Joe Freeman of The Oregonian: “These are curious times for the Trail Blazers. On the one hand, they possess a roster bursting with talent that is seemingly poised for a memorable postseason run. On the other hand, a ho-hum exhibition season has hardly reassured anyone that this potential will translate into success. Tuesday night was supposed to be a red-letter game, a final chance for coach Nate McMillan to assess where his team stands heading into a Thursday night exhibition finale that rarely sees key rotation players play. But after an even-worse-than-it-sounds 108-97 loss to the Utah Jazz before 19,696 at the Rose Garden, a fuming McMillan criticized his team’s effort, execution and will.‘Not good,’ he said, summing up his team’s lackluster performance. ‘I think some of us think that we can flip a switch and that all of sudden, it’s going to happen when the (season opener) comes. We got to get to work.’ At the heart of the Blazers’ struggles is on-court chemistry — there is none. The molding of new talent (namely free-agent pickups Andre Miller and Juwan Howard and the return of Martell Webster) with last season’s key players has not gone smoothly. ”
Brian Windhorst of The Cleveland Plain Dealer: “The point the Cavaliers were trying to make Tuesday night was driven home at the expense of Matt Carroll. Early in the third quarter of the Cavs’ 96-66 preseason win over the Dallas Mavericks at the Peterson Events Center, Carroll found himself free on what he thought was a breakaway. He should have known by looking at the scoreboard that the Cavs had gotten serious about preparing for next week’s regular-season opener. But, instead, he had to learn it the hard way. As Carroll headed for the rim, LeBron James came soaring in from behind and slammed the ball off the backboard. Carroll did a belly flop on the court, the victim of James’ first ‘chase down’ block of the season. By the time Carroll was back on his feet, Shaquille O’Neal was hanging on the rim at the other end after a dunk. Carroll pleaded for goaltending, but James just gave him a dismissive head shake. Then, two minutes later, James swatted Carroll again from behind, perhaps just for insubordination. ‘I’m getting back there,’ James said. ‘Both of them were clean.’ That’s how it went in the sixth preseason game, when the Cavs decided to get serious in playing their front line heavy minutes for the first time.”
Frank Dell’Apa of The Boston Globe: “The exhibition season effectively concluded for Celtics after a 108-103 loss to the New York Knicks last night. Coach Doc Rivers plans to rest the starters when the Celtics meet the Cavaliers in Columbus, Ohio, tonight, six days before the regular-season opener in Cleveland. And captain Paul Pierce has his sights set on next Tuesday’s game, which will mark the beginning of his 12th season as a Celtic. ‘I’m definitely looking forward to it,’ Pierce said before last night’s game. ‘It’s definitely challenging for us, knowing the last two years we haven’t been able to win in Cleveland. This is the team we’re going to probably battle all year long for Eastern Conference home-court advantage, along with Orlando. This game is huge and it’s right out of the gate and we’ve got to be ready.’ It will be a difficult opener, reciprocity for the Cavaliers’ visit to Boston last year as the Celtics celebrated their 17th NBA title with a banner-raising on opening night. ‘It doesn’t really matter to me,’ Pierce said. ‘I’m not looking at the schedule and saying, ‘I wish we were playing somebody else. The schedule is whatever they make it, and whatever they bring to us, we’re going to take it.”
Benjamin Hochman of The Denver Post: “Yes, it’s the preseason. Yes, they’re with replacement refs. Yes, it was against Minnesota. But Melo scored a game-high 24 points in just 23 minutes, while shooting 7-for-8 from the line. When he called it a night in the third quarter, the entire Timberwolves team was just 9-for-12. ‘He has a lot of matchups that he has power on,’ Karl said of the career 79.6 percent free-throw shooter. ‘And then some matchups, if they play big on him, he has the quickness. He has both abilities to go either way.’ Melo is a weapon of mass production. Last season, he got to the line 7.1 times per game, which was ninth in the NBA and sixth among non-post players. Already this preseason, he has logged games in which he was 7-for-10, 7-for-11 and 16-for-17, all in which he played just 20-something minutes. Last season, he averaged 34.5 minutes. This free-throw thing — it’s pretty important. In recent seasons, the Nuggets have built their offense on fast-paced play, which means attacking the rim, which means getting to the line. Last season, when Denver won 54 games, the Nuggets led the NBA with 2,487 free-throws attempted, and they were second with 1,891 made.”
