Rick Bonnell of The Charlotte Observer: “A phone call at 5a.m. is seldom a welcome surprise, particularly when your wife is eight months pregnant and 800 miles away. David Guthrie was in a Chicago hotel room and his wife, Laurel, was telling him she was in labor two weeks early. So get home quick or miss the birth of your second child. One frantic and expensive flight later, David rushed into a Charlotte delivery room to hear Laurel say, ‘45 minutes late…come meet your new son.’ That they both laugh, recalling that misadventure, says how well the Guthries cope with David’s job as an NBA referee. There are obvious pluses to being an NBA ref (a six-figure salary and the chance to officiate the world’s best athletes) and obvious minuses (even the best ref is an idiot in some fan’s view). Guthrie’s fine with all that. The challenge is striking the balance between this consuming job and his life as a husband and father of two.”
Jonathan Feigen of the Houston Chronicle: “Head had reached the last guaranteed season in his rookie contract. Wafer has entered the last month before the Jan. 10 date non-guaranteed contracts such as his become guaranteed for the remainder of the season. Neither had seemed likely to have much of a chance to demonstrate what they could offer. Then McGrady said last Tuesday that he would miss three weeks. A day later, Barry was ruled out with a slightly torn muscle in his left leg. The Rockets needed help from the other end of the bench and Head and Wafer had their chance. Head’s opportunity came first and he responded with a season-high 21 in leading the Rockets to their rout of the Spurs. Friday against the bigger backcourt of the Warriors, Wafer got the call off the bench and had a career-high 18. In the five games without McGrady, Head has made 13 of 28 shots. Wafer has played in three of those games, making 8 of 14 shots.
Jeff McDonald of the San Antonio Express-News: “Ninety minutes before his team ran headfirst into a silver and black buzz saw Saturday night, Golden State coach Don Nelson stood on the AT&T Court and accused his good friend and former assistant Gregg Popovich of thievery. Nelson had just finished watching film of Popovich’s Spurs team, running offensive schemes that looked more than vaguely familiar. ‘A lot of it he stole from me,’ Nelson said with a wink. The next time the two coaches break pregame bread together, Nelson would be well served to hit Popovich for tips on coaxing a team to play defense. It’s only a fair trade.”
Ronald Tillery of the Memphis Commercial Appeal: “Griz guard O.J. Mayo entered Saturday night’s game at New Orleans leading all rookies in scoring at 21.3 points per game. It’s the highest scoring average for a first-year player since Allen Iverson (1996-97), and Mayo continues to reach rare air with his offensive exploits. The 21-year-old out of USC has scored in double figures in each of his first 20 games, the longest stretch to start an NBA career since Larry Bird had 20-straight games of 10-plus points for the Boston Celtics at the start of the 1979-80 season. Mayo will match Los Angeles Lakers legend Magic Johnson should he score in double figures Monday against Houston.”
Dave D’Alessandro of The Star-Ledger: “Of all the gaudy numbers the Nets have posted in the first six weeks of the season, this one might be the most impressive: They have played six back-to-back sets, and they have swept four of them, including the Minnesota-Philly twin killing that concluded with Saturday night’s 95-84 victory over the Sixers. A year ago, they played in 22 back-to-back sets — those are games played on consecutive nights — and they swept only two. They also lost eight, and split 12. So far, the Nets have gone 5-1 in the back-end games, when teams are normally tired after playing the night before and traveling. Last year, they were 8-14 on the second nights of back-to-backs.”
Sam Amick of the Sacramento Bee: “This was supposed to be the beginning. The Kings, so haunted by absences and injuries this season, finally would have a full roster. They were coming off a Kumbaya moment just days before, when so many of the team’s veterans publicly defended coach Reggie Theus and pleaded with their fans to give them more time before making any ultimate judgments. And even if it didn’t result in a win over the new-and-improved Denver Nuggets on Saturday night at Arco Arena, it could at least serve as a start for better things to come. But their 118-85 no-show against the Nuggets looked very much like the beginning of the end. As the Kings tied a franchise record by losing at home for the eighth consecutive time, they played so poorly that even some of the worst teams in the organization’s oft-woeful history might have turned away in shame.”
Mark Murphy of the Boston Herald: “Few in the NBA know their role better. But according to coach Doc Rivers, Perkins has reached a kind of role player nirvana. By fulfilling it, Perkins has outperformed his job description. Based on his recent play, including double-doubles in three of his last four games and four straight double-figure rebounding performances, the big guy has redefined his role as a paint plugger and intimidator.”
Bud Shaw of The Plain Dealer: “The standard for retiring numbers in the Cavaliers’ organization has always been more about sentimentality than absolute greatness. Before another jersey goes up a few questions need raising. Not right now. He might qualify under the old standard. What he went through to keep his career intact even when his feet kept getting fractured was inspiring and many in this town have always underrated him. Hey, anybody in this day and age willingly taking the huge pay cut Ilgauskas took to stay in a city and chase championships should not only have his jersey retired but also bbronzed for that gesture alone. Great teammate. Even better person. With him, the Cavs are a strong 60-win possibility this season. Without him, they’re desperately looking for scoring on the front line.”
