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A little hate between these contenders is not a bad thing
By Vince Thomas
October 27 2009
Buried in the firestorm that followed Isiah Thomas' excoriation of onetime blood-brother Magic Johnson was an anecdotal revelation that had me wistful for the NBA of my childhood. Contending squads viewed each other different in that '80s Golden Age. Isiah's statement about when and how his relationship changed with Magic was indicative of the good ol' days when rivals were enemies.
"When we got to the ['88] Finals, our relationship became very different,'' Thomas acknowledged to SI.com. "It was OK for us to be friends when we weren't competing with the Lakers, but when we started competing with the Lakers, our friendship changed. I remember my son was born in '88 during the NBA Finals and Magic wouldn't even come to the hospital." Now that's cold. And I love it.
Later in the series, after Isiah badly sprained his ankle, the Lakers wouldn't even let him use their facilities. "I tried calling [Magic] to see if he could talk to the trainer," Thomas said, "and he wouldn't pick up the phone.''
I always feel the best years come when the best teams both respect and dislike each other, the way a CIA agent would a KGB operative during the Cold War. Recently, it's hard to find anything other than a manufactured rivalry. Of the teams I deem contenders, none can claim that status for more than two seasons (even San Antonio was barely a contender last season). What made the '80s, '90s and even the early '00s so dramatic is that the elite teams had runs with the other elite squads, year after year. Magic's Lakers vs. Bird's Celtics and Isiah's Pistons. Isiah's Pistons against Jordan's Bulls. Jordan's Bulls and Pat Riley's Knicks. The Shaq and Kobe Lakers vs. the C-Webb Kings. Last year we didn't have anything close to those rivalries. Now, after last postseason, we might finally have some history to coax these teams into becoming rivals.
That's what I'm looking for when Boston and Cleveland lock horns Tuesday night. They played in the preseason and things got chippy between Boston's Shelden Williams and the Cavs' Mo Williams. The Pardon the Interruption guys asked Doc Rivers about it the next day. Rivers said that both teams know that they're probably going to have to beat the other or Orlando to get out of the East, so the turf-battling and posturing is starting early. Rarely can you consider a season-opener to be a message game, but the Cavs-Celts can set the season off right. I just hope it has the requisite ornery atmosphere.
Boston and Cleveland are two of the seven teams that I can realistically envision winning it all this year. Any time they play each other, the games should have a Cold War feel to them.
7. Denver -- My favorite college player from last year, Ty Lawson, gets to serve as Chauncey Billups' apprentice. Every rookie point guard should be so fortunate. That was really Denver's biggest addition/subtraction of the summer. Well, not really. Although I wouldn't call Dahntay Jones an impact player, he provided Denver the luxury of bringing loose cannon J.R. Smith off the bench. Smith's instant offense was an integral part of the Denver attack when they would bring him and Chris "Birdman" Andersen off the bench for a change of pace and shot of manic energy. Now Smith will have to coexist with the starters and I wonder if this new role will mesh well with his game. The fact remains that Denver has, arguably, the NBA's best leader (Billups), the league's most unguardable scorer (Carmelo Anthony) and a nasty trio of big men (Andersen/Nene/K-Mart). The Nuggets aren't exactly big or deep, so their margin for error is small, but this is basically the same squad that had everyone in the West (including the Lakers) scared in the '09 playoffs.
6. Dallas -- The Mavs are facing some health issues with Josh Howard and Tim Thomas, but, when healthy, this squad is loaded. MVP candidate Dirk Nowitzki, Shawn Marion, Erick Dampier, Drew Gooden and Thomas up front. Howard, Sixth Man Jason Terry, tough defender Quinton Ross and Jose Juan Barea at the guards with Jason Kidd running the show. Kidd may not be a Top 10 player anymore, but the man can still run an offense with the best of them. Just watch, for instance, what he does to rejuvenate Marion. Sleep if you want to, but this team can beat anyone in the league.
