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Rockets Down To A One-Game Season

April 27, 2013  ·  1:42PM

 

HOUSTON – The temptation is to change without Russell Westbrook in the Thunder lineup. The temptation is to try to exploit that gaping hole in the backcourt.

But going back to that infamous apple hanging from the tree, temptation has often led to trouble.

“We can’t change who we are,” said Rockets coach Kevin McHale. “We can’t suddenly change our style and become some team that we’re not. It’s not like we’re gonna show up and suddenly play like an inside-out team with Hakeem Olajuwon in the middle.”

The task for the Rockets in Game 3 tonight at the Toyota Center is to keep stomping down hard on the gas pedal, keep moving the basketball from side to side on the court and continue to play with the sense of urgency that was evident in their fourth-quarter comeback in Game 2.

The absence of Westbrook does not mean the Rockets are facing a situation that is any less desperate.

Of 44 previous No. 8 seeds to fall into an 0-2 hole in the first round of the playoffs, only one has managed to climb back out.

“We’ve got a one-game season,” McHale said. “That’s as simple as it is. We better be desperate. We’re down 2-0 coming home in a playoff series. We got to play well. We got to do all the things we did last game, but more.”

Rather than an OKC that is reeling, the Rockets have got to figure the Thunder will come rolling with an added measure of emotion. They have got to expect that the league’s second-leading scorer Kevin Durant will now have the ball in his hands even more and will put up more shots.

“That sounds like fun for me,” said Chandler Parsons, who will get the lion’s share of the defensive duty on Durant.

“Anytime someone goes down, it gives the team an opportunity for someone to step up. (Westbrook’s) a huge part of their team. They’re hurting right now. That’s one of their leaders. That’s one of their best players going down.

“Now we’ve got to really get them while they’re down. Obviously we have an opportunity…and we have to take advantage of the opportunity.

“Just because Westbrook is out doesn’t mean we’re not still down 0-2. The urgency’s still there and it’s probably even more now. Just understanding that it’s a very winnable game and we need to go in there and set the tone and really make this series fun by getting a win.”

The Rockets are expecting that Reggie Jackson will get the start for OKC in Westbrook’s place, but they can’t afford to concern themselves with match-ups.

Houston could be missing a cog in its own starting lineup depending on the status of point guard Jeremy Lin. He suffered a bruised chest muscle in Game 2 and is considered a game-time decision. However Lin did take part in Saturday morning’s shootaround. Big man Greg Smith was suffering from stomach distress and did not participate in the shootaround.

Nevertheless, what’s important for the Rockets is to clean up all of the problems in their own game. In the series opener, the NBA’s youngest team was overwhelmed by the first playoff experience for most of the roster and was swamped. When the ball moved better in their offense and presented open shots in Game 2, the Rockets made just 36 of 91 shots and were only 10-for-34 from behind the 3-point line.

And the one thing the Rockets cannot do at all is think for even a moment that Westbrook’s absence could make things easier.

“It’s a dangerous situation,” said forward Carlos Delfino.

– Series Hub: Thunder vs. Rockets

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Fast-And-Loose Rockets Defy Convention

March 7, 2013  ·  1:26AM

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DALLAS – What Mike D’Antoni must think of these young, run-and-gun, jack-’em-up Houston Rockets.

“They are an exciting team,” said Dallas Mavericks forward Shawn Marion, a staple on D’Antoni’s seven-seconds-or-less Phoenix Suns. “And, on the floor, they are a team I haven’t seen in a long time.”

Maybe since your Suns teams, Shawn?

James Harden and Co., are turning conventional basketball on its ear, spurred by the analytics revolution that suggests mid-range jumpers in today’s game are a waste of time. The Rockets aren’t without flaws — namely a defense that allows far too many points — as was the case in Wednesday’s 112-108 loss at the Dallas Mavericks, a tough one to swallow as Houston tries to solidify its playoff position.

Their offensive approach, however, continues to defy convention at a pulsating pace. The Rockets score the majority of their points in three ways: Drives to the basket for the majority of their high-frequency points in the paint, free throws and 3-pointers. Consider in Wednesday’s game that 100 of their 108 points came from those three areas — 38 points in the paint, 26 points from the free-throw line and 36 more from beyond the arc.

“That’s Rockets basketball,” Harden said.

