Posts Tagged ‘Wes Matthews’

Report: Rubio’s Return Is Near

November 26, 2012  ·  11:25AM

HANG TIME HEADQUARTERS – Minnesota Timberwolves coach Rick Adelman has much to be thankful for during this holiday season. By almost every measure, his team overachieved throughout the first three weeks of the season, before slip-sliding through their current five-game losing streak.

In addition, he recently got All-Star power forward Kevin Love back in the lineup from injury.

And there could be more good fortune for the Adelman and the Timberwolves in the form of a healthy and fully recovered (from ACL surgery) Ricky Rubio. Originally believed to be on his way back sometime in the middle to end of December, there are signs that he could return sooner than expected.

Jerry Zgoda of the Star Tribune has the details, or better yet the lack of concrete details, coming from the Timberwolves regarding Rubio:

David Kahn said he still isn’t putting a timetable on Rubio’s return, as he hasn’t done all along.

But there’s no question Rubio’s return is getting closer, maybe closer than expected, particularly if you weren’t expecting him back until Christmas or later.

He’s been working out quite vigorously on his own before games — just saw him working up a sweat shooting and doing other drills — and it’s certainly possible he could be back in a game perhaps even sometime that first week of December, or shortly thereafter.

After watching Damian Lillard and Wes Matthews torch the Wolves Friday night in Portland, they could certainly use his defense.

“When he was healthy last year, he was very good keeping the people in front of him,” Rick Adelman said. “He was able to control the guard he was guarding and not let him get around him. He was in the Top 5 in steals. He was always in the right spot defensively as a team defender, too. He’ll help us. He’s give us a little more size there. His instincts will help us a lot.”

If the Timberwolves have any chance of saving themselves from their current dip on the dark side of the standings, they’ll need to do it now.

The sooner Rubio gets back into the flow — along with Love — the better chance they’ll have to do exactly that.

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Trail Blazers Are What They Are!

December 27, 2011  ·  7:19PM

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HANG TIME HEADQUARTERS – The days of the Portland Trail wading two and three months into the NBA season before knowing who and what they are over.

They don’t have to wait until (insert whatever injured player’s name you want here) gets healthy to find out exactly what they might be capable of.  Brandon Roy‘s knees finally got the best of him. Greg Oden‘s knees have worked him over to the point that it’s clear now that he will never be what he might have been with two sound and healthy knees.

In short, the Trail Blazers are what they are. And if you look closely, you might actually like what you see. They are a solid bunch from top to bottom, even without two of the franchise’s biggest draft picks of the past 20 years.

Sure, they might not be the up and coming Western Conference contender they appeared to be on paper a few years ago.

But they remain a formidable crew with one of the league’s best coaches in Nate McMillan, an All-Star caliber anchor in LaMarcus Aldridge and a rugged supporting cast of talented and accomplished veterans (Gerald Wallace, Wes Matthews, Nicolas Batum, Raymond Felton, Marcus Camby and Kurt Thomas among others) that are better today because of all the adversity this group has had to deal with over the years.

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Felton For Miller: An Even Swap?

June 28, 2011  ·  2:47PM

HANG TIME HEADQUARTERS – Veteran point guard for a little bit older veteran point guard.

It sounds like a reasonable take away for the Portland Trail Blazers and Denver Nuggets in their draft night dealings that saw Raymond Felton go from the Nuggets to Trail Blazers and Andre Miller from the Trail Blazers back to the Nuggets, where he played earlier in his career and resides in the offseason. While it wasn’t actually a straight up swap — it was a three-team deal that included the Blazers also trading swingman Rudy Fernandez to the Dallas Mavericks in exchange for the draft rights to Jordan Hamilton, the 26th overall pick who was in turn included in the deal with Denver — for the Nuggets and Blazers it comes down to a swap of these veteran point guards.

A NBA scouting friend suggested to me earlier today that it was basically an even swap.

“Miller is older at 35 but these guys do pretty much the same things,” he said. “They know how to run teams, are effective on both ends and they both have plenty of playoff experience, so you know they understand the dynamics of the job they have to do in a winning situation.”

But I’m not so sure.

Miller is a seemingly ageless wonder, much like his point guard elder statesmen brethren Jason Kidd and Steve Nash. But Felton is just 27. And he has always struck me as guy capable of so much more than he’s shown. He was on the road to showing off exactly what I’m talking about in New York last season, when he played All-Star caliber basketball, only to be traded to the Nuggets.

You put him at the controls of a Blazers team that boasts LaMarcus Aldridge down low and Brandon Roy and Wes Matthews on the wing with his old buddy Gerald Wallace (they played together in Charlotte) tossed in for good measure, and I’m seeing big things for Felton in his new role.

Rather than arguing back and forth with my scout friend I thought we’d let you help end this debate:

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