Neil Hayes of the Chicago Sun-Times: “The Bulls are floundering, as anyone unfortunate enough to witness Saturday night’s 102-92 loss to the hapless Timberwolves can attest. With the exception of the continued development of rookie phenom Derrick Rose, the Bulls remain the same nameless, faceless bunch that they were last season. Most troublesome is that the team appears in no better hands under Del Negro than it did last season under interim coach Jim Boylan. Perhaps it’s unfair to be overly critical of a team that is missing forwards Luol Deng and Drew Gooden, as well as guard Kirk Hinrich, but with or without their three captains, the Bulls have yet to establish any type of identity or style of play under Del Negro.”
Tim MacMahon of the Dallas Morning News: “Rick Carlisle made the case before the season that Josh Howard was the Mavs’ most important player. Carlisle wasn’t contending that Howard was a better player than Dirk Nowitzki and Jason Kidd, just more important to the Mavs’ success. That sounds silly 33 games into the season, especially since the Mavs’ record is better without J-Ho (9-4) than with him (11-9). The reality is that Howard stands a distant fourth in the Mavs’ most important rankings. You could make the case that Jason Terry should top that list. When the early Sixth Man of the Year frontrunner scores at least 20 points, the Mavs usually win (13-6). When he doesn’t, they’re a .500 team. Jet’s value to the Mavs is most apparent during fourth quarters, when Howard tends to disappear.”
KnickerBlogger.net: “The secret to Chandler’s success is simple: he’s been taking it to the basket more. Over the last 5 games Chandler’s FT/FG has been 34.9, raising his season average to 18.2. Of course 5 games isn’t significant, and this change might just be an outlier in Chandler’s career. But if Chandler is able to score more from the charity stripe, it’ll make him a more efficient scorer. This helps the Knicks in the short term (as Chandler is still in the Knicks starting lineup), and the long (he’s more likely to develop and/or be valuable to other teams). But more significantly is that perhaps this coaching staff noticed this flaw in Chandler’s game and attempted to correct it. This would be a substantial gain for the team, because it marks their ability to improve their players. Two of Isiah’s biggest acquisitions were Eddy Curry and Jamal Crawford, two young players that the team hoped would turn into NBA All Stars. Unfortunately Curry & Crawford continued to commit the same mistakes over and over and never improved. If the current Knick coaching staff can identify a young player’s flaws and attempt to rectify them, then it shows the team has improved in that area as well.”
Garry D. Howard of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: “Skiles has had 36 games to work his magic on this new collection of basketball players wearing Bucks on the front of their jerseys, and the results are encouraging enough for all involved to think playoffs. Playoffs? Yes, you heard me right, we’re talking playoffs. They will not win the NBA championship this year (not even close, yet) but if all continues to blend together as it has over the past 30 days, the Bucks will have a chance at the Boston Celtics or the Cleveland Cavaliers when David Stern raisesthe curtain on the 2008-’09 postseason. And that alone will signal success for a franchise that has been devoid of just that over the past 1,095 days. Michael Redd, Andrew Bogut, Charlie Villanueva and Charlie Bell are the main holdovers from last year’s debacle and each one has visibly improved in previously suspect areas to help this team become, well, a team. Redd has continued to show an uncanny ability to score the basketball but under Skiles, he has been asked (and probably not nicely) to remember that there are two sides to a basketball court. And he has responded to this request by increasing his rebounding, assists and floor-burn statistics.”
48 Minutes of Hell: “Not surprisingly, their win streaks are often punctuated by a trend of out-rebounding their opponents; their losing streaks and close victories are punctuated by a trend of being out rebounded. The most troubling aspect of this is that the Spurs are sometimes out rebounded by double digits, as was the case with their last loss. Even in victories, such as Saturday’s Philadelphia game, there is often a noteworthy deficit. I’m not sure how the Spurs plan to address this problem, but it does help to explain their inconsistent defense. The Spurs build their defense around a handful of basic principals, one of which is to hold their opponents to one contested shot attempt per possession.”
