helped the Clippers to register their first win in ten games with a 110-97 win over Memphis Grizzlies last Saturday night. The injury filled Los Angeles Clippers should thank the rookie for putting up a stupendous career high performance of 39 points and the best part of his basketball game was that he made 20 out of the 39 points in the fourth quarter of the game to seal a victory for his side.

Thornton said that he enjoyed the game even though he had to really grind himself out at the court. He feels that he has improved quite a lot under Coach Mike and gives some credit of his success to the coach. His teammates were of the opinion that Thornton knew his game pretty well and cannot be classified as a rookie anymore. Even the Memphis players complimented him on his outstanding performance.

The San Antonio Spurs have announced recently that they have roped in guard Brent Barry into their team. Brent Barry was earlier playing in the Spurs team as a free agent player. In his four year stint with the San Antonio Spurs basketball team, he has scored an average of 7.3 points, 2.2 assists and 1.4 rebounds in 259 games. He has scored an amazing 354 three pointers and is currently in the fifth position of All time list of three pointers for the Spurs.

Barry has a thirteen year experience playing in the NBA and has played a total of 854 games and has played for the Bulls, Clippers, Heat as well as the Sonics in his NBA career. He won the NBA Slam Dunk award in the 2005-06 season and was also named in the All Star Rookie Second team that season. Barry has averaged 3.3 assists and 9.7 points in his NBA career so far.

The Phoenix Suns are glad to have brought in Shaquille O’Neal into the team as he has shown tremendous signs of improvement in every game that he has played for the Suns and is now looking very healthy and has attained back his dominant nature. The Phoenix Suns have registered five straight wins for the first time in the 2008 season. Phoenix Suns are currently one win short of attaining the lead in the Western Conference.

Shaquille O’Neal made 15 rebounds, 5 assists and scored 16 points in the Suns win of 111-98 over Portland. The Suns coach D’ Antoni said that all his players played good basketball and when it mattered the most, his big man, O’Neal did the tidying job. Amare Stoudermire is the top scorer for the Suns this season as he made 25 points in the game and was closely followed by Nash with 22 points.

Antawn Jamison, the forward of the Wizards has been announced the Eastern Conference Player of the week by NBA for the week that started from March 10th. He is currently playing his tenth professional season and this is his first honor in his career as the player of the week. Jamison has reached 37 double –doubles in his career last week and is behind only to Dwight Howard of Orlando in the total tally of double –doubles in Eastern Conference. He led the Washington Wizards with 23 points in the win against Milwaukee and made 17 points in the game against Cleveland.

The greatest achievement for Jamison was the win against the Los Angeles Clippers. He made a double- double effort for an overtime win, scoring 36 points for the team. Seven points out of 36 were made in the last 9.7 seconds of regulation time and six were made in the first couple of minutes of overtime. Wizards won the game 119-109. The electrifying performance of Jamison has made the Wizards to climb above the .500 mark after this February 5th. Philadelphia’s Andre Iguodala, Atlanta’s Joe Johnson, Cleveland’s LeBron James and Orlando’s Rashard Lewis are the other players who were nominated for the Eastern Conference player of the week award.

Mike Dunleavy of the Indiana Pacers is kinda stuck with the “36” number syndrome as it is the fourth time that he has scored 36 points in a game for the Indiana Pacers and this time he helped his team to beat the New York Knicks 110-98. The coach of the Pacers, Jim O’Brien, said that he is not worried that Mike is not crossing the 36 point mark and is ready to accept 36 points from him for over 50 times in his career. Danny Granger also played very well for the Pacers and was a perfect foil for Mike and he scored 26 points in the match.

Mike Dunleavy has scored his career high of 36 points for the fourth time in this season and his efforts on Monday night did not help the Pacers to enter into the playoff race in the Eastern Conference. The Knicks are at the moment a completely lost side as they have lost for the ninth time in their last ten games. The only notable factor for the Knicks was Zach Randolph top scoring for the team with 21 points and he also had 14 rebounds. The Pacers played the game in their traditional golden attire and the Knicks chose to wear green uniform on the St. Patrick’s Day.

The super performer of the Cleveland Cavaliers team, LeBron James, will be seen in the front covers of the April issue of the very famous Vogue magazine and he joins a couple of elite Hollywood personalities, George Clooney and Richard Gere as the only men to don the front cover of the 116 year old fashion magazine. LeBron will be seen sporting a tank top, sneakers and shorts that are a collection of his own Nike sports clothing line. He will be seen on the front cover in screaming mode while dribbling a basketball and his other arm will be around supermodel Giseli Bundchen.

