Brian Schmitz of the Orlando Sentinel: “Magic center Dwight Howard said he was ‘shocked’ at some of the things Suns center Shaquille O’Neal has said about him. ‘I try not to think about it. Some of the things I hear, I am shocked to hear him say that,’ said Howard, his trademark smile gone. What has Shaq said? Well, it’s all pretty much a variation on the same adolescent theme: I’m the original NBA Superman and Dwight can’t carry my, er, cape. ‘You know, it’s normal for a kid to copycat his idol, but you know he can never be this good,’ Shaq has said. Shaq was asked by CBSSports’ Ken Berger recently if Howard was the closest thing to being the next Shaq. O’Neal scoffed. ‘No. Not at all. He’s a good player. He can jump. But no,’ he said. ‘I was the type of player that they had to have secret meetings and change the rules and do all that. Probably never be another me. He’s a good player, but everything he’s done, I’ve invented. So I’m not impressed.’”
Michael Rosenberg of the Detroit Free Press: “Chauncey Billups was not just an All-Star for the Pistons. He was their captain, their soul. While several of his teammates bristled at Flip Saunders’ coaching, Billups was the glue holding Saunders to the rest of the roster — without Billups, it seemed like the whole thing could have fallen apart. Of course, he never said that then. But he can say it now. ‘Yeah, I did, I felt that way,’ he said. ‘It could have really got out of hand, probably, had it not been for me trying to keep everybody together.’ There is a perception that the problem was between Rasheed Wallace and Saunders. That’s not really the case. ’Sheed was just vocal and visual about his (frustration),’ Billups said. ‘I can’t say it was all Rasheed or it was only Rasheed. But even with that, I just still feel like that should have never come into play. I feel like no matter what the coach is doing, how you feel or whatever, you can’t cheat your teammates and not give maximum effort because you’re mad at the coach.’”
Bill Livingston of The Plain Dealer: “The Cavaliers talk about team chemistry endlessly. The ‘family atmosphere’ is the thing. The players have even gone to see movies together on the road and had sleepovers on off days at home. The sleepovers part isn’t true, but it might be soon. Basketball is the most interdependent of the major sports. It has no offense/defense segregation, like football. It is not an individual sport in a team framework, like baseball. In baseball, if a second baseman (say, Roberto Alomar) resents a popular shortstop (say, Omar Vizquel, just to pick a name out of a hat), he still has to throw the ball to him on a 4-6-3 double play. Players don’t have to get along to succeed. Basketball is different. The most basic litmus test for chemistry on the court is ball movement. A team that shares the ball has players who know their roles and accept them. But there is another test — standing up for your teammates.”
Steve Bulpett of the Boston Herald: “As Marbury spoke, he still was breathing hard even though he’d been on a diligent workout regimen all year. But this was, he was realizing, quite different. This was Celtics abuse. ‘Oh yeah, but it’s good,’ Marbury said, summoning the energy for a brief smile. ‘It was a hard practice today defensively. Defensively this team is amazing. They work at it. They get after it. That’s what it’s about. That’s why they won the championship.’ For now, the road is not smooth for someone anointed as a star/savior in all his other basketball stops. ‘I know I’m going to have hiccups,’ Marbury said. ‘Adjusting to these guys is difficult because they play at a high level. It’s not a level where I’m used to. I haven’t played at this level. I’ve never played at a championship level before, so for me, adjusting my style of play, adjusting how I prepare . . . it’s all the same as far as going in with a mind-set, but doing things the way they do things is (what’s) very important.’”
Maurice Brooks of ESPN.com: “Wade has most of the credentials necessary to bring home the Maurice Podoloff Trophy at the end of the season. But as the Cavaliers’ 107-100 win over the Heat showed Monday, no matter how brilliantly he performs, he can’t elevate Miami to the level needed for him to pass Bryant and James in the MVP pecking order. Imagine getting in a fight and just as you are starting to get the upper hand on your opponent, all of his/her friends jump in. Your friends are there, too, but instead of helping you, they go MIA (no pun intended). That is what the second half of the Heat and Cavs reminded me of. Wade was beating James down statistically through three periods, and then Mo Williams joined the fray in the fourth. Next thing you know, it was Wade and the Heat who were getting pummeled.”
Rick Bonnell of The Charlotte Observer: “Boris Diaw always prioritizes making teammates happy. On this team, the best way to do that might be to shoot a little more and pass a little less. As a Phoenix Sun, Diaw was surrounded by closers, a half-dozen guys who made big shots. As a Charlotte Bobcat, his options are more limited. So Diaw has been coaxed lately to look more for his own shot. Not coincidentally, the Bobcats came off a Western trip on a three-game winning streak. They hope to maintain that momentum tonight, at home against the Chicago Bulls. The numbers tell the tale. In the past four games (three wins and a competitive loss to the Suns), the Bobcats averaged 103 points, 10.2 better than their league-low average this season of 92.8. In that same span, power forward Diaw averaged 21.8 points on 65 percent shooting from the field and 64 percent from 3-point range. With productivity like that, who wouldn’t want him shooting?”
