- 5,456
- 11
Originally Posted by CP1708
Originally Posted by nicedudewithnicedreams
You 30+, not 12 anymore man.
Don't make me end your franchise.
Offical 2009-10 NBA Season Thread
- Thread in 'Sports & Training' Thread starter Started by mateen cleaves,
- Start date
- 9,086
- 11
Good read on KD and the Thunder:
Spoiler [+]
NEXT No. 1: Kevin Durant
[h3]SURVIVAL[/h3]
In just a few minutes, Kevin Durant will be running scared. For now, though, he is smiling wide from the top of the world. "Man, it's a beautiful day," he says, bending down to look out his living room window at the November sunlight bouncing off his pool. "Let's go for a walk." He slips a pair of swim shoes over his giant, battered feet (size 18s that Nike has paid $60 million to wrap in blue plastic high-cuts) and glides down his front walk. He's wearing baggy tearaway pants and a blue T-shirt that reads "YOUNG & RECKLESS" in big, block letters. Young, Durant has down; he recently celebrated his 21st birthday at a club in his native Washington, D.C., just a few struggling whiskers poking out of his chin. Reckless? Not so much.
Durant steps off his manicured lawn and shuffles down the street, his narrow 6'9" frame casting an even longer shadow. He lives in a Spanish-style house in a gated community named Rose Creek, which touts itself as "Oklahoma's Premier Family Community," its wide streets lined with polished sedans and golf carts. Energy barons and retired surgeons wave to him as they drive by. He waves back, his hands extending so far from his shoulders (his wingspan measures nearly 7'5") they seem like satellites. He is walking and waving and talking about how fortunate he feels at the start of his third pro season, here with the looming Thunder, with his Spanish-style house and this wide street to walk down. "It's a perfect situation for me," he says. "I feel bless -- "
Suddenly a dog barks.
Durant stops on the balls of his feet.
It isn't long before he spots the culprit, something resembling a Labrador coming around the side of a big house. But the dog isn't running at him, because the dog is ancient, gray around its muzzle. It isn't even walking, exactly, because sometime over the course of its long, well-fed life, the dog has come to resemble a walrus: Charles Barkley if he had eaten Oliver Miller. If anything, the dog is merely waddling in the general direction of Durant.
But all Durant sees is a dog, and right about now, all that dog sees is Durant's skinny !%+ hustling up the street. "Shoot, I'm so scared of dogs," he says, looking over his shoulder. He says he was chased by dogs when he was a kid in DC, and he still remembers feeling the heat of a dog's breath on the back of his legs as an 8-year-old. From that memory, he's not far removed. Despite his height, despite his money, despite his burgeoning fame, Kevin Durant is still a kid with a kid's instincts. (When his mother calls his iPhone, the caller ID reads "Mommy.") If it's a beautiful day, that means he should go for a walk. If a dog barks, he should run like hell.
And this guy is NEXT?
On Nov. 6, the night before his encounter with the walrus dog, Durant and the Thunder are in Houston, playing the Rockets. The lanky forward is guarded most closely by Shane Battier. If Durant seems like a kid, Battier has always seemed like a man. And even though Durant will finish with 27 points, Battier and the Rockets keep the Thunder co-captain from reaching his full potential. Durant doesn't play scared, but he plays tentatively, as if he's still feeling his way -- which, of course, he is. The Rockets win easily, and afterward the 31-year-old Battier leans satisfied into his locker, ice packs on his knees, his feet in a bucket filled with even more ice. He has on a white dress shirt for the cameras, a picture of experience and all its burdens and joys.
"No matter how talented a young player is, his first year is sink or swim," Battier says. "Can he survive in a man's league? Obviously Kevin did, and he did pretty well." (Durant was named the NBA's Rookie of the Year after his first season, 2007-08, his team's last in Seattle.)
"Year 2, the hurdle is, Can I bring it every night?" Battier says. "Can I average double figures? Can I be consistent?" (Durant improved in nearly every statistical category last season, his first in Oklahoma City. His three-point shooting percentage jumped from .288 to .422, and he averaged five more points per game, 25.3, and two more rebounds, 6.5.) Battier continues. "The next level is, Can I be dominant? That's Kevin's final step. He's shown flashes of dominance, but can he be dominant every single night? The great ones -- Kobe, LeBron, Garnett -- had to pass through that fire. Kevin still has to run through his flames."
And from fat, old dogs.
[h3]CONSISTENCY[/h3]
Last season, the Thunder lost 24 games before winning their third, against the Raptors, on Dec. 19. In fact, the only thing they did with any consistency was lose. It wasn't easy for Durant, who spent his only year in college developing a taste for big-size success while sweeping nearly every Player of the Year award as a Texas Longhorn. He became accustomed to leading SportsCenter's highlight reel and to being coveted by every NBA fan whose team needed a savior. "That was the best year of my life," he says. Durant was loved and famous then, probably more famous than he is now, having endured two seasons hiding in basketball's hinterlands and at the bottom of the standings.
But in some ways, losing has always been the plan in Oklahoma City. From the top down, the franchise was rebuilt on the premise that people learn best from mistakes, that a new team in a new city with a new coach and new players will mature, grow and eventually win as parts of a whole. There are giant billboards dotting the Oklahoma prairie featuring Durant and the words "Rise Together." Surrounded by other young first-rounders, Durant is being cultivated here like a crop. His star will brighten not solely on his wide, bony shoulders, but on the broad backs of one of the NBA's most talented young squads. "You know, it feels like a college team," says second-year guard Russell Westbrook. "So long as we put the work in, you never know where we might end up."
