Points in the Paint

» April 6, 2009 6:52 PM | By Brandon Hoffman

  • Michael Jordan on his Hall of Fame selection:  “Hall of Fame?” Jordan asked. “To me it’s like, OK, it’s over and done with. It’s pretty much done — you can’t ever put a uniform back on. It’s totally the end of your basketball career. It’s a great accomplishment, I don’t walk away from it. But I’ve never envisioned myself really wanting to be up here so quickly. I wanted it to be when I was 70 years old, or something, 80 years old, but I’m 45 and I still think I can play.”
  • Sam Smith shares some of his favorite memories of Jordan:  “There was those half a dozen threes and the shrug to open the 1992 playoffs when everyone was saying Clyde Drexler really was the MVP. Oh yeah. There was the early spring of 1995 when everyone was mesmerized by what he would do and when he would be back. It took two words. And then 55 in Madison Square Garden a little while after for the official declaration. There were so many more. Little ones you remember, like when some guy named LaBradford Smith had 37 to beat the Bulls late in that 1992-93 season and Jordan was fuming as the kid was chortling about it. The team in a schedule quirk played the next night in Washington. Jordan told his teammates he’d have 37 on Smith by halftime. It’s one thing to do it. It’s another thing to say you will and then do it. Jordan rimmed out a shot just before halftime to end with 36 in the half. Point made. You had to smile and shake your head about stuff like that. No one did that!”
  • RealGM:  “The San Antonio Spurs today announced that guard Manu Ginobili will miss the remainder of the 2008-09 regular season as well as the 2009 NBA Playoffs. Ginobili felt stiffness in his lower right leg during the Spurs-Cavaliers game in Cleveland on Sunday afternoon. Following the game he returned to San Antonio. Earlier today, in San Antonio, he underwent a CT scan and an MRI. The examinations showed an increased marrow edema and a stress fracture in his right distal fibula.”
  • Jeff McDonald of the San Antonio Express-News:  “Cleveland coach Mike Brown is so meticulous that he’s been known to iron his socks before tipoff. Popovich, who had Brown on his staff from 2000-03, recalls witnessing some of his former assistant’s more obsessive-compulsive habits firsthand. ‘Nobody else could take a shower when he was in there,’ Popovich said. ‘However long it would take you to shower, it takes him three times as long. He needed not one, but three or four wash rags to get through that shower. Which I thought was quite odd.’” Probably more than you wanted to know, but it gives you an idea of how Brown’s mind works. I wouldn’t be surprised if he had more than a touch of OCD. I covered a Cavaliers game earlier this season for RealGM and Brown is the only NBA coach I’ve seen emerge from the postgame locker room with notes in hand. He wanted to make sure he was prepared for something as trivial (to most coaches) as the postgame media session. Talk about meticulous.
  • Josh Q. Public:  “Last night, the Cavaliers beat San Antonio to finish their interconference schedule with a 26-4 mark against the West this season.  Big deal?  So what?  I’ll tell you so what.  I’ll tell you no team from the East had won as many as twenty-six interconference games in one season since the 76ers won twenty-seven in 1977-78.  Since Dr. J.  Since World B. Free.  Since that Chocolate-Thunder-flying, Robinzine-crying, teeth-shaking, glass-Breaking, rump-roasting, bun-toasting, wham-bam, glass-breaker-I-am-jam Darryl Dawkins. That’s a long time.  That’s a long time coming.  The Eastern Conference has clinched the season series from the West for the first time in a non-strike season since 1997-98.” The Eastern Conference’s record versus the West is inflated due to Sacramento’s interconference record. The Kings are 1-29 versus the East. The West — one through eight –  is still the superior conference. LA, Denver, San Antonio, Houston, Portland, New Orleans, Utah and Dallas own a 151-87 advantage against the East.
  • Blazer’s Edge:  “Streaks look nice in the standings and record books, but the teams who put together consistent seasons (often quietly or in a way that’s taken for granted) succeed.  The gruelling 7-game playoff treadmill ensures that if nothing else.  You might get hot and take one series from a good team.  It’s not going to happen twice. The Blazers had one losing streak of three games so far this season.  Besides that they lost twice in a row only four times.  No longer losing streaks.  No huge dips.  That’s solid.  That’s repeatable.  Though the learning curve isn’t complete yet, that’s pretty much going to be Blazer basketball for the next decade.”
  • Kevin Ding of the Orange County Register:  “Just in watching Bynum do his thing in a pregame workout session with Lakers assistant coach Brian Shaw on Sunday night, anyone would conclude that Bynum can do pretty much whatever he is needed. He is pain-free and if this were the postseason would undoubtedly be playing right now. He’s fully capable of helping right now, too. Phil Jackson, hardly Pollyanna when it comes to this sort of thing, allowed that Bynum was ‘kind of the dominant force in there’ in his 5-on-5 work at practice Saturday. Bynum knows he’s basically ready to roll. You could see it in the big smile on his face Sunday. But Jackson wants a controlled atmosphere for Bynum to get off to a confidence-building start in his return.”
  • SportsRadioInterviews.com relays a great story about Chris Webber, John Wooden and that infamous timeout:  “We were scheduled two days later to go to Los Angeles for The Wooden Awards – Chris was a finalist, he knew that he didn’t win.  Afterward, he says, ‘Coach, I’m not going. I can’t go. I cannot go.’  I said: ‘You have to go.  You made a commitment.  I made a commitment.  You’re going.’  ‘I’m not going.’  Between his dad and myself, we got him to go.  We got there and Coach John Wooden, when he saw Chris, he said ‘Steve, can I talk to Chris for a few minutes?’  Brought him back in the back room, and for about 30 minutes he had a 1-on-1 with Webber and afterward Chris came out with a smile like it was Christmas and said ‘Coach, thank you, this was the highlight of my college career, what coach Wooden said to me.’  And, it was so unsolicited, so coach Wooden, to know the timing was perfect for him to talk to Chris.”
  • Jack McCallum of SI.com:  “If they were ideally matched in personality, they also seemed geographically well-placed in conservative Salt Lake, two no-nonsense, hold-the-bright-lights-hold-the-big-city types who never drew attention to themselves. But do not go overboard trying to make them into a single archetype, the introspective gunslinger, perhaps, or the unsmiling Marlboro Man. For one thing, Stockton never touched a Marlboro. As far as I know, he never drank either. The same cannot be said of Sloan. For many years during a coaching career with the Jazz that began in 1984 (he was an assistant for three years and elevated to the head job early in the 1988-89 season), Sloan did too much of both. Away from the court, Sloan was most at home in a barroom, chasing away the demons of coaching with alcohol, tobacco, profane bluntness (‘Right now our main problem is that we’re f—— terrible,’ he might say of his team) and corny jokes.”

Category: Chicago Bulls, Cleveland Cavaliers, Los Angeles Lakers, Phoenix Suns, Points in the Paint, Portland Trail Blazers, Sacramento Kings, San Antonio Spurs, Utah Jazz

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