Posts Tagged ‘David Stern’

< Older Entries
Newer Entries >

Heat, Spurs Still Virtual Strangers

March 12, 2013  ·  2:51PM

HANG TIME SOUTHWEST – Both conference’s No. 1 teams made significant statements over the last two days.

It wasn’t just that the Miami Heat and San Antonio Spurs both convincingly knocked off their closest challengers. The greater message to the Indiana Pacers and Oklahoma City Thunder — and the rest of the league — is how they did it.

LeBron James is the runaway MVP candidate. He had an amazing streak of scoring at least 3o points and shooting 60 percent in six consecutive games. Yet, the Heat only needed 13 points (5-for-10 shooting), seven assists and six rebounds from him in trouncing the Pacers 105-91 on Sunday.

It can be argued that James creates such headaches for opposing defenses that it allows his teammates to run free. Sure, OK, but it had to be demoralizing to the Pacers, the NBA’s top-ranked field-goal percentage defense, to hold James to a baker’s dozen yet surrender 55.9 percent shooting from the field.

San Antonio earned its 105-93 victory Monday over the Thunder by having its two healthy members of the the Big Three — Tim Duncan (13 points, eight rebounds) and Manu Ginobili (12 points, four assists, 24 minutes) — make way for this big three: Tiago Splitter (21 points, 10 rebounds), Kawhi Leonard (17 points, three steals) and Danny Green (16 points, 4-for-4 on 3s).

The precision, depth and discipline of the Spurs was on full display in shooting 52.4 percent against the Thunder’s second-ranked field-goal percentage defense. San Antonio’s improving defense also cranked up, making it difficult on NBA scoring leader Kevin Durant (26 points, 7-for-13 FGs) and Russell Westbrook (25 points, 11-for-27), the leaders of the West’s second-highest scoring offense at more than 106 points a game.

Does this mean we’re headed for a Spurs-Heat Finals come June? Not necessarily. But what if? Which team would hold the advantage?

How can anyone really know? These two teams are virtual strangers.

Since James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh joined forces in the 2010-11 season, the Heat and Spurs have played four times and none of those games featured lineups that would go head-to-head in a Finals series.

The fourth and most recent meeting was the infamous go-home game on Nov. 31 at Miami when Spurs coach Gregg Popovich sent his Big Three plus Green home. A steamed David Stern slapped San Antonio for $250,000 for pitting its reserves against the defending champs on national TV. The Heat won an entertaining game with a late comeback.

The three previous games were all blowouts (2-1 in favor of Miami) with a head-scratching average margin of defeat of 27.1 points. Two of those were played in the span of 10 days in March 2011, and the third was their lone meeting in last season’s lockout-shortened schedule, a 120-98 Heat win on Jan. 20, with Ginobili injured and Richard Jefferson and DeJuan Blair in the Spurs’ starting lineup.

Miami has yet to see the remodeled Spurs after they dealt Jefferson to Golden State for Stephen Jackson and added Boris Diaw. The Heat barely know Green, San Antonio’s leading 3-point bomber (although he did score 20 points off the bench on 6-for-7 3-point shooting in that game nearly 14 months ago).

Fortunately, the Spurs and Heat do meet again on March 31 at San Antonio. It might be our first real chance to assess how these two clubs match up.

Even then, Tony Parker might still be out with a sprained ankle. Either way, there will be plenty of intrigue if the Spurs and Heat, two virtual strangers, get together in June.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in HT News / Comments (17) /

Stern’s Take Double Good News For Seattle Backers

March 9, 2013  ·  4:09PM

 

HANG TIME WEST – That was some reality check commissioner David Stern delivered to Sacramento on Friday night when he said the counter-strike to keep the Kings is so far behind the Seattle package that it won’t even receive serious consideration unless the deal in the California capital gets better.

That would have been encouraging enough for the attractive bid out of Washington state. The real uplifting news for the group trying to revive the SuperSonics, the real take-away from Stern’s blunt analysis before Rockets-Warriors in Oakland, is the new awareness of how much the league is holding Sacramento’s hand during a very challenging process.

In short: Not as much as it seemed before.