5. Orlando -- Question: Why are we fine with parroting this malarkey about Orlando losing its matchup advantages with Hedo Turkoglu gone? I'm not saying that Vince Carter is as skilled of a facilitator that Turk is, but he's a darn good one. When Rashard Lewis gets back from his suspension, Orlando has one of the most versatile squads in the league. The Magic can play the "Howard and four shooters" lineup with Lewis, Vince, Pietrus and Jameer Nelson. And now they can also go big and smashmouth if they need to, bringing in newly-acquired Brandon Bass at the four, moving Lewis to small forward and letting Vince play his natural 2-guard spot. And this squad is deep. Matt Barnes is another athletic wing, Ryan Anderson is a poor man's Mehmet Okur and Marcin Gortat is more than an able backup. (Orlando sure thought so, giving the dude a $30-plus million contract.) Explain to me how this team is not significantly better than last year's Magic. I know Hedo was valuable, but it's not like they replaced him with Luke Walton. Maybe they don't win 59 games like last year, considering their division and conference is much tougher, but they're every bit the threat to return to the Finals. And, oh by the way, Howard is at that stage where things usually really click. He might actually have a post game by May.
4. Cleveland -- The wing additions of Jamario Moon and Anthony Parker will prove to be more crucial and effective than the Shaq trade. Shaq is basically Zydrunas Ilgauskas without the ability to knock down a 20-footer. Shaq might be better than Big Z, but not in any demonstrable defensive way. Big Z got slayed on pick-n-rolls. Shaq has been getting killed on pick-n-rolls for the past five seasons. Although Shaq can still dish out some punishment on the other end, if Boston wants to run a pick-n-roll with Paul Pierce and Rasheed Wallace or Orlando wants to milk a Jameer Nelson/Dwight Howard pick-n-roll, Shaq is the same kind of liability that Ilgauskas was. What the Cavs have now is a nice small-ball lineup with Anderson Varejao at center, LeBron at the four and then some combination of Moon, Parker, Mo' and Delonte West (if/when he gets his head together). Last season the Cavs didn't have the personnel to chase the Magic shooters because Wally Szczerbiak couldn't guard Chamique Holdsclaw. Now Cleveland has options. And I hope that Mike Brown finally realizes how much destruction LeBron can cause at the four. I'm not saying you play him there the whole game. I'm talking maybe 20 minutes tops. He's as big and strong as most fours on defense and then, other end ... I mean, it's unfair. That's what happens when a guy who was supposed to be the next Magic Johnson grows to become the same size as Karl Malone but keeps the Magic/MJ skill set.
3. San Antonio -- Every year, there's an offseason move that gets all the attention and it never materializes the way everyone expected. Remember 2005 when everyone touted Brent Barry's arrival in San Antonio like it was on the same level as Shaq-to-the-Heat the previous summer? At some point, you have to take a step back and really analyze things and make sure you're not overreacting. Is there any way that the Richard Jefferson trade was that move? I say no. It's hard for any reasonably skilled and talented player to not play his best basketball for the Greg Popovich/Tim Duncan Spurs. And when you combine Jefferson's arrival with the crafty Antonio McDyess pickup (the perfect kind of big man -- tough, smart and able to knock down 15-footers -- to work in tandem with Duncan), the ridiculous second round steal of DeJuan Blair and the health and freshness of Duncan and Manu Ginobili, we might be looking at the best Spurs team of the decade. Even if Duncan is on the downside of his prime, Tony Parker is peaking as an unstoppable scorer. This could be a 60-win team.
2. Boston -- The best Boston news just leaked this week. Apparently, Boston has finally gotten a clue and is actively trying to lock up Rajon Rondo before the deadline for extensions. About time. After his epic playoffs (nearly averaging a triple-double against the Bulls), the Celtics tried their best to antagonize the young dude, which is stupid, but even more dumb given that Rondo can be a bit of a hothead. But if Danny Ainge and Rondo can get the contract done and he's focused, I'd expect 16 ppg, 8 apg, 7 rpg, 3 spg and maybe a third team All-NBA out of the youngster. That means that Boston has a legitimate Big Four now. But now the Cs have Marquis Daniels backing up Rondo and Pierce and Big Baby fresh off a playoffs where he showed he can be a legitimate starter, except, with KG back, he doesn't have to be one. Pieces. The Cs have pieces. The 'Sheed' pickup was just a straight up coup. I love the stories coming out of Boston that have 'Sheed' already more familiar with the Boston playbook than some of the returning Celtics. Any concern about him messing with the Ubuntu is overblown. If any two players can tag-team 'Sheed', it's KG and Ray Allen.
