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One of the more interesting questions of the summer is: How much would you pay JaVale McGee?
He is a restricted free agent and Nuggets GM Masai Ujiri is already trying to scare off potential suitors suggesting they will match offers for him. Ujiri said Thursday he plans to re-sign McGee this summer.
What is McGee worth? DeAndre Jordan’s new deal for this season starts at $10 million. Joakim Noah’s new deal started at $10 million.
At his best, McGee can play with those guys. But his best comes only sporadically and his worst makes coaches pull their hair out.
How much will you pay for athleticism and potential? Going to be interesting to see.
AP
We don’t know yet how long Chris Bosh may be out with a strained abdominal muscle suffered in the Heat’s Game 1 win over the Pacers. We know it was serious enough to keep Bosh out of the second half Sunday, but until an MRI Monday we don’t know how long he’ll be out. Thing is, abdominal strains can take a while to heal.
If the Heat are without Bosh for a while they will be good — they just shift LeBron James over to the four spot. LeBron had an amazing PER of 29.1 when he played the three but it was 37.1 when he played power forward (via 82games.com). The Heat’s starting lineup this year without Bosh — with Shane Battier at the three and LeBron at the four — was +3.3 points per 48 minutes, which is not as good as the team’s +5.9 overall but it is good.
The problem is not LeBron at the four, it’s who comes in when LeBron sits. And it’s what lies ahead of the Heat.
If Bosh is out for any significant amount of time, it’s going to put more pressure on Udonis Haslem when he comes in off the bench, and outside of on the glass he has been unimpressive in the playoffs so far. Ronny Turiaf, who brings a lot of energy and fouls with him, will get some run (especially against the Pacers and Roy Hibbert). Mike Miller is also going to have to step up and pick up some offensive load.
But really, it’s going to be more on Lebron and Dwyane Wade on offense — and that is why the Heat will not feel the pain right now. Those guys can do more. LeBron had a ridiculous game Sunday with 32 points, 15 rebounds, five assists a couple steals and just one turnover. Wade had 29 points. Those two are capable of putting up those numbers or better against anyone on any night.
The Pacers are a good team, they are going to win a couple games this series, but they simply can’t stop the Heat’s two big guns in the fourth quarter and Bosh or no this is the last stop on their playoff train this year.
The real concern in Miami is how long Bosh will be out, because eventually Bosh will be missed.
Where the Heat will start to miss Bosh is if they don’t have him to shadow Kevin Garnett in the next round (if the Celtics advance). Where they would really miss him is if he were still out come the finals. They will need all they have against an Oklahoma City Thunder that comes at you with wave after wave of amazing athletes. Or they will need him to match up with Tim Duncan. Or there is a long shot chance they will need him to match up with the size of the Lakers front line with Pau Gasol and Andrew Bynum, or the Clippers athletic front line as well.
Bosh may be the third part of the triad, but he plays a key role in some matchups, and the Heat will need him back these playoffs. So the MRI on Monday will tell us a lot about the Heat going forward.
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Through two games the Spurs are shooting 51 percent overall against the Clippers and 46 percent from three. They have scored more than 25 points in six of the eight quarters. It feels like every shot they take is a wide open one. They have done pretty much whatever they wanted.
The Clippers have no answers, no defense for it. Blake Griffin, slowed some by a bad knee, just cannot come close to rotating as fast as the ball moves. The Spurs are making it look easy.
San Antonio remains undefeated in the playoffs, pulling away for a 105-88 win that has them up 2-0 in the series now headed to a very busy Staples Center in Los Angeles (Clippers, Lakers and the NHL’s Kings all have home playoff games this weekend, plus the Amgen Tour of California cycling race finishes outside Staples Sunday afternoon.)
San Antonio is playing fantastic, beautiful basketball, having now won 16 in a row dating back to the regular season. Tony Parker found his grove (on his 30th birthday) and had 22, Tim Duncan had his usual efficient 18 and, as we all expected, Boris Diaw added 16. It was that kind of night for the Spurs, where Diaw is hitting everything and Tiago Splitter was 4-6 shooting.
Chris Paul struggled again to find his mojo, in part still due to injury but more because the Spurs defensive game plan is working and not letting him get the looks he wants. Nor can he get going setting up teammates. Blake had 20 to lead the Clippers, who had just two other players in double figures. If Paul and Griffin are not playing like All-Stars the Clippers have no real chance.
Thing is, the Clipper offense wasn’t that bad — they shot 49 percent, hit 9-13 threes and scored 88 points.
But if they don’t find a way to slow the Spurs offense it’s all for naught. And I’m not sure they have the pieces or the maturity to make that happen right now.