Keith Langlois of Pistons.com: “Like his mentor Larry Brown, John Kuester doesn’t look at statistics – and especially not point totals – in assessing the play of his point guard. So ask Kuester to assess the performance of third-year point guard Rodney Stuckey through the first three weeks of training camp and the preseason and he evokes Brown in saying, ‘He is going to go through parts of this season where he might not score a point and have a great game. That’s one of the things – not only him, but the entire team – understanding we have to make certain sacrifices in order for us to be a complete team. He understands his role is important to us from a defensive and offensive standpoint and I expect big things out of Rodney Stuckey.’ The statistic that jumps off the page is his assists – nine in six games, inordinately low for a point guard. Kuester isn’t pinning much on that stat, either, given the small sample size and the nature of preseason basketball. ‘There are going to be nights where other people who have a higher ratio, but Rodney is a very unselfish player and somebody who will get more assists,’ he said. ‘We’re going to be focused more on playing as a collective group.’ What Kuester wants most from Stuckey is to take control of a game’s rhythm and assume the burden of putting his team in the right positions at both ends of the floor, traits that only the rare prodigies exhibit without a dose of experience and the confidence that comes with it.”
Jeff Zillgitt of USA TODAY: “At 6-7, Marion — expected to start in place of Antoine Wright, who was sent to Toronto — can contribute in transition or in halfcourt on both ends. ‘We addressed some of the issues we had over the past couple of years,’ Nowitzki said. ‘We got a little more athletic. We got a little longer on the perimeter. We got better defensively with (forward Drew) Gooden (coming over from the Spurs) and Matrix,’ Marion’s nickname. TNT analyst Kenny Smith gave him that nickname because Marion can do everything. It didn’t take long for the Mavericks to see what that means. In their second preseason game, Marion had 26 points, five rebounds, three steals and two assists vs. the Washington Wizards. Kidd said Marion scored a majority of those points without plays being called for him. That performance had Kidd digging into his mental clip file. The two played two seasons together with the Phoenix Suns from 1999 to 2001. Kidd recalls how Marion was ‘getting loose balls, tip-ins, keeping the ball alive, getting out on transition, finishing by the rim. So far, I’ve seen everything as if it was his second year in the league.’ Whereas some players call for the basketball, Marion said, ‘When you play on good teams, the ball is going to find you. Guys are looking for you. Everybody on this team is looking for everybody. The extra pass is the difference.’”
Scott Howard-Cooper of NBA.com: “Defense is Greg Oden’s game and defense is where Portland knows it needs to improve most this season. Opponents shot 46 percent against the Blazers, the No. 17-showing in the league. No one ever confused him for an all-around star coming out of Ohio State, but his potential at stopping the other team from scoring was unquestioned, an assessment that doesn’t fly away when a 21-year-old big man struggles very early amid injuries. That’s where the weight loss comes in. Coach Nate McMillan said he and Oden talked about physique at the start of last season and that Oden wanted to be the kind of center that powered through people. Then Oden averaged seven rebounds (in just 21.5 minutes) and suffered another knee injury, and maybe burly wasn’t better after all. ‘I’ve been strong my whole entire life,’ he said. ‘It just took a whole entire year of going through the league for coaches to finally get it in my head that ‘You’re strong already.’ The new Oden has gone from the 270s to the low-260s and yet is reporting no risk of getting hip-checked into the fourth row. The only difference is the one he wants, needing only a few weeks of training camp and exhibition games to notice a reduced strain on the knees and improved mobility.”
Chris Mannix of SI.com: “One of the keys to the Hornets’ surprising 56-win season in ‘07-08 was the fluidity with which Paul, West and Chandler played together. Paul and Chandler rarely made eye contact during one of their morale-crushing alley-oops, and Chandler’s offensive rebounding skills made him the perfect complement to West’s low-post presence. While Okafor ran the pick-and-roll frequently with Charlotte point guards Raymond Felton and D.J. Augustin last season, it will take time to develop chemistry with Paul. Likewise, West will have to adjust to playing next to a center who likes to set up shop in the same areas he does. ‘No question, we are all going to have to make some adjustments,’ West said. ‘We have to find a way to work Emeka in as quickly as we can.’ That could mean allowing Paul to carry the team for a while. Besides incorporating Okafor, the Hornets will have a second new starter (third-year forward Julian Wright) and two rookies (Darren Collison and Marcus Thornton) coming off the bench. After playing the last few summers with USA Basketball, Paul spent this summer working with his longtime trainer, Idan Ravin. Workouts generally began at 5:45 a.m. with conditioning drills and a focused attempt to improve Paul’s left hand. The two were often joined in the morning drills by Collison and Thornton. ‘The idea was that anything Chris could do with his right hand, we wanted him to do with his left,’ Ravin said.”