Brian Windhorst of The Cleveland Plain Dealer: “They led the NBA in total rebounding and, in the most accurate telltale, rebounding differential. Much could be attributed to Ben Wallace and Anderson Varejao being healthy and teaming up with Ilgauskas and LeBron James for a powerhouse rebounding front line. For the last several weeks, however, there has been slippage in this area. Then came Sunday against the Wizards, who battered the Cavs around chasing missed shots. With their starting center, Brendan Haywood, on the sidelines with injury and their backup Andray Blatche dealing with a sprained ankle, one of the league’s worst rebounding teams still whipped the Cavs to a tune of 52-35. It was the fifth time in the last 10 games the Cavs had been out-rebounded after having it happen just three times in the first 23 games.”
Dave Krieger of the Rocky Mountain News: “As much as they would miss their star if he has to miss an extended period, the nature of their bench gives them a better chance to withstand an injury to Anthony than to either of their big men. ‘We’ve got a really good team and we’ve got a chance to get to the playoffs and advance,’ Billups said. ‘And from there, anything can happen. But we don’t want to get too far ahead of ourselves. We need to get better at every juncture of the season, and right now, our next level is, when we get teams down, learn how to keep them down. We’ve got a lot of young guys that really haven’t probably been in situations where they get this many teams down early in the games. So it’s a process.’ It is as promising a group as the Nuggets have had in a long time. They have a chance to earn home-court advantage and a better first-round playoff matchup than this franchise has seen in the last five years of one-and-dones. But the fact remains that they are 7-11 against teams with winning records.”
Frank Dell’Apa of The Boston Globe: “The Celtics had the best 29-game start in league history, but their 19-game winning streak ended Dec. 25. Successive losses to the Los Angeles Lakers and Golden State Warriors exposed some vulnerabilities. The Lakers dropped off point guard Rajon Rondo, clogging the lane; they also presented strong inside threats offensively, exposing the Celtics’ lack of depth. Knicks coach Mike D’Antoni copied some of those ideas, matching 6-foot-11-inch Jared Jeffries with Rondo and sending Wilson Chandler directly at Kevin Garnett, who was limited by early foul trouble and a late calf injury. Celtics coach Doc Rivers said the Knicks’ defensive setup was similar to the Lakers’ in Game 3 of the NBA Finals last spring, an 87-81 Los Angeles victory.”
7 Seconds or Mess: Breaks Down New York’s Defensive Strategy vs. Boston [Video]
CelticsBlog: “We can (and will) write all day about what this team is struggling with, what they need to work on, and what they need to do to get better. The nice thing is that we know the team is doing the same thing. We can have confidence that Danny is looking around the league for the right missing pieces. We can have confidence that Doc is pointing out the areas the team needs to improve. We can have confidence that the players are taking the steps to improve as a team. Up and down the chain we know that they are not getting too low because a few weeks ago they were not too high. At the beginning of the year I felt the team would lose a few more games due to the loss of James Posey and needing to expand the roles of some of the bench players. They started out faster than I thought but perhaps we are seeing a market correction of sorts. Water seeks its own level and by the end of the year teams typically end up with the record that they deserve (barring injury).”
Ryne Nelson of SLAM: Manu With The Block! [Video]
Rick Bonnell of The Charlotte Observer: “Ask Howard, a member of Michigan’s Fab Five recruiting class in 1991, how he’s lasted so long, and he answers ‘passion.’ He injects that word into nearly every sentence concerning basketball. To him, ‘passion’ is tested on the practice court and in the weight room. Howard has enticed Ryan Hollins and Alexis Ajinca to lift more with the argument that strength staves off injury. It’s easier to sell that logic when you’re nearly 36 and don’t seem to have an ounce more fat than you did at 22. Or when you generated six points and four rebounds in just over 14 minutes off the bench Saturday against the Milwaukee Bucks. Howard doesn’t delude himself that he’s still a 22-point, eight-rebound All-Star. But he’s effective enough in short spurts to fill in at either forward spot or at center against a small team. ‘My goal is to bring energy when we need to spell a (Boris) Diaw or (Emeka) Okafor. For those few minutes, I need to play harder than my opponent,’ Howard said. The only way to do that at 35 is through efficiency. ‘I’m not saying I didn’t have a pretty good basketball IQ when I was younger,’ Howard said, ‘but when you’re younger, you think, ‘I can get it done with athleticism, quickness and youth. When you’re older, you realize, ‘I can get it done by outthinking my opponent.’”