Houston is the youngest team in the NBA and, at 33-29, it is poised to make the playoffs for the first time since 2009. They’re tied for the league lead in scoring at 107.0 points a game with Oklahoma City. They’re second behind the Knicks in 3-pointers attempted per game (28.7) and 3s made per game (10.6), fourth in free throws made per game (18.9) and second in points in the paint per game (46.5).

“We’re doing what suits us best,” said Rockets forward Chandler Parsons, who had 23 points and was 5-for-8 from beyond the arc against Dallas. “We don’t mind what other people do. That’s the way we should play. That’s the best style that we play is up and down with the personnel we have. I think that suits us best. I think it’s a perfect situation, a perfect style for the way we play, how young we are; we got shooters, we got playmakers. I think there’s no other way to play.”

Last month, the Rockets tied the NBA’s all-time 3-point record by draining 23 against the Warriors. Since the All-Star break, Houston has increased its 3-point attempts to a whopping 32.3 a game. They went 19-for-46 in a two-point loss at Washington two weeks ago. In the last seven games, the Rockets have attempted 30 or more 3s five times.

“They shoot about 25-30 3s a night, and that’s a lot of 3s,” Marion said.

Yes it is. But the exchange is worth it. In those seven games, the Rockets are 102-for-226 from beyond the arc for an astounding 45.1 percent. After Wednesday’s 12-for-32 performance (37.5 percent), they’re shooting it at 37.0 percent on the season.

“I don’t think, with our offense, you can’t put a number on it [3-point attempts],” Parsons said. “We go up and down so fast that sometimes in the flow of a game shots are there and sometimes they’re not. So, I don’t think the 3s hurt us. I think it’s just part of our game and if we have open shots we’re going to take them.”

The question, assuming the Rockets hold onto their playoff spot, is if this style can win in the grind-it-out postseason. Of course, Houston won’t be favored to beat either of their most likely postseason foes (OKC or San Antonio) so it might take another year or two of seasoning before the Rockets come of age and their style becomes dissected in the playoffs like the D’Antoni’s old Suns.

“We know the difference now between good 3s and bad 3s,” Harden said. “So, when guys are open I think everybody on the team is going to say shoot the ball.”

That’s exactly what they’re doing.

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After Trades, Rockets Take Pace And Space To New Level

February 23, 2013  ·  11:02AM

BROOKLYN – The general consensus is that the Houston Rockets made a great deal in acquiring Thomas Robinson from the Sacramento Kings on Wednesday. Robinson, selected with the No. 5 pick just eight months ago, has the potential to be one of the best rebounders in the league some day. He’s an active athlete who will only benefit from escaping the dysfunction of Sacramento.

But in making the trade and a subsequent deal with the Phoenix Suns, the Rockets traded both their starting power forward, Patrick Patterson, and his back-up, Marcus Morris. And they either compromised an offensive system that ranks in the top five in efficiency or a defense that has been just good enough to keep them on the right side of the .500 mark.

Robinson may one day start at the four for Houston, but he’s a very different player than both Patterson and Morris. And it’s unclear how he fits into how the Rockets have been playing all season.

Houston is the ultimate pace-and-space team. They play the fastest tempo in the league and they keep the floor spread, allowing James Harden and Jeremy Lin to attack the basket off of pick and rolls. Patterson and Morris played their part as stretch bigs.

At the time of the trade, 13 of the Rockets’ 15 most-used lineups included either Patterson or Morris, who attempted about 60 percent of their shots from outside the paint and accounted for about two 3-pointers per game.

Kevin McHale admitted to having seen very little of his new rookie, but he knows that Robinson isn’t that kind of player.

“We’re going to have space a little bit different,” he said Friday.

For now, the Rockets are making due with Carlos Delfino playing the four, alongside Chandler Parsons at the three. It’s a lineup they’ve used before, but only once (previous to the trades) had it played more than nine minutes together.

General manager Daryl Morey believes that his team can survive, and even thrive, with the Parsons/Delfino tandem at forward.

“It’s sustainable,” Morey told reporters on Thursday. “If you look across the league, when teams play small, they play well. Your offense goes up. Your defense goes down, but your offense goes up more than your defense goes down. So a lot of teams are playing small. We’ve got the personnel to do it. We’ve got the style that fits. I absolutely think it’s a sustainable way to play against almost any opponent.”

McHale doesn’t seem to be completely on board with that sentiment, saying that the Rockets can play Delfino at the four “situationally.” The bottom line is that the two trades took two guys out of McHale’s rotation and replaced them with a question mark.

