|
Slimmed Down Eddy Curry to Practice Tuesday November 9, 2009 7:44 PM By Chris Sheridan
NEW YORK -- Knicks center Eddy Curry will scrimmage with the team Tuesday for the first time since injuring his calf muscle on the first day of training camp. And here's the big news, according to Knicks president Donnie Walsh: Curry's weight is "way down." Walsh refused to attach a specific number to Curry's actual weight, but noted it was "way down" from the 317 pounds that Curry weighed at the beginning of training camp. The Knicks are not putting any kind of a timetable on returning Curry to game action, but the best-case scenario would allow coach Mike D'Antoni to at least showcase Curry for a few minutes Friday night when the Golden State Warriors come to Madison Square Garden. Golden State remains one of the league's most active teams in trade talks as they search for a deal to send Stephen Jackson packing, and the Knicks -- still anxious to clear additional cap room for the summer of 2010 -- would gladly get involved in any kind of three-way discussions in which Curry and/or Jared Jeffries could be dealt for players with expiring contracts. Read comments or leave a comment November 9, 2009 5:38 PM By Henry Abbott
This weekend's New York Times Sunday magazine had a story about how data collection is changing healthcare. It's a sensitive issue. This is your doctor we're talking about. The last thing you want is for that person to be an automaton. This is as much art as science! Keep your studies to yourself! I get that feeling. And I know it from talking about basketball, where a ton of people still really believe that coaches and players know best and everyone else ought to shut up, especially if they're telling about things they learned from Excel. But then I also understand that the dataheads are often right. Analyzing spreadsheets can tell you things that work that you wouldn't know about otherwise, and if you're in the business of doing the best job possible, you can't ignore all that information. And this is the information age, right? To me the question isn't whether or not we'll be getting valuable insights from data analysis. That horse is out of the barn and halfway to Houston. The question is how to integrate that kind of insight with the human intuition we also want. David Leonhardt writes about a doctor, Brent James, a doctor and a datahead who is a central player in the healthcare reform debate: This debate between intuition and empiricism is as old as Plato, who thought that knowledge came from intuitive reasoning, and Aristotle, who preferred observation. The argument has seemed especially intense lately, as one field after another has struggled to define the role of human judgment in a data-saturated society. The police officials in New York City who overhauled crime fighting were classic empiricists. The debate over education reform revolves around how well teachers can be measured and what the consequences of those measurements should be. These disagreements can sometimes be exaggerated, because everyone agrees that intuition and empiricism both have a role to play. But the fight over how to balance the two is a real one. ... The overall record of decision-making approaches that are based mostly on intuition is far weaker than the record of decisions based mostly on data. To give just one example, an article in the journal Psychological Assessment, analyzing dozens of studies that compared clinical judgments with data-based diagnoses, found that clinical judgments were better in only a few instances. The two approaches were equally accurate about half of the time, but the data-based diagnoses substantially outperformed human judgment in nearly half of the studies. And with data collection becoming ever cheaper, Kahneman says that the number of occasions in which an intuitive approach beats a systemic one is getting smaller all the time. Read comments or leave a comment November 9, 2009 2:49 PM By Henry Abbott
They won't often say it to the media, but you know they're thinking it. The people who run bad NBA teams watch the good teams and think: If I had those players, everyone would think I was a genius. Sometimes, though, they did have those players. As it happens, the NBA's best rosters -- the success stories like the Lakers, Celtics, Mavericks, Suns, Rockets and the like -- give heavy minutes to players who couldn't find long-term homes with cellar-dwelling teams.
