The Fundamentals

Chris McCosky of The Detroit News:  “Here’s what Iverson said: ‘How many minutes did I play? It seemed way, way, way less than that. Eighteen minutes? Come on, man. I can play 18 minutes with my eyes closed and with a 100-pound truck on my back. It’s a bad feeling, man. I’m wondering what they rushed me back for? For that? It’s a bad time for me mentally.’ There are so many things wrong about what he said, the least of them being the 100-pound truck. What is that, a Tonka toy? Rushed him back? He left the team Feb. 26. Hardly anybody saw him again until last week. He didn’t do one single basketball-related exercise for a month. So he comes back, clearly rusty, clearly not in game shape, and he complains about playing 18 minutes on the front end of a back-to-back. Unbelievable. Then he has the audacity to follow-up his rant by saying he doesn’t want to vent, that he’s trying to stay positive and focus on the big picture. The statement loses credibility when it comes after he’s already vented. Iverson keeps saying things like, ‘because of who I am,’ and, ‘a person with my resume and all the things I’ve done.’ The issue isn’t what he’s done in the past, it’s what he’s done as a Piston, and that has been not much.”

Frank Dell’Apa and Marc J. Spears of The Boston Globe:  “Garnett was expected to gradually regain fitness and strength but apparently suffered a setback after playing a total of 67 minutes in four games. He struggled during the Celtics’ visit to Orlando last Wednesday (an 84-82 loss), then met with Ainge and Rivers before the visit to Atlanta Friday. He will miss his third game in succession when the Celtics host Charlotte tonight. ‘He’s not very happy about it,’ Rivers said. ‘He’s frustrated, but understanding, I will say that. But he didn’t fight it, which tells you as much as you need to know.’ Though Rivers hopes Garnett will return April 12 and will be ready for the playoffs, which begin April 20, even those target dates are in question. The fact that Garnett has acceded to the advice of Rivers, team physician Brian McKeown, and trainer Ed Lacerte indicates the severity of the problem.”

Brian Schmitz of the Orlando Sentinel:  “The Magic are 19-7 since Nelson tore the labrum in his right shoulder. They were 4-1 when he missed five games earlier in the season because of a sore hip. What does it all mean? ‘That’s why you have to have two or three other guys who can help carry you,’ General Manager Otis Smith said. Smith says Dwight Howard, Rashard Lewis and Hedo Turkoglu provide a sturdy foundation to weather the loss, but he would feel even better about his team’s title chances with Nelson in the lineup. Consider that Orlando, sans Nelson the last 26 games, is just 7-6 against current playoff-bound teams and 12-1 against non-playoff-bound clubs.”

Benjamin Hochman of The Denver Post:  “The Nuggets (49-26) have their best NBA record through 75 games, and they clinched a playoff spot for the sixth straight season. Only Dallas, Detroit and San Antonio have also been in the playoffs every year since 2003-04. Of course, of that group, only Denver hasn’t advanced to the second round. ‘We’re playing at an incredibly high level,’ Nuggets coach George Karl said. ‘Making the playoffs this early is a compliment to a lot of our veterans. Some of the guys who have been here before took a lot of scrutiny. A lot of people weren’t believing in us coming into the season. We rallied together, and we’re on the verge of a special regular season, and hopefully get over the hump on the playoffs.’ And with San Antonio’s perplexing Tuesday loss to Oklahoma City, the Nuggets are in second place in the Western Conference, leading the Spurs and Rockets by a half-game.”

Andrew Perna of RealGM:  “On the surface, when looking at their losing record (31-43) and reading about their financial struggles, you might consider Indiana to be a sinking franchise. Looking deeper, that’s far from the case. ‘Our players are playing hard, and overall I think we’re satisfied with the progress that we’ve made as franchise and a team,’ the general manager said. Morway isn’t simply patting his player’s on the back. They truly have played hard this season, frequently shorthanded. Twenty of their 64 games have been decided by three points or fewer, a mark no other team in the NBA can touch. Indiana is 8-12 in such contests, while San Antonio, the team that has taken part in the second-most close contests, is 11-6.”

Ira Winderman of the South Florida Sun-Sentinel:  “As his players gather in their pregame huddle tonight in Dallas, Heat coach Erik Spoelstra hopes the chant is specific and loud and clear. ‘Enough,’ he said. ‘Enough is enough.’ It had better be. It might be the only way the Heat stays afloat in its bid to avoid the Magic, Celtics or Cavaliers in the first round of the playoffs. For as much of a revival as the Heat has enjoyed from last season’s 15-67 finish, its road reality has been one of utter frustration. The Heat opens its three-game trip tonight against the Mavericks with a 13-23 road record. It not only is the second-worst among the league’s 16 teams currently seeded to make the playoffs, but is even worse than the road record of the Nets, the 12th-place team in the Eastern Conference.”

Phil Sheridan of the Philadelphia Inquirer:  “Instead of the fresh promise of good things to come, this has the stale feel of same old, same old. Maybe that’s because of the Brand hangover. Maybe it’s because the Eagles hogged the spotlight with a playoff run and then an exodus of star players. Maybe off-season interest in the Phillies is higher than usual, as it should be. Certainly Villanova has drawn the spotlight away for the last couple of weeks. None of this is meant as a knock on Ed Stefanski or Tony DiLeo. The former took the kind of bold shot on Brand that Eagles fans clamor to see every off-season. The latter took over a roster of wandering souls when Maurice Cheeks was fired and has the team playing pretty well without Brand. The Sixers won seven of nine games before a two-game losing streak applied a cool compress to the playoff-fevered fan base. OK, so that was a gross exaggeration. There was no playoff fever, and that’s the real issue here. The Sixers’ biggest problem – bigger even than what to do about Brand – is the sense of inertia about this team. The problems seem to be about the same year after year.”

