Mike Bresnahan and Broderick Turner of the Los Angeles Times: “The Lakers and their league-best 42-10 record reassembled at their El Segundo training facility Monday, cognizant of the possibilities in the near future but also aware that 17 of their final 30 regular-season games are on the road. If the Lakers go a modest 20-10 down the stretch, San Antonio would have to go 27-4 to tie them for the best record in the Western Conference. In other words, the Lakers look like solid picks to take the West’s No. 1 playoff seeing. Earning home-court advantage throughout the postseason will be more of a challenge. The Boston Celtics (44-11) play only 27 more regular-season games, giving their veterans plenty of time to rest between tipoff times. The Cleveland Cavaliers (40-11) play 16 of their last 31 games at home, where they were 23-0 until the Lakers beat them on Feb. 8.”
Jeff McDonald of the San Antonio Express-News: “At 35-16, they are four games ahead of the field in the Southwest Division, and have established themselves as a strong No. 2 to the L.A. Lakers in the Western Conference. But Popovich — whose team, fresh off the All-Star break, resumes its rodeo road trip tonight against the Knicks — knows the Spurs will be judged solely on how deep they can play into the postseason. For that reason, he will continue to nitpick his team toward perfection. Good thing for the Spurs there is plenty of room, and plenty of time, for improvement. Four months into the season, they are still breaking in three players new to their regular rotation — Roger Mason Jr., George Hill and Matt Bonner. Team defense is like a ballet. Each performer must perform his steps exactly right, in perfect time. If one dancer pirouettes instead of plies, ‘Swan Lake’ just doesn’t look the same. As such, the Spurs’ most glaring defensive troubles haven’t been glaring at all. They have been subtle.”
Ivan Carter of the Washington Post: “According to one rival general manager, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he did not want to go on the record about another team, the Wizards’ struggles this season can really be boiled down to the absence of Haywood, Mason and Daniels. ‘To me, that team overachieved to win 43 games last year,’ the general manager said. ‘Haywood was key to the defense obviously, but guys like Mason and Daniels and DeShawn Stevenson, who had a pretty good year, they were huge also. The difference this year is that you’ve got a bunch of kids in there with Butler and Jamison and it’s just not the same. It’s hard to win with that much change, especially when you’re relying on young guys.’ A rival scout, who also requested anonymity because he did not want to be quoted talking about another team, put it this way: ‘No knock on those guys, because under the right circumstances they can help a team, but let’s be honest. If you’re starting Mike James, Darius Songaila and Dominic McGuire, how good are you?’”
Jeff Eisenberg of The Press-Enterprise: “It’s easy to assume that Walton’s basketball IQ and passing acumen are products of his bloodlines. But as NBA legend Bill Walton’s four sons have been known to say, ‘they’ve yet to find a gene related to passing in the human body.’ Luke attributes his success less to nature than nurture, crediting the passing and footwork drills he did as a kid, the afternoons he and his brothers spent in the Celtics locker room, and the way that inspired him to model his game after Larry Bird. From hiding Kevin McHale’s jersey to putting ice in Bird’s sneakers, the Walton brothers caused so much trouble during their dad’s two seasons in Boston that the franchise barred kids from the locker room afterward. ‘All my dad’s teammates were great to us,’ said Luke, who was 5 when Bill joined the Celtics in 1985. ‘Looking up to those guys as your role models, you try to imitate them when you’re in the backyard playing. You do it year after year after year, and before you know it, they’re influencing the way you play.’”
Lisa Dillman of the Los Angeles Times: “The seventh pick overall in the 2008 draft, Gordon has been one of the bright spots in a checkered Clippers season dotted with injuries. January belonged to the multifaceted Gordon, and now comes the homestretch as he looks to avoid the Rookie Wall and tries to put down building blocks for 2009-10. Gordon averaged 21.9 points per game in January and was selected the Western Conference rookie of the month; he also became the Clippers’ go-to guy (admittedly, a small selection given the injuries to marquee players) and entered the conversation for NBA rookie of the year. If he was not on the same page as the likes of Chicago’s Derrick Rose and Memphis’ O.J. Mayo, then he at least appeared in the same chapter. ‘Derrick’s got the ball in his hand the whole game,’ said Neil Olshey, Clippers assistant general manager. ‘So does O.J. for the most part. Eric’s out there with All-Stars. He’s sharing the ball with Baron Davis, Zach [Randolph], Marcus Camby and Al Thornton.’”