Shawn Windsor of the Detroit Free Press: “From tattooed icon to cornrowed hipster to aging warrior, the nearly 6-foot, 170-pound basketball player has brought complexity to the way the NBA is perceived. On the one hand, said Todd Boyd, a professor of African-American studies at Southern Cal and a basketball historian, ‘the league didn’t know what to do with him because he represented the guys in the penitentiary, the guys on the street corner. He abided thugs. And there is no abiding love in our culture for guys in the pen, for guys on the street.’ On the other hand, said Boyd, who grew up in Detroit, ‘if you really watched Allen, you saw John Havlicek,’ the floor-diving Boston Celtic and 1970s poster boy of the lunch-pail ethos. If Iverson has shown nothing else, it is that from tip-off, he plays every game ‘as if it were my last.’ It didn’t take long for these conflicting facets of Iverson’s image to play out in Detroit. Miss a practice. Offer an apology. Get booed. Create a shot off the dribble. Get cheered.”
K.C. Johnson of the Chicago Tribune: “Tracked down in a United Center hallway after being benched for all of Saturday’s victory over the Wizards, Joakim Noah responded with ‘Ask him’ when a reporter from another publication asked if Vinny Del Negro warned the second-year center beforehand what was coming. Del Negro was asked and offered some of the most blunt criticism of his coaching tenure on the subject. Typically, Del Negro deals in generalities and niceties even when discussing obvious shortcomings. But he said Noah needed to do a better job in remembering plays and being in the right defensive position. And this doesn’t even account for Noah’s conditioning problems, which Del Negro has talked about consistently.”
Mike Wells of the Indianapolis Star: “‘They’ve all definitely got talent,’ point guard T.J. Ford said. ‘If you look at those three teams, they have mostly superstars and they have good role players. They’ve all been together awhile, too, except for Boston, but they still had enough to win the title last season.’ It wouldn’t be a surprise if Pacers players said, of those three, the Cavaliers are the best so far. The Pacers have not beaten Cleveland, but they have defeated the Celtics and Lakers at Conseco Fieldhouse this season. The Celtics, who are on an 11-game winning streak, have the slight edge because of their team defense, according to Danny Granger.”
Jeff Eisenberg of The Press-Enterprise: “A reluctant No. 2 scorer behind Kobe Bryant for most of his Lakers career, Odom now ranks only sixth on the team in scoring (8.9) and seventh in field-goal attempts (7.1) in his first season coming off bench. The career-low numbers in both categories can be attributed to his reduced playing time this season, but Jackson also suggested he’s struggling to figure out how to acclimate himself to coming off the bench. Odom plays mostly on the low block when he’s on the court with the second unit, whereas he has typically handled the ball on the perimeter in the past.”
Christopher Reina of RealGM: Hands On Buckets: Who Is Carrying The Most Weight Offensively?
Matthew Gordon for RealGM: “The commonly-proffered distinction between a role player and a star, or the idea that a role player has to have less talent than a star, simply doesn’t stack up to the variety of skill sets visible in the NBA. There are so many ways to win a game, and so many ways to dominate, that there’s no one way for a player to achieve star status. In a league featuring all kinds of offensive sets, defensive formations and coaching strategies, being a team’s first option on offense or leading scorer doesn’t immediately exclude a player from role-player eligibility. Conversely, not being predicated on scoring doesn’t ensure that a player is a role player. If Michael Redd isn’t hitting shots, he becomes significantly less useful, but if Udonis Haslem is playing sub-par defense, he can still stick jumpers all night. There’s no black and white in the NBA: it’s a spectrum, and finding the right combinations of players on that spectrum are what propel teams to success. Often times, whether a player is a role player is as much as product of his environment as it is of his own skills.”
Paul Coro of The Arizona Republic: “Between that and the rings on the Boston Celtics’ fingers, it is hard to argue the West’s case, especially as former upper crust teams in San Antonio, Dallas and Phoenix slide to middle-class status in the West. But all that really has happened is the East has become more balanced, not necessarily better if you’re talking about the teams that actually matter come April, May and June, while the West’s weak teams have gotten weaker. Six of the West’s 15 teams have winning percentages below .300; the East’s only sub-.300 team is Washington, which wouldn’t be there if Gilbert Arenas was healthy. That six-pack of algae - the Clippers, Oklahoma City, Minnesota, Sacramento, Memphis and Golden State - in the West’s pool has dragged its whole conference down by going 4-32 in interconference games. The nine teams competing for West playoff spots are 35-26, more consistent with the West’s dominance since 1999-2000.”