1. The Lakers -- Andrew Bynum was really frisky during the preseason. It's not unfathomable that, if the young dude can finally get a 75 to 80-game regular season under his belt, he can be in All-Star conversations come February. Let's say the Lakers roll into the postseason with two double-double guys (Lamar Odom and Bynum), arguably the league's best player (Kobe), arguably the league's "best second-best" player (Pau Gasol) and the league's most skilled roughneck (Ron-Ron Artest). This Lakers team has a chance -- even with a shaky point guard rotation -- to be a juggernaut on par with the early decade Shaq/Kobe squads. They're my pick to win it all -- again.
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Can Shaq’s star power brighten LeBron’s future?
By Adrian Wojnarowski
October 27, 2009
CLEVELAND — Thirteen years ago, the world had walls. Shaquille O’Neal wanted to be a movie star, a rapper, the most famous basketball player in the world. Never so much that he wanted to leave for the Los Angeles Lakers, but he had to leave. Major markets delivered endorsements and televised games and national press. Wilt and Kareem were liberated to Los Angeles and, ultimately, so was Shaq.
“It was a lot different for me then, than it is for LeBron now,” Shaq says.
Everything has changed. The digital age has changed everything. They can watch you every night on a satellite TV, a laptop, a cell phone. LeBron James doesn’t need Madison Avenue to be a national icon because his stage in Cleveland has been big enough to make him a global star.
Most of all, the Lakers offered O’Neal the biggest contract, but the NBA’s collective bargaining agreement has since tilted to give the home team the ability to pay the most money in a max contract, to protect the Orlandos and Clevelands when the L.A.s and New Yorks come calling in free agency.
“I had a business decision to make,” said O’Neal, who is the spokesman for the U.S. Marines’ “Toys for Tots” Christmas program for impoverished children; people can donate gifts or money online (www.toysrus.com) or at Toys ‘R’ Us stores across the country.
“I could make more by leaving [for the Lakers], but that’s not the case for LeBron now. He can make more by staying in Cleveland. And yeah, the world is different now. They can see you wherever you play. You don’t have to be in a big market anymore. He doesn’t have to leave Cleveland.”
All these years later, Shaq is 37 and maybe still the most relevant old man in the sport’s history. Great centers have played beautifully pushing 40 years old, but over and over Shaq has reinvented himself. He’s found a new relevance, a transformational storyline. Shaq made basketball matter in Orlando and won three titles with Kobe Bryant as part of the sport’s most compelling drama. He won his fourth title with Dwyane Wade and Pat Riley in Miami, and now, done as a franchise player, Shaq’s on a mercenary mission to Cleveland for the most important season in history here.
His job is unmistakable.
Win a ring and keep the king.
Shaq is no longer a dominant force, but is still one of the league’s most commanding stars. Who else in the NBA has the charisma, the stature, to carry his own prime-time TV show? Somehow, Shaq is still the story. Shaq’s still the biggest presence in the room. With these Cavs, with LeBron’s massive persona, even Cleveland management had wondered how ’Bron and Shaq would fit together. So far, so good.
“You can already see them laughing and getting along when they’re sitting together on the bench,” one Eastern Conference scout said, “but you won’t really be able to judge how that will go until something goes wrong – until there’s some kind of adversity.”