I'm not saying the teams that let these players go made mistakes. Often they just have different priorities. But I am saying that there's clearly something going on when it's easy to come up with players who couldn't stick with bad teams but are right at home on good teams. First of all, help me brainstorm this list ... who's missing? And then ... what do you think is going on? Why is this happening? We'll dig in deeper in a follow-up. Read comments or leave a comment Stephen Jackson's Get Out of Golden State Card November 9, 2009 1:56 PM by Chad Ford
Golden State Warriors swingman Stephen Jackson has been openly pining for a trade for weeks. He's tried to force the Warriors to dump him by publicly demanding a trade to a contender, skirmishing with coach Don Nelson (and being suspended), and having his agent, Mark Stevens, rip Nelson on ESPN.com. Meanwhile, Jackson does have a way out of Golden State if he really wants out. The collective bargaining agreement allows a player and team to negotiate a buyout that reduce the compensation owed to the player. While the union doesn't love buyouts, they have been supportive in the past when players have sought them. If Jackson were forgo his three-year extension, he could be paid in full for this season but also get his freedom and the opportunity to increase his 2009-10 wages while joining the team of his choice, playing for his next contract and becoming a member of the 2010 free-agent class, if he chose to do so. For Chad's complete analysis of the Stephen Jackson situation, click here (Insider). Read comments or leave a comment November 9, 2009 1:53 PM Professional basketball player Coleman Collins has written many tremendous TrueHoop posts about Steve Nash's charity soccer game, Paris, a fashion show, Germany, Iran, and more. Today, he writes about applying culinary lessons honed in Georgia to a life unfolding in Germany, where he plays for Ulm in the Bundesliga.
I have very particular tastes. If I am trying to find something to eat, and I'm the one doing the cooking, my favorite things to eat are baked chicken wings and Ramen noodles. They have to be chicken-flavored Maruchan Ramen noodles. This is very important to remember. Some people think you can just eat Ramen noodles as a full meal, in a bowl and drowned in water like some common soup, but I've found that they work best as an accompaniment to something else. So chicken wings are served with chicken-flavored Ramen, roast beef with roast beef Ramen, and so on. There's an art to it. The most important thing is to strain the noodles in a colander, and then add the seasoning when they have dried somewhat. In this way the flavoring adheres better to the noodle, and only then can the full power of the Ramen noodle be experienced. Try it at home. You don't believe me. Trust me, I've heard all the naysayers. "Ramen noodles have absolutely no nutritional value." "How can you eat something that can be buried for ten years and not go bad?" "I thought those were for poor college kids." These sentiments are all somewhat true, but they are irrelevant. Who cares that they're high in sodium and have no vitamins? Ramen noodles are tasty and delightfully inexpensive - for 12 cents a pack you can eat like a king. It's your own personal recession special. I challenge you to find a better food value in this day and age. This isn't a story about Ramen noodles, though, because I don't have any here with me. Strangely, the Germans do not share my love of Ramen, and I have had trouble finding them at my local store. This is a small tragedy, but I adapt. I am a very good cook. One of the best dishes I cook other than baked chicken wings and Ramen is spaghetti. I learned from the best. When I was about seven or eight years old and both of my parents were working, my father decided it was high time I learned to cook something so I could feed myself for a change. One day, we stood in the kitchen, huddled over the stove. "Now listen up," he said, "and pay attention. I don't want to have to repeat this." I straightened up, all ears. I had conquered the microwave, except for that one time when I microwaved a spoon in a bowl of Spaghetti-O's, but no one had found out and the microwave still worked. Now it was time to move on to bigger and better things. He cleared his throat and began the lesson. "Any idiot can make spaghetti. You put water in a pot. Put a little salt in the pot, maybe a little olive oil. Then you put it on the stove. You make sure the stove is on," he said, gesturing to the knobs in front of us. I nodded and made a mental note. Make sure stove is turned on. This was clearly a step I would do well to remember. "You wait till the water is boiling. Then you put the spaghetti in. When the spaghetti's done, you strain it. That's it." "What do you mean, 'boiling'?" Boiling. It was a nice, round word and I rolled it around and repeated it for a bit. Boy-yull-ing. It was news to me and