Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports: “When the NBA’s Board of Governors meets with commissioner David Stern on Thursday in New York, one of the most pressing items on the agenda for several owners will be the future of NBA participation in FIBA basketball. There’s been a growing concern with owners and league executives that too many unnecessary risks have been taken with NBA players when they’re playing for national teams. For one thing, FIBA has shown little willingness to make uniform medical standards for NBA players representing countries in international tournaments. There’s a segment of league officials who want the league to redo an open-ended agreement with FIBA and demand stricter guidelines and protections for its players.”
Brian Windhorst of The Cleveland Plain Dealer: “This week the L.A. Times reported three major studios have made bids to distribute ‘More than a Game,’ a documentary by Akron native and filmmaker Kris Belman about James and his close friends at teammates at St. Vincent-St. Mary High School. The film premiered last month at the Toronto International Film Festival and got positive reviews. But its future, and whether it would ever be widely released, was in doubt. With Sony, Lionsgate and Overture Films all attempting to buy its rights, that no longer appears to be in question. You may have to wait a while, though. The projected released date isn’t until next fall.”
Bethlehem Shoals of The Sporting Blog: “Yao’s participation in the Chinese national program is holding him back as a pro. The Rockets are setting themselves up to contend. Isn’t it in China’s best interest to have their high-value basketball chip reaping glory somewhere, instead of falling short of expectations in two arenas? That gets Brand Yao out there, associating China with success, and doing so on that most American of stages. Unless the internationalization of the game is so imminent, and will be so swift, that NBA performance can be downplayed, and stuff like the Olympics retains an unimaginable premium, no matter how the team fares.”
Kurt Streeter of The Los Angeles Times: “The problem is how we view Odom, how we want him to be something he is not: the guy who comes to camp in shape instead of using camp to play into shape, the constant All-Star, the stud we can count on at all times and most particularly when the going gets rough, the second option after Kobe, not the fourth. Fine, Lamar Odom isn’t that guy and after nine years, he probably never will be. Is that so bad? Not when what we have in him is a terrific player who has the rare gift of multiple skills — passing, shooting from medium range on in, rebounding and dribbling. Sometimes he can lead a team but most often it seems he fits well into the role of supporter, content with what he has become. These, if we think about it, are rare qualities that we sometimes lose sight of because, when we think of him, a little too often we’re addled with general frustration and perplexity.”
Broderick Turner of The Los Angeles Times: “Some of Jackson’s teachings of the triangle offense were foreign to Farmar, so he resisted them. Farmar had been taught different fundamentals while playing for Woodland Hills Taft High and at UCLA, including to never jump in the air to make a pass, or dribble to the corner to start an offensive set, or to pick up the dribble before a pass or shot. But all that is OK under Jackson. ‘I would be like, ‘I was taught my whole life that this is wrong,’ ‘ Farmar said Wednesday after practice. ‘So it was kind of a battle of trying to listen to them and trying to figure out how to get it done on my own. It was a battle and a struggle. It was just learning how to be a professional and what works for you.’”
Brian Windhorst of The Cleveland Plain Dealer: “The two areas that directly concern coach Mike Brown are turnovers and transition defense, which sort of go hand-in-hand. The Cavs have been getting burned by fast-break points, a stat they’d hoped to dominate, and partially because they’ve been giving the ball away so much. Wednesday, the Cavs (2-5) turned the ball over 17 times, matching their preseason average. They were outscored by the Pistons, 21-4, in those pivotal fast-break points, a large reason why Detroit racked up 54 percent shooting. ‘It has bothered us throughout the preseason,’ Brown said. ‘I’m very concerned with it.’”
Docksquad Sports: Highlights from Derrick Rose’s 30 point game versus Dallas
Joe Freeman of The Oregonian: “Oden finished with 12 points and 13 rebounds and made six of eight field goals, including a couple of jump hooks. After a mediocre start to the exhibition season, Oden has revealed flashes of his sky-high potential in the past two games, registering 25 points and 22 rebounds. And, perhaps most important, he played at least 29 minutes in each game, showing he’s fully recovered from last season’s microfracture knee surgery and ready for the regular season, which begins next week in this very building against the Los Angeles Lakers.”
Patrick Reusse of The Minneapolis Star Tribune: “And when it came to ineptitude, no one compared to Love. The rookie played 24 minutes and went 1-for-10 from the field. He was credited with five rebounds and two turnovers. There was one glaring impression from the time Love spent on the offensive end: How is this rookie going to get the ball in the basket against NBA big men? He’s undersized and he has no lift. When he tried to go up in traffic, he was able to get the ball somewhere around the chins of Aaron Gray or Joakim Noah or Drew Gooden.”
Marc J. Spears of The Boston Globe: “In the hopes of winning fans back, Bird invited about 800 season ticket-holders to his home in the offseason. The Pacers also held their first draft-night party this year, have placed advertisements in local publications and Sports Illustrated, and rented billboard space in Indianapolis. The Pacers also didn’t raise season-ticket prices and offer about 8,600 single-game tickets for $25 or less, by far the most of the teams in the Central Division. Bird, however, knows it’s going to take more than changing the roster, shaking hands, and keeping tickets prices low to get the fans back. It’s going to take wins, and the Pacers aren’t expected to be a playoff team this season.”