When it’s suggested to Shaq that those suspicious of the partnership’s staying power are waiting for a splinter, he scoffs and says, “Egos have never been a problem for me on any team I’ve played on. …What happened in L.A., I would do it all again. We won three titles. There was nothing that hurt us…”
He’s right about this: The creative tension worked well for the Lakers. But ultimately the franchise crumbled under the weight of it all. Truth be told, LeBron doesn’t have the thirst for scoring titles the way Kobe did in those days. Once Bryant won his titles as a young player, he wanted Shaq out of the way and a contender constructed around him.
No one worries that James, so unselfish on the floor, will have an issue with Shaq there. No, it would be away from the floor, where even Shaq will cast a shadow in ’Bron’s hometown. For now, the Celtics come to Cleveland to start the season on Tuesday night and O’Neal will find out fast how desperately the Cavs need his big shoulders for LeBron to lean on. Cleveland made the biggest trade of the summer, and the clock is ticking on LeBron’s free agency as Shaq comes to town for the biggest basketball season ever here. He’s a mercenary now, here today, gone tomorrow. He has one year left on his contract, and he’ll use it to try and get a fifth title for himself and a first for James.
Eventually, Shaq says, “I want to get into ownership, to own a team, but that’s not what I’m thinking about now.” Yes, he’s pushing hard now. He’s pushing for Orlando’s Dwight Howard and Boston’s Kevin Garnett. Most of all, he’s pushing for a surreal return to the NBA Finals, where Kobe and the Lakers could be waiting for what could be the most celebrated championship series in history.
Thirteen years later, everything has changed in the NBA. Shaq’s no longer the biggest free agent-to-be in history, but maybe the forever star to teach LeBron James that everything he wants in this world can come in Cleveland, can come as a Cavalier. The bright lights, big city are out there for James, but Shaq has come to middle America with an unmistakable message for LeBron: The global game has changed and maybe the sport’s biggest star doesn’t need to leave home and go searching for something. Maybe James can stay here and it’ll all come to him. It was a different day when Shaq and Kareem and Wilt had to go find an iconic address, had to go find basketball’s biggest stage.
Now, Shaquille O’Neal has walked into LeBron’s life in Cleveland, and perhaps that’s one more reminder, one more realization, that anything’s possible here.
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Celtics’ Davis expects to be sidelined 6-8 weeks
By Marc J. Spears
October 27, 2009
Boston Celtics forward Glen Davis told Yahoo! Sports on Tuesday that he will be sidelined six to eight weeks after breaking his right thumb while trying to protect himself from a friend who slugged him while driving.
Davis said the incident happened early Sunday morning when Davis’ girlfriend, Jenna Gomez, one of her girlfriends and one of his high school friends were returning to his home after celebrating Gomez’s birthday. Davis said he and his high school friend got into a heated debate over some “personal issues,” and the friend, who was driving their vehicle, threw a punch at Davis. Davis retaliated by throwing a punch back that broke his hand.
Davis underwent surgery on Tuesday to repair the thumb at a Boston suburban hospital.
“I was defending myself,” Davis said in a phone interview with Yahoo! Sports. “I wasn’t just fighting. I feel like I let my team down by breaking my hand. I let my team down trying to defend myself. I have to make better decisions on how I choose my friends.”
Davis wouldn’t divulge his friend’s name, but a police report obtained by the Boston Herald listed him as Shawn Bridgewater, one of Davis’ former high-school teammates. According to the report, Bridgewater emerged from the car with a bloody nose and fat lip and appeared drunk. Neither Davis nor Gomez were intoxicated, the report said.
Davis was adamant that nobody in the car was inebriated at the time of the incident. He said the fight didn’t escalate further after the group pulled over to the side of the road. Davis’ friend flew back from Boston to Louisiana later Sunday.
The Celtics open the season Tuesday night in Cleveland. Davis plans to be at the Celtics’ practice facility in Waltham, Mass., on Wednesday and will apologize to his teammates for the incident. Teammates Eddie House, Rasheed Wallace, Tony Allen and J.R. Giddens have all sent text messages to check on him.
The Celtics re-signed Davis this summer to a two-year contract worth $6.3 million. The Boston Globe reported that owner Wyc Grousbeck is considering suspending Davis for his actions.
