ducks
10-21-2005, 08:11 PM
Sportsticker Pro Basketball Notebook
Sportsticker Pro Basketball Notebook
By Chris Bernucca SportsTicker Pro Basketball Editor
BRISTOL, Connecticut (Ticker) -- There were two NBA teams that spent the majority of last season getting the absolute best game from their opponents.
One was the Detroit Pistons, who as the defending champions had the requisite bull's-eye on their back. Surprisingly, the other was the expansion Charlotte Bobcats, who also seemed to extract extra effort from foes.
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"That started at the middle of the season last year," Bobcats general manager and coach Bernie Bickerstaff said. "We got the best shot from people. The way we played last year, the advantage we had at the beginning of the season is no longer an advantage for us."
"I don't think we're going to be able to sneak up on any teams this year," forward Matt Carroll said. "They know that any given night we can win any game, so it's going to be tougher. But we're going to be better this year, too."
That remains to be seen. With a roster of rookies and journeymen, the Bobcats won 18 games last season and achieved their stated preseason goal of avoiding the NBA's worst record. The W ledger included two over Detroit and Orlando, one each over Miami, Minnesota, Denver and Sacramento and a sweep of Houston.
There also were a staggering 21 contests which the Bobcats lost by three points or less, which was the story of their season. They were the NBA's Sisyphus, using determination to push the boulder up the hill but lacking the strength to get it over the edge.
Just a bit of clutch shooting can reverse a team's record in one-possession games. Although Bickerstaff knows that, he ignored the temptation to acquire a late-game sniper, even though players such as Sam Cassell and Juan Dixon clearly were available.
Instead, Bickerstaff continued to build through the draft by selecting players with winning pedigrees. One year after selecting Emeka Okafor from 2004 NCAA champion Connecticut, he grabbed teammates Raymond Felton and Sean May from 2005 NCAA champion North Carolina.
"If you fill your team with people that are used to winning, the tendency is that they will get the team to win, somehow, someway, eventually," said Okafor, who blossomed into the Rookie of the Year.
Felton didn't waste any time letting folks know he expects to win at the NBA level as well. At a team function this summer, he declared that the Bobcats would make the playoffs this season. Not this decade. This season.
The point guard was a twinkle in someone's eye the last time a second-year NBA team made the postseason. It was the 1970 Milwaukee Bucks, who had drafted a fellow named Lew Alcindor the previous summer. Toronto and Vancouver, the most recent expansion teams, needed five and nine years, respectively, to play in May.
"I'm not backing down from what I said," Felton said. "I wasn't saying (it) to be bold or to be cocky. I was saying it because I have confidence in my team and my teammates. That's the mentality that I'm trying to bring to this team."
Fortunately, Bickerstaff did not need surgery to return his eyebrows to their original position. In fact, he was excited about the confidence exuded by his future floor general.
"He told me, 'Coach, I was over there talking to some eighth-grade kids,'" Bickerstaff said. "But I don't have any problems with players feeling that way and in fact I went in and told Emeka and he said that was good. What the hell, let's go for it."
"If you don't think you can make the playoffs, then what's the point of even stepping on the court to begin with?" Okafor said. "Will we make the playoffs? Who knows? But that's our mentality."
Mentality and reality are two different things. The Bobcats did not dabble in the free agent market as Bickerstaff has been reluctant to pad the payroll with a long-term contract to the wrong player. Aside from the draft, the only other meaningful move he made was trading for Phoenix center Jake Voskuhl.
Charlotte has the youngest rotation in the NBA. Its senior member is Knight, an eight-year veteran who was second in the league in assists last season but is keeping the point guard position warm for Felton.
The bigs appear to be NBA caliber with Okafor, center Primoz Brezec and May, whose knee surgery prior to the start of training camp will set him back a bit.
It will be interesting to see if small forward Gerald Wallace does as well as he did last season, when he was playing for a contract.
The Bobcats also are expecting bigger things from shooting guard Kareem Rush, who averaged in double figures after arriving in a midseason trade with the Los Angeles Lakers and spent the offseason toning his physique and honing his shot.
If Charlotte somehow reversed its 5-21 record in one-possession games - and there is no guarantee the Bobcats will be that competitive again - it would improve to 34-48.