Stern has always wanted the Kings to stay. They would have been gone years ago if not for Stern guiding the Maloof family, the owners who almost always followed the commissioner’s lead on any league matter. He previously believed in Kevin Johnson as a first-term mayor and newbie politician at any level. More recently, either Stern or top aides have been in regular contact with Sacramento after leaders there were caught flat-footed by the Seattle group led by Chris Hansen and Steve Ballmer that was more proactive and more organized.

But for the Sacramento proposal to be so lacking that Stern said the offer is “not comparable“ to the one from Seattle is very interesting insight. Either the league is not holding Sacramento’s hand to the point of telling Johnson specifically what the bid needs to look like, as it once seemed, or Mayor KJ, Mark Mastrov and Ron Burkle as lead private investors didn’t listen. Either way, Stern has drawn a line between encouraging the Sacramento efforts and privately leading them.

This is not close to game over. Mastrov, a Bay Area resident who attended Warriors-Rockets, downplayed Stern’s comments by telling The Associated Press that “It’s all part of the process.” He’s right. But he’s also spinning: Johnson waited so long, beyond his own original timeline, to deliver a sparkling offer on the purchase of the team and the construction of an arena, and now it should be painfully clear to the Sacramento backers that the city did not. This is not the process they wanted.

Johnson missed the chance to truly lobby owners and other influential NBA leaders at All-Star weekend when he showed up in Houston without a Sacramento bid to spotlight and now he has missed the chance to push back hard at Seattle. Sacramento needs to regroup again, and now it is clear Stern will only hold their hand so far.

Tags: , , , , , ,
Posted in HT News / Comments (20) /

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Worm?

March 2, 2013  ·  1:11PM

 

HANG TIME, Texas – Let’s just say the quaint notion of Felix and Oscar as The Oddest Couple went straight out the window the moment that Dennis Rodman and Kim Jong-un exchanged hugs. As bizarre meetings go, it wouldn’t have been out of place at the Star Wars Cantina.

Rodman: “Guess what, I love him. The guy’s really awesome.”

Never mind that Kim rules over one of the most reclusive countries in world, a place that during Rodman’s NBA playing days would never have tolerated his iconoclastic lifestyle.

Bridal gowns? Leather-and-chain ensembles? Tattoos? Lip and ear rings? In the Peoples Republic of Korea, the runway fashion has perennially run toward the ultimate in “throwback jerseys,” military gray.

If NBA commissioner David Stern’s rule was always considered to be a bit dictatorial for the Hall of Famer, what might he have thought of life under the supreme leader’s Kim dynasty — including his father and grandfather — where “technical fouls” may have meant trips to a work camp, or worse?

Yet here we are in these early days of the 21st century when the intransigence of American politics brings government to a halt and is no less a comical sight than Kim and Rodman sharing yuks and sushi as they watch the Harlem Globetrotters play.

So with North Korea occasionally sending up test missiles over the Sea of Japan and constantly rattling its sabers at the United States, maybe it makes perfect sense to send in Rodman under the clownish cover of the Washington Generals where the other Washington generals have failed to make headway.

Wouldn’t it be a kick if The Worm turned out to be a mole? At the very least, it would be a very memorable photo op to see Rodman show up at the Pentagon for a debriefing wearing more metal on his face than the Joint Chiefs of Staff have medals on their chests.

According to Choe Sang-Hun and David E. Sanger of the New York Times, the U.S. government might welcome any insights that Rodman could provide into Kim’s personality and the North Korean regime.

And while the choice of Mr. Rodman might seem odd to some — he is known for cross-dressing and was visiting a conservative nation where long hair for men and short skirts for women are forbidden — Mr. (Bill) Richardson said in an interview on Friday that it was not surprising given Mr. Kim’s love of basketball. (Mr. Richardson said he was asked by North Korean officials in recent months to persuade Michael Jordan to visit.)

Even though Mr. Rodman is no diplomat, Mr. Richardson said the visit could be valuable given the lack of good intelligence about Mr. Kim, a man whose nuclear arsenal and visceral anti-Americanism makes him a threat.