Jim Alexander of The Press-Enterprise: “If this doesn’t work, there may come a time fairly soon where owner Donald Sterling and team president Andy Roeser are looking for two replacements, rather than one. The precedent, in Dunleavy’s case, is not the best. As a young coach, a little more than a year removed from taking the Lakers to the 1991 NBA Finals, Dunleavy was lured to Milwaukee as coach and general manager with an eight-year contract. But the experiment flopped so spectacularly that Dunleavy was relieved of his coaching duties in 1996, was fired as general manager the next season, and eventually had to go to court in an effort to collect his settlement from owner Herb Kohl.”
Brian Schmitz of The Orlando Sentinel: “Redick vowed after the furor of his trade request leaked to not just make the best of it, but to work overtime on his deficiencies, most notably defense. He built up his body and improved his footwork. Van Gundy was impressed at the strides J.J. had made, saying that Redick executed defensive principles better than Bogans, even if Bogans was better man-to-man. Asked if he felt comfortable matching Redick against the best shooting guards in the league, (i.e. Joe Johnson, Dwyane Wade, LeBron James) Van Gundy said that he had no reservations.”
LABallTalk.com: Vote for the top team bloggers in the blogosphere
Bucks Diary: “This preseason, Redd has gotten back to the usage numbers he had in his first two seasons, and his productivity has risen in kind. In Redd’s first two seasons, when he was just a role player, he was fantastically productive. His Win Score was comparable to Kobe Bryant’s. Once he signed his big money contract, things changed. He took it upon himself to become the focal point of the Bucks offense, consuming many more of the team’s offensive possessions, and his productivity slipped. By trying to do more, Redd actually did much less (in terms of Wins Produced). But this preseason, under Coach Skiles new “Be more judicious, Mike” dicta, Redd has used far fewer possessions and has gotten back to his formerly productive self. Will it last? I have my doubts.”
Ian Thomsen of CNNSI.com: “While everyone (including me) harps on about the Spurs’ age, their three are younger than Boston’s, and they should also be able to match the urgency of the Celtics’ mission. Both teams will be in a hurry to win another title before their biological clocks expire. It won’t carry the historical drama of a Lakers-Celtics rematch, but if both teams are healthy, then this will be a dream Finals for basketball fans featuring three Hall of Fame players per team. I’m envisioning a Game 7 win for San Antonio, which is to say that these teams are too close to call. It’s a coin flip to be influenced by injuries and other events over the next seven months that are beyond prediction. But right now, with (perhaps too much) faith in Ginobili’s rehab, I view the Spurs as the team to beat this year.”
John Canzano of The Oregonian: “Vipul Patel wanted to buy a couple of courtside tickets to a Trail Blazers game, but they’re sold out for the season. I told him to try to find a scalper, then I forgot about him. Shame on me. Because the 27-year old Patel, a senior financial analyst at Intel, asked again. And again. And finally, thinking this was getting ridiculous, I fired back: ‘Why don’t you just sit in the second or third row?’ His reply hit like a bag of bricks. ‘My brother is going to become a monk.’ In December, Vipul’s younger brother, Deepesh, 25, will give up all his worldly possessions. He’ll keep a sheet to wear, a bowl to eat from, and a prayer kit to use for daily rituals. He’ll even take a new Hindu name. Then he will board a plane to India and never be permitted to talk with his friends or family again. ‘The soul has no relations and no attachment,’ Deepesh explained. ‘Everyone in the world becomes our family.’ What we have here is a long goodbye, see.”
Sam Amick of The Sacramento Bee: “Go ahead and check back in June, but the Ron Artest experiment in Houston is working just fine so far. Better than fine if Oct. 11 was any sort of tone-setter. It was Rockets vs. Boston in an exhibition game in New Hampshire, which hardly would qualify as meaningful to most NBA players. But this was Artest with his new team, and this was the world champions, so it was time for the Herculean small forward to ratchet up those competitive juices. ‘You ought to look at (videotape of) the first half of that Boston game,’ Rockets assistant Elston Turner said when asked how Artest had fit in since being traded by the Kings in August. You would’ve thought that was Game 7 of the playoffs. ‘Woo-wee! There was like three fights; the benches cleared.’ The one-point Houston loss wasn’t as relevant as the rest: four technical fouls, 65 personal fouls and one emphatic message sent that this man was on board with this mission to unseat the Celtics from their throne by season’s end.”
Michael Lee of The Washington Post: “Although the NBA is predominantly African American, the Wizards’ Thomas said the enthusiasm for Obama has less to do with him being black than with his views on the economy, health care and education. Obama ‘is . . . laying out the plans. He’s not talking around the issues. There is a sense that things will be different.’ Political activism among athletes today doesn’t come close to that of the 1960s and 1970s, but it does contrast with the past 20 years, when athletes often chose not to take a stand or share their beliefs for fear of ridicule or financial hits. In the early 1990s, Michael Jordan famously refused to publicly support Harvey Gantt, a black Democrat running against Republican Jesse Helms in a North Carolina U.S. Senate race, saying, ‘Republicans buy sneakers, too.’”
