Basketball On The Internet.

BOB'S CORNER: During our injury-enforced absence, US correspondent Bob Craven has been chomping at the bit, churning out updates for the website despite his own tryst with ill health. Unlike me, you can't keep Bob down though and he's back with all the latest news.

SO much went on in the NBA trade market, that it seems as good a place as any to start catching up on what we've been missing.

Kevin Durant, out since early January with an injury, is now on the roster of the Phoenix Suns.  He's due to come back from the injury list toward the end of this month. 

And Tokyo Olympic Bronze Medal-winning Boomer Matisse Thybulle (right), also our local U. of Washington/Seattle Aussie, who was frozen almost completely out of the rotation by Doc Rivers at the Philadelphia 76ers, is now with the Portland Trailblazers and is starting for them.

Kyrie Irving is now partnering with Luka Doncic and the Dallas Mavericks.  The dynamic duo was good for a combined 69 points (36 by Irving--26 in Q4 alone--and 33 by Doncic) in their first game together, but it wasn't good enough.  At home in Dallas against the Minnesota Timberwolves, they went down 124-121, although they almost rallied to pull it out after being down at one point by 26-points.

And here is something that was new to me:  people who are adept to a greater or lesser degree with using either or both hands can be ambidextrous (I had always known about that), but they can also be categorised as being "mixed handed".

The difference is that people who are ambidextrous are more or less equally proficient with both hands in a given task.  People who are mixed handed do some things with their dominant hand, and other things with the "off" hand.  This latter is noticeably more common in sports.

In basketball, there are a number of players who are left hand dominant, but who shoot right-handed.  That doesn't mean they can't or don't use their left hand, but that they use the right hand almost all the time.  Some of them are also quite good with the off-hand if they choose to use it, especially in certain situations and/or from certain spots on the floor. 

The majority of these players in the NBA are natural lefties and, or instance, will write left-handed, but shoot, play golf, etc., right-handed.  Examples would be Ben Simmons, Larry Bird, LeBron James, Russell Westbrook, Bill Walton and Danny Ainge.

Ainge is the only one of this group who could probably be called ambidextrous - he can and does use both hands almost equally well.  For instance, in playing tennis, he has no backhand - he uses a right-handed forehand and a left-handed forehand, and in baseball, he batted both right- and left-handed, depending on which arm the pitcher threw with. 

Bird was and is famous for changing this up one game with amazing results. On Valentine's Day in 1986, prior to a game against the Trailblazers in Portland, he announced to his Celtic teammates that he was going to try to shoot almost exclusively left-handed, since in two days they would be playing the Lakers in LA and he "wanted to save his right hand for that game". 

What he did do was lead the Celtics to a 120-119 win in OT.  His stat line was ridiculous:  47 points, 14 rebounds, 11 assists, a steal and two blocks in 49 minutes.  Overall, he was 21-34 from the field and 7-7 from the line.  Ten of his 24 field goals were left-handed. 

Two days later against the Lakers, he led the Celtics to a 105-99 win, and had a line of 22-18-7.  Only Larry Legend was likely to have pulled that off.

THE finalists for induction into the 2023 class of the Naismith Basketball HOF have been announced.

The announcement of who will actually be inducted will come in April during the NCAA Final Four festivities, with the actual induction ceremony in August at the Hall itself in Springfield, Massachusetts.

The list of finalists is led by Dirk Nowitzki, Dwyane Wade, Pau Gasol, Gregg Popovich, and Tony Parker for the men.  The most well-known of the women is Jennifer Azzi who was a star for Stanford U. in the 1990s, and also played on the 1996 gold medal winning US Olympic team and in the early days of the WNBA.

Speaking of the Naismith HOF, if officially opened its doors on February 17 in 1968.

Also announced recently was the death of Simone Edwards at age 49 of cancer.  A 194cm post player, she was a member of the first Seattle Storm team in 2000.  Known as the "Jamaican Hurricane", she was the first Jamaican woman to play in the WNBA. 

She helped the Storm win the 2004 WNBA Championship as a part-time starter and a first-off-the-bench sub for frontcourt players during her six-year stint in Seattle.  She retired in 2005 as the all-time team leader in rebounds, games, and minutes played.

ALABAMA this week climbed to the top spot in the rankings for men's D-I hoops for the first time in 20 years. That was before they lost to #10 Tennessee, extending this season's jinx on the top-rated teams. 

'Bama's loss is the eighth by a # 1-rated team this season, which ties them for the most in a regular season in almost 30 years in a stat that goes back to 1949.

Anniversaries:
1953--Bill Chambers, a 193cm post player for The College of William and Mary in Virginia grabbed 51 rebounds in a 105-84 win over the U. of Virginia.  An interesting note here is that today William and Mary is a small university known for its academics. In 1953 it was a D-1 school and played in the Atlantic Coast Conference, one of the strongest leagues in the country.  Chambers' 51 rebounds is still the NCAA record for rebounds in a game.

1961--The Lakers' Elgin Baylor scores 57 points to lead the Lakers to an easy win over the Detroit Pistons.
1972--Wilt Chamberlain of the Lakers becomes the first player in NBA history to reach 30,000 career points in a one-point loss to the Phoenix Suns.
1994--The University of Kentucky men make one of the greatest comebacks in college basketball history with a 99-95 win over Louisiana State U. after trailing by 31 points with 15 minutes left.