The Thunder's chief architect, not surprisingly, is only 32 years old. His name is Sam Presti, and he's a Rhodes scholar who believes in the logic of numbers, who believes especially in the power of addition. Three weeks after Presti was named the team's general manager, he handed David Stern a slip of paper with Kevin Durant's name on it. The No. 2 pick in the draft behind Portland's Greg Oden, Durant would be the first constant in every equation that Presti drew on his office whiteboard from that moment on.
Presti's office is in the Thunder's practice facility, a renovated roller rink on the outskirts of town, across from an empty field. Through a wall of windows, the GM is watching Durant and his teammates, including three other top-five draft picks -- Westbrook, Jeff Green and James Harden -- practice the morning after the loss to the Rockets. When practice ends, Durant is the last man on the floor, at the far end, shooting jumpers. He has a delicate touch for a player so tall. Guys with his build (those size-18s support 230 pounds) normally have trouble navigating around furniture, let alone NBA defenses. But Durant is graceful, fluid, beautiful to watch.
"He's unique," Presti says. "But I wouldn't limit it to the fact that he's able to get to places on the floor the way smaller guys do. I find his work ethic more rare. The shots he made against Houston last night -- he understands those shots are easier because of the thousands he's taken in DC, Austin and Seattle."
Presti watches Durant take more shots. Then he tells a story. "I deal with realities," he says. "I don't deal in hypotheticals. So I can't tell you how good Kevin will be. I can't push a button and make him 28, which is when I think he'll hit his prime. But I can tell you that one night in training camp, after a double session, everybody else had left, except there was a light on in the players' lounge. I walked by to see who was in there, because it was getting late, and Kevin was in there with a plate of food. He was exhausted. I could see how tired he was just from how he was barely able to pick up his fork. I remember thinking to myself, This guy got better today."
General managers always tell stories about how hard their pampered young millionaires work, and those stories often make them sound like defense attorneys. The NBA's definition of hard work is looser than in most industries. But watch Kevin Durant practice, and he really does look like a hard hat. He shoots from a particular spot on the floor until he gets the feel for that spot exactly, and then he makes that same shot dozens upon dozens of times until he is sure his muscles are weighed down by the memory. Then he'll step six inches to his right and start again. When Presti tells the story of Durant's sitting hunched over his dinner, there's not much doubt that he got better that day, and that he got better yesterday, and again this morning. Without fanfare, in a tiny market out of the NBA's spotlight, he has quietly been spending his days and nights in this old roller rink, shooting basket after basket, waiting for his chance to run through the same fire that forged Kobe, LeBron and Garnett. Consistency is a simple machine that way. It's about repetition. It's about addition. It's about math. Consistency isn't an accident of genetics or the end game of good luck. It's about working so hard that you're too tired to pick up your fork.
[h3]DOMINANCE[/h3]
Of course, conventional wisdom dictates that greatness requires a different utensil: a knife. Michael Jordan was Michael Jordan because he looked at a nice guy like Grant Hill and still set out to break his ankles. Peyton Manning has never met an opponent he wouldn't humiliate. Running up his wide street, looking over his shoulder, Durant doesn't seem to have that instinct in him. He doesn't have arms covered in ink. He doesn't scream after every dunk (though there is the occasional scowl and chest bump). Then again, kids aren't usually killers.
"No," he says softly, after finally escaping the Demon Walrus of Rose Creek. "I can be mean. But it's like I flip a switch. I chill at home, sit on the couch and play video games or whatever, and then I turn it on that night when I need to."
Nobody has doubted his scoring ability -- "The guy is nearly seven feet tall and comes off screens shooting like Ray Allen," Battier says -- but in Durant's first two pro seasons, his defense has been suspect. And defense has always been the truest measure of NEXT. In the third quarter against the Rockets, with the Thunder fighting to keep it close, Houston big man Chuck Hayes went in for a routine basket. Durant rose up in front of Hayes, stretched to his full height, and his sinewy right arm swatted the ball violently to the Thunder bench. It was just a half-second of anger, but it showed something. Durant's face had hardened. He looked pissed. With one swipe, he had turned a buzzing Toyota Center pin-drop quiet. "He's got all the ability in the world," said Rockets coach Rick Adelman after the game. "And he keeps getting better."
Durant squints into the sun. "I want to win more than anybody," he says. (His Twitter feed includes pictures of flawless victories over his teammates at Jenga and Monopoly; there's also footage of him winning a slap fight in his living room.) "I want to be one of the greatest players of all time. I want to be remembered. But I don't think you have to be a bad person to be a great player. I think I can be one guy on the court and another guy off."
Maybe he's right. Maybe we shouldn't judge Durant the way we measure Kobe, LeBron and Garnett. Maybe Durant is just special enough as a physical specimen, such a gifted combination of long and quick, that he will be given the freedom to blaze his own path through a man's world, to run through a different fire. Maybe it's possible, in this new millennium, for Kevin Durant to prove that NEXT can happen in the middle of nowhere. Maybe, just maybe, he has it in him to become a new kind of player -- or, more accurately, an old kind -- a breed so rarely seen, you'd think it was extinct: the superstar nobody has the heart to hate.
In Oklahoma City, at least, the worst anyone can say about him is that he's a little unkempt. "He doesn't own a brush," Westbrook says one day in the locker room. "I don't know if he knows what one looks like."
Durant smiles. "When I clean myself up, I look pretty fresh," he says. "But I like to be grimy. I guess I got nappy hair. I got to be me."
Before he signed his sneaker deal with Nike, Durant turned down an offer from Adidas worth $70 million. "That's a lot of money," he says. But when it came right down to it, he just plain likes Nikes better. He grew up wearing them, and they felt good on his feet. The deal made him happy. For him, it wasn't a function of addition; it didn't come down to logic. It came down to hunch. It came down to gut. It came down to instinct. Not a killer's, but a kid's.