Marc Berman of the New York Post:  “Al Harrington sat in the locker room last night before the game, soaking his feet in a mysterious bucket of green ice water. On a night the Knicks faced mathematical playoff elimination, Harrington sat carefree, laughing and wondering why the water was green. It’s like his first season with the Knicks — a mystery. Harrington put up lofty numbers, but didn’t make them better. He made them worse after being obtained for Jamal Crawford in November. In ‘The World According to Al,’ he is here for the long term, the referees are ‘picking on’ him and his former Warriors coach Don Nelson is ‘a gangster.’ With Harrington scoring 23 points last night against the Nuggets, the Knicks (29-46) lost for the ninth time in 10 games, 111-104, despite a second straight wild rally.”

Kevin Ding of the Orange County Register:  “Bynum has been advised that he showed poor judgment. But the Lakers know what matters. Before anyone jumps to any conclusions about Bynum’s lack of commitment to his craft, let’s remember the dominant basketball he was playing when he got hurt. There was no question whatsoever that he had worked to catapult his career forward – to the Lakers’ great benefit – even after he signed a $57 million contract before the season and could’ve eased off the pedal. It’s amazing how this is viewed as irresponsible just because it’s pointless. Jackson had both Scottie Pippen and Shaquille O’Neal deliberately delay offseason surgeries so that they missed big chunks of the regular season because they felt they deserved extra time off – with pay. Jackson knows about guys jeopardizing their team and their teammates, and this doesn’t come anywhere close.”

Dave D’Alessandro of The Star-Ledger:  “While Frank has succeeded masterfully in developing young players such as Devin Harris and Brook Lopez — which was the organization’s mission statement in October — the team hasn’t grown up fast enough to satisfy management’s timetable, judging by its 30-44 record. But if there is anything that sinks Frank after 5 1/2 seasons on the job, it would be his inability to turn Thorn’s personnel into a cohesive defensive unit this season. ‘We have been a bad defensive team all year,’ said Thorn, whose team is ranked 19th in scoring defense and 19th in field-goal defense. ‘Normally a team gets better over the course of time, but we have never been a good defensive team. Whether we don’t have the personnel to do it, or we don’t concentrate enough, or need more seasoning — I’m not sure. But we’ve never become a good defensive team.’”

Paul Coro of The Arizona Republic:  “The Suns are in line to be the first team to shoot better than 50 percent in consecutive seasons since the Chicago Bulls completed their first championship three-peat in 1992. But scoring alone won’t make for a remarkable run, because the Suns have defended poorly, allowing 49 percent shooting and an average of 117.6 points in the past five games. ‘We can’t let them just drive to the hole and drop it off all the time,’ center Shaquille O’Neal said. ‘Got to play hard. Got to help the helper.’ Gentry thought he had patched their holes with more use of a zone defense, but driving guards have picked apart the zone. ‘I’ve been really disappointed that we’ve had such breakdown in our zone,’ he said. ‘We have to do a better job of containing the ball out on the perimeter in our zone and not always try to defend dribble penetration.’”

Dave Feschuk of the Toronto Star:  “To see Calderon making a bid at the season-long record is, if you saw him arrive in Toronto as a rookie in 2005, only the latest evidence that genius is 90 per cent perspiration. It’s not that he was heaving up knuckleballs back then. He’d improved enough. But the difference between 85 per cent – which is what Calderon shot as a rookie – and 97.8 per cent is vast. And even as an NBA rookie, Calderon still had an obvious flaw in his shooting technique that spoke to his 16 per cent shooting from three-point range. They call it a flying elbow. Instead of his shooting arm pointing along the target line – the simplest and most efficient path for it to chart – it was cocked unhelpfully toward the sideline. Said Dave Hopla, the former Raptors shooting coach who now works with the Washington Wizards: ‘Once the elbow’s out, you can’t get good arc on the ball.’ So Calderon, though he’d already turned himself into a millionaire with his wayward-elbow shooting, did something that, Hopla will tell you, few NBA players ever do: He remade his shot.”

Ailene Voisin of the Sacaramento Bee:  “It was a grand finale for a 7-foot-1 prince of a man, a former King whose flaws and foibles only made him more human, made him seem a lot like everyone else. He was the ordinary guy who enjoyed an extraordinary life, the player who hid his cigarettes, who hated the weight room, who cried when he lost, but who wanted to stick around and play forever. But as was noted repeatedly during the 20-minute halftime festivities, Divac, 41, was much more than a gifted, multi-faceted center. He was a virtual pushover when it came to charities, and at his flopping best when it came to kids. He was involved in numerous charities throughout his six seasons in Sacramento, most of them involving children. Most recently, he established the Humanitarian Organization Divac (HOD) – a foundation that rebuilds and refurbishes homes for refugees in his homeland. His compassion – and his playfulness – endeared him to teammates wherever he played. There were the pranks, the one-liners, the amiable nature, and most significantly, the ability to distinguish between life and death, and life and sports.”