Posts Tagged ‘brendan haywood’

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It’s All About Tyson Chandler Now

June 9, 2011  ·  10:04AM

HANG TIME HEADQUARTERS – It’s obvious that the Mavericks’ season would be all but over if Dirk Nowitzki had not fought through the effects of fever to play the role of Lazarus in Game 4.

It was also timely and significant that Jason Terry used that clutch fourth quarter to finally pull his “JET” persona out of the hangar for the first time in The Finals.

But if Dallas is going to keep fooling the experts, bamboozling the Heat and have a real chance of clawing out its first NBA championship, the series will likely rest in the hands of Tyson Chandler.

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Posted in 2011 Playoffs / Comments (33) /

Nowitzki Feeling ‘A Lot Better’

June 8, 2011  ·  6:57PM

DALLAS – Less than 14 hours after scoring the most important basket in the Dallas Mavericks’ Game 4 victory — with a 101-degree fever, no less — Dirk Nowitzki was back on the floor at the American Airlines Center. Nowitzki participated in the Mavs’ light, no-contact practice on Wednesday.

Afterward, Nowitzki said he felt “a lot better today.”

“I still got a little high temperature,” he continued, “but the fever is basically gone. So that’s obviously the main concern always. Anything else, the sniffles or the cough, you don’t really care about that as long as the fever is gone.”

That’s big new for Dallas, which needs a win in Thursday’s Game 5 to avoid going into a 3-2 hole with the final two games of the series in Miami.

They’ll need a win on enemy turf either way, but things have to be looking up for the Mavs, who looked beaten early in the fourth quarter on Tuesday. Tyson Chandler said Wednesday that he knew it might be a rough night when he saw his teammate in the locker room before Game 4.

“When I saw him, I really knew he was under the weather,” Chandler said. “Dirk is a playful guy and outgoing and outspoken when it comes to the locker room. Seeing him not being playful and not really saying much and kind of sitting in his locker, I knew it was going to be a tough night for him.”

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Chandler Comes Up Big In Game 4

June 8, 2011  ·  1:41AM

DALLAS – Dirk Nowitzki was sick and Brendan Haywood was hobbled. And because big men No. 4 and 5 on the Dallas Mavericks’ roster are named Brian Cardinal and Ian Mahinmi, it was time for Tyson Chandler to step up.

With 13 points and 16 rebounds in the Mavs’ 86-83 victory over the Miami Heat in Game 4 of the 2011 NBA Finals, Chandler did just that, helping his team even the series at 2-2.

Haywood had replaced Chandler with 1:14 to go in the first quarter, and the Heat immediately went on a 5-0 run. When Miami began the second on a 7-0 run to go up 28-21, with Haywood struggling, Chandler knew he couldn’t afford to sit any longer. So he didn’t even wait for Mavs coach Rick Carlisle to call his name.

“I seen that [Haywood] was just trying to battle it out,” Chandler said, “but I told coach, ‘You have to get me back out there. I will play 48 if I need to.’ “

Chandler didn’t play 48 minutes, but he played a season-high 42:56, including all but 1:59 of the second half. And despite that, he looked to have the most energy of anyone in the fourth quarter.

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Haywood’s Status For Game 4? TBD

June 6, 2011  ·  4:26PM

DALLAS – Watching Brendan Haywood knock down shots on the practice floor Monday makes it hard to believe the Mavericks’ backup center isn’t ready to play in The Finals.

The shooting drill didn’t require much movement, though. And movement is Haywood’s major issue right now. He strained his right hip in the Mavericks’ Game 2 win over the Heat in Miami and missed Sunday’s Game 3 loss here at American Airlines Center.

Ian Mahinmi replaced him in the rotation and there’s no doubt the Mavericks’ low-post defense took a step back. Haywood was coy about his status for Tuesday night’s Game 4. He said he was scheduled for a second MRI this afternoon and that his status would not be updated until some time Tuesday afternoon, making him a game-time decision for the second straight game.

“It’s a little bit of everything,” Haywood said. “The hip is one of those areas; it’s in charge of a lot of stuff. It’s in charge of your lateral movement, it’s in charge of when you’re taking off and running and stuff like that. So, it affects me in just all movements basically … the hip bone’s connected to the thigh bone. The thigh bone’s connected to the knee bone.”

Jokes aside, Haywood’s in serious enough pain that he can’t get on the floor in the biggest series of his NBA career.

“I’m able to move at a little better clip, so we’ll see how it feels,” Haywood said after finishing his shooting work Monday. “Really, really striding out is a problem and sometimes making explosive plays under the basket is a problem.”

An even bigger problem for Haywood is being forced to watch his teammates work in The Finals and not being able to do his part. And the 7-footer was a factor in Game 1. He’s played 16 minutes a game throughout the postseason as Tyson Chandler‘s backup. His presence on the floor would make a huge difference against a Heat team that loves to attack the rim.

