The biggest story in the NBA comes to Toronto on February 14th, and as you have probably heard by now, New York's Jeremy Lin had something of a breakout last week. It's one of the stories you really had to dig for because I think it really flew under the radar.
Look, Lin's week was good. Actually, it was historically good as no player has scored more in their first four starts since the NBA/ABA merger. It's become a cottage industry of sorts for people to uncover and describe all the ways in which Lin's impact defies all reason, as if just because it hasn't happened quite like this before means it doesn't make sense that it has happened now. Assuming that he is, in fact, an NBA caliber player, his eruption is not THAT out of the ordinary. His usage rate was sky high because Carmelo Anthony and Amar'e Stoudemire were out, he was playing in a system that is notoriously point guard friendly and he faced a lot of suspect defense during his four-game outburst (when he ran into a decent defense in his fifth game he slowed considerably). That shouldn't take anything away from Lin's spectacular play - lots of players have had similar opportunities and not even come close to Lin's production - but you shouldn't expect this kind of play to continue once the Calvary comes back to eat into his time with the ball in his hands.
Lin's recent exploits have seen him vault into eighth in the NBA in usage rate (which measures the percentage of a team's offensive possessions that a player uses when he's on the floor). That kind of time with the ball has helped allow him to probe the defense and find looks for himself and his teammates. His injured teammate Anthony, though, is fourth in the NBA in usage, and being the classic ball-stopper that he is you can expect his tendencies to wreck havoc with Lin's rhythm and production when he returns from his strained groin. People keep acting as though Lin’s exploits are going to convince Carmelo to completely reinvent the way he plays basketball when he returns, a totally absurd notion that Andre Miller and George Karl will attest to. Simply put, Carmelo does not share well with others; he ranks 155th in the NBA in assist rate, for pete’s sake. He is an isolation-heavy player and it'd be hard to Mike D'Antoni to get him to change his ways for a five-game hype machine.
Let's also not forget Amar'e, 27th in the league in usage, and someone who needs an involvement in the offense to keep him mildly motivated on defense and rebounding. There were endless stories earlier in the season about how hard it was to spread the ball between he and Melo, so add Lin to the mix and you've got a whole new wrinkle to try and iron out before everyone comes back healthy.
Sonny Weems will not be returning to Toronto. Or so says Sonny Weems... about seven months late.
Sonny Weems took to his semi-regular HoopsHype blog this week to discuss all things Sonny Weems, but he made a point of alerting his dozens of fans to the fact that he will not be suiting up for the Raptors next season or thereafter.
“Toronto is not my team,” Weems offers. “They don’t mention me in their future plans or anything like that...I’m just not focused on Toronto because you read articles about the team and my name never comes up.”
Let’s forgivingly ignore, for a second, the fact that articles not mentioning his name was cited as a reason to rule out returning to an NBA club and focus instead on the idea that he does not figure into their longterm plans.
Duh.
Look, Weems was given a tremendous opportunity with the Raptors. He was bench fodder for the Nuggets in his rookie year, playing only 55 minutes all season, and Toronto came along and gave him 1, 365 minutes the following year. In that time he even managed to finish the season off as a starter for the club and looked to feature prominently in their future based off of his initial stint with the team.
However, in year two Weems took himself right out of the conversation of a future with the Raptors. He played selfishly on offense, looking too often for his own shot despite being at best the third or fourth option on the floor. As a result of his gunner mindset his TS% dropped from .533 down to .492, a laughably low mark for a scoring wing that put him roughly in Ron Artest/Jamario Moon territory. When he was good in his first year, Weems was notable for taking good shots within his range and make them. When he was not good Weems took whatever shot came available to him and didn’t make them. That’s not the sort of play that gets you into a team’s good graces.
Weems is playing better with Zalgris Kaunas this year, but not remarkably so. His percentages are up but it would be a stretch to think that he’s played himself into a bigger NBA role than he enjoyed in his last two years in Toronto. Is he an NBA player? Absolutely, and some team will snatch him up when he’s available and he may be a quality reserve for them. The problem is that Weems has always expected bigger things and while you love a hungry player it can manifest in damaging ways if a player thinks they deserve a bigger slice of the pie. Weems played his second season in Toronto like he deserved more than he was getting, and that’s why he doesn’t factor into Toronto’s future.