That is a quantum leap for an expansion team in its second season - and still about seven wins shy of playoff consideration, even in the Eastern Conference, where it seems nearly every team can have visions of postseason sugar plums dancing in their heads.
Bickerstaff is laying a solid foundation for the Bobcats, who this season move into a new facility that opened Friday with a Rolling Stones concert. The GM in him knows he has a whole bunch of potential on his bench and a spike in cap room coming this summer, when the 75 percent expansion restriction is lifted.
But having sat on sidelines for the better part of the last 30 years, the coach in him also knows not to place any hard and fast expectations on his extremely young team. When asked how many wins the Bobcats would have this season, he called upon the knowledge he acquired during his days in Washington.
"That's like one of those questions they asked Judge Roberts during his confirmation," he said. "I don't think I can comment on that because that case might come up this year. If you're looking for numbers, you won't get them from me."
TRIVIA: Who scored the first points for the Bobcats? Answer below.
THE END OF CIVILIZATION AS WE KNOW IT: Maybe those gloom-and-doom predictions for the Toronto Raptors were right. Canada's team became the first NBA squad to lose on its home court to an international team with Sunday's 105-103 loss to Maccabi Tel Aviv. The Israeli outfit is the two-time defending Euroleague champion but no longer has Sarunas Jasikevicius, its best player who signed with Indiana in the offseason.
TOO BAD HIS FAVORITE CELTIC WASN'T ROBERT PARISH: Upon being sentenced to 30 years in prison, an Oklahoma man requested his term be increased to 33 years to honor the uniform number worn by Larry Bird.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK: Chicago Bulls guard Eric Piatkowski, explaining the pitfalls of the NBA's dress code:
"You can't just buy one suit, because if you show up with the same suit every day, the guys will never let you hear the end of it."
LINE OF THE WEEK: John Salmons, Philadelphia at New York, October 18: 28 minutes, 7-11 FGs, 16-21 FTs, five assists, four rebounds, one block, 30 points in a 114-99 win. Salmons, whose 2004-05 season high was 22 points, registered a points-to-shots ratio of nearly 3-to-1 without making a 3-pointer, which is virtually impossible in the NBA.
LINE OF THE WEAK: Mike Miller, Memphis at Cleveland, October 19: 31 minutes, 0-5 FGs, 0-4 3-pointers, six rebounds, five assists, four turnovers in an 88-84 loss. One of just two guards to shoot better than 50 percent from the field last season, Miller's last giveaway was a bad pass in the final minute that sealed the loss for the Grizzlies.
GAME OF THE WEEK: Miami at Detroit, October 22. The first meeting between last season's Eastern Conference finalists. Although the Heat made the splashier offseason moves, keep an eye on Pistons guard Maurice Evans, who was signed away from Sacramento and leads the team in preseason scoring, vaulting past the overrated Carlos Arroyo and Carlos Delfino as the top candidate for third guard.
GAME OF THE WEAK: Portland vs. Toronto at Winnipeg, Manitoba, October 24. Why is the NBA here? The NHL vacated this outpost nine years ago. ...
In the days following the announcement of the NBA's new dress code, there were a handful of reactions. Some were measured, others mindless.
But the best one may have come from the Hudson Valley Renegades, a Class A baseball team which this week issued a news release announcing a new dress code for front office staff calling for only "baggy jeans, throwback jerseys, tent-sized T-shirts, headphones and sunglasses."
"We want to look as ridiculous to our fans as the NBA players are going to look to their fans," Renegades general manager David Burke joked in the release.
And that's the point here, isn't it? Somewhere in the post-lockout morass, the NBA - clearly looking for a hook to carry itself into a future that would not include meal ticket Michael Jordan - got into bed with the hip-hop culture, not understanding the depth of the relationship.
Although that culture clearly crosses racial lines, it is still identified as a "black thing" by white, suburban, corporate America, which needs to make a much closer examination of what its high school kids wear to school and listen to on their iPods.
While the league was hitching its promotional wagon to Allen Iverson and Tim Duncan and selling jerseys by the millions, it failed to notice a distinct dressing down that saw sportcoats, ties and shoes become fashion relics among young adults - not just in the NBA, but just about everywhere, including some corporate corners.