“Any information about Kim Jong-un, his mannerisms, his ability to speak English, his personal assessment, is valuable,” said Mr. Richardson. “He is their leader, and in our visit, he had lots of support.”

The State Department was not nearly so sanguine. Despite questions about the trip and whether the government would debrief Mr. Rodman on his return, a department spokesman, Patrick Ventrell, did not suggest a visit to Foggy Bottom was in the offing.

“We haven’t been in touch with this party at all,” he told reporters Thursday, leaving out Mr. Rodman’s name. “If there are Americans who after traveling in North Korea want to get in touch with us or have something to share with us, we take the phone calls.”

So did Rodman go into Pyongyang with a nose ring microphone or a spy camera implanted in a gold tooth?

Looks like we’ll have to watch the upcoming series produced by Vice Media for HBO to find out if he’s Agent 0091.

Rodman. Dennis Rodman. He’s always liked everything shaken and stirred.

Tags: , , , , ,
Posted in HT News / Comments (2) /

Kings’ Fate Dominates Stern’s Final All-Star Presser

February 16, 2013  ·  10:34PM

h

HOUSTON – The final All-Star press conference of NBA commissioner David Stern‘s 30-year tenure played out like so many of the others, with Stern working the room with a mix of charm, seriousness, humor, pride, lawyerly word-parsing and snark.

The most notable difference from past performances was increasing play-by-play with deputy commissioner Adam Silver, his presumptive successor when Stern officially steps down Feb. 1, 2014, weeks before next year’s All-Star Weekend in New Orleans. Silver, at that point, will be the one fielding the familiar questions about expansion, drug testing, international growth, the D-League, etc.

For example, when asked about dueling bids from New York and Brooklyn to host the 2015 All-Star Game, Stern said: “This is terrific. There are two applications in, one from Brooklyn and one from the [Madison Square] Garden. And I really think that commissioner Silver is going to have a great time with those applications, I really do. And I asked him to send me a postcard to tell me how they go.”

There was less banter on the subject that dominated the Q&A period of the half-hour-plus news conference: the possible franchise relocation of the Sacramento Kings to Seattle, pending a sale to investor Chris Hansen‘s group, its transfer application and approval by the league’s Board of Governors. The procedure is well-established, the subject has been (and will be) covered extensively on NBA.com – here, here and here, among other pieces – and, as Stern said, “I don’t see any scenario where both cities are happy.”

Asked to what degree the final verdict – keeping the Kings in Sacramento or re-branding them as the new SuperSonics – will hinge on economics vs. emotions, the commissioner said: “I don’t believe it’s going to come down to economics because it’s not about, ‘OK, I say 525 [million dollars].’ ‘All right, I say 526.’ To me, that would be economics. I think the owners are going to have a tough issue to decide. But I don’t want to get to it because we don’t have the predicate for that tough decision yet.”

Stern said that, unlike last year in Orlando, Sacramento’s mayor Kevin Johnson, a former NBA All-Star, did not meet with league executives in any attempt to broker a deal. Johnson, who did meet with interested media after Stern’s news conference, still is working up a counter-offer to keep the Kings.

“And then the owners are going to have to deal with it,” Stern said. “This is a good time to be a commissioner and not an owner.”

A glimpse of Stern’s famous protectiveness of all things NBA flashed in a later question about Seattle’s possible return as a league market, given the Sonics’ sale and move to Oklahoma City in 2008.

Asked if he regretted the way the NBA left Seattle, he said: “But I seem to remember, and you can correct me if I’m wrong, that there was a $300 million‑plus subsidy for the Mariners, and a $300 million‑plus subsidy for the Seahawks. … There was a legislation which precluded that for the Sonics, and [Washington Speaker of the State House Frank] Chopp said that we should take the money from our players.  Is there anything that I’m missing there?”

Zing.

