The Fundamentals

Jason Quick of The Oregonian:  “There is one line I would like to take back, where I said ‘I can’t stand to be around’ Oden. I think a more accurate reflection of my feelings would have been to say ‘I’m sick of dealing with the entity of Greg Oden.’ The entity of Oden is the media mosh pits around him. It’s hearing stupid questions, like ones about his beard. It’s the incessant questions on the radio, and in internet chats, about him. And yes, it’s the actual dealing with Greg himself. I totally stand by my comments that the guy is not pleasant to be around. There is nothing enjoyable about it. At the same time, he has never been a jerk. Never. But he’s sullen, uninterested, he mumbles, and generally acts like he is living a tortured life. And that’s where it gets frustrating for me. There is a great kid somewhere inside this shell he has crawled into. I’ve seen it.”

Kevin Ding of the Orange County Register:  “Bynum said he’d much rather be chasing little point guards around while trying to show on pick-and-rolls than always be left out there against a team that is lifting both big men that far away from the basket. This whole thing is Rasheed Wallace’s fault, really. He was the trend-setter back on Nov. 14, standing out there next to Allen Iverson, getting passes off simple picks and lobbing in 3-pointers over a reluctant-to-close-out Gasol. No team had reached 100 points against the Lakers in their 7-0 start. With Wallace’s long-range help, Detroit scored 106 and won. That was the start of the Lakers’ defensive slide, with opponents averaging 103.1 points over the past 14 games – twice as big a statistical sampling as those first seven games that had the Lakers’ newly aggressive and double-teaming defense looking like the key to locking up the next NBA title.”

Broderick Turner of the Los Angeles Times:  “Each season Lakers Coach Phil Jackson passes out scouting assignments for the other 29 NBA teams to his assistants: Hamblen, Kurt Rambis, Jim Cleamons and Brian Shaw. Then it’s their job to scout the teams on their list. ‘We all pride ourselves in having our teams down cold, so all you’ve got to do is take the game plan to the floor and we’re good,’ Cleamons said. ‘But some nights it’s not that way. So you hope on your night, on your scout, these horses are ready to run.’ Usually, the assistants share the work load evenly. But now Rambis is also in charge of the Lakers’ defense, so this season he is responsible for only three opposing teams (including Boston). Hamblen has eight (Utah is among them), Cleamons nine (San Antonio) and Shaw nine (Portland).”

Lakers Blog:  “I have no secret MRI, no stolen doctor’s notes.  Take a look at the numbers from this year and last, and the picture isn’t totally clear.  There are any number of things that could be impacting Kobe’s performance other than physical injury- fatigue, a regular ol’ slump, an evolving lineup, etc- but from my view (sometimes pretty close to the court) one thing seems relatively clear: Kobe doesn’t seem to be moving like Kobe. A jumper that lacks pop, less time attacking the rack, more gambling on defense.” [Video]

Jonathan Feigen of the Houston Chronicle:  “If McGrady returns and starts tonight against Golden State in Oakland, Calif., the Rockets likely will have their seventh starting lineup in 23 games. This season, Shane Battier has missed 15 games, McGrady seven and Yao one. Artest has played hurt, missed one game and will be out the next two. Barry has missed eight games.  As much as the Rockets have missed the players who have been hurt, they have lost chances to build continuity. They had seemed increasingly in sync, with far better balance and ball movement, when they played the Warriors last Friday, scoring 131 points, their most since 1995. But that was with Artest going from dribbling too much and looking to carry the offense against Indiana and Denver, to leading the improved offensive flow. Then he went out and things bogged down again. That has been the pattern of the season with a continuing series of changes, adjustments and improvements, only leading to more changes.”

Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports:  “The game, the profession, has changed dramatically. Sloan never does. He still eats his game-night meals in the press room with the sportswriters and scouts. For lunch on the road he usually wanders out of the Ritz Carltons to find a mall food court with his assistant coaches. Sloan is still most apt to choose Subway. He doesn’t have an agent, and he still doesn’t have a an Armani in his closet. Hours before the Jazz – without Boozer – beat the Portland Trail Blazers at EnergySolutions Arena, Sloan left the morning shootaround wearing a sparkling new John Deere baseball cap. There will never, ever be another NBA coach who was raised the youngest of 10 children on a farm with horse-pulled plows. From Layden to owner Larry Miller, and now Miller’s son, Greg, the Jazz have never let the changing culture of pro basketball change their franchise.”