And while Commissioner David Stern's point is well-taken regarding how lax the new dress code actually is - you can wear a mock turtleneck, jeans and penny loafers, mind you - it is a quantum leap from what had been acceptable for so long that we would be stunned if we saw Iverson in a collared shirt or Duncan in a sportcoat.
There is an old saying that goes, "Clothes make the man." It probably was coined by someone who owned an apparel shop or a member of corporate America, who wanted his employees as uptight as he was and instituted an edict that forced them to dress uncomfortably.
That may be where this came from. In May, Stern appointed GOP consultant Matthew Dowd to conduct research that would help improve the NBA's image, which certainly has flagged during this decade. But that image has much more to do with how players behave than what they wear.
As the CEO of a multi-billion-dollar global corporation, Stern absolutely has the right to impose codes of conduct and appearance upon his employees that were collectively bargained. And he will get compliance from those obstinate employees with a progression of fines and suspensions. Amid the changes this league has seen during Stern's reign as commissioner, one thing has remained constant - players like getting paid and can't stand not playing.
However, while the NBA adopts its buttoned-down version of "clothes make the man," Stern may also want to remember another popular adage passed onto us by our parents.
A pig in a tuxedo is still a pig.
TWO MINUTES: The preseason has been rough on the backcourt of the Celtics, which came to camp needing answers but only has seen more questions arise. At shooting guard, the Celtics felt like they were set with second-year man Tony Allen, who had a solid rookie season and appears to have the athleticism to compete at the league's deepest position. However, Allen has spent training camp recovering from offseason knee surgery and now faces aggravated battery charges stemming from an incident in his hometown of Chicago this summer where he allegedly instigated a brawl at a restaurant by pointing out someone with whom he had a beef and told a cohort to "(bleep) him up." During the brawl, Allen's alleged accomplice shot Allen's antagonist, who has paired with another victim in the dust-up to bring a civil suit against the guard. At the point, the Celtics came to camp with five potential suitors - rookies Will Bynum and Orien Greene, incumbents Marcus Banks and Delonte West and trade acquisition Dan Dickau. However, Banks has a stress fracture that will sideline him for a minimum of three months and coach Doc Rivers - himself a former point guard - has not been impressed with either rookie, leaving a battle between West and Dickau - neither of whom has blown away Rivers with his floor generalship. "Thus far we have not played well at that position," the coach said earlier this week. "Dan Dickau has been up and down and so has Delonte West. Those are our two guys right now. ... We're counting on both of them. We need those two guys to step up for us so we can run the ball up and down on offense and we can pressure the ball on defense." Neither West nor Dickau could pressure the ball the way Banks did. Of the two, West is the better shooter and defender, but Dickau has better court sense as both a scorer and distributor. ... One of the few teams whose youth and inexperience rivals the Bobcats is the Portland Trail Blazers, who may have the youngest collection of guards in NBA history and are looking for leadership from players such as Zach Randolph and Darius Miles, who have displayed questionable character in that regard. At training camp, Randolph - who missed most of last season with a knee injury that required the dreaded microfracture surgery - said he was ready to assume that role. "This is the year for me to become a leader," said the four-year veteran who is just 24 years old. "Be a leader on the floor, off the floor, too." However, earlier this week, new coach Nate McMillan threw his best player out of practice for not running hard during a scrimmage. McMillan is aware of Randolph's possible reluctance to push too hard but didn't feel like this was one of those times. "You got to listen to the player, but at the same time you got to make sure that he is working and getting the knee stronger," said McMillan, whose patience certainly is going to tested on many fronts by this group. ... Last season, the Nuggets had an effective point guard tandem of 6-2 Andre Miller and 5-5 Earl Boykins, both of whom qualify as small guards. So it was a bit surprising when the Nuggets signed 6-1 Earl Watson, who resembles a slightly larger version of Boykins. "I was surprised by it," Boykins admitted. "In this business they traded Wilt Chamberlain, so you shouldn't be too surprised by what goes on." In Thursday's preseason win over the Lakers, the Nuggets used a starting backcourt of Boykins and 6-9 DerMarr Johnson, which has to be some sort of league record for biggest height differential between backcourt mates. ...
Trivia Answer: Primoz Brezec. ... Happy 31st Birthday, Jeff McInnis. ... Tony Allen might be the first NBA player to allow someone else to take one of his shots.