“Wyc has been on the warpath for two days over this,” a league source told Yahoo! Sports. “They want to get money back from him.”
The team has been hurting financially, the source said, and Grousbeck sees this as an opportunity to recoup some of Davis’ salary.
“I don’t want to comment on that,” Davis said. “I haven’t spoken to them about that.”
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Figuring out the East's beast among season-opening queries
By Fran Blinebury
Posted Oct 27, 2009
Seven questions for the next seven days:
Who's the boss?
Nothing like coming right out of the box with the Eastern Conference version of King Kong vs. Godzilla as Boston and Cleveland square off for the 2009-10 season opener.
A healthy Kevin Garnett has returned from knee surgery and is back in the Celtics lineup that is now deeper with the free-agent additions of Rasheed Wallace and Marquis Daniels. The Cavs, of course, did a little off-season shopping of their own, accessorizing the LeBron James collection with that big bauble named Shaquille O'Neal. The winner here gets to strut around as Beast of the East, at least until the end of October.
Can the King and I make sweet music?
Most of the time, the defending champions give themselves a few weeks or months to determine whether the chemistry that won last season can be re-created in the lab. But the Lakers wasted no time swapping out Trevor Ariza for Ron Artest and now they'll get to spend the next six months looking over their shoulders and wondering when Dr. Jekyll will turn into Mr. Ron-Ron. Nothing like opening night at the Staples Center on Tuesday against the Clippers for the ring ceremony to get a peek at the early marriage of the new happy couple. No, not Lamar and Khloe. We're talking Kobe and Artest.
So are we chopped liver?
Well, practically nobody believed in them all of last season when they were rolling up an impressive 59-23 record. Then nobody believed they'd get past the Celtics in the second round of the playoffs. Then nobody thought they could beat Cleveland. Then right up until Dwight Howard missed those two free throws at the end of Game 4, Orlando actually had a real chance to take down the Lakers and win a championship before a world of disbelieving eyes. Now they've unloaded two-fifths of the starting lineup (Hedo Turkoglu and Courtney Lee) that got them to the Finals, plugged in Vince Carter and are back to facing doubts again.
Can the Answer shoot down the questions?
He may not play in Memphis' season opener against his former teammates in Detroit due to a partially torn left hamstring, but that's only the least of the concerns surrounding Allen Iverson. The bigger question is whether the former MVP and three-time scoring leader can sublimate his ego to become a smaller part of a young Grizzlies team that is trying to finally take a real step forward. With shot machine Zach Randolph already thrown into the mix that supposedly has Rudy Gay and O.J. Mayo as the main ingredients, this could be a recipe for disaster.
Can they go back to the future?
The Spurs and Hornets are a couple of teams that wouldn't mind flipping the calendar back a couple of years to recapture the old spark. The Spurs haven't been this enthusiastic since their last championship in 2007. They've brought in wing man Richard Jefferson to boost their offensive production. But the bigger news is that Tim Duncan, Tony Parker and Manu Ginobili are all healthy again. Meanwhile the Hornets were a rising West power two seasons ago, but fell off and flamed out last year. They swapped Tyson Chandler for Emeka Okafor in the middle, but never saw their new center (toe injury) on the floor once in the preseason.
Did anybody get the license number of that truck?
The last time most of the world saw the Rockets, they were putting up a gallant fight against the eventual champion Lakers in the second round of the playoffs. They were, in fact, the only team to push Kobe & Co. to a seventh game in any playoff series. But since then, the Rockets' hopes have been flattened. No Yao Ming for the entire season. No Tracy McGrady for at least a month. So Ron Artest took a quick glimpse at the wreckage and fled to the Lakers. Welcome to Houston, Trevor Ariza.
How long will this Booz cruise last?
After spending his summer indicating he'd rather be elsewhere, Carlos Boozer is back again with the Jazz and vowing to be productive in the middle of the lineup. But with the team having spent big money to keep Paul Millsap in the fold and Boozer slated to become a free agent next summer, it might only be a matter of time before he's sending out those change of address notices from Utah.
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