But so far, so good. After Friday’s 106-96 win in Brooklyn, the Rockets are 2-0 with their new starting lineup, with wins over the Thunder and Nets. They’ve been outrebounded in each game, but have shot 31-for-63 (49 percent) from beyond the arc.

Over the course of the season, the Rockets’ new lineup has been excellent offensively, scoring 112.9 points per 100 possessions in 133 minutes together. It’s yet to be really hurt on the glass and held its own defensively.

Really, it’s just taking the pace-and-space style to a new level. Less size, more shooting. Delfino has played 79 minutes over the last two games after averaging just 25 per game before the trades. He knows that he can only try his best to keep power forwards like Reggie Evans off the boards, and that the Rockets can take advantage of the same matchup offensively.

“When we go small, we play against big people and we try to create space,” he said. “Sometimes, it’s not just me getting my shots or having the ball, but [it's] rotations. They don’t rotate off me and they have more space in the paint.”

That’s exactly what happened in the first half on Friday. The Nets stayed at home on Delfino on the weak side, and the Rockets got a handful of dunks and layups off their pick and roll. Harden was the star against OKC on Wednesday, but his team managed to beat Brooklyn on Friday despite a relatively quiet night (22 points and only five trips to the line) from their All-Star.

Time will tell if the small lineup can hold up over time and keep the Lakers at bay in the playoff chase, and if Robinson has a place in McHale’s rotation this season. Certainly, 49 percent from 3-point range isn’t sustainable, but Houston does have an easier schedule than L.A. going forward.

***

One additional note: While the Sacramento trade makes complete sense, the trade that sent Morris to Phoenix for the Suns’ second-round pick was a little more curious. Morris wasn’t playing big minutes every night, but he obviously would have helped replace Patterson’s production if the Rockets had just made the one deal.

Morey said that he likes having high second-round picks and one has to wonder if the Rockets have already fallen in love with a player they project will be available when that Suns selection comes up. Right now, it’s set to be the No. 35 pick in the draft.

Houston got Parsons with the No. 38 pick two years ago.

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Clippers Top League’s Best Benches

January 18, 2013  ·  3:03PM

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HANG TIME NEW JERSEY – After Thursday’s 90-77 win in Minnesota, the Los Angeles Clippers are now 3-0 without MVP candidate Chris Paul.

All three wins have come on the road against good teams, and in none of them have the Clippers required a huge performance from one of their other starters. In fact, Blake Griffin has averaged just 16.3 points in the three wins. Eric Bledsoe, starting in place of Paul, has done a decent job of running the team, but has totaled only 11 assists.

The Clippers won the three games — and won them all comfortably –for the same reason that Paul has been able to sit the entire fourth quarter in nine of the 37 games he’s played in: They have the best bench in basketball.

Here’s all you need to know about the Clippers’ bench and why they’re a much-improved team: Last season, the Clips were outscored by 11.6 points per 100 possessions when Griffin was on the bench. This year, they’re outscoring their opponents by 11.7 points per 100 possessions with Griffin on the bench.

That’s a 23.3-point turnaround and that’s really what it’s all about. A good bench should build on leads, not lose them. That’s why the Bulls’ bench was so good the last couple of years, even though it didn’t have anybody who could really score. When Omer Asik, Ronnie Brewer and Taj Gibson were on the floor together, the Bulls shut down foes and scored enough to build on the lead the starters gave them.

With that in mind, here are the best benches in the NBA …

L.A. Clippers

The Clips have a full, five-man bench unit that’s one of the best lineups in the league. In 243 minutes with Bledsoe, Jamal Crawford, Matt Barnes, Lamar Odom and Ronny Turiaf on the floor, L.A. is a plus-14.5 per 100 possessions.

Though Crawford is known for his offense, this is really a defensive unit that has only scored 102.8 points per 100 possessions, just a notch above the league average. But it has allowed only 88.3, making it the second-best defensive unit of the league’s 72 lineups that have played at least 100 minutes.

The question is how Grant Hill fits in. In Hill’s first game back, that unit only played six minutes together. And in the last three games, it hasn’t played together at all, though that may have more to do with Bledsoe starting.

Either way, it would be disappointing if coach Vinny Del Negro broke up such an effective unit. And it really could affect where the Clippers finish in the Western Conference standings.

