Sean Deveney of the Sporting News: “There is not a single West reserve from a sub-.500 team. There are three in the East: Chris Bosh of the 19-28 Toronto Raptors (who pretty much had to be voted in because he was considered a center), Devin Harris of the 20-26 New Jersey Nets and Danny Granger of the 18-28 Indiana Pacers. That should have a couple of players in the East ticked off. First is Ray Allen, who has come out of his slump and is averaging 18.0 points while shooting better than 50 percent for a 38-9 team. Second is Mo Williams, who is averaging 17.2 points while shooting 47 percent from the field for a 35-8 team. Harris and Granger have great numbers and are deserving of their spots, but clearly the East coaches who voted for the reserves did not put as much emphasis on winning as did coaches in the West.”
Mike Monroe of the San Antonio Express-News: “Jefferson has had a better season than Lakers power forward Pau Gasol, and there’s only one reason Gasol got the nod over the Timberwolves’ big man: He plays for the team with the best record in the NBA. Jefferson, meanwhile, plays for a team that has won only 16 games. Do the coaches factor in a team’s record when they vote for the reserves? ‘I think it’s important,’ Jazz coach Jerry Sloan said a couple of hours after casting his All-Star votes. ‘Somebody’s going to score on a bad team. It just ends up being that way. Somebody’s going to get opportunities.’ Of course, a great record wasn’t enough to get Mo Williams a spot on the Eastern Conference team, and that is an even more glaring miscarriage of All-Star justice. LeBron James is the front-runner for this season’s Most Valuable Player award, but he isn’t winning games for Cleveland by himself. Putting Williams on the team instead of Orlando’s Jameer Nelson would have given the Cavs, Magic and Celtics two players apiece.”
Joel Brigham of HOOPSWORLD: “Really, it came down to Nelson or Williams, and Mo first and foremost didn’t want to take anything away from his colleague. ‘Congratulations to him,’ Williams said with a smile. ’He deserves it, but there’s only a certain amount of players that can play.’ Teammate Ben Wallace interjected this comment with, ‘You deserved it more,’ than asked for Mo to ‘Tell it like it is,’ not shelter his feelings behind a mask of political correctness just because there was media present. ‘You want me to tell you like it is?’ Williams chuckled. ’Then I’ll tell it like it is. It’s a tragedy. How many players get into the game, and how many players did the Magic get in? They’ve got three players, and we’ve got the best record. Not just in the Eastern Conference, but in the whole league… Best team in the world, and we got one player.’”
Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports: “‘I’d love to see Shaquille and Kobe have a chance to play together,’ Phil Jackson said recently. ‘I think people would like seeing that.’ Somehow, Shaquille O’Neal dusted the debris off of a flat-lining career and willed his way onto the Western Conference reserves. The coaches couldn’t resist voting him onto the team and letting him lord again over the sport’s biggest party. Jackson and Kobe Bryant were so sure that they had left O’Neal in the dust, left him to YouTube lore and his eternal freestyle rapping question of how that fat fanny tasted to his old Lakers teammate. Only, here is Shaq again, the official host of All-Star foolery in February. This promises to be a weekend of grudging bygones, revisionist history and, maybe most of all, a retro tribute to the dysfunctional dynasty that captivated the post-Michael Jordan NBA.”
Kyle Hightower of the Orlando Sentinel: “During the 1988-89 NBA season then-Detroit Pistons Coach Chuck Daly took that concept a bit further. It was in that season that Daly and his assistant coaches came up with a set of specific guidelines for defending Michael Jordan that became known as ‘Jordan rules.’ Daly didn’t come up with the name. That actually belongs to longtime NBA writer Sam Smith who later titled a book on the Bulls ‘The Jordan Rules.’ But the idea is still going strong when it comes to trying to slow down the league’s top stars. Magic Coach Stan Van Gundy stopped short of admitting that his staff had any ‘LeBron rules’ he was going to employ Thursday night against Cleveland’s LeBron James. He did admit, though, that the concept hasn’t gone away post-Jordan. ‘Everybody has their version of that for everybody,’ Van Gundy said. ‘No team has the same one, but every team has their rules of how to play people. But if rules could stop [a player], we wouldn’t have them.’ Even if the Magic weren’t trying to follow Daly’s blueprint exactly, they were following some of its principles Thursday against James.”