Sam Amick of the Sacramento Bee:  “While Udrih was given a five-year, $32.3 million contract over the summer, he also has learned the hard way that the point guard’s role is quite different in Sacramento. This is the land of the high-post offense as long as Brad Miller remains, with the 7-footer often dubbed a ‘center-point’ directing traffic and finding open teammates ‘80 percent of the time,’ Reggie Theus estimated. That and Udrih’s often questionable decision-making this season, and injuries that often have surrounded him with inexperienced youngsters, has led to an underwhelming payoff on his new deal. Entering tonight’s game at the Lakers, he ranks 18th among the league’s point guards in assists per game at 5.2. But the rub to those paying his salary is more about turnovers, with Udrih’s 66 second among point guards to Phoenix’s Steve Nash entering Thursday (tied for seventh overall) and his three per game putting him third at his position behind Nash (3.7) and Dallas’ Jason Kidd (3.1).”

Empty the Bench:  “The current NBA record for consecutive contests with a theft is 105, set by former Spurs guard Alvin Robertson who had a steal in every game over 20 years ago from November 6, 1985 to Deccember 29, 1986. With two steals against the Charlotte Bobcats on December 10th Paul extended his personal streak of consecutive games with a steal to 102. If things go according to plan he’ll tie the mark on the upcoming Hornets road trip at Boston, Toronto and Memphis. At that point Paul will have the chance to set the NBA record on December 17th at home against none other than Mr. Robertson’s Spurs of San Antonio. Yep, the very same Spurs who crushed the Hornets and their fans collective hearts with a seven-game defeat of New Orleans in the second round of last season’s playoffs after Paul & Co had jumped out to a 2-0 lead. It’s not going to erase those bad memories, but it would serve to sweeten the moment, if only slightly.”

Scott Cacciola of the Memphis Commercial Appeal:  “Del Negro would like Rose to continue to work on being a more vocal leader, which sounds familiar. When he arrived at Memphis, Rose wasn’t just quiet — he was silent. Rose acknowledged to Calipari that he would go entire games at Chicago’s Simeon High School without saying anything to anyone. ‘Not one word to a coach, an official, a teammate,’ Calipari said. ‘Now, how you would do that as a point guard, I have no idea.’ Calipari made him enroll in speech class and forced him to talk during practice. And by the end of the season, Rose was the total package — scoring, passing, imploring, encouraging. With the Bulls, the process has continued, speed bumps and all.”

Alan Hahn of Newsday:  “There are currently very few options from within the NBA for the Knicks to fill Cuttino Mobley’s roster spot, unless you’re satisfied with passing the trade exception off to Sacramento for Brooklyn’s Quincy Douby or trying to push the Trail Blazers to consider giving up Sergio Rodriguez. But with some patience, more intriguing options could emerge. We reported in our print edition story today that the Knicks are looking into whether Carlos Delfino or Jannero Pargo will be interested — and, of course, able — to get out of their respective contracts with Russian teams to come back to the NBA. It would be easier, of course, if the NBA permits the Knicks to use the Disabled Player Exception (DPE) in Mobley’s case. That would give them $4.5 million to work with to sign either player. They do have the bi-annual exception ($1.9M), which still would be slightly more than either made in the NBA last season, though it would be a paycut from their Russian deals.”

Michael Rosenberg of the Detroit Free Press:  “Pistons fans, please do yourself a favor. Do not write this team off. I know the Pistons look horrible. I know they are 11-9 overall. But in 2004-05, when they made it to Game 7 of the NBA Finals, they started 12-12. And in 2003-04, when they won the title, they started 16-13. (To be fair, they did not acquire Rasheed Wallace until later that season.) Listen to a man who was clearly disappointed and shocked when he heard about the trade: ‘When you have a unique player like Allen Iverson, and the way that we’ve been doing things around here, it’s not going to happen overnight,’ Hamilton said. ‘It’s going to take time. We’re understanding him, and he is understanding what he has to do also.’”

Woody Paige of The Denver Post:  “The Nuggets now have The 3Cs — Chauncey and Carmelo and Complementary players. They’re having a ball. Carmelo’s sheepish grin has been transformed into a serious smile. He and George Karl are at peace. I recommended after last season that Carmelo be traded for Chauncey. I was half right, all wrong. The Nuggets needed Chauncey at point guard, but they also needed Carmelo to become a complete player. And he has, because of Chauncey’s presence. If there were such doings any more, they should room on the road. Anthony and Billups combined for 69 points against the Tenderwolves. Those were Iverson-Anthony numbers on a great scoring night. Only difference is, these Nuggets came back and won the game. Carmelo’s scoring average is down, but his rebounds and assists are up. Much is made of the Nuggets’ 14-4 record with Chaun- cey in the lineup. In the same games, the Nuggets are 9-1 when Melo has scored 21 or more points, 7-0 when he has seven or more rebounds and 6-1 when he has a double-double.”