As usual, beside the occasional Borscht Belt routines, Stern and Silver addressed a gamut of topics:

  • The league had no comment on the National Basketball Players Association vote Saturday to terminate executive director Billy Hunter after 17 years of service. “We await notification from the union as to who we should be dealing with,” Stern said.
  • Proud of the NBA’s drug-testing program, Stern repeated his remarks from last week in Minneapolis that human-growth hormone (HGH) would be added to the list of banned substances before the start of next season, subject to an agreement on testing protocol. He said of NBA players, “They want to be perceived as playing in a drug‑free sport.”
  • The NBA’s vision for the D-League, Silver reiterated, remains a 30-team league with 1-to-1 affiliations with parent clubs. “We think it’s the second-best basketball in the world after the NBA,” Silver said. D-League teams may be used to extend the NBA brand through promotional games internationally, he added.
  • Stern and Silver both talked of further growth opportunities globally, particularly in India, Africa and China. Stern will be traveling to Mumbai and Silver said a basketball academy might be opened in India similar to one the league created in China.
  • Stern’s favorite All-Star memory? No surprise here: Awarding Magic Johnson the MVP trophy after the 1992 game in Orlando. Johnson had abruptly retired before that season after being diagnosed with the HIV virus. “Giving sweaty Magic Johnson a big hug right after he hit the last 3, and still being able to hug him – because he’s alive – every time I see him,” the commissioner said. “That is at the top of the list.”
  • Second-best? Staging the “50 Greatest” players event at the 1997 All-Star Weekend in Cleveland, with 47 attending and only Hall-of-Famer Pete Maravich deceased at that point (Jerry West and Shaquille O’Neal missed the weekend.)
  • As for future All-Star Games – the 2014 game is set for New Orleans – Silver said that Cleveland also has applied to host the 2015 game, in addition to the Knicks and the Nets. Other ideas have been floated from time to time. “We’ve discussed playing internationally,” Silver said. “I’m not sure if it will work, logistically, but it’s something we’ll continue to study. We’ve looked at other neutral cities [like Las Vegas in 2007]. We’ve looked at refreshing All‑Star Saturday Night and other innovative events for the weekend and I think we’ll continue to do that, the same way we have under David’s leadership.”

Let the passing of the torch continue.

Tags: , , , , , , ,
Posted in Uncategorized / Comments (10) /

Stern’s Countdown As NBA Commissioner Under Way

February 14, 2013  ·  8:54PM

HOUSTON – Former Kings and Nets All-Star Otis Birdsong, at a brief ceremony Thursday afternoon extending the partnership between the NBA and the National Basketball Retired Players Association, took a moment to thank commissioner David Stern for his service to the league and his friendship.

A few minutes earlier at Houston’s convention center, Stern had officially welcomed fans to the latest, and his final, Jam Session at All-Star Weekend.

The next several days figure to be a lot of the above: People summing up Stern’s contributions as commissioner, maybe expressing their thoughts about what will be his 30 years at the top of the league’s hierarchy, and noting his last this and final that. After all, he’s a short-timer now – Stern announced in October that he would be retire from the post on Feb. 1, 2014. Deputy commissioner Adam Silver is his likely successor.

So as Stern made the rounds Friday, and continues through the weekend, there already was a twilight feel taking hold.

In one exchange, a reporter asked Stern what folks ought to know about him before he exits. “Everyone knows about me,” Stern said. “This is my 36th year at the NBA, starting [as legal counsel] in 1978. There’s not a lot left that people don’t understand, although they see me more in a business [mode] or less in some of my non-profit endeavors. But that’s just the way it is because I consider those to be more private.”

Ask 100 players, coaches, executives and fans across the NBA about Stern and there might be an equal number of differing opinions. As for those public moments when he gets booed by one team’s partisans or another’s – such as at the NBA Draft – Stern said: “They’re showing their fandom. I think it’s terrific.”

Stern’s final All-Star press conference – see, always with the historic stuff now – will be held at its customary time and place: Saturday in the bowels of the arena before All-Star Saturday events. But he took enough questions from reporters Thursday to provide a sampler for what he might be talking about in 48 hours.