As Thunder rookie James Harden puts it, "If you grow up too fast, what's the point? Kevin's not childish. He's just different. He just likes to have fun. He's young, man. We're all young. But we're learning when we can joke around and when we have to be serious."
Learning the difference between joking and serious, between consistent and dominant, is this season's homework assignment for Durant. Once he answers those questions, he'll be on his way to answering all of the others. He'll be able to show us how different he really can be.
There's a hint of it at the Thunder's morning shootaround on Nov. 8. Durant is again the last man on the floor, under the same basket at the far end. He finishes his work, then goes for a stint in the cold tub. He used to be scared of the cold tub, almost as scared of it as he is of dogs. For a guy who doesn't like water or the cold, the cold tub is a scary place. But he knows that the big boys, the professionals, get iced for good reason. And so he has worked to overcome his fears. He began one day in the offseason by submerging his giant feet. The next day, his skinny legs. And finally his entire long self, first for a minute or two, then for five, 10, then 20. It was a logical progression, a measured acclimation. Bit by bit, he made progress. When people talk about growing up, that's what they're talking about. They're talking about math.
Durant gets dressed, goes home and rests, then makes his way downtown to play the Orlando Magic. The combined age of Oklahoma City's starting lineup is 116, good for an average of just over 23. Durant is the second-youngest player on the floor. He logs three steals, scores 28 points, and the Thunder run away with it, 102-74, Durant's contribution equaling the margin of victory. It's their third win of the season. Last year, Durant and his teammates needed 27 games to win three. This year, it took them six. They have many years left to go.
You do the math.
[h3]SURVIVAL[/h3]
In just a few minutes, Kevin Durant will be running scared. For now, though, he is smiling wide from the top of the world. "Man, it's a beautiful day," he says, bending down to look out his living room window at the November sunlight bouncing off his pool. "Let's go for a walk." He slips a pair of swim shoes over his giant, battered feet (size 18s that Nike has paid $60 million to wrap in blue plastic high-cuts) and glides down his front walk. He's wearing baggy tearaway pants and a blue T-shirt that reads "YOUNG & RECKLESS" in big, block letters. Young, Durant has down; he recently celebrated his 21st birthday at a club in his native Washington, D.C., just a few struggling whiskers poking out of his chin. Reckless? Not so much.
Durant steps off his manicured lawn and shuffles down the street, his narrow 6'9" frame casting an even longer shadow. He lives in a Spanish-style house in a gated community named Rose Creek, which touts itself as "Oklahoma's Premier Family Community," its wide streets lined with polished sedans and golf carts. Energy barons and retired surgeons wave to him as they drive by. He waves back, his hands extending so far from his shoulders (his wingspan measures nearly 7'5") they seem like satellites. He is walking and waving and talking about how fortunate he feels at the start of his third pro season, here with the looming Thunder, with his Spanish-style house and this wide street to walk down. "It's a perfect situation for me," he says. "I feel bless -- "
Suddenly a dog barks.
Durant stops on the balls of his feet.
It isn't long before he spots the culprit, something resembling a Labrador coming around the side of a big house. But the dog isn't running at him, because the dog is ancient, gray around its muzzle. It isn't even walking, exactly, because sometime over the course of its long, well-fed life, the dog has come to resemble a walrus: Charles Barkley if he had eaten Oliver Miller. If anything, the dog is merely waddling in the general direction of Durant.
But all Durant sees is a dog, and right about now, all that dog sees is Durant's skinny !%+ hustling up the street. "Shoot, I'm so scared of dogs," he says, looking over his shoulder. He says he was chased by dogs when he was a kid in DC, and he still remembers feeling the heat of a dog's breath on the back of his legs as an 8-year-old. From that memory, he's not far removed. Despite his height, despite his money, despite his burgeoning fame, Kevin Durant is still a kid with a kid's instincts. (When his mother calls his iPhone, the caller ID reads "Mommy.") If it's a beautiful day, that means he should go for a walk. If a dog barks, he should run like hell.
And this guy is NEXT?
On Nov. 6, the night before his encounter with the walrus dog, Durant and the Thunder are in Houston, playing the Rockets. The lanky forward is guarded most closely by Shane Battier. If Durant seems like a kid, Battier has always seemed like a man. And even though Durant will finish with 27 points, Battier and the Rockets keep the Thunder co-captain from reaching his full potential. Durant doesn't play scared, but he plays tentatively, as if he's still feeling his way -- which, of course, he is. The Rockets win easily, and afterward the 31-year-old Battier leans satisfied into his locker, ice packs on his knees, his feet in a bucket filled with even more ice. He has on a white dress shirt for the cameras, a picture of experience and all its burdens and joys.
"No matter how talented a young player is, his first year is sink or swim," Battier says. "Can he survive in a man's league? Obviously Kevin did, and he did pretty well." (Durant was named the NBA's Rookie of the Year after his first season, 2007-08, his team's last in Seattle.)
"Year 2, the hurdle is, Can I bring it every night?" Battier says. "Can I average double figures? Can I be consistent?" (Durant improved in nearly every statistical category last season, his first in Oklahoma City. His three-point shooting percentage jumped from .288 to .422, and he averaged five more points per game, 25.3, and two more rebounds, 6.5.) Battier continues. "The next level is, Can I be dominant? That's Kevin's final step. He's shown flashes of dominance, but can he be dominant every single night? The great ones -- Kobe, LeBron, Garnett -- had to pass through that fire. Kevin still has to run through his flames."
And from fat, old dogs.