Besides, at this point the Raptors have more than one Sonny Weems on the roster, already. They have guys who have some skill but no above-the-radar talents on the wing, they are like Toronto’s bread and butter. The fact that, right now, Linas Kleiza is Toronto’s most effective wing says all you need to know about the position on the team. This is not a club that needs to add another bench player to the position, this is a team that needs to add a starter-grade option and Weems, as much as he believes otherwise, is not that option.
It’s not that hindsight is always 20-20, it’s that hindsight does a great job of distorting reality beyond all reasonable recognition.
When the New York Knicks acquired Carmelo Anthony it seemed like such a safe move. Did they overpay for him? Probably, but they got to pair two superstars together with cap room to come and with the Playoffs on the horizon they finally looked like they’d turned the corner as a franchise.
It’s too bad they haven’t.
After all of talk of a rebirth, after all of Donnie Walsh’s efforts to put the Knicks back on track, the team is once again carrying the bloated contracts of sorta-stars all the way to an 9-15 record that currently has them outside of the Playoffs looking in. Is this 2012 or 2006? It’s hard to tell.
Donnie Walsh came in with a smart and time-tested plan: clear the ledger of bad contracts and rebuild the Knicks slowly, patiently and smartly into a team that generate success for years to come. He spent two years disassembling the roster, positioning themselves to make a run at LeBron in 2010 and ridding the organization of the myopic decision-making that had plagued it for nearly a decade. While the team didn’t land LeBron, the squad headlined by Amar’e Stoudemire and a cast of good role players (Danilo Gallinari, Wilson Chandler, Raymond Felton, Landry Fields) had the Knicks playing over .500 with tons of financial flexibility still on the horizon to make moves down the road. Then Carmelo entered the fray.
Here’s the thing about the Carmelo deal, and here is where all this hindsight talk muddies the waters. The deal itself was no so terrible. Yes, giving up a stable of good, young assets like Gallinari, Chandler, Felton and Timofey Mozgov was a lot, but the team probably wasn’t re-investing in free agent-to-be Chandler after acquiring Melo (both small forwards) and Felton was replaced by a still-capable Chauncey Billups, so the scales were so severely tipped as some would claim (and do claim after looking at Denver’s current record).
However, the desperation felt above Walsh in New York’s front office to acquire Carmelo at all costs was the real loss. Walsh had spent his time in New York eradicating that impulsiveness from the halls of MSG. He knew that the real culprit that brought the team down in the Isiah Thomas era was the tendency for the club to fall in love with players to such a public degree that they could easily be exploited by their willingness to overpay. As soon as an agent or GM outside of New York told the Knicks they could have a player that they coveted the Knicks didn’t care what it was costing them, they just pounced. Walsh made it a habit to rid the squad of that impulsiveness, that narrow-mindedness, and yet as soon as Knicks ownership knew that Carmelo was close to being theirs they threw Denver every piece they could spare to make it happen. Walsh believed that Denver would do the deal with less, and knew that New York had leverage in free agency with Carmelo next summer if it came to that, but like the old days James Dolan and company saw an asset they wanted and all of Walsh’s hard work at changing the culture was undone in a matter of hours.
You can’t have it both ways, Dwight Howard. You can’t demand a trade out of one side of your mouth and then act as team leader out of the other side. It’s not only disingenuous, it’s also futile. Who in that locker room do you think is listening to you knowing that in five months time (at most) you’ll be suiting up with another franchise?
Howard has taken to tearing into his soon-to-be-ex-teammates a lot lately, questioning their effort and telling those that don’t work as hard as they should to stay in the locker room. He says that they can take it, that they’re professionals, but he conveniently ignores why the club is playing in such a funk, or at least a good part of why, and that is because he is constantly denigrating them in the press, either directly or indirectly, as a result of his trade demand. He teammates aren’t any happier about the club’s four-game losing streak than he is, but it isn’t helping matters much when they guy looking to jump ship is telling everyone else how to pilot the boat.
Look, when summer comes Dwight Howard is free to go wherever he wants as a free agent. That’s the contractual right he has negotiated for himself. He’s even done Orlando more of a service than LeBron James and Chris Bosh did for Cleveland and Toronto by informing Orlando about his intentions. They are now given time to try and manufacture a trade to avoid losing Howard for nothing (whether they exercise that option remains to be seen). However, after that Howard needs to man-up and accept the collateral damage that comes in the wake of decisions like those. He has to accept that maybe the guys on his team aren’t quite as grateful for his candidness. Maybe they aren’t enjoying being cast as a band of unwanted children just waiting to be orphaned by a disinterested parent. Howard cannot call himself a leader while at the same time working publicly to abandon those he’s leading because people aren’t going to respond to his leadership in that case. Heck, people probably can’t help taking their foot off of the gas pedal a little bit as a result of his tirades. That may not be excusable either for a professional athlete, but much of the drama going on in Orlando extends beyond the raw competitiveness of athletics.