sounded strange and important. I decided right then and there to bring it up casually at school. "Did you watch that new episode of "Doug" last night?" my classmates would ask. "Oh no," I'd say, "didn't have any time. I got carried away boy-yull-ing some water, and, well, you know how it is." Boiling water was clearly something that grown-ups did, and once I learned how to do it I'd be well on my way. As I mouthed the word, giggling at its strangeness, he narrowed his eyes at me, probably second-guessing the decision to leave me alone near an open flame. "Pay attention. Boiling is simple. There will be bubbles coming from the water. Big bubbles. They'll be rising and popping really fast. You'll be able to tell. I hope." "Ok." Bubbles were familiar territory. Show me a little kid that doesn't like bubbles, and I'll show you a future mortician. "But, wait - how do I know it's done cooking?" He laughed and put his arm around my shoulder. "Ah-ha. That's the best part. But let's just keep it between you and me, alright son?" I nodded vigorously. At that point you could trust me with anything. I was a vault. He glanced over his shoulder as if to be sure no one was listening, whispered in my ear. "You get it out a piece at a time - use a fork so you don't burn yourself or anything - and then you throw it at the wall. If it sticks, it's ready to eat." "Spaghetti can stick to a wall, without glue or anything?" "It most certainly can. And if it doesn't stick, you just wait and keep throwing strands of spaghetti every so often until one does. That's how you know. Only don't tell your mother I told you. It'll be our little secret." I was beside myself. Who knew cooking was so fun? Boiling water with bubbles floating all over the kitchen and popping overhead? Spaghetti that magically stuck to any surface? It was almost more than I could bear. I composed myself, tried not to let on how excited I was. "What about the ceiling? Would that work too?" "Sure, why not? I don't see why the ceiling'd be any different. If it's done, really done, it'll stick to anything. Got it?" I nodded again. "Ok, good. I'm gonna go upstairs and watch the game. Why don't you try it out?" He chuckled to himself and walked away, leaving me beaming, standing in a kitchen full of magic and possibilities. That was the day I made my first pot of spaghetti. My mother came home about an hour later. "I made dinner!" I said brightly, clutching a colander half-full with overcooked pasta. She smiled weakly and took a piece, chewing and glancing around the kitchen at the other half-pot of spaghetti, the half that covered the ceiling and walls and the raw pieces that littered the floor. I'd thrown a piece about every fifteen seconds from the moment I'd first dropped them in. "Mmmmm," she said, "that tastes really good. How'd you learn to do a thing like that?" "Dad taught me," I said. Then I thought about our secret. "Well, he showed me a couple things, but I came up with a few ideas myself." "Ah," she said. "I see. Good job. How about you put that spaghetti down for a second, and sweep this floor up? Where's your father right now?" "Upstairs." She sighed. "I think I'll go up and tell him how well your spaghetti turned out." Over the years I have perfected my spaghetti technique, but I have not forgotten those first lessons in my family's kitchen. They have served me quite well. I make phenomenal spaghetti. I often receive compliments about the tenderness of the pasta, and I nod and accept them with a knowing smile. Because I am so good at making spaghetti, I will often find myself eating it three or four times a week. 'But what of the other days of the week?' you might ask. This problem is easily solved. On Tuesdays, most of the KFCs in Germany have a wing special -- six wings for two euros. Tuesday nights I get a big bucket of chicken wings and fantasize about having Ramen noodles to eat with them. On nights that are not Tuesdays I might order delivery from the selection of pizza and Chinese places. If I am hungry for a high-class meal with vegetables I will visit an actual restaurant. Lunch time is simple. Connoisseur that I am, regardless of where I am living I will always be well apprised of the various buffets in the area. There is a Chinese buffet downtown, all-you-can-eat for 6.90. There is another buffet that is also all-you-can-eat, which charges 6.70. These two restaurants are directly across the street from each other. I imagine the owners, peering out their respective windows and plotting against their competitor. In my mind they are brothers who have had a falling out over their father's will. The older brother coerced a deathbed rewrite and stole the recipe for their father's secret sauce, and after years of court challenges they've retreated to their respective bunkers, silently hating each other from a few yards away. I have begun to subtly sow seeds for a price war. "How much was that again?" I ask. "Six