Points in the Paint

» August 12, 2009 3:27 PM | By Brandon Hoffman

I’m 100% behind the idea that the point of rebuilding is to win a championship. Not to be pretty good, but to win the whole thing. Kiki Vandeweghe, who doesn’t get enough respect for the turnaround he orchestrated in Denver, gets it, as reported by John Schuhmann: “Would the Nets be better off if they had kept Vince Carter? The 11-year veteran provided leadership. But he missed just two games last season and his team still went 34-48. With some improvement from their younger players, the Nets may have won a few more and maybe challenged for the eighth spot in the East. ‘We weren’t going where we wanted to go as we were constructed,’ Vandeweghe said. ‘Vince Carter is a tremendous basketball player, but we looked at our team and we realized that we weren’t going to get to a championship level.’ So the Nets took a step back, hoping it would allow them to take two steps forward.”

The complete backboard and rim from the arena formerly known as the Delta Center in Utah, where Michael Jordan hit his last shot as a Chicago Bull is going to be auctioned off on September 12th.

John Jackson has more on D-Wade’s purchase of a $1.4 million Chicago townhome: “Sadly, this is what passes for news in the Internet age. Wade is a native of the Chicago area and always has spent a good deal of the offseason in Chicago. He’s recently divorced and there’s nothing unusual about him buying a home. There’s been speculation that spending so much money may be a sign that this is more than just a second home, but Wade will make nearly $16 million this season. Believe me, he can afford to spend $1.4 million for a second home. And besides, Wade isn’t the first NBA player who plays elsewhere to buy a home in the Kinzie Park development. Shawn Marion, a former teammate of Wade, has owned a townhouse there for over a year. The development is attractive to athletes who aren’t home frequently because it is gated and there’s constant security patrols.”

From Dwight Howard’s blog: “Some folks in Orlando are concerned that I’m not working enough on basketball while I’m doing all of this traveling, but yall have nothing to worry about. Everywhere I go my two trainers go with me. Just last week, we were going through workout sessions at 5:30 in the morning and again in the afternoon. We usually spend 90 minutes a day in the weight room and 90 minutes on the court. Trust me, I’m working harder this summer than I’ve ever worked in my life. Getting to the NBA Finals just made me hungrier than I’ve ever been. I know I have to come back better next season for us to get that ‘ship. I want it really, really, really bad. So ya’ll aint got to worry about me getting my work in.”

Shaquille O’Neal threw out the first pitch at last night’s Cardinals game, and is scheduled to face St. Louis’ Albert Pujols in a Home Run Derby on Thursday. I wonder if Shaq has hired a few trainers to travel with him throughout the summer?

Dwight Jaynes recalls his years covering Dr. Jack Ramsay: “The best part, I think, was that he wasn’t one of those ‘the league is my life’ kinds of guys. This wasn’t Mike Schuler, who was so involved in coaching that he once confessed to me that he had no idea what ‘that Watergate thing’ is. (‘Honestly, Dwight, I know it had something to do with Nixon, but I don’t really know what happened. I’m not proud of that. I was too busy coaching.’) Jack would talk politics, music, art or simply the news of the day. Whenever we traveled to New York, he was talking to trainer Ron Culp about what Broadway plays to arrange for us to see. And I mean ‘us.’ See, it was really the only time in my writing career I was included in a lot of the things the coaches did. Yes, this was a different era.”