Tag: NBA

Categories
Sports

LeBron James says he needs to ‘do more’

On Oct. 30, 2014, the Cleveland Cavaliers staged a pregame ceremony to mark a homecoming for LeBron James, who had left four years earlier to play for Miami.

About a minute into the observance, before an arena packed with fans who waved sabers that glowed red, a video of James appeared on the so-called humongotron that hangs from the ceiling of the arena.

“If there’s one thing we all know,” intoned an announcer, before the video cut to James. “There’s no place like home,” James finished, before tossing chalk into the air as tends to be his pre-game ritual. The fans, who seemed to embody the chalk’s trajectory, leaped from their seats.

Fast forward to Friday, when we awoke to news that the Nets had upset the Cavs the night before in Brooklyn.

The Nets entered the matchup with 20 wins in 71 tries and ranked 14 of 15 in the NBA’s Eastern Conference. The Cavs started the game atop the conference and, seemingly, poised to compete for an NBA championship after losing to Golden State in the finals last year.

The loss to the Nets capped a week that featured a series of questions about James’ ability to lead the Cavs back to the finals and his commitment to the team after this season.

Five days earlier, the Cavs lost in Miami after James spent halftime chatting with his friend and former teammate, Heat guard Dwayne Wade, rather than warming up with the Cavs, who trailed by 21 points at the half.

That earned James a talking-to from coach Tyronn Lue, who said James apologized for his behavior. “I just told him we can’t have that, being down like we were and him being the leader,” Lue told cleveland.com.

On Monday, a tweet appeared that suggested James had unfollowed the Cavs’ Twitter feed.  (James declined to discuss it.)

Then on Wednesday, James received another talk, this time from Cavs general manager David Griffin. The prompt: a story by Howard Beck in the Bleacher Report that quoted James as saying he hoped to team someday with his besties Wade, Chris Paul and Carmelo Anthony.

The talks seemed to have their effect. “I just need to do more,” James told reporters after the loss in Brooklyn.

James will have his chance on Saturday night in New York, where the Cavs will take on the Knicks. “I feel like we’re ready to make a championship run,” James told reporters on Saturday morning before Cleveland’s shootaround.

In a gift of scheduling, the game at the Garden will feature a matchup between James and Anthony.

Of course, the Cavs all need to do more if they hope to return to the finals. “These handpicked Cavs, with Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love, should never have to be a one-man team, and they’re doomed if they are,” Barry Petchesky noted on Deadspin.

Though James, 31, has said he plans to end his career in Cleveland, he also has signed a series of one-year deals that enable him to become a free agent again this summer.

Categories
Sports

Warriors win streak ends at 24

It had to happen eventually.

The Golden State Warriors ended their NBA record of 24 straight wins when the Milwaukee Bucks topped them 108-95 on Saturday.

The first five minutes of the game foretold the outcome. The Warriors looked tired on the last stop of a seven-game road trip and seemed unable to get their offense going.

In the end, Golden State shot 6 for 26 from three-point territory. Stephen Curry, the Warriors all-galaxy point guard, hit just 25% of his shots from beyond the line or about half as many as he has sunk from outside the arc all season.

Center Greg Monroe led the Bucks with 28 points.

https://twitter.com/andrewbogut/status/675899017973342208

Warriors’ interim coach Luke Walton dismissed a suggestion that the loss spelled relief for his team. “Losing sucks,” he told reporters. “Even if you are 24-1, losing still sucks.”

Still, Walton speculated that his players might experience “a little relief mentally” now that pressure to maintain the streak has ended.

Categories
Sports

Golden State Warriors and the values that support a record start

In his book “Winners: And How They Succeed,” Alastair Campbell reports that the winningest winning mindsets are in sports.

The Golden State Warriors, who have set a record for the best start to an NBA season, underscore Campbell’s finding.

Guard Stephen Curry and his teammates will look to go 18 and 0 on Saturday when they host Sacramento.

The Warriors’ start sent me to stories about the team and the values instilled by Coach Steve Kerr: joy, mindfulness, compassion and competition.

Joy means “he wants us having fun,” interim coach Luke Walton told reporters on Tuesday. (Kerr is on leave to recover from a spinal fluid leak.)

Mindfulness, said Walton, means “thinking the game. It’s not just trying [to] out-talent people; it’s not trying to go for your individual stats. It’s being mindful of the right way to do things.”

“There’s compassion—for each other and for the game of basketball,” he added. “And then there’s competition.”

On Friday, Curry scored 41 points on Friday against Phoenix despite not playing in the fourth quarter. Equally amazing: He hit nine of 16 3-pointers to edge past LeBron James in all-time 3-pointers made. Curry now has 1,278 threes for his career, which spans 433 games. James, by comparison, has 1,276 threes in 927 games.

On offense, it can seem as if Curry and his teammates operate continually beyond the three-point line. After hitting a shot, Curry spins and, without a trace of celebration, heads down the court to play defense.