“I need to be able to go out there and feel like I can play a normal game or at least at 70 or 80 percent,” he said. “If I feel I’m pulling something or something’s straining on every play, then I probably don’t need to be out there. We’ll see how it goes.”

When asked if he would be able to play if the Mavericks had a game Monday night, Haywood got playful with his answer.

“It’s a good thing we don’t have a game tonight,” he said and then smiled. “Today wasn’t a good indication of where I’m at, because this was some really light stuff.”

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Posted in 2011 Playoffs / Comments (32) /

D-Wade problem: For Heat or Mavs?

June 1, 2011  ·  10:10AM

Maybe this is why the Miami fans usually show up to AmericanAirlines Arena late. They don’t want to catch a glimpse of Dwyane Wade before he gets warmed up and fully into his act.

  • Wade had his shot blocked three times in the first half, once each by Shawn Marion, Brendan Haywood and a creaky old guy named Jason Kidd.
  • On the rare occasions when Wade went to the basket in the first half, he hardly finished aggressively. He didn’t get a shot off when he was 1-on-1 with Dirk Nowitzki and simply careened out of control into Tyson Chandler and lost the ball out of bounds.
  • He spent a good portion of the first half floating out around the 3-point line, managing just seven points as the Mavericks took a 44-43 lead into the break.

Then there were all the reasons why nobody in Miami ever turns their back on Wade when the games get late.

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K.D.’s wakeup call: Boom!

May 20, 2011  ·  3:23PM

DALLAS – Kevin Durant said it was just a play.

Sure. Just like the Pacific Ocean is just a puddle of water and the Grand Canyon is just a hole in the ground.

The Thunder had been playing soft on defense, loose on offense, not at all like a team that was already in a desperate situation in the Western Conference finals and trailed the Mavericks 28-19.

That’s when Durant made a play, his play.

He took the ball on the right side of the lane, whooshed past Peja Stojakovic fast enough to give him whiplash and jumped right through the roof of the American Airlines Center.

Well, almost. What Durant did was to elevate so high that his navel was practically in the face of Dallas would-be defender Brendan Haywood and he slammed the ball down like he was swinging the hammer of Thor.

“We needed a basket and there was an opening,” said Durant.

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Mavs Dominating Bench Battle

May 5, 2011  ·  3:26PM

LOS ANGELES – Lakers sixth man Lamar Odom is doing everything you’d expect of the NBA’s Sixth Man Award winner. But he is, after all, just one man.

And right now he’s fighting a battle against a Mavericks’ bench crew that is deeper and more dynamic than what the Lakers can handle. It’s also a crew that has been much more productive than anyone might have imagined they’d be through the first two games of this Western Conference semifinal series.

Mavericks’ reserves Jason Terry, Jose Barea, Peja Stojakovic, Corey Brewer and Brendan Haywood have totally outplayed the Lakers’ reserves, led by Odom and including Shannon Brown, Matt Barnes and Steve Blake. The Mavs have outscored them 70-37 so far, with Odom accounting for 21 of those 37 points.

The production disparity between the two groups was a backbreaking 30-12 in Game 2, with the Mavericks using Barea to dismantle the Lakers’ defense down the stretch with pick-and-roll sets and breakdowns on dribble penetration.

“I had good practice from that Portland series when I was going in there with [Marcus] Camby and [LaMarcus] Aldridge and [Chris Johnson],” said Barea, who is averaging 10.o points and shooting 46.7 percent from the floor against the Lakers. “That’s how I play. I love to attack the paint. I got all the shooters out there and I’ve got two big guys setting great screens for me …  I came out with a lot of energy that I knew we needed [because] we were up. We did a great job defensively all game and I think a little spark by me worked out in the win.”

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Lakers Ready For Playoff Push

April 1, 2011  ·  8:09AM

HANG TIME HEADQUARTERS — Jason Terry and Steve Blake, are ready for the playoffs.

Matt Barnes, Brendan Haywood and Shannon Brown seem more than ready for the grind as well.

In fact, the crowd and everyone else affiliated with the Lakers and Mavericks looked like they were in postseason form from what we saw in the Lakers’ crucial 110-82 blowout win over the Mavericks at Staples Center on TNT last night.

All five of those players were ejected early in an intense game that was marked by rising tensions on and off the floor and even more verbal drama after the game was over.

Even Lakers coach Phil Jackson and Mavericks owner Mark Cuban are in a playoff lather. Cuban, as only he can do, poked at the Lakers Wednesday when he indicated that the Mavericks would be fine with Lakers forward Ron Artest making the decisions in triangle offense:

“Anything that puts the ball in Ron Artest’s hands is always a good thing,” he told reporters. “… Of all the choices you have on that team, you want Ron Artest making the decisions in the triangle.”

