Tag Archives: nba
AP
Not even the most die-hard Kentucky fan — say, Ashley Judd — really thought Anthony Davis or the rest of the top players on Kentucky were coming back for another year.
That will become reality Tuesday when Davis (the lock No. 1 overall pick and likely franchise player) as well as Terrence Jones, Michael Kidd-Gilchrist, Doran Lamb and Marquis Teague of Kentucky all will hold a joint press conference, at which each and each one is expected to declare for the NBA draft, as reported on NBC’s CollegeBasketballTalk.
Yes, Kidd-Gilchrist has repeatedly denied he was turning pro, but it would be a shock if the lock top five pick did not jump into the draft.
There’s a reason that these guys are all turning pro (and a reason Kentucky won the national title). DraftExpress in their current mock draft has Davis going No. 1, Kidd-Gilchrist No. 3, Jones No. 11, Teague No. 18 and Lamb early in the second round.
None of this is a surprise, this is how the John Calipari system works (see John Wall, DeMarcus Cousins, Eric Bledsoe, Brandon Knight, and we could go on and on). But this group is fully committed if they declare — the new (and silly) NCAA rule says that the last day to withdraw your name from consideration for the draft was April 10. The NBA says players have to April 29 to declare, but now once you are in you are in, there is no time to “test the waters.” (How is this the NCAA is looking after the student athletes? Oh, we’ll save that rant for another day.)
AP
The new-ish trendy element to judge a player is efficiency. We’ve learned over time that a lot of guys, not all, but a lot of guys can drop 30+ if they shoot it 27-plus times. So every scoring effort is weighed against how many shots it took to get there. After all, if you’re just throwing the ball at the rim over and over again, that’s probably not helping your team as much as helping to convert a higher number of times you have the ball. Which is what makes Kevin Durant‘s line against the Wolves Saturday night all the more impressive.
Durant finished with 43 points and seven rebounds. Four turnovers is a little high for just the one assist, but when you’re scoring that much, you’re going to lose the rock a bit. OK, great, ho-hum, another 40-plus night for a shooter. Woo. How many shots did he…
23. Twenty three. Forty three points on 23 shots. Good. Gravy.
It gets even weirder when you take a look at Duran’s shot chart, courtesy of NBA.com (blue line emphasis mine):
Basically Durant hit one shot from the right shallow wing near the baseline, and one juuust-to-the-right of the top-of-the-key three, and other than that, all his makes were in a straight-on path to the basket. So what does this mean?
Nothing. Absolutely nothing, it is not indicative of anything besides the fact that the Thunder weren’t using Durant out of the corner on sets which makes sense because, really, who’s leaving Kevin Durant open in the corner and two that the Wolves were forcing him middle and he was torching them with it. It’s not super-relevant in any way, it’s just kind of neat.
But not as neat as 43 points on 23 shots. That’s super-neat.
Reuters
Luol Deng is playing through a torn ligament in his left wrist — surgery now would mean missing the Bulls playoff run and he wants to be part of (and is essential to) what could be a special run.
But he also has plans to play for Great Britain this summer as they host the 2012 London Olympics. He grew up in England and is the best player in that nation. It’s another great honor he doesn’t want to miss.
But now we are into August or later and surgery on the wrist would take a couple months to fully heal. Which makes things sticky for Bulls management, as Mark Schanowski discusses at CSNChicago.com.
There’s also the question of whether surgery will be absolutely necessary. Some ligaments will heal on their own over time, and doctors really aren’t sure how Luol’s wrist will look after going through the NBA playoffs and the Olympics. But if Deng does need surgery sometime in September, he could easily miss the first two months of the next NBA season, something that has to be troubling to Bulls’ management.
Playing through the wrist injury Deng has looked himself some games, other he seems to only want to use his right hand. He’s not the same player every night.
The Bulls are going into these playoffs with that Deng and Derrick Rose trying to get healthy. How far they go may depend on how good those two feel.
But the thought of starting next season already on the injury roller coaster has to make Bulls fans roll their eyes.
It’s now official — Kentucky’s five young starters are headed to the NBA.
Anthony Davis (the lock No. 1 overall pick in the draft), Terrence Jones, Michael Kidd-Gilchrist, Doran Lamb and Marquis Teague all sat beside John Calipari at a press conference Tuesday, said they loved being Wildcats but it was time to go after their NBA dreams.
Every one of them could go in the first round. DraftExpress (like everyone else on the planet) has Davis going No. 1, Kidd-Gilchrist No. 3, Jones No. 11, Teague No. 18 and Lamb early in the second round, but he could move up with a good combine and team workouts.
Getty Images
Haven’t we all just been waiting for Mikki Moore to get back in the league?