euros even, right? No? Oh, I'm sorry, I don't eat here often. I usually go to that other, cheaper place across the street, but today it was so packed I just couldn't get a table." When I am tired of eating Asian buffets or making lunch from cold cuts, I dine at IKEA. Most people think that IKEA is only for bland furniture and rock-bottom prices, but for those blessed with houses already full of furniture and discerning palates, it can also be a wonderful place for lunch. The food is vaguely Swedish with a German twist. I like to think of it as European fusion. Someday it will catch on elsewhere, but for now IKEA is the only outlet for the European fusion enthusiast. The only problem is that the menu never changes; IKEA's restaurant was (sadly) not designed for repeat customers. People only go to IKEA at most once a month, and even still, they won't stop to eat each time they walk in. As a result IKEA is able to keep its menu static with the average consumer none the wiser. But I am, as I have told you before, a culinary connoisseur, and I cannot help but notice. For this sad reason, the joy of eating IKEA's food is gradually lessened with each visit. I have begun changing up my order when I go there, but am secretly hoping that 2010 has a new IKEA menu in store for me. But if you haven't been yet, you should go. The meatballs are excellent this time of year. On extremely rare occasions, I might even experiment with something other than spaghetti, but normally the sole reason I haven't cooked spaghetti is that there are no clean dishes. My apartment here doesn't have a dishwasher. This is the primary source of stress in my life. I hate washing dishes by hand. To me it's like washing a load of clothes in a river or using flint to start a fire: sure, it's noble, but there are machines that do that better than I ever will, so why bother? Paradoxically, I absolutely can't stand a dirty kitchen, so after cooking on consecutive days I tend to spend most of my time in the living room. When the living room got too dirty to bear, I found an older German woman to clean things up. For 10 euros an hour she will come in and clean your apartment from top to bottom. Her husband dropped her off, and there she was standing at my door, mop in hand and ready for battle. "Don't forget to do the dishes," I told her. "I'm planning on making something special tonight." I left her there, went to practice and came back a few hours later. The place was absolutely spotless, save for the cleaning lady collapsed on the couch, glistening with sweat from the labor. I paid her the money I owed (with a little extra out of embarrassment for how dirty the apartment was) and we said our goodbyes. Then she ambled down the stairs, out the door and into the arms of her waiting husband, who had to have been shocked at how long it took her to finish. I can only imagine their conversation on the way home. "Now, wait - just wait one minute," he says, scratching his head. "The floor I can understand. That part makes sense. But how on earth would he have gotten that stuck to the ceiling?" Read comments or leave a comment November 9, 2009 1:42 PM By Henry Abbott
Read comments or leave a comment Five thoughts about Timberwolves at Blazers November 9, 2009 12:00 PM By Henry Abbott
One of the stranger games of the NBA season happened in Portland last night. In a game of two stars -- Portland's Brandon Roy and Minnesota's Al Jefferson -- neither much mattered as Portland rolled to the victory powered by the likes of LaMarcus Aldridge and Andre Miller. Five things I noticed:
Read comments or leave a comment November 9, 2009 8:48 AM
Read comments or leave a comment Moral victory for winless Nets in loss to Celtics? November 7, 2009 10:55 PM By Chris Sheridan
EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. - They don't give out Ws in the NBA for moral victories, which is why the New Jersey Nets will awake Sunday still sporting the league's only goose egg in the win column. But what happened Saturday night, with New Jersey sticking with the Boston Celtics all the way into the final minute of the fourth quarter of an 86-76 loss despite having only eight healthy bodies, can arguably be considered the most positive night thus far of what promises to be a dismal season. "Our guys are battling their tails off, and we'll break through. We're not discouraged," said Nets coach Lawrence Frank, whose team dropped to 0-7. "Our team going in, we said none of us is as strong as all of us, and it's literally come to fruition in a seven-game stretch. Go figure. But our guys have a great deal of pride and they're trying to win. We walked in the locker room, and it wasn't like a moral victory. They wanted to win, and we're disappointed we came up short, but it's a credit to those guys in the locker room, and we're going to keep on battling." The Nets were without starters Devin Harris (strained right groin), Courtney Lee (strained