In defending Artest, among other things he did after the game, Jackson had this rather colorful response directed at Cuban:

“I know that Mark likes to prick the skin of people. But he’s not a player. He just sits behind the bench with his suntanned face and has to make comments like that. He’s got nothing to do with it. I know that he’s provided a great roster that’s almost as good as money can buy. But not quite.”

You can’t make this stuff up!

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Mavericks On The Loose, Again

February 9, 2011  ·  11:36AM

HANG TIME HEADQUARTERS – With the trade winds blowing in Los Angeles and attention focused seemingly everywhere else, the Dallas Mavericks have quietly gotten back to the business of mowing down the competition.

Winners of 10 straight games, the Mavs have clearly recovered from that little mini-tailspin last month (they lost six in a row and seven of eight) when both Caron Butler and Dirk Nowitzki went down with knee injuries.

They have won 11 of their last 12 games, the only blemish during that stretch being an 82-77 setback in Chicago Jan. 20. Included in that march are wins over the Los Angeles Lakers, Hawks, Knicks and Celtics. So it’s not like they’ve been fattening up on just losing teams.

The Mavs have regained that early season swagger they showed when they rolled to a 24-5 start right after Christmas and announced themselves as a legitimate challenger to the Lakers’ three-year stranglehold on the Western Conference title.

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An Early Look at Most Improved

December 7, 2010  ·  12:56PM

Through Monday, the NBA season is exactly 25 percent done. The quarter pole is a great time to evaluate a lot of things, but here we’re going to look at early candidates for the Most Improved Player award.

There isn’t clear criteria for the award, as indicated by the 13 different players who received first-place votes last season. Personally, I thought that Kevin Durant, who went from non-All-Star to MVP candidate, was the only choice, but only 17 of the 123 voters agreed with me.

Statistically, there are a few different ways you can compare performance from one year to the next. And I’ll probably explore all of them by the end of the season. But for now, since it’s still early, I’ll keep it simple.

To see whose production has taken the biggest jump from last season to this one, I looked at efficiency per game. Efficiency is a stat that’s been used here on NBA.com for a while now, and it’s fairly simple to understand. You just add up a player’s positive stats (points, rebounds, assists, steals and blocks) and subtract turnovers and missed shots (both from the field and from the line). So the formula is this:

Pts. + Reb. + Ast. + Stl. + Blk. – Turn. – (FGA-FGM) – (FTA-FTM)

Here are the season leaders, and here are the most improved players, according to efficiency per game…

Most Improved: Efficiency per Game
Player Team 2009-10 2010-11 Diff.
D.J. Augustin CHA 6.0 16.2 10.2
Reggie Evans TOR 4.9 14.3 9.5
JaVale McGee WAS 8.6 17.1 8.5
Kevin Love MIN 19.7 27.0 7.4
Paul Millsap UTA 15.6 22.7 7.1
Russell Westbrook OKC 18.1 25.1 7.1
Raymond Felton NYK 14.8 21.5 6.8
Tyson Chandler DAL 10.3 17.0 6.6
Daniel Gibson CLE 6.0 12.6 6.6
Jrue Holiday PHI 9.4 16.0 6.5

D.J. Augustin probably isn’t one of the first guys you think of when it comes to Most Improved. But he’s clearly a step ahead of the field (especially since Reggie Evans is out for two months with a broken foot), having stepped into Raymond Felton‘s role as the starting point guard in Charlotte.

None of the other names on the list are real surprises.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, we have the 10 players who have regressed most in terms of efficiency per game…

Most Regressed: Efficiency per Game
Player Team 2009-10 2010-11 Diff.
David Lee GSW 27.0 18.8 -8.2
Reggie Williams GSW 16.2 8.0 -8.2
Brendan Haywood DAL 16.1 7.6 -8.5
Erick Dampier MIA 12.2 3.7 -8.5
LeBron James MIA 32.4 23.8 -8.6
Corey Maggette MIL 18.6 9.3 -9.2
Jermaine O’Neal BOS 15.8 6.6 -9.3
Anthony Randolph NYK 14.3 3.2 -11.1
Earl Barron PHX 17.0 2.7 -14.3
Troy Murphy NJN 20.5 6.1 -14.4

The name that stands out here, of course, is LeBron James. We all knew that his statistical production would fall off, but maybe not this much. People talked about him averaging a triple-double with the Heat, but his rebounds have gone down from 7.3 to 5.7 per game, and his assists have gone down from 8.6 to 7.3.

Last year, James led the league in efficiency at 32.4 per game, which was more than four points better than the next player on the list, Durant at 28.0. It’s obviously not easy maintaining those numbers when you’ve got to share the ball with two other All-Stars.

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John Schuhmann is a staff writer for NBA.com. Send him an e-mail or follow him on twitter.

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