Brian Windhorst of The Plain Dealer:  “At 19-3, the Cavs possess the best offense in the NBA, in terms of efficiency. They rank fourth in scoring at just under 104 points a game, second in field-goal shooting at 48 percent and first in victory margin at more than 13 points. Much of it can be attributed to the addition of point guard Mo Williams; the team previously lacked an accomplished lead guard, which contributed to the past trouble. But there’s also another factor that has helped despite purposely not getting attention — offensive coordinator John Kuester. In his second season as Brown’s assistant, Kuester has taken over much of the detail operations of the offense. He has brought some new concepts to what the Cavs call their ‘early’ offense, an effort to make them more effective in transition and less bogged down.”

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Ian Thomsen of CNNSI.com:  “While other teams are losing money and lack direction, the Hornets are — for the moment at least — a franchise of remarkable stability in the second year of their return to New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina. Chris Paul remains among the league’s most valuable young stars, and the 12-6 Hornets are off to the same start that led them to the Western semifinals and a near series victory against the reigning champion Spurs last season. Even more impressive is the absence of speculation about their departure from New Orleans. An option in their lease would have allowed them to escape if they failed to average 14,735 fans from December 2007 through the end of this season. But the success of last year has resulted in the sale of close to 11,000 season tickets and average attendance of 16,612 this season, effectively extending the Hornets’ lease with New Orleans Arena to 2014.”

Jeff Latzkie of the Associated Press:  “The base for the Thunder’s strong attendance comes from a five-day stretch in September, when the entire stock of about 13,000 season tickets were sold. The team even turned away some potential season-ticket buyers, saving the rest of the 6,000 or so tickets for partial-season plans, groups and gameday sales. Of those, 3,500 tickets are available at $10 apiece, and Mahoney said he thinks fans have found the Thunder to be an affordable entertainment option Their numbers are easily outpacing the expansion Bobcats’ first season in Charlotte and the Grizzlies’ first season in Memphis after moving from Vancouver, with both teams averaging about 14,400. They’re also ahead of the Hornets’ first season in New Orleans, when average attendance was 15,650.”

Julian Garcia of the Daily News:  “While the whole team’s performance seems to slide at home, no one has been more affected by the lack of support than Devin Harris. Averaging a career-high 24.8 points – fourth in the league – Harris was 10th among Eastern Conference guards in All-Star voting as of Thursday. The fact that the Nets are 22nd in the NBA in average home attendance likely has something to do with that. In fact, their officially listed average home crowd of 16,098 seems suspiciously high to those who regularly attend games at the Meadowlands, which they could be playing in for years to come. Officials with team owner Bruce Ratner’s company admitted on Wednesday that the Atlantic Yards project in Brooklyn, which includes the team’s proposed new arena, has been put off indefinitely for financial reasons. Harris, who averages 22.1 points at home and 27.9 points on the road, had a hard time believing the All-Star voting results. ‘I’m 10th?’ Harris said. ‘Really? I’m 10th?’”

Jerry Brown of the East Valley Tribune:  “Understand, the list of shooters who had big games against Richardson in Charlotte is a long one. But over the last month, the same has been true regarding Bell in Phoenix (Dwyane Wade, J.J Berea, Vince Carter) and the team’s plus/minus at shooting guard was the worst of any position on the floor (-7.6). So the new school of thought in bringing in Richardson and saying ‘if we can’t stop the big-time shooting guards, at least we can push the tempo and wear them out by forcing them to run and play defense,’ sounds a lot like old-school D’Antoni. And how much would the old coach have enjoyed an injection of Golden State weaponry (Matt Barnes and Richardson) and more ‘small ball’ to the arsenal? With Barnes, Leandro Barbosa, Dudley, Robin Lopez (and a veteran backup point guard to be named later) off the bench, the Suns are again destined to run. Built to score.”

Peter Vecsey of the New York Post:  “Without any prompting D’Antoni has agreed to discuss what went wrong at the end of his almost unflawed six-year relationship with the Suns, as well as his frame of mind regarding Monday night’s return to a hot spot where he enjoyed so much success, everything but win a title.  ‘It really burned that we had four straight years of competing at the highest level, yet, in the end, (management’s) attitude was like we didn’t win a championship so we didn’t do nothing,’ declared D’Antoni, whose teams during that stretch averaged 58 victories. ‘That really burned me more than anything!’  When did you know you weren’t being fully appreciated by ownership or GM Steve Kerr or the fans, I wondered? Was there a certain instance that you recognized it was time to get out of Dodge?  ‘Things began to unravel toward the completion of the opening round against the Spurs,’ D’Antoni said, still grieving the Game 1 loss. ‘Had we won, it would’ve changed the complexion of the series. But five or six minutes to go they hit a killer 3 when someone didn’t switch out and then [Tim] Duncan hit that unbelievable three, his first of the season, I believe, to put it into overtime Then we get crushed in [the] second game.’  Next thing you know, D’Antoni was being criticized from within for the first time and he admittedly was feeling the pressure.”