left groin), Yi Jianlian (sprained knee) and Chris Douglas-Roberts (swine flu), along with reserves Keyon Dooling (hip), Jarvis Hayes (hamstring) and Tony Battie (knee), but they led by as many as eight, kept the game tight the entire way and had four chances to cut into a six-point deficit in the final 90 seconds, only to miss on offense each of those four times. Frank had to go with a starting five of Brook Lopez at center, Bobby Simmons and Josh Boone at the forward spots and Rafer Alston and Trenton Hassell in the backcourt. His only available reserves were rookie Terrence Williams (4-for-14, 4 turnovers), Eduardo Najera (zero points, one rebound and two turnovers in 12 minutes) and Sean Williams (4 points in 5 minutes of playing time.) "Sometimes when you're in that forest it's hard to see in between those trees," Frank said, "but I think in the process we are getting better, and the numbers will take care of themselvs in terms of wins and losses. If we keep plugging away, we'll get the wins we deserve to get. I like the approach that our guys have, they have no fear of anyone." If Frank has any fear concerning his job security, he is keeping it well hidden. Frank, team president Rod Thorn and general manager Kiki Vandeweghe are all in the final year of their contracts, and the entire organization is in a state of limbo while they wait to see if the sale of the club from Bruce Ratner to Russian oligarch Mickael Prokhorov goes through. That issue may not be resolved until the end of December, and the school of thought at the Meadowlands is that nobody on the coaching staff is in job jeopardy simply because of the fact that the club would have to spend money to pay a replacement, and spending money is not something the Nets are doing these days. (Frank's No. 1 assistant, Brian Hill, decided to leave over the summer after management asked him and most of the other assistant coaches to take pay cuts, and the Nets are scrambling so far and wide for sponsors that the rotating signage on the front of the scorer's table featured advertisements, in English and Chinese, for the Agricultural Bank of China, and for a product called YiLi Low Lactose Milk). So for at least another 7-8 weeks, Frank -- the longest tenured coach in the Eastern Conference, with a career record of 225-232 -- should remain secure. But once the outcome of the Ratner-Prokhorov transaction is known, everyone in the organization is apt to morph from lame duck to on the chopping block. "I think somtimes because your record is bad people assume that the coach is in trouble, and I don't know if that's the case here," Boston coach Doc Rivers said. "I know it shoudn't be. In our case, at least in Boston, it was more talk from the media than from inside. I never felt threatened that I was going anywhere -- that don't mean you're not, it can happen. "But I think they're pretty smart here. They know what they have. They know what they're dealing with, especially right now with the injuries and the youth. They decided to go in this direction. So you just do your job. You come and you show up and you do your job every day, and I think Lawrence has done a fantastic job but has nothing to show for it, and that's tough." The last time a coach was fired in-season without any victories was in 2002 when Memphis dismissed Sidney Lowe after the Grizzlies opened 0-8. In 1988, the Pacers let Dr. Jack Ramsay go when Indiana started 0-7, in 1996, Cotton Fitzsimmons was fired in Phoenix with an 0-8 record, and Rivers lost his job in Orlando six years ago after the Magic opened 1-10. "All of us go through it [rebuilding]," Rivers said. "Pat Riley went through it, Phil [Jackson] went through it, one year. Guys go through it, and you've got to just maintain what you do and your belief system. And when you go through this, is does challenge you, it absolutely does. "In Boston I went through it, and you just think 'How am I going to figure a way to win this game tonight?' And then to also build for the future when you have a young team, it's a tough, tough line to walk." Read comments or leave a comment Answers few and far between on Allen Iverson's future in Memphis November 7, 2009 10:40 PM by Chad Ford