Categories
Sports

Phil Jackson, Kris Porzingis and the kids on the 3 train

One night about a week ago I boarded an uptown 3 train at Chambers Street. To my right sat two middle-age men, each accompanied by two boys who appeared to be their sons. One of the boys wore a t-shirt that touted Steph Curry, the all-star point guard for the Golden State Warriors. Another wore Lakers garb. Two wore Knicks jerseys.

About two stops later it occurred to me the six of them likely had come from the Barclays Center, where that evening the NBA staged its annual draft. The first threesome left the train at Penn Station. Their companions at 72nd Street.

After arriving home and consulting Twitter, I realized, at least for the Knicks fans, that the draft had presented something of a referendum on Kristaps Porzingis, a 19-year-old forward whom the Knicks selected as their top pick.

Apparently, the selection of Porzingis proved to be wrenching for some of the Knicks’ faithful, who awaited the draft with a hope that finally, this draft, the first under team president Phil Jackson, would mark the first step in a return to winning. The Knicks finished last season with 17 wins and 65 losses, second-worst in the league and the worst in franchise history.

By wrenching, I mean that some fans who attended the draft booed the selection of Porzingis, despite his standing seven feet one and saying that he wanted to play in New York. ESPN captured one young fan crying as he marked the moment in a selfie.

That’s not to suggest Porzingis doesn’t have game. As a player last season with Cajasol Seville of Spain’s ACB league, Porzingis averaged 10.7 points, 4.8 rebounds and one block in 33 games. He hit 38% of his three-point shots and 54% of his two-point tries. Porzingis averaged 11.6 points, 4.1 rebounds and 1.2 blocks in 16 games of the Eurocup, where he won the “Rising Star Trophy.”

Porzingis’ weakness is said to be defense. He weighs about 233 pounds, which, at his height, suggests he might struggle with the physicality of the NBA. It didn’t help that Carmelo Anthony, the Knicks star forward, reportedly dissed the selection of Porzingis. Anthony later reached out to the rookie, whom Anthony said he “can’t wait” to see play.

The pundits appear to like Porzingis’ game, though questions abound. According to Kevin O’Connor at SB Nation, the Latvian “could end up being the steal of the 2015 NBA Draft” if Porzingis has the work ethic to reach what O’Connor calls his “sky-high potential.”

Writing in the PhillyVoice, Rich Hoffman praised Porzingis’ shooting and athleticism while questioning his defense and ability to pass the ball. “He averaged less than one assist per game in both [Spain and the Eurocup] and reportedly doesn’t look comfortable setting his teammates up,” Hoffman wrote.

“Porzingis is very agile for someone his size,” Rafael Uehara wrote last January on the fan site Upside and Motor, noting that Porzingis can play defense, too. “Energy and length are also how he contributes on the other end… He also clogs passing lanes, picking up steals with regularity.” As for Porzingis’ deficits: dribbles too high (makes him susceptible to having the ball stripped away) and passes poorly while moving (see Hoffman, infra), says Uehara.

Jackson says he’s not worried and compares the Latvian to Paul Gasol, who stands seven feet and played center for Jackson with the Lakers. “[Gasol] was 227 pounds when drafted by Memphis,’’ Jackson told reporters recently. “He said, ‘I was a skinny kid when I came in the NBA, too. It’s not about that. It’s about strength.’”

Of course, the selection matters all the more because of who did the selecting. Jackson won five NBA championships with the Lakers after winning six with the Chicago Bulls. He also won two championships as a player for the Knicks; the first in 1970, followed by another three years later. “I think Phil wanted to make a statement,” a host on ESPN Radio’s afternoon show said Wednesday. “He clearly made it with Kris Porzingis.”

If you had asked me in the 1990s, when Jackson’s Bulls dominated the NBA, whether I could imagine the Zen Master one day taking the top pick in the draft on behalf of the Knicks, I think it would have seemed unthinkable. But there I was, on the 3 train, across from a couple of kids in Knicks jerseys on their way back from Brooklyn where they had witnessed exactly that.

Categories
Sports

NBA announces first-ever exhibition in Africa, South Africa sport minister condemns xenophobia

The news that the NBA will stage its first-ever exhibition game on the continent in South Africa later this year comes amid a wave of anti-immigrant violence that is engulfing the republic.

At roughly the same time Wednesday that the league announced a matchup to be played this August in Johannesburg, President Jacob Zuma vowed to deal with the “underlying issues,” including a jobless rate that hovers around 25%, that have contributed to attacks on foreigners.

The NBA didn’t comment on the attacks, which have left at least seven people dead and forced thousands of immigrants from Malawi, Zimbabwe and elsewhere to seek shelter in camps.

But Fikile Mbalula, South Africa’s minister of sport, who attended the NBA’s announcement, condemned the xenophobia and mistreatment of migrants.

“We have here in South Africa coexisted with people who have oppressed us for more than 300 years,” said Mbalula. “And yet there are criminals who can’t tolerate their own blood, and their own brothers and sisters. And we say, as South Africa, not in our name.”

The exhibition is slated to feature a contest between a squad composed of African players and an outfit made up of players from the U.S. and elsewhere. Luol Deng, a forward for the Miami Heat who was born in South Sudan, will captain Team Africa. Chris Paul of the L.A. Clippers will skipper Team World.