AP
It was a bit surprising in historical context — this is the Boston Celtics, the franchise of Bill Russell, the team who one a 2008 title thanks to their big front line — but it worked, and that’s all Doc Rivers cares about.
In Game 1, Rivers went small in the fourth quarter with Kevin Garnett at center, Paul Pierce at the four with series of different wings and guards, the Celtics outscored the Sixers by five to win 92-91.
Half of what worked with that lineup was the defense. Philly struggled to get good looks and knock down shots — and were forced to shoot a lot from the midrange and ended up shooting 38 percent in the fourth quarter. Boston’s defense is hard enough to score on, but the Sixers played right into their hands.
The other half was at the other end, Boston ran a lot of Kevin Garnett/Rajon Rondo pick-and-roll and spaced the floor with shooters. Philly could not adjust. They need to for Game 2 (more and better Thaddeus Young please).
Both teams come into Game 2 with some reasons for optimism.
For Boston, they really didn’t play that well, especially for the first 35 minutes of Game 1. Pierce shot just 3-11 with Andre Iguodala on him for long stretches, Rajon Rondo was just 6-15. Ray Allen was 2-7 from three, the rest of the team was 0-11 from deep. These shots can fall. There should be credit given to the Sixers here, they had to give up something and they did — Kevin Garnett or other Celtics bigs and the 18 footer. Thing is, KG can knock that down pretty consistently.
Boston just needs to get a little more offense from guys like Mickael Pietrus and Brandon Bass. And they need to rebound better, second chance points were big for the 76ers in Game 1.
For Philly, they could have won Game 1 on the road, they led most of the way, which should show to them they can hang in this series. There were stretches and lineups where the Sixers were able to get out and run and get some easy transition buckets on the Celtics. They need do more of that.
They need to bounce back mentally and not just expect the Celtics to outplay them at the end. Also, they need more out of Elton Brand.
If Boston can win and go up 0-2 it’s hard to see Philly coming back to win four out of the next five. But if Philly can make a couple more plays and even the series, then it is on.
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Going into this series we knew any chance the Pacers had rested on Roy Hibbert — the Heat had nobody who could match the size of Hibbert. That became especially true once Chris Bosh went down.
Above is a video (put together by NBA.com) of Hibbert’s considerable contributions to the Pacers Game 3 thrashing of the Heat — 19 points and 18 rebounds. Hibbert, like the Pacers, seems to be growing in confidence with every win against Miami. The Heat have tried Ronny Turiaf, Dexter Pittman, heck they’d probably give Alonzo Mourning another shot at this point.
Another game like that from Hibbert this weekend and this series will be all over but the shouting of Heat fans.
Reuters
Here’s another NBA postseason award we all knew was coming it was just a matter of when….
Cavaliers point guard Kyrie Irving will be named the NBA Rookie of the Year on Tuesday, something first reported by Marc Stein at ESPN and confirmed by the Associated Press among others.
The voting should be almost a unanimous coronation for the former Duke player. He averaged 18.5 points and 5.5 assists a game, shot 39.9 percent from three, became a dangerous late game threat, and restored some hope to a Cleveland franchise that has been lacking it.
As the season wore on he pulled away from the competition for this award, although Ricky Rubio and Kenneth Faried will get some votes. This was one of the easiest choices on the ballot (and he would have gotten my vote as well)
Reuters
The Miami Heat self-destructed, and Dwyane Wade hit the button.
Wade, the former finals MVP, was 2-13 shooting and had words with coach Erik Spoelstra as the Heat came apart at the seams and fell to a Pacers team growing in confidence with every minute. Game 3 finished 94-75 — which is pretty reflective of how the game went — and the Pacers lead the series 2-1.
The Pacers are in the Heat players’ heads, and you have to wonder if the Heat can get them out of there before Game 4. Miami players hesitate with decisions, seem to be looking over their shoulder, and their confidence is shaken. Meanwhile the Pacers have Danny Granger and George Hill knocking down threes and Roy Hibbert scoring 19 and owning the paint.
Most fans — and apparently the Heat players — did not realize before this series how good the Pacers were. They do now.
What nobody expected was for the Heat team to buckle at the first sign of adversity. Especially not Wade, who was -19 and jawed with his coach during the blowout. After the game in his press conference, Spoelstra blew off the incident.
“Anybody who hasn’t been part of a team, been a coach, been a player, you have no idea how often things like that happen,” Spoelstra said. “It was during a very emotional part of the game, we were getting our butt kicked. Those exchanges happen all the time during the course of an NBA season… that was nothing, the least of our concerns.”
Which is good, because the Heat have a plethora of concerns.
Without Chris Bosh setting the picks and spacing the floor, the Miami offense has become a muddled mess. That’s not all about Bosh, that’s about how the Heat players responded to adversity. They shot 37 percent as a team, 20 percent from three.