So Dwight, just keep doing what you’re doing on the court and accept that you are not speaking for the team off of it. You’ve made your position clear and now you have to accept the fallout from that declaration. When your substantial weight has been lifted from Orlando’s locker room, that’s when they can finally feel free to care about basketball again.
KABLAMMO! In the face! THE FAAAACE! That's what they call a posterizer. A dunk so damn big and mean and amazing it belongs on your wall. But you never want to be the guy under that poster dunk, memorialized forever as a squinty, flinching mess getting leap-frogged for all to see.
Last night, LA Clippers star Blake Griffin did just that to Oklahoma City's Kendrick Perkins, on the way to LA's 112-100 win over the Thunder.
Doug Smith over at the Star runs down his Top 5 in-game dunks, which of course includes Vince Carter bounding over Frederic Weis, but all are well worth watching again and again.
Golden State Warriors' Stephen Curry posted a contest on Twitter over the weekend, challenging fans to send him video of them making the toughest HORSE shots they could, all while mentioning his SC30 brand. The winner gets a customized outgoing voicemail message from Curry, so they have an NBA star greeting missed calls from family and friends.
The deadline for entries was today, but Curry has picked five of his favourites and will post them to his Facebook page where the winner will be voted on by fans. This is great and all, but seems a tad elaborate for the level of prize up for grabs. Sure, a voicemail message from your favourite NBAer would be wicked, but it's also the type of thing Curry should do for a trivia question over Twitter. Kevin Durant went and played football with fans just because he was bored. Curry's asking them to video near-impossible shots while mentioning his brand and all they get is a voicemail? What might make it worth it is if he'll say anything they ask him to. Like, say, "Hi there. I'm Stephen Curry of the Golden State Warriors. Basketball is fun but my true love is synchronized swimming. Oh, and Bob isn't available at the moment, please leave a message."
The Raptors are open to trading Jose Calderon! The Raptors are open to trading Jose Calderon!
Shockingly, the team that already traded Calderon in the summer of 2010 (only to have the trade fall apart at the thirteenth hour) is open to trading Calderon in 2012. Sometimes news is just too big to take in in one sitting.
Following an interview that Jose Calderon conducted with Marca, a Spanish newspaper, where he confessed that he would “like to have the opportunity to compete for something,” ESPN followed up with ‘sources with knowledge of Toronto’s thinking’ that intimated that Toronto is open to a move. Again, try and contain your shock at all of this brand new information.
The fact of the matter is that the Raptors have spent years open to moving Calderon. It’s not that they don’t appreciate his game or the benefits to having such a tremendously efficient point guard teamed with their not-ready-for-prime-time players, it’s just that he’s only going to take them so far. He’s not a stand-out defender, he can’t create his own shot and his shooting percentages are not what they once were at his peak. Plus, Toronto’s GM Bryan Colangelo has always preferred more dynamic options at the position (while in Phoenix he went from Kevin Johnson to Jason Kidd to Stephon Marbury to Steve Nash). Looking at the makeup of Toronto’s current roster, too, the team could probably use more of a scoring threat at the position than Calderon will ever offer.
All that said, though, the team isn’t really in a position to trade Calderon right now. Ignore for a second how difficult it would be to move his $9.7-million salary (with a 10% trade kicker) and consider what this team would do if Calderon wasn’t there. Without Calderon the Raptors would have no true point guard on the team at all. The Raptors are playing make believe that Jerryd Bayless has any point guard instincts in his game, and Anthony Carter is a much better practice player than in-game player at this point in his career. The Raptors rank 18th in the NBA in assists per game (20.1 apg), and Calderon accounts for 8.7 of them. If you think that the team’s offense looks broken today, take away the club’s one true point guard and see how easy it is for them to get quality shots.
Why does this matter, though, if the Raptors are in a developmental year? You could argue it matters more because they are in a developmental year. This club needs someone who can make the game easier for the seriously struggling DeMar DeRozan and Ed Davis, they need someone who knows how to run the plays and get guys the right looks. It would be one thing if the Raptors had tremendous individual talent in the young corps, but they don’t. They have a second-tier and third-tier talent (outside of the injured Andrea Bargnani) that need as much help from the team’s system to get them going as they can get. Calderon may not be at Steve Nash’s level of turning water into wine, but he’s a whole lot better than what this team would have to work with if he wasn’t around.