Is Allen Iverson's career in Memphis over after just three games? On Saturday, Iverson was granted permission to leave the Grizzlies to deal with a personal matter a Grizzlies spokesperson confirmed. The question is, will he be back? Head coach Lionel Hollins said Saturday night that Iverson's departure was "indefinite." Owner Michael Heisley said Iverson's absence has nothing to do with his displeasure about his role on the team. “I’m not going to get into the personal reason but it has nothing to do with the other stuff,” Heisley told the Commercial Appeal, referring to Iverson’s unhappiness over his sixth man role. “I’m the guy who said he could go. It’s a real family issue that I don’t think should be reported.” However, Heisley also said that there are still big issues to address when and if Iverson returns. “There’s no question that when he comes back we have to work some things out,” Heisley said. “He’s got a lot of work to do, but we’ve all got to get on the same page. He understands what the conditions are. And we need to be less hyper about this along with Allen.” Despite Heisley's remarks to the media, the rumor making its way through the NBA grapevine, according to a number of league sources unconnected to the Grizzlies, is that Iverson's gone for good from the team. One rival GM, citing a conversation with someone from the Grizzlies coaching staff, told ESPN.com that the Grizzlies and Iverson had mutually agreed to part ways. According to this source, the word is that Iverson was causing too many distractions and the team didn't want to deal with Iverson's insistence that he be put in the starting lineup. But another league source cautioned that these things often have a way of working themselves out over time. "You never say it's over until it's over," the source said. "The Grizzlies still owe Iverson a lot of money. I'm sure they're going to explore trading him but it's going to be really, really hard. If they can't, they may have to swallow $3.5 million this season. That works out to $1 million per game. They have a lot of financial problems there. I'm just not sure they are going to give up just yet." Iverson, who signed with Memphis as a free agent in the offseason, can't be traded until Dec. 15. If the Grizzlies intend to trade him, they have to keep him on the roster until at least that date, and they might also have to insist that they intend to keep him for the remainder of the season to keep teams from merely waiting for him to be waived. Of course, it's unclear whether Iverson has trade value at this point, given his problems with the Grizzlies. A number of GMs I spoke with on Saturday night said they had no interest in acquiring Iverson via trade or off the waiver wire. "I can't imagine anyone wanting him at this point," one GM said. "Struggling teams now know he's going to be a distraction. Contending teams have to live with the fact that Iverson puts himself above the team. Even the Clippers backed away from him this summer and Donald Sterling will do anything to sell tickets. I'm still not sure what the Grizzlies were thinking." No one is, especially in light of recent revelations that neither GM Chris Wallace nor Hollins addressed Iverson's role as a starter or bench player before signing him. "That is, in a word, amazing," said one NBA executive who explored signing Iverson this summer said. "The guy has a documented history of resisting coming off the bench. The Grizzlies had a young starting backcourt of Mike Conley and O.J. Mayo. No one thought to explore it?" Iverson started the season sidelined by a hamstring injury. In his three games with the Grizzlies, he has come off the bench. After his first game, he made it known he was unhappy. "It's something that I never did in my life, so obviously it's a big adjustment," Iverson said of coming off the bench. Iverson also indicated that he was off to a rocky start with Hollins over more than just a starting position. "I think that's probably the worst part of all this," Iverson said Friday. "That while all this is going on, we have never talked to each other. That's probably why it's at this point right now. We've just never had a conversation, so it's probably going to always be hard for me and him to see eye-to-eye, because we've never even talked to each other. Obviously that's what you do if you're trying to accomplish the same goal." Iverson ran into similar issues last season with the Pistons. After he was demoted from his starting job to a sixth-man role, he eventually left the team and didn't return for the rest of the season. While the official reason provided was that Iverson was rehabbing an injury, sources said later that the Pistons and Iverson had mutually agreed to part ways because he couldn't come to grips with being demoted to the bench. Is history repeating itself? If it is, one GM was ready to write AI's NBA eulogy: "He's finished in the NBA. He can go hang out with Stephon Marbury." Read comments or leave a comment Shorthanded Nuggets overmatched in Atlanta November 7, 2009 10:20 PM By John Hollinger