Among other topics:

  • Possible expansion as a solution to the franchise-relocation battle involving Sacramento and Seattle: “Talk to Adam next year. I don’t have any plans to champion expansion between now and February 2014.”
  • The Kings’ uncertain future: “Seattle’s a great market. Sacramento’s been a good market. It’s going to be a very difficult decision for the Board of Governors, if Sacramento comes up with an offer. That’s why I’m glad I’m not an owner.”
  • Turmoil in the NBA players union, with a meeting set for Saturday at which NBPA executive director Billy Hunter‘s fate could be determined: “We always look forward to negotiating with whomever the players association sends to negotiate with us. And we’ve had some really good negotiations over the years. Not only with Billy Hunter per se but with Jeffrey Kessler, who is the lawyer representing the union and [economist] Kevin Murphy … We’ve had some very difficult negotiations but we feel very good about where we are now.” [In other words, Stern, the league and the owners are interested observers but staying out of the fray.]
  • An All-Star Weekend staged some year in London: “That’s for the next commissioner to worry about…”

Expect to hear at lot of that in the coming 11 1/2 months.

Tags: , , , ,
Posted in HT News / Comments (6) /

Expansion Is Not The Simple Solution

February 14, 2013  ·  2:46PM

HOUSTON – Resolving the Sacramento-Seattle debate was never going to be as simple as rewarding both cities with teams, a reality commissioner David Stern and successor/deputy commissioner Adam Silver no doubt will underline during All-Star weekend here. In fact, Stern already has.

The idea has gained public momentum the last several weeks as a win-win outcome: Sacramento gets to keep the Kings with new ownership, the dream ending there, while Seattle gets an expansion franchise, generally the preferred route over inheriting a team with a history elsewhere. Plus, Seattle, sympathetic to the emotional aspects after feeling the pain of the SuperSonics moving to Oklahoma City, doesn’t have to victimize someone else to get back into the NBA. Everyone goes home happy.

It just may not be realistic. Owners around the league who will decide the fate of the sale of the Kings to a Seattle-based group, pending legal challenges from minority shareholders who claim a right of first refusal on any purchases, will clearly be intrigued by the idea of an expansion fee. Bob Johnson and the group that started the Bobcats in Charlotte, for example, paid $300 million, and that was in 2004.

But owners will be weighing that against the revenue that will be lost by having to cut a 31st team into future money, a significant setback that current organizations will project over the next five or 10 years. TV money. Luxury-tax money. Even if an expansion franchise is transitioned into a full share – a certain percentage the first year, an increase the next, etc. – that’s still a big hit over time.

(And that doesn’t even get into concerns over watering down the talent level. That will be more of an issue for fans.)

When Jonathan Feigen of the Houston Chronicle asked Stern, as part of a wide-ranging interview in advance of All-Star weekend about the possibility of Sacramento without a team, the commissioner replied, “I’m going to claim executive privilege on that one. The idea of leaving Sacramento is not a good one. The idea of going back to Seattle is a good idea. We’ll have to see how that plays out.” Pressed on expansion, though, Stern said:

“I haven’t heard anything about expansion from our owners. They have discussed contraction in conjunction with the last Collective Bargaining Agreement. I don’t think (expansion) is an option. Right now, we have no approved plan for an arena in Seattle. We have a very good potential ownership group and set of plans, but there’s a lot of work to be done. I keep a little green book with a list of all the cities interested in NBA teams and could respond pretty quickly. There’s all kinds of stuff going on in Pittsburgh, Columbus, Louisville, Virginia Beach, Las Vegas, Vancouver, Mexico City, Kansas City.”

I don’t think (expansion) is an option.

This is obviously in the moment, with no way of knowing what the next three or five years would bring. Sacramento mayor Kevin Johnson has said he intends to have a new entertainment complex built with or without the NBA as an anchor tenant, and a downtown arena moving forward would obviously keep expansion hopes alive. But Johnson has also received a clear message from Stern in the past that chances are very slim the small-market city would get a replacement team in the future. Besides, if the league was going to add a 31st team, it would be backward to move an established franchise from Sacramento to Seattle only to put a new organization in Sacramento in a few years.

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Uncategorized / Comments (8) /

Stan Van Gundy Unchained!

January 22, 2013  ·  10:44AM





HANG TIME HEADQUARTERS – Months removed from his most recent coaching stint in the NBA, Stan Van Gundy‘s words still resonate.