[h3]CONSISTENCY[/h3]
Last season, the Thunder lost 24 games before winning their third, against the Raptors, on Dec. 19. In fact, the only thing they did with any consistency was lose. It wasn't easy for Durant, who spent his only year in college developing a taste for big-size success while sweeping nearly every Player of the Year award as a Texas Longhorn. He became accustomed to leading SportsCenter's highlight reel and to being coveted by every NBA fan whose team needed a savior. "That was the best year of my life," he says. Durant was loved and famous then, probably more famous than he is now, having endured two seasons hiding in basketball's hinterlands and at the bottom of the standings.
But in some ways, losing has always been the plan in Oklahoma City. From the top down, the franchise was rebuilt on the premise that people learn best from mistakes, that a new team in a new city with a new coach and new players will mature, grow and eventually win as parts of a whole. There are giant billboards dotting the Oklahoma prairie featuring Durant and the words "Rise Together." Surrounded by other young first-rounders, Durant is being cultivated here like a crop. His star will brighten not solely on his wide, bony shoulders, but on the broad backs of one of the NBA's most talented young squads. "You know, it feels like a college team," says second-year guard Russell Westbrook. "So long as we put the work in, you never know where we might end up."
The Thunder's chief architect, not surprisingly, is only 32 years old. His name is Sam Presti, and he's a Rhodes scholar who believes in the logic of numbers, who believes especially in the power of addition. Three weeks after Presti was named the team's general manager, he handed David Stern a slip of paper with Kevin Durant's name on it. The No. 2 pick in the draft behind Portland's Greg Oden, Durant would be the first constant in every equation that Presti drew on his office whiteboard from that moment on.
Presti's office is in the Thunder's practice facility, a renovated roller rink on the outskirts of town, across from an empty field. Through a wall of windows, the GM is watching Durant and his teammates, including three other top-five draft picks -- Westbrook, Jeff Green and James Harden -- practice the morning after the loss to the Rockets. When practice ends, Durant is the last man on the floor, at the far end, shooting jumpers. He has a delicate touch for a player so tall. Guys with his build (those size-18s support 230 pounds) normally have trouble navigating around furniture, let alone NBA defenses. But Durant is graceful, fluid, beautiful to watch.
"He's unique," Presti says. "But I wouldn't limit it to the fact that he's able to get to places on the floor the way smaller guys do. I find his work ethic more rare. The shots he made against Houston last night -- he understands those shots are easier because of the thousands he's taken in DC, Austin and Seattle."
Presti watches Durant take more shots. Then he tells a story. "I deal with realities," he says. "I don't deal in hypotheticals. So I can't tell you how good Kevin will be. I can't push a button and make him 28, which is when I think he'll hit his prime. But I can tell you that one night in training camp, after a double session, everybody else had left, except there was a light on in the players' lounge. I walked by to see who was in there, because it was getting late, and Kevin was in there with a plate of food. He was exhausted. I could see how tired he was just from how he was barely able to pick up his fork. I remember thinking to myself, This guy got better today."
General managers always tell stories about how hard their pampered young millionaires work, and those stories often make them sound like defense attorneys. The NBA's definition of hard work is looser than in most industries. But watch Kevin Durant practice, and he really does look like a hard hat. He shoots from a particular spot on the floor until he gets the feel for that spot exactly, and then he makes that same shot dozens upon dozens of times until he is sure his muscles are weighed down by the memory. Then he'll step six inches to his right and start again. When Presti tells the story of Durant's sitting hunched over his dinner, there's not much doubt that he got better that day, and that he got better yesterday, and again this morning. Without fanfare, in a tiny market out of the NBA's spotlight, he has quietly been spending his days and nights in this old roller rink, shooting basket after basket, waiting for his chance to run through the same fire that forged Kobe, LeBron and Garnett. Consistency is a simple machine that way. It's about repetition. It's about addition. It's about math. Consistency isn't an accident of genetics or the end game of good luck. It's about working so hard that you're too tired to pick up your fork.
[h3]DOMINANCE[/h3]
Of course, conventional wisdom dictates that greatness requires a different utensil: a knife. Michael Jordan was Michael Jordan because he looked at a nice guy like Grant Hill and still set out to break his ankles. Peyton Manning has never met an opponent he wouldn't humiliate. Running up his wide street, looking over his shoulder, Durant doesn't seem to have that instinct in him. He doesn't have arms covered in ink. He doesn't scream after every dunk (though there is the occasional scowl and chest bump). Then again, kids aren't usually killers.
"No," he says softly, after finally escaping the Demon Walrus of Rose Creek. "I can be mean. But it's like I flip a switch. I chill at home, sit on the couch and play video games or whatever, and then I turn it on that night when I need to."
Nobody has doubted his scoring ability -- "The guy is nearly seven feet tall and comes off screens shooting like Ray Allen," Battier says -- but in Durant's first two pro seasons, his defense has been suspect. And defense has always been the truest measure of NEXT. In the third quarter against the Rockets, with the Thunder fighting to keep it close, Houston big man Chuck Hayes went in for a routine basket. Durant rose up in front of Hayes, stretched to his full height, and his sinewy right arm swatted the ball violently to the Thunder bench. It was just a half-second of anger, but it showed something. Durant's face had hardened. He looked pissed. With one swipe, he had turned a buzzing Toyota Center pin-drop quiet. "He's got all the ability in the world," said Rockets coach Rick Adelman after the game. "And he keeps getting better."
Durant squints into the sun. "I want to win more than anybody," he says. (His Twitter feed includes pictures of flawless victories over his teammates at Jenga and Monopoly; there's also footage of him winning a slap fight in his living room.) "I want to be one of the greatest players of all time. I want to be remembered. But I don't think you have to be a bad person to be a great player. I think I can be one guy on the court and another guy off."