The Rising Suns: “Watching the Suns refuse to play help defense on countless Tony Parker forays into the lane- just made it a matter of time. A matter of time until the Spurs made a run and Suns folded. Terry Porter, hacking Bruce Bowen makes no sense- especially in a TIE GAME. Sure he’s shooting 28 percent. He shot more free throws in this game than he had all season. Way to kill any momentum you had. Here’s a thought. When the Spurs hack Shaq, they kill your offensive rhythm and then attack your weak defense. When you hack Bowen, he hits and the Spurs (a defensive team) can set their defense without a transition. Not a good strategy. This was painful to watch because just like in the past, it was just waiting for the Spurs to snatch the game away. The Suns are to Duncan’s Spurs what the Cavs were to Jordan’s Bulls: foils.”
Frank Isola of the Daily News: “Gallinari made the transition to a new league, country and locker room easier for himself by following the unwritten code of respecting the veterans and never questioning their orders. David Lee remembers that when he, Channing Frye and Nate Robinson were all rookies, the veterans picked on Robinson because he once joked that he wasn’t going to do some of the things required of first-year players. ‘You know Nate, he said one thing and that was it,’ Lee joked. ‘Me and Channing didn’t have it as bad as Nate had it.’ The veterans have gone easy on Gallinari for several reasons: they sympathize with his arriving for training camp with a bad back that sidelined him nearly three months of the season. If anything, Gallinari earned their respect with the amount of time and effort he put into his rehabilitation. Plus, the players generally like Gallinari, whom they regard as confident but not arrogant. It says a lot about the locker room to embrace and not resent a player considered part of the franchise’s future when most of the current players, especially the veterans, won’t be around in two years.”
Patrick Hayes of MLive.com: “On the season, the Pistons are being out-rebounded by opponents 1,816-1,784, or about .72 rebounds per game. That is 20th on the league. The three best teams in the league all happen to be in the top five in rebounding margin. The only teams that can be called contenders ranked 15th or below in the category are New Orleans and San Antonio. Simply put, winning teams do not get out-rebounded. Now, what about games in which Amir plays 20 minutes or more? The Pistons are 8-4 in those games and are +20 in rebounding margin, out-rebounding opponents by 1.7 per game (or a nearly 2.5 rebound difference than games when Amir plays 20 or fewer minutes). And the number would be higher if not for the Oklahoma City debacle, in which the Pistons were out-rebounded by 17. A +1.7 differential would put them ninth in the league. Not Boston or Cleveland level, but much more competitive.” [Via Detroit Bad Boys]
Michael Murhphy of the Houston Chronicle: “Rockets forward Ron Artest was discussing the Rockets’ progress over the course of the season, insisting they still had much to learn. ‘We’re in elementary school right now,’ he said. ‘How do you go from elementary school to PhD beyond midseason? I don’t know, but we’re going to try and do it. We’re going to try and make it happen.’ Artest then paused for a few moments and was apparently struck by the profundity of his quote. ‘Did you like that analogy?’ he said, laughing. ‘I don’t know where that came from. I’ve been around Shane (Battier) too much.’”
Sekou K Smith of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution: “As of Jan. 26, the Hawks ranked first in the entire NBA in net points in the fourth quarter (+2.4) and fourth quarter winning percentage (63%), two sure signs of an accomplished team that has the pieces and parts to excel with the game on the line. The teams behind them in fourth quarter net points are, in order, Cleveland, Portland, Orlando, New Orleans, Philadelphia, the Lakers, Utah, Charlotte and Phoenix. The teams behind them in fourth quarter winning percentage – Dallas, New Orleans, Cleveland, Orlando, Portland, Philadelphia, Charlotte, New Jersey and Milwaukee. On the flip side, the Hawks rank 20th in net points in the first quarter (-1) and 18th in first quarter winning percentage (44%), two more clear statistical indicators of the (mostly) elite in regards to teams that come out and establish themselves from the start and don’t waste time toying around and easing into anything.”