San Antonio

Though Manu Ginobili has been neither healthy nor sharp, the Spurs’ bench continues to get the job done. It’s just tough to determine where the starters end and where the bench begins, because eight different guys have started at least nine games for San Antonio already. But coach Gregg Popovich‘s ability to mix-and-match lineups will little drop-off is part of what makes the Spurs’ bench so good.

The Spurs don’t have a full bench unit like the Clippers. Their latest starting unit is Tony Parker, Danny Green, Kawhi Leonard, Tim Duncan and Tiago Splitter. Their most-used lineup that includes at least three other Spurs has only played 38 minutes together, and that lineup includes Parker and Duncan.

This is why we’d rate the Spurs’ bench behind that of the Clippers. But San Antonio is still outscoring its opponents by a solid 5.7 points per 100 possessions with Duncan off the floor. That’s a very good thing. (more…)

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Delfino Makes Milwaukee Return ‘Special’

January 5, 2013  ·  11:09AM

 

MILWAUKEE – Fine, so it wasn’t as big or as triumphant as Jeremy Lin‘s return to Madison Square Garden. Emotions weren’t raw and racing just below the surface the way they were for James Harden and the Houston Rockets when he went back to Oklahoma City just a month after being traded.

But Carlos Delfino enjoyed his time with the Milwaukee Bucks, wasn’t eager to leave and wound up taking some real satisfaction from his first trip back Friday at the BMO Harris Bradley Center.

“It’s always special going against your old team,” said Delfino, the eight-year NBA veteran who spent the past three seasons in Milwaukee. The 6-foot-6 swingman stuck the Bucks for 22 points – nine in the second quarter to whittle down an 18-point deficit, then 13 in the fourth to seal the comeback in a 115-101 victory.

Delfino averaged 10.6 points and 4.5 rebounds for the Bucks, starting 159 of his 178 appearances. He helped them reach the playoffs in his first season, then was badly missed in 2010-11 when he sat more than two months with concussion symptoms and neck strain.

Last summer, after a second straight lottery appearance, Milwaukee headed in a non-Delfino direction, counting on Mike Dunleavy and young Tobias Harris at small forward while committing to Monta Ellis alongside Brandon Jennings in the backcourt. Delfino was on the market until late August, his work for Argentina (15.3 ppg, 3.8 rpg) in the London Olympics done.

It wasn’t Bucks GM John Hammond ringing his phone, it was the Rockets’ Daryl Morey instead.

“I was sad in the moment. I thought I was staying in Milwaukee,” Delfino said. “I had a good feeling with everybody in the city, after you’ve been defending the colors for three years. Then when I didn’t have any offer, I didn’t get sad about that or blame anyone. It’s a business. But I was feeling more about the personal stuff. Getting a call. … I was more sad about that.”

What the Bucks and Bradley Center fans saw Friday was classic Carlos: Not his rousing, somewhat unexpected, one-handed driving dunk but his 8-of-11 shooting, including 6-of-7 on 3-pointers (while the rest of the Rockets were going 7-of-26 from the arc). Houston is 9-2 this season when Delfino makes at least three 3-pointers in a game; the past two seasons, the Bucks were 20-10 on those nights.

“When Carlos makes a couple, he’s got a beautiful shot,” Houston coach Kevin McHale said afterward. “I watch him in practice sometimes just shoot. When he’s relaxed and guys are rebounding for him, he goes for long, long stretches without missing.”

Delfino, who is 29 but seems to have been on the NBA scene much longer, also is a helpful veteran on an extremely young roster. “Carlos has no agenda,” McHale said. “He’s a pro. … It’s the same thing I felt about Luis Scola last year – these guys have been playing pro ball since they’re, like, 14. They have such a relaxed feel, they’re fun to be around.”

The Bucks aren’t having much fun at the moment. They have dropped three in a row and four of six, heading into their game at Indiana Saturday. Coach Scott Skiles, his staff, Hammond and half the locker room are working in the final years of their contracts.

The roster is heavily tilted toward the frontcourt, with only Beno Udrih as a reliable backup at guard. The guy they acquired to plug Andrew Bogut‘s hole last season, Samuel Dalembert, doesn’t play these days. Neither does Drew Gooden, who did what he could to plug that spot last season.

As the Bucks threw the ball away 19 times and shot 38.9 percent in the second half, they could have used someone exactly like Delfino. But he was working from the other end, in road colors, making sure his trip back to town stayed special.