Maybe he's right. Maybe we shouldn't judge Durant the way we measure Kobe, LeBron and Garnett. Maybe Durant is just special enough as a physical specimen, such a gifted combination of long and quick, that he will be given the freedom to blaze his own path through a man's world, to run through a different fire. Maybe it's possible, in this new millennium, for Kevin Durant to prove that NEXT can happen in the middle of nowhere. Maybe, just maybe, he has it in him to become a new kind of player -- or, more accurately, an old kind -- a breed so rarely seen, you'd think it was extinct: the superstar nobody has the heart to hate.
In Oklahoma City, at least, the worst anyone can say about him is that he's a little unkempt. "He doesn't own a brush," Westbrook says one day in the locker room. "I don't know if he knows what one looks like."
Durant smiles. "When I clean myself up, I look pretty fresh," he says. "But I like to be grimy. I guess I got nappy hair. I got to be me."
Before he signed his sneaker deal with Nike, Durant turned down an offer from Adidas worth $70 million. "That's a lot of money," he says. But when it came right down to it, he just plain likes Nikes better. He grew up wearing them, and they felt good on his feet. The deal made him happy. For him, it wasn't a function of addition; it didn't come down to logic. It came down to hunch. It came down to gut. It came down to instinct. Not a killer's, but a kid's.
As Thunder rookie James Harden puts it, "If you grow up too fast, what's the point? Kevin's not childish. He's just different. He just likes to have fun. He's young, man. We're all young. But we're learning when we can joke around and when we have to be serious."
Learning the difference between joking and serious, between consistent and dominant, is this season's homework assignment for Durant. Once he answers those questions, he'll be on his way to answering all of the others. He'll be able to show us how different he really can be.
There's a hint of it at the Thunder's morning shootaround on Nov. 8. Durant is again the last man on the floor, under the same basket at the far end. He finishes his work, then goes for a stint in the cold tub. He used to be scared of the cold tub, almost as scared of it as he is of dogs. For a guy who doesn't like water or the cold, the cold tub is a scary place. But he knows that the big boys, the professionals, get iced for good reason. And so he has worked to overcome his fears. He began one day in the offseason by submerging his giant feet. The next day, his skinny legs. And finally his entire long self, first for a minute or two, then for five, 10, then 20. It was a logical progression, a measured acclimation. Bit by bit, he made progress. When people talk about growing up, that's what they're talking about. They're talking about math.
Durant gets dressed, goes home and rests, then makes his way downtown to play the Orlando Magic. The combined age of Oklahoma City's starting lineup is 116, good for an average of just over 23. Durant is the second-youngest player on the floor. He logs three steals, scores 28 points, and the Thunder run away with it, 102-74, Durant's contribution equaling the margin of victory. It's their third win of the season. Last year, Durant and his teammates needed 27 games to win three. This year, it took them six. They have many years left to go.
You do the math.
- 24,717
- 436
KD getting a lot of pub this year, elevating his game and it's paying off.
Fighting for a playoff spot, having career highs in PPG/RPG/APG/STL/BLK. Shot it a little better last year, but he's scoring a bit more, and 46% is veryrespectable.
Also, word is Brand/Tracy being shopped. I wonder who the suitors are. If any
Fighting for a playoff spot, having career highs in PPG/RPG/APG/STL/BLK. Shot it a little better last year, but he's scoring a bit more, and 46% is veryrespectable.
Also, word is Brand/Tracy being shopped. I wonder who the suitors are. If any
- 9,086
- 11
Like I've said in the past, Durant being in OKC won't be a deterrent for his popularity/marketability.
He puts up his usual stats and the team wins = all the pub he needs and deserves
He puts up his usual stats and the team wins = all the pub he needs and deserves
Oh my God if Brand gets moved.
Houston won't move TMac unless they get a legit star at good money prices. I think they stack him and let the 20 mil fall off for the summer.
I wanna know where Andre Miller goes, and what the "Pritchard is a genius" people say. I'm begging for that to happen for my Christmas presentthis year. They will keep me laughing thru the new year.
Houston won't move TMac unless they get a legit star at good money prices. I think they stack him and let the 20 mil fall off for the summer.
I wanna know where Andre Miller goes, and what the "Pritchard is a genius" people say. I'm begging for that to happen for my Christmas presentthis year. They will keep me laughing thru the new year.
- 24,717
- 436
Whodathunk that Andre Miller would be shut out by Steve fricking Blake.
I don't blame Roy, or the Blazers though. You have too many decent-to-good players, you can't keep them all around. Look at their wing depth. They gotMartell, they got Rudy, they got Outlaw, they got Batum, they got all these damn athletes but they can't get their minutes right.
Trade a wing or two for another guy who can pound it inside, they should have went after Bass instead of another PG. Cheaper and more of a need than AndreMiller.
And yeah if OKC can stack up the W's, it won't be a big deal that he's probably in one of the poorest sports areas in all of American sports.
Look at LeBron.
I don't blame Roy, or the Blazers though. You have too many decent-to-good players, you can't keep them all around. Look at their wing depth. They gotMartell, they got Rudy, they got Outlaw, they got Batum, they got all these damn athletes but they can't get their minutes right.
Trade a wing or two for another guy who can pound it inside, they should have went after Bass instead of another PG. Cheaper and more of a need than AndreMiller.
And yeah if OKC can stack up the W's, it won't be a big deal that he's probably in one of the poorest sports areas in all of American sports.
Look at LeBron.
