Matt Watson of FanHouse: “Regardless of how Cleveland fans got their tickets, what’s certain is that they did. From my vantage point, I’d say the arena started out 50-50 in support of each team, but as the game wore on, support overwhelmingly tilted in Cleveland’s favor as Detroit fans left early and Cavs fans had more reason to cheer. Cavs players spent timeouts late in the fourth quarter pointing and waving in appreciation to the friendly crowd. As players left the court after the game, the fans surrounding the Cavs tunnel serenaded LeBron with more “M-V-P” cheers, while the crowd surrounding the Pistons tunnel heckled the home team while waving inflatable brooms and LeBron jerseys. Having attended well over 200 Pistons games both as a fan and a member of the press, it was something I never thought I’d ever see, though one the Pistons will certainly never forget.”
Chris Broussard of ESPN.com: “While the vets respected A.I. as a person and his accomplishments as a player, they didn’t exactly embrace him with a loving bear hug. They were too stunned and disappointed by the departure of Billups to excitedly put out the welcome mat. Plus, their ‘We’ve-won-a-championship-and-you-haven’t’ attitude meant they expected A.I. to do all the adjusting. They weren’t going to change at all, not even a little bit. Nothing was said and the actions weren’t overt, but A.I. felt the lack of love. Michael Curry’s eventual benching of Hamilton in favor of Iverson only compounded the problems in the locker room. While Hamilton was professional enough to give it his all as a sixth man, he’s been upset ever since, even though he’s returned to the starting lineup, and multiple sources tell me that he and Curry haven’t been on speaking terms for months.”
Johnny Ludden of Yahoo! Sports: “Another draft had come and gone, and the night was beginning to give way to morning as San Antonio Spurs general manager R.C. Buford finally emerged from the team’s conference room. Buford and the Spurs had targeted French swingman Boris Diaw only to see the Atlanta Hawks take him ahead of them. So, hoping to preserve as much salary-cap room as possible for their free-agent pursuit of Jason Kidd , they traded their pick. On his way out the door, someone asked Buford if he was pleased with how the draft had played out, given that Diaw was unavailable. He nodded, then laughed. ‘But if Josh Howard ever becomes a player,’ Buford said, ‘Pop is going to kill me.’”
John Canzano of The Oregonian: “Fernandez has played in a gold medal game in the Olympics. He’s an NBA rookie, but has five years of professional basketball experience. This isn’t some foot-shuffling rube. He packs a dagger behind the arc. In fact, a year ago, Fernandez was the player owner Paul Allen flew to Spain to recruit for a moment and an opportunity exactly like this. Blazers fans chant, ‘Rudy… Rudy… Rudy…’ Didn’t anyone in the Portland huddle think it during the final timeout? Makes sense that Fernandez would be on the floor, and he was. Makes sense that he would be running around trying to get open, and he was. But nobody set a screen for him, and guard Steve Blake said, ‘Travis was what we were looking for there.’ And so it turns out that when the Blazers needed a big three-point shot at a key moment they looked at their best three-point shooter with passing interest and decided to go to a guy in a slump.”
Kerry Eggers of The Portland Tribune: “Adelman has made a career getting the most out of ‘trouble’ players, guys such as Rod Strickland, Chris Webber, Latrell Sprewell and Ron Artest, who have had some of their best seasons playing for him. Adelman, says Morey, acts as a calm amid the storm. ‘Ron says it best – Rick is just a coach,’ Morey says. ‘He worries about two things in his life – coaching and his family. A lot of coaches say that, but don’t necessarily follow through. Rick every day is sort of the captain of our ship. We had a lot of typhoons early this season. He got us through, and hopefully we can come into the port now.’ Elston Turner says Adelman’s relationship with players is at the core of his success. ‘Rick has a real polished way of handling and managing players,’ says Turner, the former Portland assistant coach who has served on Adelman’s staff for a decade. ‘I can’t think of any former player we’ve had who hasn’t come over before a game and said hello. That’s kind of rare.”
