From Chris Herrington's Memphis Flyer Grizzlies blog: "When Juan Carlos Navarro knocked down his first three, an African-American gentleman behind me remarked to his friend, with absolutely no attempt at humor: 'You know, at first I thought he was too small and too white.'"
Adam Lauridsen from Golden State of Mind: "The first All-Star votes are in and the Warriors are dead last. I couldn't be happier. The NBA regularly salutes Warriors' fans as the league's finest. A large part of the reason why is because we understand what's important in the game. We cheer louder for court burns than we do free t-shirts. And we don't waste our time stuffing the ballot box for a global marketing beauty pageant. All the beauty we need is being delivered nightly from the fingertips of men five men on the court, thrilled to be identified not for their individual vote counts, but for what they do together as Warriors. Jerry Stackhouse ahead of Baron Davis? Erick Dampier pulling down four times as many votes as Andris Biedrins? Dirk Nowitzki leaving Stephen Jackson in the dust? Fine by me. All the All-Star appearances in the world won't erase from Dirk's memory what Jax did to him last May. And I'm pretty sure that Stephen wouldn't trade his barrage of three pointers in Game 6 for a trip to New Orleans this year. Why should he? The type of rapture shared between players and fans in Oakland that night hasn't been found at the All-Star Game for a long time, if ever. So given that our synapses are a little numb from an overdose of glorious basketball after years of neglect, its perfectly understandable that Warriors fans couldn't care less about hanging chads in David Stern's annual election."
Brian Windhorst of the Akron Beacon-Journal on a game the Cavaliers won the ugly way against the Bucks: "Much credit must be given to Devin Brown, whose gutty play seemed to inspire the rest of the team at times tonight. He's got his flaws and he'll not play this way all the time, but the Cavs needed a spark from somewhere. It came out of nowhere. Let's just assume Damon Jones, Eric Snow and Shannon Brown weren't really thrilled because they didn't play. In my mind none of them deserved to be benched, but the team was losing with them playing. ... The Cavs didn't turn the ball over for the last 23 minutes of the game. That is simply unreal. Devin gets some credit there, too, he was playing as the Cavs backup point guard tonight."
Advance scouts chart every play call of their opponents. They see the team's hand signal, and then they know where everyone should go. And then they watch. Sometimes what they see is that some players are breaking plays. Ian Thomsen of Sports Illustrated: "'When Theus calls the play and it isn't for [Ron] Artest, he's so reluctant to let them get into a play he's not involved with,'' said an NBA advance scout who has been studying Artest recently. 'He'll be running down the floor and he should go through to the opposite corner, but instead he'll turn and post up. He might be open and he definitely is good enough that he can be effective in a quick post-up, but that's not the play. I can't tell you how many times that happened. He is playing like a very selfish player right now. Maybe he doesn't like the team, or he doesn't think the team is good and so he has to put up numbers to make up for it. I knew he was a time bomb in the past, but I always respected his game. But he has gone down a notch or two because of the selfish attitude.'"
Not that long ago Tim Kawakami of the San Jose Mercury News made an impassioned case for Stephen Jackson as one of the best defenders in the league. An update: "Remember how I started talking about Stephen Jackson as a possible NBA defensive player of the year? I'm not talking about that so much any more. He's still a very good defensive player, but he has looked leg weary for the last week or longer and it's showing on offense (39.9% FG shooting, 3.5 turnovers a game) and definitely on defense."
I'm sure I'm misusing statistics 100 ways here, but for fun, let me point out that after beating New Orleans last night to stretch the win streak to eight, according to John Hollinger's playoff predictor, the Blazers are now three times more likely to reach the NBA Finals (1.2%) than they are to win the lottery (0.4%).
The Timberwolves beat the Heat in the dubious competition to be crowned most pathetic NBA team. Britt Robson of The Rake: "The Miami Heat look terrible. Shaq is shockingly old, his hands lacking grip, his knees unable to help him stop on a dime--he committed two or three fouls (and fouled out) tonight simply bowling people over with uncontrolled momentum--not from passion by lack of muscular restraint against his enormous body mass. Dwyane Wade is obviously not close to 100% -- he walks with a hitch and looks five years removed from NBA Finals MVP instead of 18 months. He clanged jumper after jumper. The Heat's best player on the floor tonight was glue guy Udonis Haslem. And Wolves fans need not regret waving goodbye to Ricky Davis and Mark Blount. And yet Minnesota still spit the bit on this eminently winnable game. And this time around, it was the dysfunctional two-guards, Marko Jaric and Rashad McCants, who let them down the most. What happened to Jaric? Was it just a week or 10 days ago that he was playing the best ball of his NBA career, penetrating for layups, dishing off that penetration, and hitting clutch hoops in addition to his usual kamikaze defense? Well, he's back in the tank. For the second straight game he was held without a field goal, had two of his three FGA blocked, and committed four turnovers, at least three of them simply stupid passes. Wittman yanked him after one such careless perimeter giveaway early in the third, and only inserted him after Rashad McCants fouled out late in the fourth. In no stint was he effective."
Basketbawful on the Knicks: "During the second quarter, the Knicks went nearly 11 minutes without a field goal. And I feel the need to point out the obvious here: An NBA quarter is only 12 minutes long. New York bricked 20 shots during that 11-minute Gulag. ... Fun fact: The Knicks are last in the league in assists (17.2). ... They have the second-highest payroll in the league, yet they've lost six of seven games and are 7-17 on the season (including 1-9 on the road). Their own fans have turned on them and they're regularly booed at home. They're selfish, don't play defense, their coach/general manager is a laughingstock, and there's no hope whatsoever of anything improving in any significant way any time soon. The three words that best describe them are as follows, and I quote: 'Stink. Stank. Stunk.'"
Ron Hitley of Hornets247 describes how the Hornets -- and lots of teams -- have reacted to Portland's zone defense: "I had to wonder if the Hornets ever discussed how to play a zone like the one Portland threw at us. Our guys reacted to that defense like it was an inside-out donkey with two heads and no feet. OMFG!! WHAT THE HELL IS THAT! No, don't get too close! Let's just hang back and wait for it to melt or something." Portland has a bit of history with MVP candidate Chris Paul -- they could have picked him, but decided Sebastian Telfair was the solution, so they traded down for Martell Webster and change. The Blazers are a team he'd like to stick it to, but last they dared him to shoot, and he did not make them pay.
Jonathan Abrams of the L.A. Times documents a historic moment for Clipper fans: Shaun Livingston and Elton Brand both at least on a basketball court. "Seeing Shaun out here shooting the ball and doing stuff and E.B. starting to do the same, yeah it's good," Coach Mike Dunleavy said. "No question."
Rick Bonnell of the Charlotte Observer asks some tough questions, including this one: "Is Jason Richardson that good? They're paying more than $12 million a season to a guy who is averaging 16 points while shooting 40 percent from the field and 60 percent from the foul line. He has not performed like the offensive difference-maker he was billed to be. His salary approaches that of Atlanta's Joe Johnson, and he's not Joe Johnson."
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