Question or comment? E-mail [email protected]
Sportsticker Pro Basketball Notebook
By Chris Bernucca SportsTicker Pro Basketball Editor
BRISTOL, Connecticut (Ticker) -- There were two NBA teams that spent the majority of last season getting the absolute best game from their opponents.
One was the Detroit Pistons, who as the defending champions had the requisite bull's-eye on their back. Surprisingly, the other was the expansion Charlotte Bobcats, who also seemed to extract extra effort from foes.
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"That started at the middle of the season last year," Bobcats general manager and coach Bernie Bickerstaff said. "We got the best shot from people. The way we played last year, the advantage we had at the beginning of the season is no longer an advantage for us."
"I don't think we're going to be able to sneak up on any teams this year," forward Matt Carroll said. "They know that any given night we can win any game, so it's going to be tougher. But we're going to be better this year, too."
That remains to be seen. With a roster of rookies and journeymen, the Bobcats won 18 games last season and achieved their stated preseason goal of avoiding the NBA's worst record. The W ledger included two over Detroit and Orlando, one each over Miami, Minnesota, Denver and Sacramento and a sweep of Houston.
There also were a staggering 21 contests which the Bobcats lost by three points or less, which was the story of their season. They were the NBA's Sisyphus, using determination to push the boulder up the hill but lacking the strength to get it over the edge.
Just a bit of clutch shooting can reverse a team's record in one-possession games. Although Bickerstaff knows that, he ignored the temptation to acquire a late-game sniper, even though players such as Sam Cassell and Juan Dixon clearly were available.
Instead, Bickerstaff continued to build through the draft by selecting players with winning pedigrees. One year after selecting Emeka Okafor from 2004 NCAA champion Connecticut, he grabbed teammates Raymond Felton and Sean May from 2005 NCAA champion North Carolina.
"If you fill your team with people that are used to winning, the tendency is that they will get the team to win, somehow, someway, eventually," said Okafor, who blossomed into the Rookie of the Year.
Felton didn't waste any time letting folks know he expects to win at the NBA level as well. At a team function this summer, he declared that the Bobcats would make the playoffs this season. Not this decade. This season.
The point guard was a twinkle in someone's eye the last time a second-year NBA team made the postseason. It was the 1970 Milwaukee Bucks, who had drafted a fellow named Lew Alcindor the previous summer. Toronto and Vancouver, the most recent expansion teams, needed five and nine years, respectively, to play in May.
"I'm not backing down from what I said," Felton said. "I wasn't saying (it) to be bold or to be cocky. I was saying it because I have confidence in my team and my teammates. That's the mentality that I'm trying to bring to this team."
Fortunately, Bickerstaff did not need surgery to return his eyebrows to their original position. In fact, he was excited about the confidence exuded by his future floor general.
"He told me, 'Coach, I was over there talking to some eighth-grade kids,'" Bickerstaff said. "But I don't have any problems with players feeling that way and in fact I went in and told Emeka and he said that was good. What the hell, let's go for it."
"If you don't think you can make the playoffs, then what's the point of even stepping on the court to begin with?" Okafor said. "Will we make the playoffs? Who knows? But that's our mentality."
Mentality and reality are two different things. The Bobcats did not dabble in the free agent market as Bickerstaff has been reluctant to pad the payroll with a long-term contract to the wrong player. Aside from the draft, the only other meaningful move he made was trading for Phoenix center Jake Voskuhl.
Charlotte has the youngest rotation in the NBA. Its senior member is Knight, an eight-year veteran who was second in the league in assists last season but is keeping the point guard position warm for Felton.
The bigs appear to be NBA caliber with Okafor, center Primoz Brezec and May, whose knee surgery prior to the start of training camp will set him back a bit.
It will be interesting to see if small forward Gerald Wallace does as well as he did last season, when he was playing for a contract.
The Bobcats also are expecting bigger things from shooting guard Kareem Rush, who averaged in double figures after arriving in a midseason trade with the Los Angeles Lakers and spent the offseason toning his physique and honing his shot.
If Charlotte somehow reversed its 5-21 record in one-possession games - and there is no guarantee the Bobcats will be that competitive again - it would improve to 34-48.