Adam Lauridsen for the San Jose Mercury News: “Don Nelson kicked off a Thursday radio interview by announcing that he doesn’t have a very good team. After Wednesday’s collapse against the Mavericks, I don’t think he’ll get much dissent on that evaluation. He followed up the knock on his squad by stressing that the most important aspect of the season now is to determine who stays and what direction the team moves in the future. Again, no disagreement there. Finally, in an effort to explain Wednesday’s defeat, Nelson argued that Ellis’ return — given his ongoing recuperation and lack of familiarity with the team — is going to make the squad worse before things get better. Once again, I’m in complete agreement with Nelson and willing to take whatever ugly losses come our way now if they help us get Ellis back up to full speed and integrated with the team. Where I fundamentally break with Nelson, however, is his unwillingness to apply the same leniency and long-term approach he’s taken with Ellis to the rest of the youth on his team.”
Tom Enlund of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: “There are statistics for all occasions in the National Basketball Association but one number speaks volumes about how the Milwaukee Bucks’ season has gone so far. The Bucks have a 14-4 record in games in which the opponents shoot less than 44%. ‘If we want to win, there it is,’ coach Scott Skiles said. ‘That’s what we’ve got to do. Our defense is much improved but we need it now. We need to understand that. Some days it seems like we do and some days it seems like we don’t, which is typical of trying to turn us around. We really need to let that sink in.’ What that means is that it was unacceptable to let the Indiana Pacers shoot 51.9% Wednesday night – and 57.1% in the first quarter – in their victory over the Bucks. Milwaukee’s defensive field-goal percentage for the season is 45.6%, which is considerably higher than Skiles’ standard for excellence and ranks them 18th in the league.”
Doug Smith of the Toronto Star: “They are provided help with their bodies and their diets, their jump shots and their dribbling. Now the Raptors can get assistance for something just as important: their minds. The team has hired noted sports psychologist Dr. Dana Sinclair as a consultant, giving the players, coaches and staff access to an expert to help improve performance at every level. ‘You want to give your players the best tools possible to put them in a situation to succeed or maximize their talents and that’s what this is about,’ said Raptors president and general manager Bryan Colangelo. Sinclair, an Ottawa- and Cambridge-educated partner in Human Performance International – a firm that specializes in human resource management and performance enhancement, according to its website – has been working with the Raptors for a couple of months now, spending time at practices and games (she was seated behind the bench in New Jersey on Tuesday night) and being available to anyone who wants to take advantage of her expertise.”
Howard Beck of The New York Times: “In better times, entry to a Knicks game required a gold credit card and a bank account with at least one comma. Now all fans need is a pair of scissors and a hammer to smash the piggy bank. Over the last few months, the Knicks have entered the coupon era. A recent clip-and-save promotion advertised savings of 40 percent on January games at Madison Square Garden. Cutting along the dotted lines also entitled frugal fans to a free box of popcorn. They are extreme measures for extreme times, a reflection of the nation’s economic recession and the Knicks’ own struggles to become respectable again.”
Mary Lynne Vellinga of the Sacramento Bee: “The NBA’s urgent effort to get a new arena for the Kings built at Cal Expo has gone into slow motion because of the sputtering real estate economy. ‘There’s no lending out there right now, so real estate development is absolutely flat,’ said NBA point person John Moag. Moag said this week that the NBA and Cal Expo likely will push forward with planning for a mixed-use project at the fairgrounds that would include an arena and a revamped venue for the State Fair. The two parties expect to seek proposals from developers in March, he said. But actual construction is unlikely to occur until the real estate economy improves.”
Ken Berger of CBSSports.com: “Other very real and economically driven factors could completely change the expected free-agent landscape in 2010. Depending on how the economy goes, the NBA could see massive changes in the next two years, with small-market teams moving or financially strapped owners being forced to sell. We can’t predict the free-agent strategies of owners who aren’t even in the NBA yet, nor can anyone say how existing owners might change course amid freefalling revenues. We have no choice but to leave those unknowns out of the equation. Last — and this is important — the potential 2010 free-agent pool could be enhanced by an inordinate number of restricted free agents accepting qualifying offers as opposed to extensions this summer, for the sole purpose of getting a piece of the 2010 pie.”