ATLANTA – This is the difference between the Nuggets and most of the other contenders: Depth. Teams like Orlando and the Lakers can shrug off the loss of a starter or two and still claw their way to victories, as they’ve done in the absence of Rashard Lewis and Pau Gasol, respectively. Denver? They can hang with anybody at full strength. But the past two nights we’ve seen the result of their sitting out the summer spending spree by fellow contenders Boston, Cleveland, San Antonio and Orlando. With J.R. Smith suspended for the first seven games and Kenyon Martin out since early in Friday’s loss in Miami, too many cracks showed up in the Denver facade in a 125-100 loss to the Hawks. Exhibit A is what’s happened in the absence of two starters: Consecutive blowout defeats where the Nuggies fell behind by more than 20 points in the third quarter. Yes, these were road games against tough opponents, but that’s the point. The Nuggets can’t deal with that caliber of opposition in such a compromised state. “We didn’t have enough energy tonight to overcome the negative influence of having two of your best players sitting next to me,” said Nuggets coach George Karl. With Kenyon Martin’s mid-range threat replaced by non-shooter Renaldo Balkman and Smith replaced by another weak perimeter threat in Joey Graham, the Nuggets made only two triples on the night. Worse yet, their drivers constantly faced crowds of Hawks at the rim, as Atlanta saw no need to respect any perimeter shooter besides Chauncey Billups. Atlanta returned nine Denver shots to sender, including six blocks by Josh Smith. “The two games that we played really special [without J.R. Smith] we found the 3-ball,” said Karl. “Tonight we didn’t. They brought a crowd to our penetration, and probably to a degree we didn’t respect the shot-blockers. There’s more of a comfort zone and a confidence with J.R. knowing he’s standing in one of those corners, and he adds an ability to play-make for us too.” Fortunately for Denver, Smith comes back on Tuesday against Chicago. Martin, who is day-to-day with a left fibula contusion, may return by then as well. But in an 82-game season this scenario undoubtedly will crop up again, and when it does, as tonight illustrated, the Nuggets don’t have as many resources to cope with it as their more free-spending brethren. Read comments or leave a comment November 7, 2009 1:17 AM By J.A. Adande
It’s a Friday night in Los Angeles. Am I at the Laker game or the hot new club? Yes. No need to choose anymore now that Sam Nazarian, the nightlife mogul of L.A., opened an edition of his Hyde Lounge inside Staples Center. No matter that it’s located 30 rows and three decks of suites away from the court, just a few feet below the $28 seats in the 300 level. This is the new coveted real estate. Instead of scattering around the building or choosing among the court-level Chairman’s Room or the Lexus Club high above the baseline, the beautiful people now have a central location to do what they do best: hold drinks poured from $400 bottles of vodka, send text messages from their Blackberries and bask in their hotness. Watching the game is an option, too. “It’s L.A., man,” said Tim Leiweke, President and CEO of AEG, the company that owns Staples Center. “We finally, finally have a place that everyone else is staring at us, saying, ‘We want one of those.’” As one clubgoer said, “You can’t do this at the Target Center.” In the course of a $20 million updating of the 10-year-old arena this summer, AEG and Nazarian’s company SBE spent more than $1 million to clear out eight suites and line them with dark padding, comfy booths, long bars, full-length mirrors and a ceiling with panels that light up (kind of like the disco floor in “Saturday Night Fever.”) Friday night’s Lakers-Grizzlies game served as the grand opening, with a red carpet outside the arena and coveted silver wristbands distributed to the 200 or so people who can fit inside the new club. How do you get a wristband? If you’re asking you probably aren’t getting one. You can’t buy them. You pretty much have to be in the SBE circle and get invited. I'm not even sure how I got my hands on one. I called someone who gave me someone's number to call. I left a message on that person's voice mail and received a call from someone else. That person told me to meet her where she would give me a wristband ... as soon as she got one from someone else. For Leiweke, Hyde@Staples Center is an ode to the Forum Club that was the place to be at Laker games in their former home. Despite the various clubs for courtside denizens and suite-holders, “We didn’t have that kind of sexiness of the Forum Club,” Leiweke said. "That place reeks of sexiness. And it’s a demo we weren’t quite hitting. Now we’re hitting it.” “What demo is that?” I ask. “Wait till you see it,” is all he says. “It’s unbelievable.” So just before halftime I duck into the tunnel, go down a hallway and take an elevator up to suite level C. There’s a rope, a podium and four people outside, all waiting to determine who’s in and who’s out (a couple of actors from a premium cable show didn’t make it past the rope on opening night). I hold up my wristband and get waved down to another woman. She’s busy texting away and doesn’t notice me for two minutes. But eventually the wristband does the trick, I’m past the rope, up to the large door and inside the club. That demographic Leiweke was talking about? No other way to describe it than good-looking. I just don’t expect many of them to spend the evening discussing