Dave D’Alessandro of The Star-Ledger: “Clearly, it hasn’t worked out as anyone had hoped when the Nets made Sean Williams the 17th pick in the 2007 draft. Williams is the first to admit this, and he is candid about how far he has to go to find acceptance. ‘I feel like I have to prove myself every day,’ the Nets forward said after a particularly strong practice Tuesday. ‘So today — or tomorrow, or as far as I can see — I’m going to continue to play like I belong here. But I know I have to prove myself. I know there is some distrust from the people above me. But I have to work to gain their trust, so they can feel like they can count on me. I want them to see that I can be a player for them, night in and night out. That will take time to prove it.’ He’s had two years to do that, but he is failing. Part of it is related to his maturity issues and running afoul of the law. The other part is talent: While he has very few peers athletically, he doesn’t have basketball skills, if those can be boiled down to dribbling, passing, and shooting. Everyone had hoped he could get by on athleticism, while the rest of his game caught up. Everyone had hoped he would learn to be an impact player just by outrunning and outjumping his opponent. But it’s been two years and three camps, he has never learned to sustain his intensity level, and hardly anyone runs from the truth anymore. They all know that time is running out.”
Doug Smith of the Toronto Star: “There is a staccato rhythm to the NBA season: practice, shootaround, game, practice, shootaround, game, lather, rinse, repeat. It is a schedule that has withstood the test of time and the whims of coaches who would alter it; a schedule that suits the players. ‘The schedule? It’s fine,’ said Toronto’s Chris Bosh. ‘No sense messing with it.’ Yet some are. On a typical day for a game, the home teams will have a shootaround at 10 a.m., visitors follow at 11 for a game that starts either at 7 p.m. or 7:30. Practices throughout the league begin generally at 10:30 a.m. or 11 and last, on average, maybe a couple of hours. Flights are generally scheduled for mid-afternoon, landing a traveling team at its destination around dinner time. And while a handful of teams are sticking with that schedule, some are making alternations. The New York Knicks have stopped morning shootarounds at home and will meet about 3:30 p.m. to get ready for that night’s game. The Portland Trailblazers changed departure times for road trips East last year from early morning west-coast time to late afternoon to keep the players’ bodies on the same time clock. Some teams have pushed practices on the days after home games to later in the morning to give the players more time to recuperate. The major change in all of that is the Knicks’ decision to move shootarounds from morning to afternoon. It is the major disruption to the norm and wouldn’t sit well with the Raptors.”
Ian Thomsen of SI.com: “The Cavaliers adopted Shaquille O’Neal to serve as a big brother to LeBron James, even as the champion Lakers were providing Kobe Bryant with a pit bull named Ron Artest. The Magic became more explosive by trading for Vince Carter, and the Celtics grew more experienced (and versatile, and grouchy) by adding Rasheed Wallace. And don’t forget the Spurs — they made off with Richard Jefferson like barons robbing from the poor. While billionaires around the globe have been losing fortunes, multinationals have been going under, and the entire world has sought to downsize, the NBA’s rich have grown richer. In spite of the larger, gloomier trends, the five leading title contenders all made themselves stronger this summer with expensive moves that should lead to the strongest title race in two decades. The coming season promises to be a throwback to those glorious days when leading men like Magic, Larry, Dr. J and Isiah were surrounded by talented lineups and deep benches. ‘That’s how it should be,’ says James, the reigning MVP. ‘You look back in the ’80s, you not only had three or four All-Stars on the same team, you had three or four Hall of Famers on the same team. So it’s good to see the competition is getting back up there.’ … Says an excited Garnett, ‘I’ve never seen it like this since I’ve been in the league, with so many teams that are stacked with a lot of talent.’”