Well, it’s finally happened. With David Lee down for the season and Andris Biedrins out with a concussion the Warriors have added Moore through the end of the regular season, reports Matt Steimnetz at CSNBayArea.com. (We shouldn’t make fun of Moore, who was a reasonable NBA backup for stretches of his dozen years in the league.)
Moore played for the Warriors in 2009-10 but spent this past season with the Idaho Stampede of the D-League. So, he should have some Antoine Walker stories. Golden State has the 9th worst record in the NBA but only get to keep they pick in this draft if they have one of the seven worst records, so you can guess what their goal is from here on out.
Getty Images
Larry Brown has been itching to get back into coaching, hanging around Villanova practices the past couple years and hoping for a chance. Oh, and living comfortably on all that money James Dolan paid him.
Looks like he has found his chance… at SMU. That’s the report from ESPN, although the rumor this has been in the works has been around for weeks.
For the record, Brown has been an NBA head coach in Denver, New Jersey, San Antonio, Los Angeles (Clippers), Indiana, Philadelphia, Detroit, New York and Charlotte. And that’s not mentioning his four years in the ABA. He was rumored to be looking for a college job recently while also trying to get into an NBA front office.
Yea, he’s a nomad. And he’s 71 years old. Which is why no NBA team was bringing him back (that and how he covets other players more than those on his roster). His nomadic ways have meant a lot of criticism from SMU. But since that is a program that is bad and about to head to the Big East, is brining in a former NCAA title winner, NBA champion coach and Hall of Famer a bad call? Even if he is past his prime? Rob Dauster put it well at NBC’s CollegeBasketballTalk:
SMU is in for a rude awakening when they make their way to the Big East, but by hiring Brown, they are making themselves notable. The Mustangs have a buzz about them, and even if the majority of the talking heads are saying that this move is dumb, there’s no such thing as bad publicity, right?
The best part of this — maybe we can end the rumors of him coming back to the NBA. Actually, we know better than that.
Getty Images
It was a battle of very successful, very flawed approaches, when you think about it.
The Miami Heat edged the New York Knicks with a closing round flurry Sunday, 93-85. The Heat looked like the much better team in the first and fourth quarters, New York the more complete and hungrier squad in the 2nd and 3rd. What we learned inside those two subsets revealed a pair of elements about both teams.
Both the Heat and the Knicks are extremely talented and when they are doing what they do best, can simply overwhelm the other team with talent.
Both the Heat and the Knicks suffer from a lack of cohesive effort. Mentally for the Heat, and approach for the Knicks.
The Heat had the same issues they’ve had for the past two years. After transforming into a flying death machine for the first quarter, getting out and running and creating havoc with superior physical ability, once the Knicks adjusted and started forcing containment, the Heat ran into complex coverage and started forcing it. You know the drill. Turnovers, off-balance jumpers, trying to out-talent the opponent with tough shots instead of using their talent to create easy ones.
So how did Miami win? Because New York’s approach is valiant, and impressive, and not at all sustainable. The Knicks relied on isolation plays from Carmelo Anthony consistently, and after 43 minutes, and when faced with varying coverages from Dwyane Wade and LeBron James, Anthony simply couldn’t seal the deal. Working your tail off on defense is what puts the Knicks in position to win, and great players hitting big shots is an indelible part of the NBA. But relying on it so much for 48 minutes is just not a sustainable approach. Synergy Sports indicates that Anthony went ISO 19 times against Miami. The Heat by comparison as a team went ISO 23 times, including 14 for LeBron James. That’s a lot of one-on-one play.
And in the end, the Heat made the plays. They shut down Anthony, who only had two field goals in the fourth. James and Wade each had two in the final five minutes. Combine that with some questionable decision making, and the Heat were able to finish off the Knicks.
Now, Anthony carried them with that same play for much of the game. Anthony was a monster, and it’s amazingly impressive that he can produce at that level given how hard it is to go one-on-five. But it’s not sustainable. There’s definitely a time and place for giving Anthony, arguably the best one-on-one player in the league right now, the ball and letting him do work. But after that many minutes and that many shots, defended by two of the best players in the league, it just didn’t work out.
The Knicks may have proved Sunday they can hang with Miami, scare them, force the issue, especially if Jeremy Lin and Amar’e Stoudemire return. But can they win? Maybe some. But overall?
The war looks a lot different than the individual battles. For the Heat, they get a road win against a playoff opponent who plays tough defense, by getting clutch scoring from their two stars. Both teams did what they do, and though from here it doesn’t look good enough to win a title, for the Heat it’s a good sign. For the Knicks, it’ll be a coin flip as long as this is their approach.
Getty Images
Ramon Sessions will tell anyone who will listen he is enjoying his time as a Laker — he has come in and provided some quickness and playmaking at the point guard the team desperately needed under new coach Mike Brown. He said he really wants to return to the Lakers next season.