Ross Siler of The Salt Lake Tribune: “The tan was the obvious giveaway Monday evening of how much Deron Williams managed to get away from basketball over the All-Star break, spending three days on the golf course in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. Not only hadn’t he heard that coach Jerry Sloan had been selected Friday as a finalist for the Basketball Hall of Fame, Williams hadn’t looked beyond Thursday’s game against Boston on the Jazz’s upcoming schedule. Yet with the Jazz reconvening for the final 29 games of the regular season, Williams’ challenge will be recapturing the momentum with which he entered the break after five consecutive 30-point scoring games. With Carlos Boozer (knee surgery) and Andrei Kirilenko (ankle surgery) out, Williams has carried the Jazz in their absence. His streak of 30-point games in the franchise’s longest since Karl Malone had six straight from Feb. 18 to Feb. 28, 1997, in his first MVP season.”
Jerome Soloman of the Houston Chronicle: “The Rockets won’t admit it, but surely by now they have figured out that this will not work. This Yao Ming-Tracy McGrady thing, that is. The talented big man. The talented wing man. Batman and Robin. Their Batman isn’t dominant enough; their Robin, while at times seemingly part of a circus, is no longer a Flying Grayson. (And let’s not even get into their friends’ not being quite super enough to carry the oft-injured stars.) The Rockets’ Dynamic Duo has been the diagnosis-needed duo. This is Year 5 of Yao-McGrady, and the only parade they have been involved in is the endless one to Memorial Hermann to have injuries checked out. This is likely to be the fourth straight season that one or both have missed at least 25 games due to injury. (Tonight makes it 19 down and six to go for McGrady.)”
Brian Schmitz of the Orlando Sentinel: “Dwight Howard’s mantra is simple: Dominate. ‘I try to dominate every night,’ he has said. ‘Dominate, go home, put the [ Superman] cape on the charger. And then go dominate some more.’ He says he even has the word on pieces of paper around his house. As the Orlando Magic (38-13) begin their post-break march tonight into the postseason, Coach Stan Van Gundy plans on holding Howard to the loftiest standard. And that’s saying something for a 23-year-old center who just returned from playing in his third all-star game and currently leads the league in rebounding and blocked shots. With point guard Jameer Nelson likely out for the season and the Magic struggling — they’re 5-5 in their past 10 games — Van Gundy says he needs more.”
Kelly Dwyer of Yahoo! Sports: Most Valuable Player … so far?
Ken Berger of CBSSports.com: “The more Nash talked Monday about being ‘optimistic’ and ‘looking forward,’ the more you realized how much he must fear that the Suns are broken beyond repair. Nash said he expects the roster to remain intact through Thursday’s trade deadline, but nobody asked him if that’s good or bad. I’m not sure he knows. All of this — every shred of it — can be traced back to the trade for O’Neal, the gamble that supposedly was well worth taking. Worth what? Worth alienating D’Antoni, who couldn’t get to New York fast enough once he realized there were forces beyond his control dictating the Suns’ future? Worth dumping Amare Stoudemire for expiring contracts and other rubbish, when Phoenix would’ve been sitting pretty today with Marion’s expiring contract had they not rolled the dice with Shaq? Worth turning Nash into a shell of himself at a time when he should’ve been feted in the city he’s treated to so much excitement?”
Chris Mannix of CNNSI.com: “At Monday’s news conference, the Suns all but said that they planned to bring back D’Antoni’s up-tempo style of play. But the man they chose to lead it, Alvin Gentry, is hardly a D’Antoni disciple. Gentry, who is as known for his classic zinger of former No. 1 pick Michael Olowokandi as he is for his coaching skills, coached under D’Antoni for four seasons and is well-versed in the Seven Seconds or Less system. But in Gentry’s three previous head coaching stops (Miami, Detroit and the LA Clippers) he has not presided over many running teams. According to basketballreference.com, only one Gentry-coached team (the 1999-2000 Pistons) has finished in the top-5 in pace factor, an estimate of the number of possessions per 48 minutes by a team. In fact, Gentry’s teams regularly finished in the bottom half of the league in that category. While Gentry will certainly have the horses to implement a running system (specifically, Steve Nash), he is not as well versed as D’Antoni — who never finished lower than fourth in pace factor in his four full seasons with the Suns — in the subtle nuances that make a good up-tempo team a great one.”
Kristie Ackert of the Daily News: “‘It’s tough, they had high expectations and didn’t live up to it,’ D’Antoni said Monday of the Suns. ‘Something always happened – a trade, a firing, something always happened.’ With his Knicks 21-31 and the Spurs coming into the Garden tonight, D’Antoni would not use the Suns’ very public and costly move to say he was vindicated, but he has said in the past that the Suns’ front office did not appreciate what his teams accomplished. D’Antoni averaged 58 wins over four full seasons coaching the Suns, using an up-tempo offense that made Phoenix the most entertaining team to watch in the NBA. It also won the Suns three Pacific Division titles and took them to the Western Conference finals twice, but did not get them to the next level. D’Antoni feels it was bad luck – an injury to Joe Johnson in 2005, the 2007 suspensions of Amare Stoudemire and Boris Diaw in a playoff series against the Spurs – that stood in the way.”