Neil Paine of Basketball-Reference.com: What If… Grant Hill
Kate Fegan of the Philadelphia Inquirer: “Any NBA player who has the amount of time the Sixers are giving is going to be a better shooter than his percentage. Great, so the Sixers are forcing a 30.0 percent three-point shooter to shoot. But they’re also giving him such a length of time — much more than he is used to during his 30.0 percent shooting season — that he becomes a 10-15 percent higher shooter. At that point, how are the Sixers playing the percentages? It’s been a bad stretch for the Sixers — 2-6 since the all-star break. But what’s been especially frustrating is the poor coverage on the defensive end, without ownership after the game. A team does not shoot 62.5 percent on you if you’ve ‘contested’ all their three-pointers. And you aren’t ‘picking your poison’ if you’re swallowing all the poisons. Still, the Sixers are 29-30 and in seventh spot in the Eastern Conference. Earlier this season, they endured a similar stretch and then went 14-4 over an 18-game. It can be done. And the Sixers have four days before their next game. Although DiLeo would not specifically commit to needing to work on defending the three-pointer (he said they needed to improve the ‘little things,’ like loose balls, etc.) if they don’t figure out a way to defend the perimeter — whether it’s at the point of inception with the pick-and-roll, or with failed defensive rotations — this outside game is going to continue to be a problem into the postseason.”
John DeShazier of The Times-Picayune: “It’s a disturbing trend the Hornets have wandered into during a winning streak that had reached a season-high five games, squandering double-digit leads in the second half, allowing opponents to storm back and even to take late leads. But it would have been a lot more disturbing if they had lost the games. So at the risk of appearing a tad blase over the way the Hornets have finished, for now it’s imperative to stress that the object is that they finish with more points than the opponent, regardless of how that’s accomplished. There’s no day of the week on which winning pretty counts for more than does winning ugly. And right now the Hornets, 37-22 after Monday’s road win over Philadelphia, really are getting the hang of posting wins that are hard on the eyes, having gotten a taste of the method against Sacramento and having taken it to new heights (or depths) against Milwaukee and the Nets. Still, what most matters is ground has been gained, and will continue to be gained as long as New Orleans wins. What tops the priority list is that the Hornets are within striking distance of Southwest Division-leading San Antonio and jockeying for the No. 4 seed in the Western Conference with Houston.”
Paul Forrester of SI.com: “When leading scorer Michael Redd suffered torn knee ligaments in late January, who didn’t think Milwaukee’s season was on life support? And when starting center Andrew Bogut joined him on the inactive list two weeks later with a stress fracture in his back, shouldn’t that have spelled the end? (For good measure, starting point guard Luke Ridnour broke his right thumb Feb. 5 and missed five games.) But with the season headed into the final quarter, the Bucks are still hanging around under coach Scott Skiles. They entered the week with a one-game lead over the Bulls for the eighth and final playoff spot in the Eastern Conference. Milwaukee (29-33) is 7-8 since Redd went down for the rest of the season and 5-6 since the departure of Bogut, who might not return this season, either. ‘The easiest thing to do would have been to mail in the season,’ forward Charlie Villanueva said. ‘We’ve been dealt a bad hand as far as the injuries to Andrew and Mike, but the fact that we’ve kept this team together and believed in one another shows a maturity on our part. ‘It starts with Coach Skiles, though. He believes that whoever is out there on the floor can win the game, and that has become contagious.’”
John Smallwood of the Philadelphia Daily News: “For the Pistons, that’s consecutive victories on the homecourt of two of the top three teams in the Eastern Conference without Iverson, who will miss tonight’s game against Denver as he has his back examined in Washington, D.C. ‘We’ve played our best ball when we’ve had guys out,’ Pistons coach Michael Curry told reporters after the Boston game. ‘When we have all our components, we still have got to find a way to play the exact way we played this game – the way we focused on what we were doing defensively, the way we shared the ball on the offensive end. ‘We were good. We didn’t stay on one side of floor. A lot of times, the secondary guys got the shot. Guys were moving the ball, they were willing passers. We took care of the basketball and gave ourselves a good chance on the offensive end.’ If you close your eyes, can’t you picture Larry Brown mouthing Curry’s words? The only thing Curry didn’t do was invoke Brown’s catch phrase of ‘playing the right way.’”
