HANG TIME HEADQUARTERS – The shocking news that Kobe Bryant‘s season came to an abrupt end with a probable torn left Achilles Friday night spread through the basketball world like an emotional tidal wave.
Pundits and fans, friends and foes alike, everyone is digesting the news that even if the Lakers make the playoffs, Bryant’s work this season is done. Reactions from around the basketball universe (and beyond):
Damn man i feel bad for @kobebryant . If there's anybody and i mean anybody who can come back from that injury it would be him! Best wishes!— LeBron James (@KingJames) April 13, 2013
Prayers out to my man @kobebryant. Hoping for a speedy recovery and there is absolutely no doubt he'll be back strong!— Chris Paul (@CP3) April 13, 2013
Woke up to some very bad news that my lil brother and close friend kobe could have a partial torn Achilles I'm very sadden by this— Gary Payton (@GaryPayton_20) April 13, 2013
Kobe is 1 of tha greatest 2 do it ! Keep ya head up.— Snoop Dogg (@SnoopDogg) April 13, 2013
Hard watching this @kobebryant interview right now… One of the hardest working players I've ever witness.. Stay strong Kob! #prayersup— Swin Cash (@SwinCash) April 13, 2013
Thoughts & prayers go out to the big homey #Kobe.. Shame they ran him into the ground.. #Damn— Matt Barnes (@Matt_Barnes22) April 13, 2013
He left it all on the hardwood.— Steve Smith (@steve21smith) April 13, 2013
Bummed about Kobe. League is less fun than it was 3 hours ago. Hope he comes back 100%. PS: no way Phil Jackson plays him 47 mins a night.— Bill Simmons (@BillSimmons) April 13, 2013
Not a joke ! The truth stupid… I know- FatherTime is no joke!— Chris Webber (@realchriswebber) April 13, 2013
Tough way to finish that game. Ill take Carl with the elbow jump shot any day of the week! Hate to see Kobe walk off like that hope he's ok— Stephen Curry (@StephenCurry30) April 13, 2013
Recess, high school, summers at 15, little league, road trips, surf sessions-KB is something you wish lasted as long as these memories— Bones (@Barryathree) April 13, 2013
Now, inevitably, comes the blame game…should D'Antoni have rested Kobe longer in these games? And was fatigue even a factor in this?— Michael Wilbon (@RealMikeWilbon) April 13, 2013
Go look at Ryan Howard's numbers to see the effect of an Achilles tear on a lumbering first baseman, let alone a basketball player.— Ross Siler (@rosssiler) April 13, 2013
Oh don't worry, @kobebryant WILL be back. Dat boy good!!— Damien Wilkins (@dwilkins3000) April 13, 2013
Tough moment because of @kobebryant injury. I wish him a great recovery. I have no doubt he'll come back stronger than ever. #prayforvino— Pau Gasol (@paugasol) April 13, 2013
Perhaps somewhere in a quiet gym in the coming months, Kobe will realize he is just 675 pts behind MJ and push it just a little harder #Vino— (@nbabeau) April 13, 2013
HANG TIME HEADQUARTERS – A healthy civil discourse and creative storytelling are staples of our operation here at the Hang Time Podcast. We make it a point to do as much of both on a weekly basis, whether there are live microphones involved or not.
Solving mysteries, however, is a little something new. And we tackle two huge head-scratchers on Episode 103 of the Hang Time Podcast, featuring special guests Kevin Harlan of TNT and Brent Barry of NBA TV.
Harlan was in New Orleans working as a radio play-by-play man for the Super Bowl and there were rumblings (we blamed it on Reggie Miller and Steve Kerr, but the truth is yet another mystery for someone to solve) when the lights went out in the Mercedes-Benz Superdome.
Barry, an old friend of the program and a longtime HT Fave, did his best to help us solve the mystery that is Dwight Howard, whose playing days with Kobe Bryant, Steve Nash and the rest of the Los Angeles Lakers haven’t come closet to anyone’s expectations from a group that was expected to contend for a championship this season.
These, are just two of the many issues discussed on Episode 103 of the Hang Time Podcast, a must-listen if you’re interested all in finally getting some answers to those nagging questions that have been bothering you.
LISTEN HERE:
As always, we welcome your feedback. You can follow the entire crew, including the Hang Time Podcast, co-hosts Sekou Smith of NBA.com, Lang Whitaker of SLAM Magazineand Rick Fox of NBA TV, as well as our new super producer Gregg (just like Popovich) Waigand and the best engineer in the business, Jarell “I Heart Peyton Manning” Wall.
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HANG TIME PLAYOFF HEADQUARTERS – It’s easy to focus on the Oklahoma City Thunder’s Big 3 Kevin Durant, Russell Westbrook and James Harden when they’re playing as well as they have in the past three games of the Western Conference finals.
But to focus solely on the stars would overlook perhaps the most startling development in this series. The Thunder’s role players, commonly referred to as the “others,” are outplaying their Spurs counterparts considerably in the past 12 quarters of this series.
Praised by many as the deepest and most balanced team in the league, the Spurs haven’t been able to lean on the likes of Matt Bonner, Gary Neal, Danny Green, Tiago Splitter or any of the extras who helped them roll to 20 straight wins since April 11, and that includes those two wins over the Thunder in Games 1 and 2. They’ve been in the conference finals witness protection program the past three games, though, as the Thunder have seized control with three straight wins.
Neal suffered a through a particularly ugly performance on this night, shooting 0-for-6 from the floor and scoring just two points in his 14 minutes of action. His 6-for-22 shooting effort in the past three games is indicative of the struggles that have plagued the Spurs’ extras.