Jerry Zgoda of the Minneapolis Star Tribune: “‘I understand it. It’s a little different for me, as you can imagine. I’ve always played a lot of minutes. I don’t disagree with me having to earn them. I’m playing 22, 23 minutes a game right now. Hopefully, I’ll keep building on that the second half of the season. Maybe I’ll play 30. Who knows?’ Love has struggled in the season’s opening 33 games to get off his shot against bigger, more athletic opponents, and he often has been outreached around the basket. He already, though, is proving himself to be one of the league’s most efficient rebounders. Prorate his 7.9 rebounding average over an entire game and Love averages 16.7 rebounds per 48 minutes.”
WaitingForNextYear: “The other problem that seems to be creeping in is one that I have always taken issue with. Ever since LeBron has arrived in Cleveland, there is one aspect of his game that I simply cannot stand, and that seems to get worse as he’s gotten older and more ‘established’ in the league. Let’s all face it: LeBron is a big WHINER. LeBron has never committed a foul in his NBA career, as is evident from the fact that every time he’s whistled for one he scrunches his face up and stomps around like a petulant child. LeBron has never missed a lay-up in his NBA career, as is evident from the fact that every time a lay-up doesn’t go in, he puts his arms out and looks for the nearest officials. This is hardly unique to LeBron, but as the best player in the NBA, I want him to let some of this crap go and JUST PLAY HIS GAME.”
Jonathan Feigen of the Houston Chronicle: “Coach Rick Adelman spoke with him Monday about McGrady’s determination to play through his limitations. ‘That’s what he has to do,’ Adelman said. ‘He has to be aggressive no matter what. The other night, we were playing poorly as a team, and he became very unaggressive. He can’t play that way, (or) he’s not going to get through it or out of it, and we aren’t going to be any good. ‘We have to find more ways to make sure we have room to operate, but it’s got to be an aggressive approach every time he plays. I spoke to him about it because he’s not going to get anywhere unless he keeps pushing himself. It’s in practice, too. It’s a mindset. Sometimes when things don’t go well, that’s when you have to work even harder. Like I told him today, ‘There’s going to be times you’re going to succeed and times you’re going to fail, but that shouldn’t have an effect on how hard you play. You have to play through the good times and the bad times.’”
Kevin Ding of the Orange County Register: “He is simply a superior basketball talent, something executives Isiah Thomas and Otis Smith identified but could not get coaches Larry Brown and Stan Van Gundy to cultivate in New York and Orlando. Mitch Kupchak has been a fan all along, too, but the Lakers decided to draft Sasha Vujacic instead of Ariza in 2004 because they thought Ariza would take years to develop. After all, Ariza shot 23.7 percent on 3-pointers and 50.4 percent on foul shots in his only season at UCLA. But Ariza’s continued work on his form, in conjunction with Jackson reconditioning Ariza to take the open jumpers other coaches had ordered him not to, has him at 28.3 percent on 3-pointers and 68.2 percent on foul shots. Not great yet, but a threat … and Ariza is still developing.”
Steve Kyler of HOOPSWORLD: “This NBA season is full of deals that didn’t pan out… Philadelphia and Elton Brand… The Clippers and Baron Davis, however none is bigger than the Raptors and Jermaine O’Neal. The sad part of this story is on paper the Raptors look impressive, on the court they have degraded intensity wise and with Jermaine in and out of the story due to constant injuries the Raptors have not gotten anything close to a rhythm and are not having a lot of success. No one could blame the Raptors for trying to deal Jermaine right? The situation simply isn’t working out. HOOPSWORLD spent a considerable amount of time around Jermaine this summer, and talked at length with the trainers and experts that were helping JO get ready for the season. He looked great on the court and even better mentally. The sky was the limit for JO this year, and that’s just has not happened. It was a ‘dare to be great’ move by Toronto when they traded for him this past summer, and now they are faced with the tough choice of do you or can you move him in trade? O’Neal is still owed $11.9 million on his $21.3 million contract year this year. Jermaine also has a player options for next year worth just over $23 million.”
Mike Wise of the Washington Post: “How can the Wizards get back to what might have been — before surgeries to their best player and starting center, before Eddie Jordan was axed, before, really, 7-25 ever happened? The truth, the one Abe Pollin and friends can’t ever let on to their season ticket holders: Concede that this is a lost season. Now. Make every important decision today based on next year. That means don’t take a chance on bringing back Gilbert Arenas or Brendan Haywood early from injury, if at all. Don’t clear either player to participate in full scrimmages until Arenas’s knee and Haywood’s wrist are completely rehabilitated. Even then, limit their minutes considerably. Keep giving the youngsters big minutes. Let Nick Young, Dominic McGuire and Andray Blatche make every dumb, knucklehead mistake on the court until they either learn a better way or play themselves out of the league.”