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McHale Returns To Rockets: ‘It’s Time’

December 8, 2012  ·  8:54PM


HOUSTON – It was time.

Time for Kevin McHale to think about Xs and Os instead of the unspeakable tragedy of losing a daughter.

Time to deal with the tension of trying to win games rather than cope with the lingering grief.

McHale returned to the sidelines on Saturday night nearly one month since taking a leave of absence to be with his 23-year-old daughter in the last days of her life.

Sasha McHale died of complications from Lupus on Nov. 24.

“I feels good to be back,” McHale said in the hallway of the Toyota Center a short time before his Rockets played the Mavericks. “I’ve been gone a pretty long time. It’s good to rely on the players to make plays and the coaches to help me out a lot.

“It’s been a while, but hopefully it’s the right time. I don’t know if there ever is a right time. Don’t know if there’s a playbook by this. I’m excited to be back. I think it’s gonna be good. It’s been, needless to say, a terrible month. But you know, it just felt like the time to come back and go to work and be around the guys.”

When McHale left the team to fly to Minnesota to be with his family on Nov. 10, the Rockets had just lost at Memphis. The team went 7-6 in his absence under the guidance of acting coach Kelvin Sampson.

“I thought Kelvin [Sampson] did a tremendous job, I really did,” McHale said. “I left after the Memphis game. We went there and got beat up pretty good by Memphis. We had a two-point game for a while, but they exposed some stuff and I had talked to Kelvin and the coaching staff about trying to do some other things. I thought they did a great job implementing that.

“With a new team, with a bunch of new guys, your first 20 games — I feel bad I wasn’t around to really be here and help with the guys, because everything works on the white board when you’re drawing stuff up and a lot of stuff works in the exhibition season. But all of a sudden the regular season starts and everything doesn’t work as good as I thought it would. We have to do this or we have to do that. There’s just a ton of adjustments to be made, and I thought they did a really good job.”

From a distance, McHale had both analyzed and admired his team, the youngest in the NBA.

“They fight hard, they do. I mean, last night San Antonio put it on us pretty hard, but the guys have battled. That win we had against the Lakers was an amazing win. That just felt like there was no chance that we’re going to win that game. They just battle hard.

“We’re a young group of guys. We coaches are still trying to figure out how to fit everybody into the mold together. And then, inside of that, you have Carlos [Delfino] miss 6, 7 games with his groin. There’s always stuff that’s happening in the NBA. When you’ve been together for a while, you just fall into a rhythm as a team. ‘Oh this guy’s not playing, so this guy’s role increases.‘ We’re still trying to figure a lot of that stuff out.”

It was coincidental that McHale’s return came against the Mavs, coached by his long-time friend Rick Carlisle. They were teammates for three seasons in Boston and won a championship together in 1986.

“I’ve heard from a lot of people,” McHale said. “That’s been tremendous. I had a lot of guys that I didn’t know that well that really reached out, and I spent a lot of time talking to them. It’s a terrible situation. It’s a terrible situation to even think about. To comprehend the whole thing, it’s almost incomprehensible.

“I’ve known Rick [Carlisle] since we were kids. It was good to see him. It was good to talk to him.”

Carlisle and McHale spoke before the game and the Mavs coach expected the return to the sidelines to be an emotional experience for his old friend.

“I’m sure it will be,” he said. “I just talked to him about it and I can’t imagine the emotions he’s gone through in the last month. All of us that know him have been thinking about him and his family and praying for them a lot over the last several weeks. And this represents him stepping back into the fray here and it’s an important deal.”

When the Toyota Center public address announcer noted after the starting lineups that McHale was back on the bench, the crowd rose to its feet and applauded warmly, but he did not acknowledge it. McHale’s head was down inside a team huddle as he drew up plays on his whiteboard.

It was time to be a coach again.

What was important to McHale through the ordeal was keeping in touch with his team through his daily conversations with Sampson.

“I don’t want to get into the whole thing, but it was hard,” McHale said. ‘Your mind’s a million miles away and yet you’re still watching the games, still pulling for the guys so hard. You want them to win and you literally just ache with every loss and rejoice with every win. It’s just different. We would just talk basketball. A lot of times, that hour of the day was the best hour of the day.”

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Exposed Howard Covers Lakers Sins

December 5, 2012  ·  1:28AM

HOUSTON — Evidently, it is also safe now to spit into the wind and pull the mask off the old Lone Ranger. Because everybody, it seems, is tugging on Superman’s cape these days.