- 9,086
- 11
[h4]
[/h4] [h4]What The Scouts Are Saying[/h4]
[/h4] [h4]What The Scouts Are Saying[/h4]
Spoiler [+]
Eastern Conference scout on the new Carmelo Anthony:
"Everyone talks about what kind of shape he's in, and you can see it. He's ripped up. He looks tremendous. And now he's just so aggressive that he's playing with a different level of confidence. He was always a matchup nightmare who could take your smaller guy into the post or shoot from the outside against bigger guys, but I think there were times in the past where you could frustrate him and take him out of the game. I don't know if you can do that any more. Maybe LeBron [James] and [Dwyane] Wade figured it out faster, but it looks like Carmelo has figured it out."
Western Conference scout on whether Shaquille O'Neal fits in Cleveland:
"Right now I would say no. They're winning because they have superior talent … or should I say because they've got a great, great, great player. And I think there's something to be said for the fact that [O'Neal] leaves Phoenix and all of a sudden Phoenix starts winning.
"I see them jumping around [on the Cavs' bench] and acting like they're having fun, so maybe that's a good sign. But I still have reservations because Cleveland built [its] whole foundation the last couple years on being a defensive team. They're just not going to be as good defensively with Shaq on the floor.
"It's a big-time work in progress. They're still experimenting on how they want to use him, and ultimately the Shaq experiment is going to be yea'd or nea'd in the playoffs, so maybe he'll prove me wrong. Ultimately whether they win 55 or 65 games in the regular season is irrelevant."
Eastern Conference scout on the rising Atlanta Hawks:
"They're a beast. I'm telling you that Cleveland wants no part of these guys in the second round. Whoever gets this team in the second round will have their hands full. They've grown up a lot. They know how to win. And they've got eight, nine, 10 guys now. They can flat-out score now with [Jamal] Crawford coming off the bench, they can bang with you with [Zaza] Pachulia, they've added a quality veteran like Joe Smith, and Josh Smith has come a long way compared to where he was. I think they can play with anybody and beat anybody in the East."
Western Conference scout on the surprising Sacramento Kings and working Kevin Martin back into the lineup when he recovers from wrist surgery:
"You expected them to be a lot worse without Kevin Martin, but Martin takes the ball out of Tyreke Evans' hands and Beno Udrih's hands. Now they have Tyreke and Beno attacking the other team's worst defenders, they've loaded up the floor with shooters and they've taken one of their weakest defenders off the floor. Having said all that … I still don't know how the hell they're winning games.
"They've played more free-flowing. It's more by committee now. Sometimes in the past they worked so hard to find [Martin] that three other guys ended up sitting and watching. How are they going to work [Martin] back in? If they put him on the floor with Tyreke and Beno, other teams are going to take advantage of them when they do it. Maybe they try to trade him."
Eastern Conference scout on how teams prepare now for Brandon Jennings:
"The biggest thing is that you have to have great transition defense and also try to keep him out of the paint. The problem is that you can't just go under every screen and dare him to shoot because he has such great range on his 3 ball. He also does a great job of keeping the ball alive, dribbling around like Nash, probing for openings.
"It's hard to be physical with him because of his speed. Defensively you can try to make him run through a lot of screens and try to wear him down in pick-and-rolls, but they have pretty good length around him to help. He's very similar to me to a young, passionate Allen Iverson. He's a lot tougher than people gave him credit for, including me.
"The thing that's really impressed me is that he hasn't been a high-volume shooter. I know he's struggled lately, but he's been pretty efficient in a lot of games. The bigger question to me is what's going to happen when Michael Redd is back as a consistent player, because he's getting a lot of Michael Redd's shots."
Western Conference scout on Andre Miller's future with the Portland Trail Blazers:
"Portland is probably going to trade him sooner rather than later, but I don't think Miller has necessarily been the problem. I really don't want to knock the kid, but I think some of it has to do with [Greg] Oden being on the floor. He's been putting up some numbers, but I think they play more fluidly when [LaMarcus] Aldridge is at the 5.
"It's great that the kid's healthy, but Oden jams up the floor sometimes. If you're the other team you want [Portland] to throw it to him. The more he gets it the less it's in their best players' hands.
"[Travis] Outlaw being hurt obviously hurts them because he can space the floor. To me their best group is when they're playing smaller. Aldridge is much more of a handful at the 5 than the 4. "
Eastern Conference scout on the Washington Wizards' slow start and Gilbert Arenas' comeback after missing most of the past two seasons:
"They're going to have to make a trade. I know they've played better since [Antawn] Jamison came back, but they just have too many personalities going in different directions. Their main three guys have been together for a long time and it hasn't really worked. When are they going to [admit] that it doesn't work? Gil and Caron [Butler], Gil and [Brendan] Haywood, [Andray] Blatche. [Nick] Young, DeShawn [Stevenson] … there's a lot going on there for Flip [Saunders] to try to pull that all together.
"I think Arenas is still good enough to be a 20-point-a-game guy. But not a 30-point-a-game guy. He just seems to lack a little bit of burst that he had in the past. You see it in flashes over the course of a game, but he's more reliant on little pull-ups and long jumpers than he used to be. He used to get a dunk or two every game on dribble penetration. Now those are layups. Or missed layups."
Eastern Conference scout on the resurgent Suns and how Steve Nash looks at 35:
"There are probably only two guys in this league who can dominate the ball -- handle the ball on every single set -- and it's good for their teams: Chris Paul and Steve Nash. It's really good for the Suns now because they don't have a high level of depth and they don't have a lot of guys who can get their own shot, so Nash makes their [lives] so much easier. What's he averaging? Eleven or 12 dimes at his age?
"I wonder if the way they lost to New York and Cleveland will affect them down the road, but I think they can keep this up in the regular season. The playoffs are a different story. But when you've got six guys shooting better than 40 percent on 3s, that's unheard of. That's hard to stop.