LeBron James played well early, but like the rest of the Heat faded as the game went on, finishing with 22 points on 22 shots. He could not take over and turn the tide. He was so unimpressive, Lance Stephenson was giving him the choke sign from the bench.
The death throes of a coach in a series often come when they start to look deep down the bench for a spark from a matchup that hasn’t really worked for them all season. This game Spoelstra switched up the starting lineup to put Dexter Pittman and Shane Battier in it. Yes, Pittman.
It is another sign that the Heat are in serious, serious trouble in this series, to go with arguing on the bench, the muddled offense, the inability to hit three pointers and general bad play.
The Pacers are far the better team right now. It’s not close. If the Heat didn’t have the guys who should be the two best players in the series on their side we would be calling this thing over. Maybe we should anyway.
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The USA Select team is the team in waiting — guys invited to the USA Basketball training camp in Las Vegas this summer to push and test the guys actually going to London. The Select Team are the guys Mike Krzyzewski and friends want to see up close, to consider for future Olympics and World Championships.
Here is the roster, a source told Matt Steinmetz of CSNBayArea.com:
DeMarcus Cousins — Kings
Jeremy Lin — Knicks
Klay Thompson — Warriors
Kyrie Irving — Cavaliers
John Wall — Wizards
DeMar DeRozan — Toronto
Paul George — Pacers
Gordon Hayward — Jazz
Kawhi Leonard — Spurs
DeJuan Blair — Spurs
Ryan Anderson — Magic
Taj Gibson — Bulls
Derrick Favors — Jazz
A few of these names had already leaked out and a number have now been confirmed.
Some of these guys — Wall, Irving, Cousins, Hayward, Thompson — have skill sets that could play well in the international style game, with its floor spacing and off-the-ball movement. Each though needs to mature and grow his game, and himself. Sometimes guys come out of this and the challenge of being against the best pushes them, helps their games grow.
We’ll see who gets that out of this year’s camp.
We’re far enough along in the playoffs now to start wondering beyond if the Sixers can come back on the Celtics and start to wonder how Boston matches up in the next round. The Sixers may still have a say in that, but you can start to think about the next round a little.
Especially if you are a Thunder fan.
AP
We don’t know yet how long Chris Bosh may be out with a strained abdominal muscle suffered in the Heat’s Game 1 win over the Pacers. We know it was serious enough to keep Bosh out of the second half Sunday, but until an MRI Monday we don’t know how long he’ll be out. Thing is, abdominal strains can take a while to heal.
If the Heat are without Bosh for a while they will be good — they just shift LeBron James over to the four spot. LeBron had an amazing PER of 29.1 when he played the three but it was 37.1 when he played power forward (via 82games.com). The Heat’s starting lineup this year without Bosh — with Shane Battier at the three and LeBron at the four — was +3.3 points per 48 minutes, which is not as good as the team’s +5.9 overall but it is good.
The problem is not LeBron at the four, it’s who comes in when LeBron sits. And it’s what lies ahead of the Heat.
If Bosh is out for any significant amount of time, it’s going to put more pressure on Udonis Haslem when he comes in off the bench, and outside of on the glass he has been unimpressive in the playoffs so far. Ronny Turiaf, who brings a lot of energy and fouls with him, will get some run (especially against the Pacers and Roy Hibbert). Mike Miller is also going to have to step up and pick up some offensive load.
But really, it’s going to be more on Lebron and Dwyane Wade on offense — and that is why the Heat will not feel the pain right now. Those guys can do more. LeBron had a ridiculous game Sunday with 32 points, 15 rebounds, five assists a couple steals and just one turnover. Wade had 29 points. Those two are capable of putting up those numbers or better against anyone on any night.
The Pacers are a good team, they are going to win a couple games this series, but they simply can’t stop the Heat’s two big guns in the fourth quarter and Bosh or no this is the last stop on their playoff train this year.
The real concern in Miami is how long Bosh will be out, because eventually Bosh will be missed.
Where the Heat will start to miss Bosh is if they don’t have him to shadow Kevin Garnett in the next round (if the Celtics advance). Where they would really miss him is if he were still out come the finals. They will need all they have against an Oklahoma City Thunder that comes at you with wave after wave of amazing athletes. Or they will need him to match up with Tim Duncan. Or there is a long shot chance they will need him to match up with the size of the Lakers front line with Pau Gasol and Andrew Bynum, or the Clippers athletic front line as well.
Bosh may be the third part of the triad, but he plays a key role in some matchups, and the Heat will need him back these playoffs. So the MRI on Monday will tell us a lot about the Heat going forward.
