During an interview with the New Yorker's Avi Zenilman a few months ago, Bill Simmons, an ESPN columnist/author and a man who doubtless dashed off 3,000 words this morning before I managed to get the brown sugar and banana on my oatmeal, was asked about the paucity of great basketball books. See, when you write about the NBA, as Simmons does and I have done for many years, you are generally ...

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Jack McCallum: Rich season for basketball books (Sports Illustrated)

Excerpted from "The Art of the Beautiful Game: The Thinking Fan's Tour of the NBA", by Chris Ballard.

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Chris Ballard: Shaq's larger-than-life presence transcends the game (Sports Illustrated)

NEW YORK -- If there has been one downside to what has been an otherwise improbably impressive year for Texas Rangers manager Ron Washington, it came a couple of weeks ago when best-selling author John Grisham was in Arlington for a game and Washington didn't get to meet him.

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Ted Keith: Rebuilt Rangers heading in right direction for postseason (Sports Illustrated)

ROME (AP) -- The winner draped himself triumphantly on the lane rope, thrusting his right hand in the air to celebrate a world record.

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Phelps suffers rare loss in 200 free (Sports Illustrated)

It didn't take long for the letters to start rolling in about the dismissal of Chicago Blackhawks GM Dale Tallon. Let's take a look at that hot topic, and a few more that showed up repeatedly in the mailbag.

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Allan Muir: The Dale Tallon conspiracy theory and other hot mailbag topics (Sports Illustrated)

The Nuggets didn't waste any time in taking care of their top offseason priority.

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Denver Nuggets Team Report (USA Today)

Know what they have plenty of around here? Besides road rage?Living legends calling the shots for their teams.

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Torre, Jackson lead L.A. teams to success (USA Today)

The toughest job with a column like this is giving so many pieces of advice and knowing that some of them won't pan out. Every analyst wants to be right all the time, just like every ballplayer wants to bat 1.000.

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T.I.P.S.: Arizona's Reynolds steals the show (Sports Illustrated)

By the time a trade involving Jake Peavy is finally completed and Peavy is somewhere other than San Diego, there will have been more stories, more rumors and more anxiety connected to talks involving Peavy than any previous trade talks. That is the only prediction regarding Peavy that's safe now.

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Jon Heyman: Cubs, Brewers look like best hopes for Padres to get Peavy deal done (Sports Illustrated)

SI.com's Josh Gross provides first-rate analysis from the UFC 97 showdowns in Montreal featuring light heavyweights Chuck Liddell and Mauricio "Shogun" Rua and, in the main event, Thales Leites and Anderson Silva for the UFC middleweight title.

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Silva wins, Liddell stumbles at UFC 97 (Sports Illustrated)