Eric D. Williams of The News Tribune: “City officials, along with sports-related and business groups interested in keeping KeyArena afloat in a competitive market, have begun working with the state Legislature to secure $75 million to complete a $300 million remodel. The city wants to create an NBA-ready facility with the hope of securing another basketball team in the near future. According to the settlement, the city could receive another $30 million from Bennett’s group. In order to receive the money, the Legislature would have to fund $75 million toward the KeyArena revamp by Dec. 31, 2009, and Seattle would still have to be without a team by 2013. Unlike the prior four unsuccessful attempts by the Sonics in Olympia to secure public funding for a new basketball facility, the city is taking a more proactive approach in dealing with state lawmakers in preparation for the 2009 session.”
Melody Gutierrez of The Sacramento Bee: “April Greene is intertwined in everything her 20-year-old son has accomplished, despite seven years of separation since she died of an enlarged heart. Greene’s heartache over his mother’s death has been recited in each city he’s ventured into during his basketball career. Greene opened up to his hometown paper, the Baltimore Sun, admitting he twice tried to commit suicide shortly after he found his mom dead. But for as much as that tugs on the hearts of those around him, Greene has used her memory as a source of inspiration. He chose his Kings jersey number – No. 20 – because his mother was born March 20.”
Mark Heisler of The Los Angeles Times: “Colangelo, taking over after the 2004 Athens train wreck, had a wide array of friends from abroad — including his daughter-in-law, a former Italian freelance writer — and knew only too well what the world thought. “I really do believe from everything I know from people I respect, the people in the world thought the American teams didn’t respect them,” Colangelo says. “Didn’t respect them as teams, as individuals, arrogant, that kind of thing. And that had to end. . . . “From those first meetings with players, I said, ‘Look, this is what people think of us. We have to change this. We have to come in with a whole new attitude. We have to show respect for our country, show respect for our team, show respect for our opponents. And anything less than that’s not going to fly.’ ” This is still sports, so the U.S. team can’t win unless it wins, but its most important legacy for me will be the standard it set for a U.S. team’s behavior.”
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Bright Side Of The Sun: “Say this for Steve Kerr: he’s knows how to make an impact. Just 14 months after assuming the mantle of Phoenix Suns’ general manager and president of basketball operations, with the signing of Goran Dragic, he has remade the Suns in his own image. Franchise-altering mega-trade? Check. Hand-picked head coach? Check. Sacrificing athleticism and offense for role players and defense? Check. Betting the future on an unknown hand-picked foreigner? Check. It all seems to have happened so quickly, as if Kerr just pressed one of those “Easy” buttons from Staples. Trade a franchise player here, draft and sign a couple role players there, hire a head coach here and presto-change-o, it’s a whole new Suns team taking the floor next season. If all this leads to a championship this season, who could blame Kerr for approaching the dais for his turn with the Larry O’Brien carrying his giant phantom huevos Sam Cassell-style?”
John Hollinger of The New York Sun: “But one other thing should be equally obvious: Spain mailed it in. This is important for the American players and coaches to understand, because the team they’ll see in the gold-medal game next Sunday (presumably) is much better than the team that took the floor this past Saturday. If the Spanish coaches were interested in winning this game, they chose an odd way to go about it. Their best players spent large chunks of the game on the bench, their half-court defense was only a rumor, and they actually used full-court pressure against America for much of the second half. I’ll repeat that, for emphasis: Against a team that has run everyone else out of the building but has struggled in the half-court, Spain decided that a full-court press would be the way to go.”