Tom Orsborn of the San Antonio Express-News: “In an interview before a recent playoff game, Holt covered a wide range of topics, including efforts by SS&E — the parent company of the Spurs, the American Hockey League’s Rampage and the WNBA’s Silver Stars — to bring another sports franchise to town and also to broaden the company’s footprint in the Austin area. Wearing his trademark black blazer, Holt said the key to the Spurs’ financial health has been a stable, fiscally conservative ownership group. Other factors include the four NBA titles won during the Tim Duncan era and increased revenues from national and local television deals. But the prudent manner in which the owners have conducted business is the main reason the Spurs are financially stable, said Holt, CEO of San Antonio-based Holt Cat, the nation’s largest Caterpillar equipment dealer. ’All these years, none of the (Spurs shareholders) took any money out of the business at all,’ Holt said. ‘So it just pays down debt, pays down debt, leaving our debt really low. And none of the owners, luckily, make a living directly off the business. So we’re all in good shape. The Spurs are financially sound.’”
Jerry Crowe of the Los Angeles Times: “In exploring the roots of Southern California’s most successful sports franchise, you start in Minneapolis, of course. You start with Sid Hartman. If not for the hubristic Hartman, a high school dropout and unapologetic homer of a sports columnist for the (Minneapolis) Star Tribune, there would be no Lakers. They were his idea. And not only that. In the Lakers’ formative years in Minneapolis — well before they moved to Los Angeles in 1960 — the journalist moonlighted without title (or shame) as the Lakers’ de facto general manager, playing a behind-the-scenes role in piecing together the parts that formed the NBA’s first championship dynasty. ‘Conflict of interest,’ Hartman says from his home outside Minneapolis, ‘wasn’t important then.’”
Valley of the Suns: “In the name of fairness and because the West has been the overall better conference since Jordan retired, the NBA would have to do away with conference affiliations and make the NBA Playoffs a 16-team free-for-all seeded by record for the 16 most-deserving teams to make the playoffs, a concept that should not be so difficult to make a reality as it is. The NBA would also have to alter its unbalanced schedule – which this year means the Suns had to play more of the tough West teams than mediocre East squads, but they also got to fill up on the conference’s numerous patsies – and who knows how all that would have affected their final record. With seven-game series’ in every round with the 2-2-1-1-1 format until the Finals, this would be brutal for travel, as teams could have to journey across the country in many opening series’ like they do in baseball. And I can tell you when I covered the Dodgers last year, reporters from both Los Angeles and Philadelphia were rejoicing when the Phils ended the Dodgers in five games just because that saved them a trip back to the City of Brotherly Love and an ensuing cross country workout to cover the very next day.”
Bradford Doolittle of Basketball Prospectus: “Everyone and their dog (including my dog Hunter) thinks the Cavs and Lakers will meet in the finals. Indeed, given the records of the respective teams in question, it would be kind of crazy to anticipate any other matchup. However, I think most ‘mainstreamers’ favor the Lakers in that eventual clash. Stat-based power rankings, on the other hand, have favored Cleveland all season and, as such, the people behind those systems probably pick the Cavs to win. This is my suspicion, anyway. You might notice that the Cavaliers also have a higher probability of reaching the finals than the Lakers do. What’s interesting about that is the common perception is that Cleveland has the tougher road. The Lakers have been head and shoulders above the West all season, while the Cavs have the Celtics and Cavaliers with which to contend. Here’s the thing: Cleveland’s road is easier. The reason is simple. The Magic and Celtics do half of Cleveland’s dirty work in their East semifinal matchup.”
Mike Moreau of HOOPSWORLD: “To attack the regular season schedule with its constantly changing opponents, most teams come in with a general strategy with minor adjustments for each opponent. The regular season approach is ‘This is who we are, this is how we play, and it will give us the best chance to be successful against most teams on our schedule. We may try to limit or take away one or two things our opponent does, but we won’t overreact to an area of weakness because it’s only an area of weakness against this team. So, we aren’t going to drastically change anything just to affect two or three games out of 82.’ That’s a sound approach for the regular season grind. But, in the playoffs, although your “general strategy” got you there, the minor adjustments for your opponent can become major overhauls of strategy and personnel as you play the same team over and over, pitting move against counter move. It’s the first team to win four games, and just a simple tweak of your game plan isn’t enough. For this particular opponent, to beat them four times, you may have to make some radical changes in your attack. The reality is, if you don’t change, you will lose. Period.”
