Basketball Daily

The San Antonio Spurs announced yesterday that their star guard Manu Ginobili would undergo surgery to correct his left ankle.  Manu who is 31 years old originally injured his ankle in the 2008 NBA Playoffs against the Phoenix Suns.  The injury affected Manu the rest of the Playoffs and it hurt the Spurs team from advancing into the finals.

Manu was cleared to play in the Olympics, but on his return to the states an MRI showed that he had re-aggravated the injury.  The Spurs will announce a timeline for his return after Ginobili undergoes surgery next week.  Everyone can only hope that he will be ready for the next season, as the Spurs are a different team without him.

The oldest son of the legendary Patrick Ewing was acquired from the Houston Rockets on August 29th.  Patrick Ewing, the father is New York’s all time leading scorer with 23,665 points, leading rebounder with 10,759 boards, leading blocker with 2,758 stuffs and leading games played with 1,039.  Patrick’s jersey number 33 was also retired by the franchise in 2003.

Patrick Ewing Jr. stands 6′ 8″ and weighs 240 pounds.  He was originally drafted as the 43rd overall pick this year.  Ewing Jr. was named the sixth man of the year in 2007-2008 season for the Georgetown Hoyas.  Ewing Jr. averaged 6.1 points per game and 4.2 rebounds per game his final season in college.

I would think Ewing Jr. is very excited to play for the same team his father made his mark in.  Hopefully, Ewing Jr. can help the poor performing Knicks, bring some life back into Madison Square Garden.

Step back just 5 years ago and the NBA Live computer PC game franchise was thriving and gaining users.  This was at a time when more and more people were getting high speed connections at their homes.  EA Sports was promoting the product very well and the online user base was fantastic.

From 2004-2006 NBA Live was an exciting and thrilling basketball game to play on the Internet.  EA Sports had devoted an online lobby to accommodate their users.  In 2006, something started to shift; online players were cheating profusely towards the end of the season leading up to the ‘07 PC game.  When NBA Live ‘07 was released the PC ballers did not want to deal with it, and most people stayed away from the game, and I am sure EA Sports lost a lot of sales.

NBA Live ‘08 brought many new features to the game but EA Sports eliminated the online lobby inside the game.  This forced players to either find a league or simply play a local one player game on their own PC.  I think most people decided to give up playing basketball on the PC at this time and many started to shift to console gaming on the X-Box or PlayStation.

EA Sports announced they will not be releasing the game at all on the PC this year.  While this doesn’t come as a surprise, it is a total shame for the diehard basketball fans that game on the PC regularly.  The graphics, sound and game play was astounding on the PC and I am certainly one person that will miss playing with my favorite NBA ballers on the computer.