Just not enough to pick up his player option for next year.
Rather, he is likely to opt-out and become a free agent so he can get paid. But he told the Los Angeles Times he’d like to get paid by the Lakers ideally.
“I want to be here. I don’t know what that means or how that’s going to happen. It ain’t no secret. I’ll tell anybody that. I tell [Lakers General Manager] Mitch Kupchak. I tell my agent. I want to be here. Period. For a long time.”
Sessions is set to make just under $4.6 million next season. The Lakers have his Bird rights, but they are also a team trying to trim payroll because with Kobe Bryant, Pau Gasol and Andrew Bynum alone they are going to be paying the luxury tax in the coming years — and in the new CBA that tax gets more regressive and painful each year.
The Lakers want him back and he wants to come back, you would think a deal could get done. But if the Lakers are trying to save money and another team that needs a point guard comes in over the top… money still talks in the NBA.
It’s going to be an interesting summer in Los Angeles as the Lakers try to work an extension for Bynum (next season is the last year of his deal) while getting their tax bill down.
AP
The new-ish trendy element to judge a player is efficiency. We’ve learned over time that a lot of guys, not all, but a lot of guys can drop 30+ if they shoot it 27-plus times. So every scoring effort is weighed against how many shots it took to get there. After all, if you’re just throwing the ball at the rim over and over again, that’s probably not helping your team as much as helping to convert a higher number of times you have the ball. Which is what makes Kevin Durant‘s line against the Wolves Saturday night all the more impressive.
Durant finished with 43 points and seven rebounds. Four turnovers is a little high for just the one assist, but when you’re scoring that much, you’re going to lose the rock a bit. OK, great, ho-hum, another 40-plus night for a shooter. Woo. How many shots did he…
23. Twenty three. Forty three points on 23 shots. Good. Gravy.
It gets even weirder when you take a look at Duran’s shot chart, courtesy of NBA.com (blue line emphasis mine):
Basically Durant hit one shot from the right shallow wing near the baseline, and one juuust-to-the-right of the top-of-the-key three, and other than that, all his makes were in a straight-on path to the basket. So what does this mean?
Nothing. Absolutely nothing, it is not indicative of anything besides the fact that the Thunder weren’t using Durant out of the corner on sets which makes sense because, really, who’s leaving Kevin Durant open in the corner and two that the Wolves were forcing him middle and he was torching them with it. It’s not super-relevant in any way, it’s just kind of neat.
But not as neat as 43 points on 23 shots. That’s super-neat.
AP
John Wall seemed to be everywhere last summer (him and Kevin Durant). As summer rec leagues and charity games grew is stature during the lockout — players were not at Summer League, were not working out at team facilities, so they were finding games — Wall crisscrossed the country seeming to show up at everything from Goodman League events to Vegas work out sessions.
And he looked spectacular — in games with spotty defense and a free-flowing style his speed and athleticism stood out. But when the more defined and focused NBA games returned, Wall could not translate those skills and take the step forward some of us expected in his sophomore campaign.
As he looks back on it, he might have handled it differently, something he said to reporters Monday night (after the Wizards beat the Bulls) and picked up by Mike Prada of Bullets Forever.
Q: Did you feel like you were at a disadvantage this year? Nobody had a summer, nobody had much of a training camp, but for a younger player, that would seem to be pretty important.
A: No … I didn’t think I had a disadvantage. I just think that, instead of working out more, I did more of playing in charity events and summer leagues, when I should have been working out more. That’s the only thing I think I should have done differently, but it was a great experience going to different states and venues.
Wall is putting up similar numbers this year compared to his rookie effort (for example 16.5 points per game last year, 16.4 this year) but he is doing it a little more efficiently has he has cut back on the three pointers he doesn’t hit. However, he has not a big step forward. The bigger issue is that his outside shot — which looked fluid when left wide open in summer leagues — is still wildly inaccurate. He is shooting 32 percent from 10-15 feet, 30 percent from 16 feet out to the arc, and 7.9 percent from three this season. He can attack and get to the rim in transition, but teams will just go under the pick and force him to shoot jumpers in the half court until he can prove he can knock those down.
Part of the problem in evaluating Wall is it’s hard to tell how good he would be on a reasonable NBA team. Deron Williams feels bad for Wall. Wall had erratic big men and team that rarely brought consistent effort for his entire career, what happens if he is on a team where he gets real help? I wonder what would have happened if, like Rajon Rondo, he was dropped into a team loaded with veterans who demanded accountability and responsibility, rather than the Wizards?
Wall has to lead the changes he wants to see in the Wizards. He is the star. Which means next summer a lot of time in the gym with a shooting coach and less time on the charity circuit. Time to grow up.
