A good Grant Wahl Sports Illustrated article about the dribble drive motion offense used by an increasing number of good teams at every level of the game, including the University of Memphis and in some part the Boston Celtics. John Calipari learned about it from a Fresno junior college coach, Vance Walberg: "Calipari asked Walberg something that no other coach had bothered to ask him. 'So tell me, Vance,' he said, 'what do you run?' Walberg laughed. 'You don't want to know,' he replied. 'It's a little bit off-the-wall.' 'No, really,' Calipari said. 'Show me.' And so, using a pepper shaker as the basket, white sugar packets as offensive players and pink Sweet'n Low packets as defenders, Walberg explained his quirky creation, a high-scoring scheme featuring four perimeter players and a host of innovations. Unlike Knight's classic motion offense (which is based on screens) or Pete Carril's Princeton-style offense (which is based on cuts), Walberg's attack was founded on dribble penetration. To Calipari, at least, it embodied two wholly unconventional notions. One, there were no screens, the better to create spacing for drives. Two, the post man ran to the weak side of the lane (instead of the ball side), leaving the ball handler an open driving path to the basket. But there was plenty more. As Walberg pushed the packets through the phases of his offense, Calipari experienced a new kind of sugar rush. Walberg's scheme was madness. It was genius."
Jason Kidd smiles as he is asked about the potential of playing in Dallas.
A good Rasheed Wallace feature from Chris Silva of the Detroit Free Press: "'People think that because he gets mad and he goes off in a game and he speaks his mind that, like, he's a thug, like he's a bad dude,' teammate Chauncey Billups said. 'That couldn't be further from the truth about Rasheed. He's nowhere near a thug. He's a family man. Once he steps outside that rectangle, he's totally different, totally different. But that's cool. That's kind of the way he wants y'all to think. He don't really care what y'all really say or think about him. As long as the people that love him and know him know who he is, that's all he really cares about."
Ira Winderman of the South Florida Sun-Sentinel: "Even with his performance in the Skills Challenge during All-Star Saturday, it seems as if Dwyane Wade's issues are as mental as physical at this point. Burned out at 26?"
Mike Wells of the Indianapolis Star: "It's gotten to the point that fans are stopping people on the street and saying, 'You look like you play basketball. You should play for the Pacers because they need all the help they can get.' That's a true story. It happened after Tuesday's loss to Boston. Marc Spears of the Boston Globe, Mark Murphy of the Boston Herald, C.L. Brown of the Louisville Courier Journal and I were walking to my car when a fan, who was obviously intoxicated by the way she was slurring her words and trying to give chest bumps to people in the garage, stopped Brown, who is about 6-4, and made that comment to him."
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