The Raptors only move Calderon this year is if they can replace him, and it’s very hard to think of a team with a point guard they are looking to trade that would have any interest in Calderon. The only swap that might make sense is with Portland for Raymond Felton’s expiring deal, but with Portland looking to re-up both Gerald Wallace and Nic Batum this summer it’s unlikely that they’d take the $10.5-million Calderon is owed next season just to sorta upgrade their point guard position.
The fact of the matter is that while Toronto may not be enamored with the thought of keeping Calderon around, doing so is probably in the team’s best interest. Going forward he would be an ideal backup if they do find a superior starter, and his low-mistake brand of basketball will only help the club as they compile more talent in the coming seasons. It’s easy to say that the organization is keen to move him along, and that Calderon himself is open to a new home as well, but until there is a way to make such a move more sensible for the Raptors he’s going to continue to suit up for this lottery-bound club.
Yesterday the Hornets guard turned down an unspecified four-year contract from the league-owned club and will become a restricted free agent this summer along with several of his draft mates. This development is something of a surprise considering how hard the Hornets/league worked to pry Gordon loose in the Chris Paul trade last December, but several mitigating circumstances prevented the two sides from moving forward meaningfully on any kind of substantial contract extension.
The first one has been and remains the team’s regrettable ownership position. Until the NBA finds a buyer for the Hornets that will keep the team in New Orleans (which they continue to insist will happen sooner rather than later), it will be very hard for the organization to make any substantial financial investments with regards to its roster. The league, as custodians of the team, turned down a trade for Chris Paul that involved them taking back big contracts belonging to Kevin Martin and Luis Scola, and turning around and giving comparable cash to Gordon at this point would have been nearly impossible to justify. In order to remain an attractive asset in a sale the team needs to be as financially flexible as possible, and for now that means keeping onerous long-term deals off of the books.
However, that reason is only partly true if we’re being honest with ourselves. If Gordon had spent the last month tearing it up with the Hornets, posting anywhere near the 22.3 ppg he averaged last season it may have been easier for the league to justify inking him to a bigger deal than what one supposes Gordon was offered because he’d be an attractive asset to a potential buyer. Unfortunately for both the Hornets and for Gordon, the talented guard has only played in two games this season and it will be three more weeks (at least) before he gets back out onto the court to play.
This continues a troubling trend for Gordon, since he’s only played in an average of 65.3 games per season in his first three NBA campaigns, a number that is even skewed somewhat by the 78 games he played in his rookie year. With each season he’s played since then he’s played a smaller and smaller portion of the whole season, and that makes it increasingly hard to accurately value the former seventh-overall pick as a financial investment.
Flip Saunders was fired today as the head coach of the Washington Wizards and he’s better off for it.
Watching a coach with Saunders’ experience and expertise try and reach a group of gadabouts night after night had become torture for just about every NBA fan. While Saunders is not blameless in Washington’s 2-15 start, asking him to extract wins out of that assemblage of players is like asking a carpenter to build you a house out of construction paper - the tools just ain’t right.
When Saunders was initially hired by Washington, it was to build upon the marginal success that Gilbert Arenas, Caron Butler and Antawn Jamison had had under former head coach Eddie Jordan. Saunders had made a habit out of winning with Minnesota and Detroit and Washington wanted his experience on their sideline. Unfortunately for Saunders, during his time he watched as the club’s Playoff-bound roster was replaced with a collection of talented-but-disinterested youngsters that ran afoul of the game of basketball. His firing comes off as much as a relief as it does a termination, and of all the parties involved Saunders probably walks away from this firing in the best position of all.
Look, Saunders will have no trouble finding another job. Whether it’s this season with New York or the Clippers or if he goes to the college ranks or if he does T.V. for a while he waits out his ideal landing spot, he’ll be fine. In Randy Wittman the Wizards have a hapless coach that is much better suited to its hapless roster. Since Washington is going nowhere but down it was almost decent of them to allow Saunders to escape the plunge, especially since they’ve already made a habit ditching their most valuable assets.
In this new promo for the Vitaminwater-sponsored Winter X Games Real Snow event, Nash unveils the trick he thinks will get him an invite to the contest. The cape is a nice touch.