Rick Bonnell of The Charlotte Observer: “A kinder, gentler Larry Brown? Charlotte Bobcats guard Raja Bell sure thinks so. This is Bell’s second stint playing for Brown. Bell started his career with Brown and the Philadelphia 76ers from 2000 through 2002. ‘More mellow,’ Bell said recently. ‘From the first couple of days (after Bell’s trade from Phoenix to Charlotte), I could see a different guy. When he needs to yell, he will. But in day-to-day demeanor, he’s a different guy.’ Bell says Brown is no less an authority figure. But he’s more collaborative, less strident, less prone to overreact and wear out players with constant criticism.”
Mike Baldwin of The Oklahoman: “Bob Woolf, a gymnastics coach living in Arizona, wore the gorilla suit in 1988. He used a trampoline to dunk, jumped through a ring of fire, rode motorcycles and once catapulted himself 25 feet for a dunk at the 1995 All-Star Game. ‘Everybody is like lemmings,’ Raymond said. ‘That evolution has been a great success. The NBA is the best at valuing its characters. That’s why I train people to be acrobatic performers.’ Mascots also are part of the community. They attend 300 to 400 functions a year, including parties, school functions, community events and visits to children in hospitals. ‘The number of children I’ve seen die from a terminal illness is tough,’ mascot Rob Wicall told the Baltimore Sun. Wicall currently wears the Spurs’ Coyote costume and spent two seasons as the Wizards’ G-Wiz. ‘But that kind of stuff is amazing. When you make someone in that situation smile or laugh, you realize what’s so cool about the job.’”
Jeff Rabjohns of the Indianapolis Star: “Tinsley, involved in a number of off-court and legal scrapes, hasn’t been with the Pacers this season. NBA players often have guaranteed contracts, so even if Tinsley loses in arbitration and doesn’t play, he would be paid $14 million by the Pacers for the 2009-10 and ‘10-11 seasons. He turns 31 on Feb. 28. The union wants to force the Pacers to trade, release or buy out his contract. The trade deadline is Thursday. ‘If they warehouse him for three years and he can’t play, it pretty much terminates his career. I’m not inclined to stand by and let that happen without some judgment being rendered by some arbiter,’ Hunter said.”
Dave Feschuk of the Toronto Star: “Chris Bosh didn’t practise or play at the NBA all-star weekend, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t work up an appetite. Hungry and searching for a decent restaurant in relatively unfamiliar Phoenix, he didn’t consult the Yellow Pages or surf the Internet or phone Bryan Colangelo, the foodie of a Raptors general manager who has spent most of his life in the Arizona desert. Bosh, instead, used his BlackBerry smartphone to solicit recommendations on Twitter, the social networking site that, judging from the number of times it was referenced by hoop types this past weekend, is becoming ever more popular. Bosh’s short message – known as a ‘tweet,’ in the parlance – reached the fellow Twitterers who have signed up to ‘follow’ Bosh on the service. ‘I got about 10 replies,’ said Bosh, somewhat incredulous. And though the tech-savvy Raptor confessed to taking exactly none of the suggestions – ‘We just went to, like, the Cheesecake Factory’ – he has professed his devotion to Twitter by posting regular updates on everything from his whereabouts to his current state of being. All of his updates fall into the parameters of the so-called microblog: They’re at most 140 characters in length and text-based.”
J.A. Adande of ESPN.com: “If Iverson can make a concession to age then so can I, meaning I didn’t stay out as late or party as hard as I did when I first started coming to these things in 1994. I did make it to LeBron and Jay-Z’s ‘Two Kings’ party Saturday night, which was notable not only for the expected attendees such as Spike Lee, Rick Fox and Pau Gasol, but for the random factor of Richard Moll (Bull from ‘Night Court’) and Nets general manager Rod Thorn. Then I realized that technically Jay-Z, as minority owner of the Nets, is Thorn’s boss. So Thorn was doing what any good employee would do by putting in an appearance at the boss’ event. Not only that, he’s a repeat visitor. Mark Cuban, the type of front office executive you would expect to see at a LeBron/Jay-Z party, said Thorn attended the first one in New Orleans last year. In fact, Cuban said, that’s where they finalized the Jason Kidd/Devin Harris trade. ‘It’s true,’ Thorn confirmed the next day. ‘We did.’”
