» March 4, 2009 7:36 PM | By Brandon Hoffman
- CelticsBlog: “The Celtics are running screens to get him free right at the spots he likes, especially fading to the corners and curling around the elbows. The main ball-control guys (namely Rajon Rondo, Paul Pierce and Kevin Garnett) are getting him the ball at the right time. Allen is stepping into his shots just the way he likes and often shooting with a bit of extra space. The added accuracy from deep is forcing opponents to work even harder to stay with one of the game’s all-time shooting greats, and he is taking advantage of that as well. So many times this season, we’ve seen Allen pass up a contested look outside to take a dribble or two toward the lane and then fluidly pull up to swish an elbow jumper. He has also excelled going to the basket, finishing an array of baby jumpers off the glass, traditional lay-ups and circus shots where he drives baseline, elevates as he goes under the basket, switches hands and finishes. The numbers reflect what the eyes observe about Ray’s increased comfort: He is shooting a career best 49.0 percent from the field, 40.8 percent from three-point land and 94.9 percent from the foul line, also a career high. All of those factors combine to give Allen a 63.3 percent true shooting mark. That’s insane.”
- Michael Jordan: Executive Of The Year. Josh Q makes a good argument. The Bobcats have turned things around this season. But given MJ’s history as General Manager, I’m not convinced that he deserves more credit than Larry Brown. Guys like Raja Bell, Boris Diaw, Sean Singletary and DeSagana Diop are Larry Brown type players, which leads me to believe that Brown — notorious for meddling in front office affairs — did most of the legwork to make those moves.
- Spike Lee on his pending documentary about Jordan: “In Michael’s last season in Chicago, a camera was with him every single day during that season. And the NBA has been sitting on this footage for years. I mean, phenomenal stuff. There’s just so much amazing material and they’ve been sitting on it. And they finally realized they needed a filmmaker to make it into a film. So I’m going to go back, cut that stuff, then interview the players, the people that were a part of that great run. So it’s a fascinating look at one of the greatest athletes of all time.” Spike also talks about his pending documentary featuring Kobe Bryant, which has been in the works since last season. [HT: BDL]
- WFNY: “In 27 games with the Cavaliers in 2008, Smith averaged eight points (on 51 percent shooting) to go with five rebounds. Many fans will recall the Cavs’ win over the Boston Celtics during Game 3 of the Eastern Conference Semifinals where Smith poured in 17 points with six rebounds a block in only 23 minutes of play. For a big man, Smith boasts an outstanding mid-range jump shot (vital to the Cavs’ offense) and has a career true shooting percentage over 50 percent. For those of you keeping track, Danny Ferry traded away Smith and Damon Jones for Mo Williams back in August. We now have Smith back with the team. Thus, discounting the fact that Smith had to spend a little stint in Oklahoma City, Ferry effectively traded Damon Jones for Mo Williams. Not too bad, eh?”
- Steve Luhm of The Salt Lake Tribune: “The Jazz play seven of their final 18 games on the second night of a back-to-back, starting next week at Atlanta. Among the back-to-backers are crucial road games at Phoenix (March 25) and Portland (March 31). Personally, I think the back-to-back games have become a huge competitive issue in the NBA. It escalated when the NBA agreed to schedule only two or three games on Thursday nights, in order to give television partner TNT a one-night monopoly on the product and — theoretically — improve ratings. This marketing strategy does not impact a team like the Lakers who, because of Kobe Bryant and their broad appeal, play nine times on Thursday night this season. Teams with less appeal to TNT, however, have their 82-game schedules compressed into six-day weeks. This results in more back-to-back games for the non-glamour teams, which is a huge disadvantage during six-month regular season.”
- I linked to this at RealGM earlier today, but it deserves mention again. Shaquille O’Neal did the seemingly unthinkable last night. He flopped when attempting to defend Dwight Howard. Basketbawful breaks it down here. Bawful even labels the play a “flop of Divacian proportions.” Ouch. That’s as bad as it gets.