Tim Kawakami of the San Jose Mercury News: “If you take Nelson at his word, the surest sign of tankage would be if he played Brandan Wright and Anthony Randolph sustained minutes–since he thinks they’re not very good; he’s withholding them because he’s NOT tanking. They’re trying to win. Achieving nothing. If they pick off a win or two here and there (Boston, maybe 4 or 5 in the soft spot of the schedule in the next few weeks), it means nothing. It moves the franchise nowhere. They’re wasting prime development time with Randolph and Wright. And the guys Nelson loves to play are NOT going to get any better, they’re not being coached, they’re never going to play defense, and they’re also guiding him to a probable 24-58 finish.”
Mike Monroe of the San Antonio Express News: “When your nickname is The Big Fundamental and you go out of your way to avoid attracting attention, relying on the average hoops fan to recognize your surpassing greatness is an act of faith. We live in look-at-me world, but the Spurs are an exception. They don’t produce YouTube videos promoting the All-Star merits of their players, as the Nets recently did for Devin Harris. And when the regular season nears its conclusion in April, media voters won’t get cheesy promotional packets urging them to support this Spurs player, or that, for the various postseason awards. A big part of The Spurs Way is subjugation of the individual to the good of the whole. They even had a marketing campaign: Team Is Everything. It wasn’t so much a slogan as an expression of an organizational way of life.”
Jonathan Abrams of The New York Times: “‘Our fan base is still really not in tune with the rest of the league and even our team on the road,’ Cornett said. ‘I don’t get the sense that if you walked into a restaurant and our team is playing a road game, that it’s a given that they are going to be playing it on TV. The market just hasn’t matured in that respect. To them, the N.B.A. is 41 home games, and the rest will take time to develop.’ The losses come frequently, but so do the fans. The team itself has a strong, young nucleus centered around Kevin Durant, a spindly forward in his second year, and Russell Westbrook, a rookie guard. But after just one win in the first 13 games, Coach P. J. Carlesimo was fired. The Thunder has the worst record in the N.B.A., 4-30 entering Tuesday night’s game against the Knicks. But its season-ticket allotment quickly sold out, and despite playing in the league’s smallest market, the team is drawing 18,548 fans a game, 12th among 30 teams.”
Jan Hubbard of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram: “If the game sells out, it will have the largest attendance in basketball history. A crowd of 78,129 attended a game between Michigan State and Kentucky at Detroit’s Ford Field in 2003. The NBA attendance record is 62,046 for a Bulls-Hawks game at the Georgia Dome in 1998. The Mavericks will take a group of 40 representatives from the various local agencies to the 2009 All-Star Game in Phoenix in February. They will have two meetings in Phoenix, then planning sessions will begin in earnest upon their return. Ussery said one of the unknowns in the planning is how many visitors will come to North Texas. All-Star Games normally are played in arenas with about 20,000 seats. Ussery said, however, that as many as 100,000 people visit those All-Star cities to attend other events. What no one knows is whether the 5-1 ratio will continue in Arlington. If it does, as many as 500,000 people will show up.”
Mark Cuban: “It was pretty obvious that more than a few of the owners hoped I would come in and stir things up and stand up and speak for the owners when it came to digital rights and the future of technology and how it would impact the teams and leagues profitability. They were hoping I would be the new guy to come in and take the commissioners’ arrows. Which of course I would be fine with and happy to do if it got me their confirmation vote. The obstacles seemed to be minor, the opportunity with the Cubs significant. It really was an opportunity that I thought I could be successful with on the field, and financially. More importantly, its something I could have a blast with. The Cubs had a strong organization, with strong management, so if I could do a deal, it wouldnt require changing the entire organization or culture like I had to with the Mavs. I felt I would have to tweak some things, but it was all manageable, which made me feel good that I could stay commited to the Mavs and lock in with the Cubs. The hardest part was going to be the financial deal. I never thought it conceivable that it would be hard to spend a billion dollars on a sports team. In this case it was. Add me to the list of people who never want to participate in this type of sales process again.”