Dwight Howard couldn’t be more exposed if he were a magazine centerfold wearing nothing but a staple. At least in Playboy, they usually let you lay down on a soft bearskin rug.

Howard shot just 8-for-16 on free throws and it was actually his best night from the foul line in a week and a half.

Every time the Lakers center stands unguarded 15 feet from the basket, it is becoming less a surprising adventure than a sitcom rerun: The Big Clang Theory.

The Rockets were only the latest to intentionally foul Howard and send him to the line. The strategy — Bite-a-Dwight, if you will — continues to take a shark-sized chunk from the aura of the big man that the Lakers are falling all over themselves for the chance to pay $100 million to and give away the keys to the franchise.

The fact that the strategy worked — and gave the crowd at the Toyota Center great amusement — covered up a bigger batch of sins. The Lakers can’t take care of the ball, committing 19 turnovers, can’t keep opponents off the offensive glass and can’t defend consistently when the game is on the line.

Yes, the Rockets sent Howard to the line five different times in a 69-second span of the fourth quarter. Yes, he connected only five times on his 10 throws. But during that stretch Houston outscored the Lakers by just 7-5.

It was everything else the Rockets did in the fourth quarter — getting James Harden into the paint to draw fouls, getting easy dump-off passes to Greg Smith, getting open shots on the wing for Toney Douglas -- that made the difference.

Just as occurred on at home on Sunday night against Orlando, Howard’s ineptitude from the foul line was the lightning rod while everyone else in the lineup let the house burn down.

Now the talk shows and the Twitterverse will be teeming with the suggestions for coach Mike D’Antoni to chain Howard to the bench in the fourth quarter of close games.

“People have no clue what they’re talking about if they think I’ll take Dwight out in the fourth quarter,” D’Antoni said. “It’s pretty simple: You don’t do that to a guy. He made his foul shots and that’s not the reason that we lost that game. He has to work through this. You just don’t take out a franchise player and do something like that to him.”

Certainly not if you don’t want to risk turning a mental block into a full blown psychosis. If Howard is going to be the anchor to the Lakers in the post-Kobe Bryant future, then he can hardly be hidden away at crunch time like Grandma’s porcelain figurines every time the kiddies come to visit.

“That’s just a strategy that teams are employing and we have to figure out the best strategy to defend it,” Bryant said. “We’ve talked about it a little bit. He just has to keep working at it all the time and keep practicing and doing it over and over until he turns it into a strength.”

The more critical problem is the Lakers’ lack of discipline and defense when games get late. This was a game in which the Lakers once led by 17 and were still up by 13 early in the fourth quarter.

On a night when Harden was a myopic 3-for-19, Chandler Parsons 5-for-16 and Jeremy Lin 2-for-8, the Rockets kept working and grinding and did all of the little things to inch their way back and give themselves a chance. It was the kind of play that the Lakers seem to think is beneath them.

With Steve Nash still out with a fractured leg and Pau Gasol now going to the sidelines to rest his ailing knees, excuses are all around for the Lakers, if they want to use them.

So, too, is the easy scapegoat, Howard, hammering more metal than a blacksmith, at the line. But it is not Howard committing the defensive breakdowns. He’s stepping up to cut off a penetrator and nobody is rotating behind him. Howard is not the one leaving the likes of Douglas and Carlos Delfino wide open on the outside because the proper switches weren’t made.

“He’s not the reason that our defense breaks down,” D’Antoni said. “He’s not the reason that stuff happens.”

But as long as Superman keeps standing exposed at the foul line, the real problems stay hidden.

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Some Notable Names Are Still Waiting For Their Free Agent Fury To Begin

August 30, 2012  ·  12:52PM


HANG TIME HEADQUARTERS – Not all NBA free agents are created equal.

Sometimes you’re Deron Williams and sometimes you’re not.

And this isn’t news to the huddled masses of familiar names and faces still looking for work with the start of training camps just a mere month away. They know that it’s time for the two-minute drill, when their options are dwindling and an invite to camp becomes a life-preserver for guys who are used to guaranteed roster spots and permanent spots in a team’s rotation.

This would explain the likes of Eddy Curry, who most likely will not be in Miami on opening night when the championship banner is raised but does have a ring with his name on it, auditioning for any team interested.