The colorful former coach of both the Orlando Magic and Miami Heat didn’t hold anything back when discussing his life, the NBA, politics, Lance Armstrong, his future and plenty more with Jon Saraceno of USA Today. And because he’s no longer bound by his employer to watch his tongue, you better believe he let it all out.

Van Gundy answered questions the same way he coached his teams, without a hint of reservation and as brutally honest as possible. Best players he’s ever coached? Dwyane Wade followed by Dwight Howard and Shaquille O’Neal (with the qualifier that O’Neal was in the latter stages of his stellar career).

Is politics in his future? He’s never going to run at the top of a ticket for anything. And who is to blame for him not joining his brother Jeff Van Gundy on ABC/ESPN broadcasts in some capacity? NBA Commissioner David Stern.

The most overrated player in the NBA? Houston Rockets point guard Jeremy Lin (“He’s not a guy who should be third in the [All-Star] voting.”) followed closely by Brooklyn Nets point guard Deron Williams (“I never thought Deron Williams was overrated but right now people still look at him as one of the top two or three point guards in the league. He hasn’t been that in recent seasons.”) And the most underrated? Nets guard Joe Johnson is Van Gundy’s most “underappreciated.”

If Van Gundy has designs on rejoining the NBA coaching fraternty, he’ll have to be ready to answer a few more questions about some of his answers with at least several teams. He didn’t hold back on a number of topics, and that includes the league’s topic du jour (the train wreck that the Los Angeles Lakers have become):

Q: Biggest surprise this season?

A: Like everybody, probably the way the Lakers have struggled. There are probably pretty easy explanations for it. I’m not totally (surprised), but if you had asked me early in the year, I thought they would win the West.

I never could have predicted they would have screwed up the coaching situation — fire a guy (Mike Brown) five games into the season and be on three coaches 11 games into the year. Or have predicted their injuries. That’s as screwed-up a team as I’ve seen in a long time.

Q: What about team chemistry?

A: I still think that would’ve worked out. Training camp now is a total waste. Bill Walsh in his book (Finding the Winning Edge) said that you have to stay true to your process. You don’t circumvent the process. The Lakers screwed up the process. They haven’t given it a chance to work.

Gregg Popovich says you can’t skip steps. They skipped. (Coach) Mike D’Antoni is coming in on the fly and doesn’t have time to build chemistry and respect in the locker room. I feel badly for Mike because he’s a great guy and a great coach. The situation is impossible.

At the end of the day, there are a lot of guys who are qualified to coach. But the key thing is you all have to be on the same page. I sometimes marvel how organizations sometimes shoot themselves in the foot.

Q: Was Phil Jackson the solution?

A: I think Phil would have run into the same problems. Kobe (Bryant) and Pau (Gasol) are really the only guys left (from his tenure). It all would have been new — he would’ve gone through the same chemistry problems. I mean, I think they should have stuck with (Brown).

There are some firings where, even if you (personally) disagree with them, you see where (management) is coming from. (But) five games in? If you weren’t committed to Mike Brown, you shouldn’t have brought him back. With two new high-profile players, he needed time to put this together.

Q: But was Brown the right guy for the Lakers?

A: I think he was . . . he could have been. They really didn’t have the people to play that way. The hired Mike D’Antoni and they’re (supposedly) going to bring back Showtime. Showtime? Are you kidding me? Those (older players) aren’t going to be Showtime. They weren’t really Showtime when Phil was there, quite honestly. They executed in the half-court and used their size.

D’Antoni is a great coach but they have to have the right pieces. It all has to fit — what management wants, the type of players and the coach. It’s not an easy thing. For all the success they’ve had, I just think this year that they’ve looked pretty foolish as an organization.

The truth according to Stan Van Gundy is a lot of things, but it’s never boring.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in HT News / Comments (63) /

Numbers Don’t Favor Lakers

January 21, 2013  ·  11:34AM






HANG TIME HEADQUARTERS – If and when this season officially goes over the basketball cliff, the Los Angeles Lakers will have their pick of scapegoats.