That is a quantum leap for an expansion team in its second season - and still about seven wins shy of playoff consideration, even in the Eastern Conference, where it seems nearly every team can have visions of postseason sugar plums dancing in their heads.
Bickerstaff is laying a solid foundation for the Bobcats, who this season move into a new facility that opened Friday with a Rolling Stones concert. The GM in him knows he has a whole bunch of potential on his bench and a spike in cap room coming this summer, when the 75 percent expansion restriction is lifted.
But having sat on sidelines for the better part of the last 30 years, the coach in him also knows not to place any hard and fast expectations on his extremely young team. When asked how many wins the Bobcats would have this season, he called upon the knowledge he acquired during his days in Washington.
"That's like one of those questions they asked Judge Roberts during his confirmation," he said. "I don't think I can comment on that because that case might come up this year. If you're looking for numbers, you won't get them from me."
TRIVIA: Who scored the first points for the Bobcats? Answer below.
THE END OF CIVILIZATION AS WE KNOW IT: Maybe those gloom-and-doom predictions for the Toronto Raptors were right. Canada's team became the first NBA squad to lose on its home court to an international team with Sunday's 105-103 loss to Maccabi Tel Aviv. The Israeli outfit is the two-time defending Euroleague champion but no longer has Sarunas Jasikevicius, its best player who signed with Indiana in the offseason.
TOO BAD HIS FAVORITE CELTIC WASN'T ROBERT PARISH: Upon being sentenced to 30 years in prison, an Oklahoma man requested his term be increased to 33 years to honor the uniform number worn by Larry Bird.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK: Chicago Bulls guard Eric Piatkowski, explaining the pitfalls of the NBA's dress code:
"You can't just buy one suit, because if you show up with the same suit every day, the guys will never let you hear the end of it."
LINE OF THE WEEK: John Salmons, Philadelphia at New York, October 18: 28 minutes, 7-11 FGs, 16-21 FTs, five assists, four rebounds, one block, 30 points in a 114-99 win. Salmons, whose 2004-05 season high was 22 points, registered a points-to-shots ratio of nearly 3-to-1 without making a 3-pointer, which is virtually impossible in the NBA.
LINE OF THE WEAK: Mike Miller, Memphis at Cleveland, October 19: 31 minutes, 0-5 FGs, 0-4 3-pointers, six rebounds, five assists, four turnovers in an 88-84 loss. One of just two guards to shoot better than 50 percent from the field last season, Miller's last giveaway was a bad pass in the final minute that sealed the loss for the Grizzlies.
GAME OF THE WEEK: Miami at Detroit, October 22. The first meeting between last season's Eastern Conference finalists. Although the Heat made the splashier offseason moves, keep an eye on Pistons guard Maurice Evans, who was signed away from Sacramento and leads the team in preseason scoring, vaulting past the overrated Carlos Arroyo and Carlos Delfino as the top candidate for third guard.
GAME OF THE WEAK: Portland vs. Toronto at Winnipeg, Manitoba, October 24. Why is the NBA here? The NHL vacated this outpost nine years ago. ...
In the days following the announcement of the NBA's new dress code, there were a handful of reactions. Some were measured, others mindless.
But the best one may have come from the Hudson Valley Renegades, a Class A baseball team which this week issued a news release announcing a new dress code for front office staff calling for only "baggy jeans, throwback jerseys, tent-sized T-shirts, headphones and sunglasses."
"We want to look as ridiculous to our fans as the NBA players are going to look to their fans," Renegades general manager David Burke joked in the release.
And that's the point here, isn't it? Somewhere in the post-lockout morass, the NBA - clearly looking for a hook to carry itself into a future that would not include meal ticket Michael Jordan - got into bed with the hip-hop culture, not understanding the depth of the relationship.
Although that culture clearly crosses racial lines, it is still identified as a "black thing" by white, suburban, corporate America, which needs to make a much closer examination of what its high school kids wear to school and listen to on their iPods.
While the league was hitching its promotional wagon to Allen Iverson and Tim Duncan and selling jerseys by the millions, it failed to notice a distinct dressing down that saw sportcoats, ties and shoes become fashion relics among young adults - not just in the NBA, but just about everywhere, including some corporate corners.