It’s the same reason you hear names like Josh Howard, who has worked out for his home state Charlotte Bobcats, Josh Childress, Hilton Armstrong and so many others — some former lottery picks (Childress) and some former All-Stars (Howard) — doing what millions of other Americans are doing right now, and that’s looking for work.

Curry and Armstrong worked out together for the Nets Wednesday, according to the New York Post:

Curry, along with Hilton Armstrong, worked out for the Nets Wednesday, according to Yahoo! Sports. Curry, the much maligned former Knick, spent last season with the Heat, playing 14 games and averaging 2.1 points while riding the coattails of LeBron James to his first NBA title.

Curry, 29, played a combined 10 games in his final three seasons with the Knicks before his contract was used as salary ballast in the Carmelo Anthony deal in February 2011.

Armstrong was part of the Nets’ free agent minicamp in May, when he earned some praise for his play from general manager Billy King.

“What I like about Hilton is he’s long and he knows how to play. I think the biggest thing for Hilton is doing it consistently,” King said at the time. “I think he got better each day. I like his length, because the one thing is it’s hard to find athletic size in this league.”

(more…)

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A Rivalry Renewed: U.S. And Argentina Set To Face Off … One Last Time?

August 9, 2012  ·  10:15PM

LONDON – After a decade of circling each other, five times in five different tournaments during that span, it comes down to this for the U.S. Men’s Senior National Team and their counterparts from Argentina.

Only one of them will play for a gold medal here Sunday in the Olympics.

And whoever gets that chance will have to go through their bitter rival in the semifinals Friday afternoon (4 p.m. ET) at North Greenwich Arena.

It’s a fitting crossroads for the two programs. After all, Argentina is the outfit that shocked the USA Basketball system a decade ago at the 2002 World Championship in Indianapolis, shattering a previous decade of domination by NBA players on the national team rosters by embarrassing that team on home soil.

They’re reaffirmed the initial blow two years later by going through the U.S. Team in the semifinals on the way to gold in the Athens Olympics. That death-blow jolted USA Basketball into a complete reorganization of the program that saw both managing director and chairman Jerry Colangelo and coach Mike Krzyzewski come on board.

When the U.S. finally returned the favor in Beijing four years ago, finishing off Argentina in the semifinals on the way to Olympic gold, it was clear both sides would spend the next four years pining for a moment like the one that is upon them now.

Argentina’s aging core group, led by Manu Ginobili, Luis Scola, Andres Nocioni and Carlos Delfino, is believed to be making this one last stand together. The instigators of a basketball revolution in their native land, this could very well be the last time they take the floor together in Olympic competition.

“We know who those guys are,” said Ginobili, Argentina’s fearless leader. “We are not intimidated when we play against them.”

That fact only adds to the intrigue for the core of the U.S. Team, guys like LeBron James, Carmelo Anthony, Kobe Bryant, Chris Paul and even Kevin Durant.

They’d love to put the Argentina chapter of USA Basketball’s history to rest.

“Why not? Why not?” Anthony said without so much as a whiff of cockiness in his voice. “We have to play them. Something has to happen. Why not end it [now]?”

(more…)

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Posted in London 2012 / Comments (18) /

Slim Pickings Left In Free Agency

August 3, 2012  ·  12:46PM

HANG TIME NEW JERSEY – Training camp is still about eight weeks away, but good luck trying to find any more free agents who can make a real impact on your team. A month after free agency opened, only slim pickings remain.

Want proof? The remaining free agent who played the most minutes last season is Alonzo Gee. Most rebounds? Shelden Williams. Yep, we’re down to the bottom of the barrel.

At this point, if teams are still looking to fill roster spots, they have certain needs. So we’ll list the best available guys by position. Here are three point guards, five wings, and three bigs who could be useful (or not) next season…

Point guards

1. Derek Fisher (OKC)
23.9 MPG, 5.6 PPG, 2.7 APG, 37.1% FG, 32.1% 3PT
The veteran will celebrate his 38th birthday next week, and it’s been a while since we’ve heard anything about a possible destination for next season. After a rough regular season, he shot a solid 38 percent (18-for-48) from 3-point range in the playoffs.

2. Jannero Pargo (ATL)
13.4 MPG, 5.6 PPG, 1.9 APG, 41.5% FG, 38.4% 3PT
Pargo provided an offensive lift for the Hawks in a handful of games last season. (more…)

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Posted in Free Agency 2012 / Comments (65) /

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