- Ian Thomsen of SI.com: “Dumars was hoping to rebuild the Pistons without having to ultimately reinvent them. He wants to bring in two or three ready-made talents to return Detroit to contention next season. ‘I’m trying to avoid running the tires completely off,’ he said of hoping to dodge a down cycle that bottoms out at the top of the lottery. The Spurs have remained relevant by plugging in younger pieces around Tim Duncan, Manu Ginobili and Tony Parker — a threesome that is far more dynamic than Detroit’s surviving trio of Hamilton, Prince and Stuckey. But Dumars believes in the system and the availability of talent to plug into it. Don’t forget that he originally signed Billups as a free agent to the mid-level exception. ‘We’re not going to change our model in order to lay the success or failure on one superstar,” Dumars said. ‘We’re going to continue the model that we’ve had here and that has worked for a long time. We will always try to build one of the deepest teams in the NBA, which is what we’ve done over the years. ‘I’m not averse to a star. But it has got to be a star who can flourish in this type of environment, this type of culture that we’ve become accustomed to here.’”
- Kevin Pelton of Basketball Prospectus: “Better teams definitely tend to win more close games than weak ones, but the relationship is hardly perfect. The correlation is just .454 (a correlation of 1 or -1 means two variables are perfectly in sync, while a correlation of 0 means no relationship whatsoever). There are two extreme schools of thought on close games–those that believe they are primarily decided by luck and those that feel they are primarily decided by teams and demonstrate their true ability. Neither position is supported by the data. Instead, what the results tend to show is that the difference between good teams and bad teams is mitigated in close games.”
Category: Boston Celtics, Chicago Bulls, Cleveland Cavaliers, Denver Nuggets, Detroit Pistons, Indiana Pacers, Los Angeles Lakers, Philadelphia 76ers, Phoenix Suns, Points in the Paint, San Antonio Spurs
Tags: Allen Iverson, Boston Celtics, Charley Barkley, Chicago Bulls, Cleveland Cavaliers, Denver Nuggets, Detroit Pistons, Indiana Pacers, Joe Dumars, Joe Smith, Larry Bird, Los Angeles Lakers, Magic Johnson, Michael Jordan, NBA Teams, Philadelphia 76ers, Phoenix Suns, Points in the Paint, Ray Allen, Reggie Miller, San Antonio Spurs, Shaquille O'Neal
Discuss in Forum
March 4th, 2009 at 11:40 pm
Man, I picked a bad week to be out of the country unable to watch games and with a slow internet connection, there’s been so much good NBA stuff going on.
I continue to have mixed feelings about Shaq. Sometimes he comes off as a jovial guy who is smarter than he lets on, and other times he’s just a jerk and an idiot. He’s certainly one of the most interesting figures the game has ever seen, I just wish we got more of Good Shaq and less of Bad Shaq.
Henry Abbott over at Truehoop has a fantastic series today on how officials call traveling that is an absolute must-read. I wish he’d said a bit more about the rampant switching of the pivot foot that is allowed. More than anything, that’s the no-call in the NBA that makes me maddest. It’s not that hard guys, you get one pivot foot, you aren’t allowed to change it without dribbling.
That Basketball Geek article really has some great data. I’ve been meaning to do something similar, but I just haven’t had time to find the data and process it. He’s doing some really cool work over on that site.
I love Josh Q from back on the FoxSports blog, but I think he’s dead wrong on this one. Best case scenario, the Cats end up with a 7 or 8 seed this year and maybe next. Their ceiling is absolutely no higher than a bottom playoff team (and lets not forget that they probably wouldn’t be in the playoff race if Milwaukee and Indiana weren’t decimated by injuries). In order to be slightly less crappy, they made 3 trades, all of which hurt their cap space in the short and long term, and they jettisoned one of their few quality young players, Jared Dudley. They basically said “we’re ok with being mediorce-to-bad for the next 4 years.”