"As for Nash, I think he's too smart to be slowing down. He's not like Derrick Rose or Dwyane Wade, taking a lot of contact, falling a lot, trying to dunk on guys. He knows how to get rid of the ball before [absorbing] major contact. He shoots floaters to protect himself. He might get a little banged up on defense, but he knows how to take care of himself and he knows how to take care of everybody else."
Western Conference scout on Ron Artest's first month-plus with the Lakers:
"From what I've seen, Artest gives them a swagger. He puts his hands on guys he's guarding and he can make shots from the perimeter. He's in great shape. He plays multiple positions. And, believe it or not, has the respect of the officials. In one game I saw he really handled Kevin Durant, took him right out of the game.
"Now they probably would have the same record if they had [Trevor] Ariza instead of Artest. And Ariza's younger. But I like Artest for the Lakers in the short-term. It's hard to evaluate it after 20 games because you always wonder: Is he going to do something off the court? Is he going to get suspended? Will he be here in three years? But I kind of like where [Artest] said that he's the captain of the defense and Kobe's the captain of the offense. I respect the dude."
Western Conference scout on the best team he's seen:
"It's the Lakers, hands down. They're so physical across the board, all the way down to Derek Fisher and Shannon Brown. They're enormous. They're just big, strong, physical guys that can really get up into you and defend you. They're just big and strong and versatile and they can really do damage with their defense. The days of questioning [L.A.'s] toughness are over."
"Everyone talks about what kind of shape he's in, and you can see it. He's ripped up. He looks tremendous. And now he's just so aggressive that he's playing with a different level of confidence. He was always a matchup nightmare who could take your smaller guy into the post or shoot from the outside against bigger guys, but I think there were times in the past where you could frustrate him and take him out of the game. I don't know if you can do that any more. Maybe LeBron [James] and [Dwyane] Wade figured it out faster, but it looks like Carmelo has figured it out."
Western Conference scout on whether Shaquille O'Neal fits in Cleveland:
"Right now I would say no. They're winning because they have superior talent … or should I say because they've got a great, great, great player. And I think there's something to be said for the fact that [O'Neal] leaves Phoenix and all of a sudden Phoenix starts winning.
"I see them jumping around [on the Cavs' bench] and acting like they're having fun, so maybe that's a good sign. But I still have reservations because Cleveland built [its] whole foundation the last couple years on being a defensive team. They're just not going to be as good defensively with Shaq on the floor.
"It's a big-time work in progress. They're still experimenting on how they want to use him, and ultimately the Shaq experiment is going to be yea'd or nea'd in the playoffs, so maybe he'll prove me wrong. Ultimately whether they win 55 or 65 games in the regular season is irrelevant."
Eastern Conference scout on the rising Atlanta Hawks:
"They're a beast. I'm telling you that Cleveland wants no part of these guys in the second round. Whoever gets this team in the second round will have their hands full. They've grown up a lot. They know how to win. And they've got eight, nine, 10 guys now. They can flat-out score now with [Jamal] Crawford coming off the bench, they can bang with you with [Zaza] Pachulia, they've added a quality veteran like Joe Smith, and Josh Smith has come a long way compared to where he was. I think they can play with anybody and beat anybody in the East."
Western Conference scout on the surprising Sacramento Kings and working Kevin Martin back into the lineup when he recovers from wrist surgery:
"You expected them to be a lot worse without Kevin Martin, but Martin takes the ball out of Tyreke Evans' hands and Beno Udrih's hands. Now they have Tyreke and Beno attacking the other team's worst defenders, they've loaded up the floor with shooters and they've taken one of their weakest defenders off the floor. Having said all that … I still don't know how the hell they're winning games.
"They've played more free-flowing. It's more by committee now. Sometimes in the past they worked so hard to find [Martin] that three other guys ended up sitting and watching. How are they going to work [Martin] back in? If they put him on the floor with Tyreke and Beno, other teams are going to take advantage of them when they do it. Maybe they try to trade him."
Eastern Conference scout on how teams prepare now for Brandon Jennings:
"The biggest thing is that you have to have great transition defense and also try to keep him out of the paint. The problem is that you can't just go under every screen and dare him to shoot because he has such great range on his 3 ball. He also does a great job of keeping the ball alive, dribbling around like Nash, probing for openings.
"It's hard to be physical with him because of his speed. Defensively you can try to make him run through a lot of screens and try to wear him down in pick-and-rolls, but they have pretty good length around him to help. He's very similar to me to a young, passionate Allen Iverson. He's a lot tougher than people gave him credit for, including me.
"The thing that's really impressed me is that he hasn't been a high-volume shooter. I know he's struggled lately, but he's been pretty efficient in a lot of games. The bigger question to me is what's going to happen when Michael Redd is back as a consistent player, because he's getting a lot of Michael Redd's shots."
Western Conference scout on Andre Miller's future with the Portland Trail Blazers:
"Portland is probably going to trade him sooner rather than later, but I don't think Miller has necessarily been the problem. I really don't want to knock the kid, but I think some of it has to do with [Greg] Oden being on the floor. He's been putting up some numbers, but I think they play more fluidly when [LaMarcus] Aldridge is at the 5.
"It's great that the kid's healthy, but Oden jams up the floor sometimes. If you're the other team you want [Portland] to throw it to him. The more he gets it the less it's in their best players' hands.