the merits of Ron Artest v. Trevor Ariza. I glance at one of the menus set up in an empty booth. Cheapest bottle in there is Krol Vodka at $375. The price list tops out at $10,000 for a big bottle of Veuve Clicquot champagne. Halftime hits, the club fills up. A guy tells his friend, “This place is dope, bro.” People still talk like that? The only clue the third quarter’s about to start comes when the DJ lowers the volume on the dance remix of “I Love L.A.” Most people have their backs turned to the game far below, where the players are so small you can’t really tell that Allen Iverson has grown his cornrows back. The place has a wow factor, but can it make money? They’re counting on bottle service to pay the way, but half the booths were empty during the game. And as one person observed: “These people don’t look rich. They’re hot, but they’re not rich.” The biggest of the money men, the likes of Jeffrey Katzenberg, won’t be heading up there. Not their kind of scene. And the in-crowd tends to move on to the next hot spot in L.A. after six months or so. But as long as the Lakers keep winning, Staples Center is going to be filled with the "right demo." And Nazarian insists Hyde@Staples Center is going to be here for a long time. “The best of L.A.,” he calls it. A synopsis of L.A., is more like it. And if you happen to come across a box score, that’ll work, too. Read comments or leave a comment World, please notice Chuck Hayes November 6, 2009 12:34 PM By Henry Abbott
Chuck Hayes is starting in place of Yao Ming, and the Rockets are 3-2 out of the gates, which makes them just one of 10 NBA teams with a winning record. They've beaten Golden State, Portland and Utah, and lost to the Lakers by a single point. Tonight they play the Thunder, which will be the first time all season Houston has been favored to win.
How have they had this surprising starless success? At 6-6, Chuck Hayes is tiny for an NBA center, but he's a huge part of the reason. Jason Friedman of Rockets.com is kicking off a campaign to get Chuck Hayes on the NBA's All-Defense team. I'll second that. Friedman writes: “I may not be top in the league in blocks but if I’m guarding, say, LaMarcus Aldridge and I make him shoot a bad percentage, then I hope they pay attention to that,” says Hayes. “I just wish there was a stat for keeping your man to the lowest field goal percentage.” Well guess what, Chuck? You just so happen to work for the most number-crunching team in the league. Of course there’s a stat for that! Consider these numbers (courtesy of the Rockets’ Basketball Operations department):
Read comments or leave a comment November 6, 2009 11:29 AM By Henry Abbott
Not that they have time, but consider the message Real Madrid coach Ettore Messina gets to share with his team's fans on his Sports.ru blog: I consider myself a tailor whose job is to create the best possible suit for the team. I’m not a prêt-à-porter guy; I don’t produce those “ready to wear” clothes. I’m like a man who makes a suit that’s supposed to fit its owner perfectly. That means it takes time for me to understand what’s best for the team both defensively and offensively. Like, we can defend a pick-and-roll in many different ways. And the way we defended it with CSKA could be ill-suited for a team that’s not as powerful and at the same time is much quicker than CSKA. We have to adjust our pick-and-roll defense, adjust principles of defensive rotations, etc. It’s my job to define through experiment what we should do. Same goes for the offense. With CSKA, we didn’t run a lot of pick-and-rolls. We liked to create post-up opportunities for our bigs and set plenty of off-the-ball screens for the shooters. But here in Madrid day by day I become more and more confident that this is a team that should use pick-and-rolls more often. We’ve got a lot of frontline players who can pick and pop out, which could give us versatility as far as offense is concerned. At the same time, it’s important not to overlook posting-up that forces defenders inside and creates space for our shooters on the perimeter. Figuring all this out takes a while and in the meantime we’re not playing consistently and sometimes lose games. How many times have we seen NBA coaches feeling steamed, because they're in the middle of long-term goals, while being asked by the media and fans about short-term results? This kind of coach-controlled conversation is a chance for coaches to get fans to understand the big picture. If fans, media and owners can follow the rationale, I have to believe this kind of leadership could help a coach buy the job security necessary to do things the right way. Similarly, in a world where coaches were expected to explain themselves meaningfully, those without solid plans would have a hard time hiding, which is probably good for basketball too. Read comments or leave a comment November 6, 2009 11:17 AM By Henry Abbott
Read comments or leave a comment |
|
|