From the entire Buss family to David Stern, Phil Jackson, Kobe Bryant, Mike D’Antoni, Dwight Howard, Pau Gasol, Steve Nash, Metta World Peace, the Hollywood elite and just about anyone else who has set foot in Staples Center this season, you will not be safe if things come completely undone and the Lakers miss the playoffs.

The real culprit, however, might be the numbers. They don’t lie and the Lakers are stalling at a time when they simply cannot afford to, given the obstacle course they have left to navigate.

As of this morning, they need to go 24-18 over the next 42 games just to break even this season, which we all know probably won’t be good enough to get them into the playoffs. That means they’ll need to play lights out over that same stretch to get back into the playoff picture.

While we’re not saying it’s impossible, it seems highly improbable for a team that’s managed a mighty 17-23 record heading into tonight’s game against Chicago (9:30 ET, TNT). Then again, the way things are going, impossible might need to be the rallying cry the Lakers use the rest of the way. Because no one thought this result was possible when Nash and Howard joined the party over the summer.

Fast forward to the third Monday of this New Year and Howard and the Lakers are still trying to get out of their own way, experiencing the sort of growing pains few people expected them to still be dealing with this late in the season.

Give the Lakers this much, they are giving it the old equal-opportunity try in assessing their issues. Everything is being scrutinized. Even Kobe has admitted his struggles and failings. Their defense has been atrocious, validating the fears of many (the HT crew included) that D’Antoni’s penchant for focusing so much on the offense might obscure the fact that this crew’s biggest deficiencies are on the  other side.

Despite despicable defensive numbers, they all seemed to be more concerned about offense, as Kevin Ding of the Orange County Register reports:

“The ball sticks,” D’Antoni lamented Sunday.

Said Nash: “Sometimes we don’t do what we talk about and we break away. And maybe that’s because we need more time, but to me, mentally you’ve got to stick with the script. Right now I think we’re defecting from the script too many times.”

Bryant’s thought process? Very different.

He said he was “very, very happy” about Pau Gasol getting consistent post-ups Sunday: “We got a lot of easy things from him down there, so we’ll start seeing that more often.” As for his poor shooting, Bryant said he was tired and needed to get more massages, ice baths and rest. He has been asked to defend the best perimeter player on the opposing team in recent games and last game requested more set plays for him to shoot.

“This team needs me at both ends of the floor,” adding a vague reference to “unless they’re going to do something roster-wise.”

The time for vague references are over. The Lakers have a definitive bottom line they are working. They have 42 games to work with and the legacy of this team, this group, and, specifically D’Antoni, Kobe, Nash, Howard and Gasol, will be defined in that time and space.

Time is running out!

Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in HT News / Comments (79) /

Hang Time Podcast (Episode 100) Featuring TNT’s Shaq, Kenny and Charles

January 16, 2013  ·  8:39PM

hangtime-100-575-

HANG TIME HEADQUARTERS – The centennial edition of The Hang Time Podcast was bound to be our biggest and best effort to date.

It had to be, given the star-studded guest list headlined by TNT’s Emmy Award-winning crew from The Inside set, masters Shaquille O’Neal, Kenny Smith and the Hall of Famer, Charles Barkley. With an opening assist from the great Ernie Johnson and a visit from the longtime radio voice of the Atlanta Hawks, Steve Holman, who was celebrating his 2,000 consecutive broadcast, we made sure to celebrate 100 right here at headquarters.

Dozens of current and former NBA players, current stars and living legends, have made appearances on the show in the first 100 episodes. We’ve talked to a little bit of everybody, from comedian extraordinaire Charlie Murphy to NBA Commissioner David Stern, Hollywood up-and-comer Genesis Rodriguez to comedic wiz Chelsea Peretti.

About the only guys we hadn’t spoken to yet were Shaq, Kenny and Charles … until now!

Listen in on Episode 100 of the Hang Time Podcast and party with us while we keep it 100!

(Big ups to Vince Thomas of The Shadow League, our former super producer Micah Hart for hatching the podcast with me from the start and the NBA TV and NBA Digital brain trust of Rusty Mintz, Tony Lamb, Steve “The Boss Man” Quintana, John Donovan, Kevin McCormack, Beau Estes our former intern Tori Carmen for helping nurse the show from its infancy into the full-blown ball of hoops chaos that we’ve grown into.)