Meanwhile, the Thunder have received timely contributions from guys like Derek Fisher, Nick Collison, Serge Ibaka, Thabo Sefolosha and Daequan Cook, whose eight points(on a perfect 3-for-3 shooting from the floor, and consecutive makes from long distance) in just three minutes and 54 seconds of action in the first half of Game 5 proved to be crucial to the Thunder’s cause in their 108-103 win.
HANG TIME HEADQUARTERS – My main man Brent Barry spent the weekend in Boston at the Sloan Sports Analytics Conference, crunching numbers with the best in the business (including NBA.com’s very own John Schuhmann and plenty of others) and brought back this gem for those of us who did not make it Boston:
HANG TIME HEADQUARTERS – I suppose the easy way of looking at the Philadelphia 76ers these days would be to scan the Eastern Conference standings and act all shocked and surprised that this crew is sitting in the No. 2 spot. (Seriously, check for yourself. They’re holding down the No. 2 spot.)
It feels like there might be something much more substantial going on with the Sixers than just early season good vibrations. Winning nine out of 10 games during any stretch of the season is something to talk about. And the Sixers remain just one of four teams – San Antonio, Chicago and Indiana are the others — yet to lose a home game this season. (Returning your top 11 players from a year ago does wonders in a season that could be defined, to an extent, by the compressed schedule.)
But if we lost our beloved game for five months so teams could build a sound foundation from the ground up (with solid drafting, shrewd free agent moves, wise spending and the flexibility to nurture your own nucleus), it’s not a stretch to say that the Sixers embody the new model for a franchise aiming to move up in the pecking order.
Sure, they have a couple of robust contracts (Elton Brand and Andre Iguodala) on their books, but everything else is more than manageable. They have drafted well (Jrue Holiday, Thaddeus Young, Lou Williams, Evan Turner, Nikola Vucevic) the last few seasons and added the right pieces via trades (Spencer Hawes, Jodie Meeks, Andres Nocioni) and free agency (Tony Battie). And they have cohesion as a group — Williams, a reserve, leads them in scoring (16.2) — that has to be the envy of other franchises dreaming about chasing a playoff spot.
HANG TIME HEADQUARTERS – We had to call in some serious favors and promise to sell super producer Micah Hart’s phone contact list to the Smithsonian one day, but we finally landed the one guest we’ve been waiting on since the Hang Time Podcast first hit the airwaves.
Basketball legend and Hall of Famer Kareem Abdul-Jabbar graced us with a visit on Episode 52. We talked about his documentary, “On the Shoulders of Giants,” detailing the history of the Harlem Rens basketball team – the story of the greatest basketball team you never heard of.
The film is available on is available now on Comcast Video on Demand and will be available on Netflix on May 15th. You can pre-order the DVD at www.kareemabduljabbar.com.
We didn’t let the NBA’s all-time leading scorer make his Hang Time Podcast debut without getting his thoughts on a wild opening weekend of the NBA playoffs.
And we also enlisted the services, live from the golf course, of NBA TV’s Brent “Bones” Barry and his brother Jon Barry, a scratch golfer and NBA analyst himself for ABC and ESPN. They weighed in on the shocking Game 1 defeats in Los Angeles and San Antonio, while also sharing their insights on what’s to come in all of these first round series — in between a little brotherly trash talking on the links, of course.
Trust us when we tell you that you don’t want to miss this:
HANG TIME HEADQUARTERS – The Jump crew took the show on the road to yap about all things NBA and we wound up at Goodfellas in nearby Smyrna, GA — just a short ride from the hideout here.
And if you think we talk a lot of smack around here, wait until you see these cats from Goodfellas get going (with Dennis Scott, Brent Barry and yours truly along for the ride):
HANG TIME HEADQUARTERS – While it’s not the most prestigious honor handed out during the NBA’s award season, one of our favorites here at the hideout is the Most Improved Player award.
This is the one award that rewards guys for actually taking their game from one level to the next, a transition that takes place for various reasons (a change of scenery never hurts and a regime change can inspire a player, too).
NBA TV’s Game Time crew (Marc Fein, Brent Barry and Jerry Stackhouse) had a pretty good debate about it last night (above). Unlike the MVP chatter, this topic doesn’t dominate our conversations this time of year. But the list of worthy — or at least legitimate — candidates for the Most Improved honor is much longer than the list of names populating the MVP debate.
In fact, the leader in the MVP clubhouse, Bulls point guard Derrick Rose, could easily be considered the front-runner for MIP. We’re not going to rely on anyone else’s research. (Although, if you haven’t seen John Schuhmann’s StatsCube piece on the Most Improved race, you should.) We’re taking the vote to the people (that would be you) to see what the popular opinion is on the Most Improved Player:
HANG TIME HEADQUARTERS – As if things weren’t interesting enough for the Golden State Warriors this season, former Warriors coach Don Nelson is weighing in now.
And if there is any validity to what he has to say, more on that in a second, then the new ownership situation for the Warriors couldn’t have come at a better time.
In a Monday night interview on “Chronicle Live” on CSN Bay Area, Nelson aired some of his own dirty laundry and that of many others. You have to read some of it to believe it, courtesy of Rusty Simmons of the San Francisco Chronicle:
In his most provocative comment, Nelson seemed to say he was fired primarily for asking center Andris Biedrins to shoot his free throws underhanded. Biedrins shot an NBA-worst 16 percent in 2009-10, Nelson’s final season.
“I got fired when I asked him to (shoot underhanded),” Nelson said, and there was no follow-up question. Nelson maintained that he had Rick Barry lined up to instruct Biedrins.