The cover photo of LeBron James was shot in January by ace photographer Annie Leibovitz in Akron, Ohio, the hometown of the famous basketball player. The Vogue magazine spokesperson, Patrick said that LeBron is an amazing sports personality and nobody could be more fashionable than James and Gisele. James is accustomed to being on the cover of many sports magazines and his first appearance on a sports magazine was in the year 2002 when he was spotted on the front cover of the Sports Illustrated magazine at the age of 17 years. He will be one of the 11 sports personalities to be appearing on the cover of the 10th anniversary issue of ESPN, the magazine.

The Houston Rockets are in such sublime form in the NBA lately that they have now recorded their 20th straight win as they beat the Atlanta Hawks 83-75 on Wednesday night. The Rockets coach Rick Adelman said that he was pretty pleased to see his team win the match despite a poor outing and game display. The Rockets have now become the third team to win 20 consecutive games or more in the history of the NBA and are behind Milwaukee Bucks with 20 games and Los Angeles Lakers who have 33 straight games to their credit. Tracy McGrady of Houston played exceptionally well and scored a total of 28 points of which 21 came in the second half.

McGrady said that the Rockets are happy to win this game even though they did not showcase a thoroughly professional basketball game in the first half. He accepted that the shooting was very poor against the Hawks and it was the defense that saved the Houston team at the end of the day. The Rockets last tasted defeat at the hands of Utah in January 27 and McGrady acknowledged that he is honored to be in a team that has won 20 games consecutively.

Shaquille O’Neal lived up to his expectations as he played some tremendous basketball in the final six minutes of the game to seal a victory for the Suns by 94-87 against their arch rivals Texas Spurs. This probably explains why the Suns were determined to have O’Neal in their side. Shaquille O’Neal finished the game with 14 points and had 16 rebounds and he along with Stoudemire helped in sealing the victory for the Phoenix Suns, who now are the only team in the NBA to have not lost a game in their last three appearances this season.

The Spurs who have always had the better hand against the Suns in the past, were not able to penetrate the defensive set up of the Phoenix Suns this time and it shows in the result as they had just 30 field goals and 44 boards to the 52 the Suns had. Phoenix coach Mike D’Antoni said that this was like a playoff game and his team had jelled well in bringing home a win. Steve Nash was the leading scorer of the game for the Suns with 19 points and he said that the team is slowly getting a grip of things and was excited to see the Suns beat the Spurs.

The 10,000 to 12,000 odd Cleveland fans, who had fought through snow and bitter cold to get to the stadium, were thrilled with joy to watch their team make a clean sweep of the Indiana Pacers with a 103-95 victory last Saturday. Cavalier’s LeBron James who scored 38 points in the game said that he wanted to make sure that the efforts taken by the fans to get to watch the game must not go waste and thanked for the fans to come and watch the game even at times of adverse weather conditions. The winter snow was so bad in Cleveland that it covered the cars unto the doors.

Cleveland Cavaliers maintained their home winning streak as they have won their fifth consecutive game on home soil. The main players for the Cavaliers were West who scored 14 points, Wally with 11 points, Joe Smith with 12 points, Varejao with 15 points as well as 16 rebounds and of course James, the top scorer with 38 points. James acknowledged that he was in top of his game on Saturday and wanted to be aggressive throughout the game. Cavaliers continued their domination over the Pacers as they have won 10 of their last 11 meetings.

The Washington Wizards hosted their team’s fundraiser “Ballers Bowl” last Monday at the Lucky Strike Lanes. The fund raising event hosted by the Wizards gave their team sponsors and the season ticket holders to interact with the players. This event also gave a chance to the Wizards fanatics to bid for the players memorabilia in an open auction conducted at Chinatown’s Lucky Strike Lanes. The proceeds of the Wizards fundraising event will go to the Washington Sports and Entertainment Charities, Inc.

It is such an entertaining event for the players as they will get some time off their busy playing schedule and will get to play another sport called bowling and enjoy the evening with gigs and laughs. This event also gives them an occasion to talk to their team sponsors and their fans. The Ballers Bowl gave enough opportunities for the skilled basketball wizards to showcase their skills in bowling. After the bowling game, the Washington wizards enjoyed the whole night dancing to the tunes of the DJ Bigg Trigger and the Wizards player, Andray Blatche, also tried his hand out on the DJ table. The players acknowledged the fact that the event gave them the chance to enjoy with people outside their workplace.