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 Magazine and 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.

– To download the podcast, click here. To subscribe via iTunes, click here, or get the xml feed if you want to subscribe some other, less iTunes-y way.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Podcast / Comments (20) /

Popovich On Resting Players: ‘I Don’t Know What The Guidelines Are, Do You?’

December 30, 2012  ·  9:02PM

DALLAS – One month has passed since San Antonio Spurs coach Gregg Popovich flew four key players home before a nationally televised game at Miami. It rankled commissioner David Stern so that it earned the franchise an unprecedented fine of a quarter-million bucks.

Popovich said Sunday night as the Spurs prepared to face the Dallas Mavericks that he has had no contact with the league, has no idea of any guidelines for resting players and that he’ll operate as he has and rest a player — or  players — as he sees fit.

“The league hasn’t come out with specific guidelines to follow on resting players or anything like that, so I don’t really know what the rules are,” Popovich said. “But given that we’ve been fined for it, I would assume that they’re probably thinking about it, working on it in some way, shape or form. But I haven’t had any conversations with the league on, ‘Hey, what are you doing, what’s the deal?’ I haven’t talked to anybody.”

That could make this week rather interesting. The Spurs began a stretch of four games in five nights Sunday at Dallas. Then they’ll come back home to host Brooklyn on Monday. That’s followed by a trip to Milwaukee on Wednesday and on to New York to play the Knicks on Thursday.

“If you’re playing four games in five nights and you need to rest somebody, I think that’s a call that I’ll make,” Popovich said. “I’ve done it before and I’ll do it again, I’m sure.”

The Nov. 29 game at Miami was the Spurs’ 10th road game of the month and the last of a six-game road trip that spanned 10 days. After defeating the Orlando Magic by 21 points the night before, Popovich sent home starsTim Duncan, Tony Parker and Manu Ginobili, plus key rotation player Danny Green.

Almost as quickly as Stern learned about the absences in Miami, he issued an apology to fans, saying the Spurs’ decision was “unacceptable” and “substantial sanctions will be forthcoming.”

Stern was particularly perturbed that the Spurs did not notify the league office in advance. Still, the Spurs’ reserves led nearly the entire game until losing the lead and the game in the final minute.

Some suggested that Popovich sent the players home as a not-so-subtle message to the league to express his distaste for the road-heavy schedule. Would Popovich actually risk another significant fine or possible suspension and rest multiple players again? Well, it’s impossible to predict what Popovich might do.

“A lot of cricumstances have to converge to sit two or three players on a given night,” Popovich said. “But it has to do with their bodies, how many hits they’ve taken, how many minutes they’ve played, what the schedule is, all those things.”

Popovich is certainly known for giving his older players nights off, especially Duncan and particularly in a back-to-back situation. He’s hardly the only coach to do so. Mavericks coach Rick Carlisle used to give Jason Kidd nights off, typically later in the season, as a way to keep him fresh.

It was also not the first time that Popovich ordered multiple players home early from a road trip. However, the early season timing of this incident, plus it being a nationally televised game against the champs, did not sit well with the league office.

Yet until the league hands down a directive, Popovich doesn’t plan on changing his priorities.

“I don’t know what the guidelines are, do you?” Popovich said. “I don’t know how you plan. I’m just going to do what I’ve been doing for, I don’t know how long now, 16, 17 years, whatever it is. I’m mostly concerned with the health and safety of my players, especially the ones who are a little bit older and when they need rest I’m going to give it to them.”

In February, the AT&T Center is occupied by the San Antonio Stock Show and Rodeo, so the Spurs will be away from Feb. 6-24, a nine-game trip that at least has the luxury of being split up by the All-Star break.

The Spurs play the first five before the break with one back-to-back, plus three games in four nights heading into the break. After it they play four games in six nights with the middle two being a back-to-back.

Tags: , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in HT News / Comments (58) /

< Older Entries
Newer Entries >