And while Commissioner David Stern's point is well-taken regarding how lax the new dress code actually is - you can wear a mock turtleneck, jeans and penny loafers, mind you - it is a quantum leap from what had been acceptable for so long that we would be stunned if we saw Iverson in a collared shirt or Duncan in a sportcoat.
There is an old saying that goes, "Clothes make the man." It probably was coined by someone who owned an apparel shop or a member of corporate America, who wanted his employees as uptight as he was and instituted an edict that forced them to dress uncomfortably.
That may be where this came from. In May, Stern appointed GOP consultant Matthew Dowd to conduct research that would help improve the NBA's image, which certainly has flagged during this decade. But that image has much more to do with how players behave than what they wear.
As the CEO of a multi-billion-dollar global corporation, Stern absolutely has the right to impose codes of conduct and appearance upon his employees that were collectively bargained. And he will get compliance from those obstinate employees with a progression of fines and suspensions. Amid the changes this league has seen during Stern's reign as commissioner, one thing has remained constant - players like getting paid and can't stand not playing.
However, while the NBA adopts its buttoned-down version of "clothes make the man," Stern may also want to remember another popular adage passed onto us by our parents.
A pig in a tuxedo is still a pig.
TWO MINUTES: The preseason has been rough on the backcourt of the Celtics, which came to camp needing answers but only has seen more questions arise. At shooting guard, the Celtics felt like they were set with second-year man Tony Allen, who had a solid rookie season and appears to have the athleticism to compete at the league's deepest position. However, Allen has spent training camp recovering from offseason knee surgery and now faces aggravated battery charges stemming from an incident in his hometown of Chicago this summer where he allegedly instigated a brawl at a restaurant by pointing out someone with whom he had a beef and told a cohort to "(bleep) him up." During the brawl, Allen's alleged accomplice shot Allen's antagonist, who has paired with another victim in the dust-up to bring a civil suit against the guard. At the point, the Celtics came to camp with five potential suitors - rookies Will Bynum and Orien Greene, incumbents Marcus Banks and Delonte West and trade acquisition Dan Dickau. However, Banks has a stress fracture that will sideline him for a minimum of three months and coach Doc Rivers - himself a former point guard - has not been impressed with either rookie, leaving a battle between West and Dickau - neither of whom has blown away Rivers with his floor generalship. "Thus far we have not played well at that position," the coach said earlier this week. "Dan Dickau has been up and down and so has Delonte West. Those are our two guys right now. ... We're counting on both of them. We need those two guys to step up for us so we can run the ball up and down on offense and we can pressure the ball on defense." Neither West nor Dickau could pressure the ball the way Banks did. Of the two, West is the better shooter and defender, but Dickau has better court sense as both a scorer and distributor. ... One of the few teams whose youth and inexperience rivals the Bobcats is the Portland Trail Blazers, who may have the youngest collection of guards in NBA history and are looking for leadership from players such as Zach Randolph and Darius Miles, who have displayed questionable character in that regard. At training camp, Randolph - who missed most of last season with a knee injury that required the dreaded microfracture surgery - said he was ready to assume that role. "This is the year for me to become a leader," said the four-year veteran who is just 24 years old. "Be a leader on the floor, off the floor, too." However, earlier this week, new coach Nate McMillan threw his best player out of practice for not running hard during a scrimmage. McMillan is aware of Randolph's possible reluctance to push too hard but didn't feel like this was one of those times. "You got to listen to the player, but at the same time you got to make sure that he is working and getting the knee stronger," said McMillan, whose patience certainly is going to tested on many fronts by this group. ... Last season, the Nuggets had an effective point guard tandem of 6-2 Andre Miller and 5-5 Earl Boykins, both of whom qualify as small guards. So it was a bit surprising when the Nuggets signed 6-1 Earl Watson, who resembles a slightly larger version of Boykins. "I was surprised by it," Boykins admitted. "In this business they traded Wilt Chamberlain, so you shouldn't be too surprised by what goes on." In Thursday's preseason win over the Lakers, the Nuggets used a starting backcourt of Boykins and 6-9 DerMarr Johnson, which has to be some sort of league record for biggest height differential between backcourt mates. ...
Trivia Answer: Primoz Brezec. ... Happy 31st Birthday, Jeff McInnis. ... Tony Allen might be the first NBA player to allow someone else to take one of his shots.
Question or comment? E-mail [email protected]