"[Travis] Outlaw being hurt obviously hurts them because he can space the floor. To me their best group is when they're playing smaller. Aldridge is much more of a handful at the 5 than the 4. "
Eastern Conference scout on the Washington Wizards' slow start and Gilbert Arenas' comeback after missing most of the past two seasons:
"They're going to have to make a trade. I know they've played better since [Antawn] Jamison came back, but they just have too many personalities going in different directions. Their main three guys have been together for a long time and it hasn't really worked. When are they going to [admit] that it doesn't work? Gil and Caron [Butler], Gil and [Brendan] Haywood, [Andray] Blatche. [Nick] Young, DeShawn [Stevenson] … there's a lot going on there for Flip [Saunders] to try to pull that all together.
"I think Arenas is still good enough to be a 20-point-a-game guy. But not a 30-point-a-game guy. He just seems to lack a little bit of burst that he had in the past. You see it in flashes over the course of a game, but he's more reliant on little pull-ups and long jumpers than he used to be. He used to get a dunk or two every game on dribble penetration. Now those are layups. Or missed layups."
Eastern Conference scout on the resurgent Suns and how Steve Nash looks at 35:
"There are probably only two guys in this league who can dominate the ball -- handle the ball on every single set -- and it's good for their teams: Chris Paul and Steve Nash. It's really good for the Suns now because they don't have a high level of depth and they don't have a lot of guys who can get their own shot, so Nash makes their [lives] so much easier. What's he averaging? Eleven or 12 dimes at his age?
"I wonder if the way they lost to New York and Cleveland will affect them down the road, but I think they can keep this up in the regular season. The playoffs are a different story. But when you've got six guys shooting better than 40 percent on 3s, that's unheard of. That's hard to stop.
"As for Nash, I think he's too smart to be slowing down. He's not like Derrick Rose or Dwyane Wade, taking a lot of contact, falling a lot, trying to dunk on guys. He knows how to get rid of the ball before [absorbing] major contact. He shoots floaters to protect himself. He might get a little banged up on defense, but he knows how to take care of himself and he knows how to take care of everybody else."
Western Conference scout on Ron Artest's first month-plus with the Lakers:
"From what I've seen, Artest gives them a swagger. He puts his hands on guys he's guarding and he can make shots from the perimeter. He's in great shape. He plays multiple positions. And, believe it or not, has the respect of the officials. In one game I saw he really handled Kevin Durant, took him right out of the game.
"Now they probably would have the same record if they had [Trevor] Ariza instead of Artest. And Ariza's younger. But I like Artest for the Lakers in the short-term. It's hard to evaluate it after 20 games because you always wonder: Is he going to do something off the court? Is he going to get suspended? Will he be here in three years? But I kind of like where [Artest] said that he's the captain of the defense and Kobe's the captain of the offense. I respect the dude."
Western Conference scout on the best team he's seen:
"It's the Lakers, hands down. They're so physical across the board, all the way down to Derek Fisher and Shannon Brown. They're enormous. They're just big, strong, physical guys that can really get up into you and defend you. They're just big and strong and versatile and they can really do damage with their defense. The days of questioning [L.A.'s] toughness are over."
- 20,261
- 2,188
- 6,126
- 10
I can't even front, this isOriginally Posted by you big dummy
- 24,717
- 436
Does computation kick in after 40?Originally Posted by CP1708
You don't read this thread much do you?
By shut out I meant that the team prefers (Roy prefers) Blake over Andre Miller.
I wouldn't have thought that Steve Blake would be preferred over Andre Miller.
- 7,084
- 45
this. there were rumors last season about blake+outlaw but nothing ever happened.
i think they should move blake rather then miller. or move both and give time to bayless. i think roy just wants miller out because he doesnt get to dominatethe ball as much...
i think they should keep outlaw and rudy, but eh.
and good read on that article nas. i agree with most of the things said, if not everything.
- 17,325
- 3,612
anybody watching the grizz vs mavs game?
JA?
JA?
- 12,102
- 1,410
On James Harden..
Mike Gorman : "didn't this kid have a horrible NCAA tournaemnt? and his stock kinda dropped, some people even had him as the 3r or 4th pick.."
Donny: ......................."he was the 3rd pick""
on kevin durant..
Gorman: "He just kinda shows up and scores and gets his 3 rebounds and that's it. you think at his size he'd fall into some."
I'm no KD apologist but the man is averaging 7 a game.
like tommy, that is not being a homer, that is being unprofessional.
Mike Gorman : "didn't this kid have a horrible NCAA tournaemnt? and his stock kinda dropped, some people even had him as the 3r or 4th pick.."
Donny: ......................."he was the 3rd pick""
on kevin durant..
Gorman: "He just kinda shows up and scores and gets his 3 rebounds and that's it. you think at his size he'd fall into some."
I'm no KD apologist but the man is averaging 7 a game.
like tommy, that is not being a homer, that is being unprofessional.
- 25,504
- 666
Before he signed his sneaker deal with Nike, Durant turned down an offer from Adidas worth $70 million. "That's a lot of money," he says. But when it came right down to it, he just plain likes Nikes better. He grew up wearing them, and they felt good on his feet. The deal made him happy. For him, it wasn't a function of addition; it didn't come down to logic. It came down to hunch. It came down to gut. It came down to instinct. Not a killer's, but a kid's.
YOOOOOOOOOO
what the hell did Nike give him?
- 9,086
- 11
^
$60M I believe.
$60M I believe.
- 17,325
- 3,612
OJ finally out of his slump. I guess its safe to say good win by the Grizz tonight against a surging Dallas team.
I forgot this the team that gave up that big %+# lead to the damn Clippers.
- 1,377
- 121
The Nets and the T'Wolves don't look as bad as before with some of their key injured players back.
- 17,325
- 3,612
- 6,993
- 80
Originally Posted by bhzmafia14
Noah salty becasue Lebron keep dancing.
i mean somebody had to check him on it, as a man you can't let anyone just show you up like that
- 16,335
- 13
I'm not sure which one of them I dislike more.
