- Eddie Sefko and the Dallas Morning News are expecting better things from Dirk Nowitzki: "'I think they kind of got up under his skin last night, and I could tell he didn't like that,' said Josh Howard. 'It was kind of like that Houston series two years ago. They came in here talking all that noise, and we just stayed cool and kept our focus and finished out that series. Whatever we can do to make the game easier for him, we're going to do it.' Nowitzki would appreciate that. But he knows the onus is on him to adjust. In that Houston series, he had to become a facilitator, setting up teammates rather than beating the Rockets with his points. 'It looks like it a little bit,' Nowitzki said. 'They're really running at me hard. They're fronting me in the post. Front and back, sometimes. If I have it, everybody's on alert. As soon as I put it down [to dribble], they're coming. So I have to find my teammates and move the ball.' Nowitzki remains confident. But the Golden State defense is better than advertised. 'They're all over the place,' he said. 'If we shoot 36 percent against that defense, we're not going to win a game. I don't know if this is going to be my series where I'm going to take them off the dribble. I've got to be patient and be strong in the post.'"
- Dirk Nowitzki's history of bouncing back from miserable games.
- The case for Rick Adelman in Seattle. My thought is that he's good at letting good players do what they do best. Ray Allen would love life. But he's not very meddlesome at all, and perhaps some of those younger Seattle players could use a little meddling.
- Coaching the Clippers is like doing a hard Sudoku puzzle.
- Tomorrow I'm going to a dinner honoring the memory of Jim Valvano. If you have not seen it before, you have to see the video of the speech Valvano gave at the ESPY awards before he died. My favorite part is when he lays into the producers trying to hurry him off stage. Sometimes people think there's too much laughing, thinking, and crying in sports. Valvano advocated doing each of those things at least once a day.
- Sometimes I daydream, as all good sports fans do, about which player I'd most like to add to my team's roster. One name that came to me was ... Luke Walton. Yup. He's biggish, skilled, and he makes teammates better. But you can never get premium young players when they are about to enter their prime! They're all locked up! Except ... this one. Luke Walton, ladies and gentlemen, free agent.
- The suggestion that Greg Oden and Mike Conley might like to remain teammates in the NBA. That would take Memphis, Boston, or whoever ends up with the top pick dealing something good for another lottery pick, which is a lot of stock to put in some very young players.
- Remember when Andrei Kirilenko was a budding MVP candidate? What happened? The blog called Retire Sloan, shockingly, blames Jerry Sloan and his love of the inflexible flex offense. (Is Jerry Sloan getting tired?)
- Sam Mitchell has been named the best coach in the NBA. Michael Grange of GlobeSports would like to see Mitchell be the best coach in the New Jersey vs. Toronto series.
- Sam Smith is wondering if the era of Shaquille O'Neal and the big men is over.
- Allen Iverson names the greatest leaders he has ever been around: Larry Brown, Eric Snow, and Aaron McKie.
- Doug Robinson reports in the Deseret Morning News on the John Stockton of ticket takers: "Wally Price has been taking tickets and warming hearts for 26 years, manning his post at the end of the hall where players, coaches, referees, execs and some lower-bowl ticket holders make their entrance. They have come and gone over the years; Wally is still there. He was there when Jordan sank the shot. He was there when rookies named Karl Malone and John Stockton showed up for their first days of work. He was there when they played their final games. He has been there for some 1,400 games. And he's hardly seen any of them. Oh, he might step into the arena for a couple of minutes in the fourth quarter, but that's it. The rest of the time he views a sliver of the court through a tiny aperture at the other end of a long hallway, the players flashing by occasionally. 'I can tell how the game goes by the noise,' he says. Wally is 91 years old. He still drives to work. He was a mailman for 33 years, 26 of it on foot. He retired, but his pension wasn't enough to live on, so he took a part-time job at the Salt Palace as a Jazz usher. When the Jazz built the Delta Center, he moved with the team, although that's not how team owner Larry Miller sees it. 'He was standing here, and they built the building around him,' the team owner likes to say."
- The Akron Beacon-Journal's Brian Windhorst is a bit of a show off, demonstrating in a Sunday column, and again on his blog today, that he actually knows a thing or two about NBA basketball. You want to know what play Eddie Jordan is calling when he touched his chin? Brian's your man.
- Kevin Martin had a better season than Richard Hamilton.
- Mike D'Antoni now looks a little smarter for having played his starters in meaningless games.
- Remember when Kobe Bryant did the whole "who's Raja Bell?" thing last year? Now he openly praises Bell. It's part of a new approach, as quoted Rich Hammond: "I read a book this summer from Mr. Phil Jackson and it talked about warriors respecting other warriors. If you have respect for your opponent, the thing you have to do is play hard every time down. It gave me a new perspective on things. I have a tremendous amount of respect for Raja and what he does, and I enjoy matching up against him because I know he's going to play hard every possession, which makes it fun for me."
- SLAM's Lang Whitaker has been accused of not respecting the Warriors. H
e accepts the criticism: "The Warriors play buck-wild basketball. This is what they do, and they do it very well. They're kind of like the Suns without a plan or a center. Right now they're the feel-good story of the NBA, a Disney movie (except for Stephen Jackson) waiting to happen. Also, I don't really like what Golden State is doing, because as I wrote the other day, there's a certain feeling of fatalism to watching the Warriors play right now. They're not building something for the long term, they're not developing their young guys, they're just trying to win that game on that night. Which is what basketball is supposed to be about, right? In a way, but the NBA is almost as much about today as it is about tomorrow, and the 'tomorrow' for the Warriors is cloudy. The way they're constructed now, nobody expects the Warriors to win, so happening upon a win is like found money. And if they lose, they can always say, Well, we're just doing the best with what we have." - More than how high you go in the draft, it matters if the team you play for is a good situation. Get in a bad situation, and your whole career is messed up.
- Dwight Jaynes of the Portland Tribune: "Last Tuesday, when the 1977 Trail Blazers were gathering in Portland to help celebrate the 30th anniversary of their championship and to retire Lionel Hollins' number, Dr. Jack Ramsay paid a visit to the locker room of the current team. There wasn't much of a fuss made about it, but those who were in the room tell me the team was spellbound as the 82-year-old Ramsay spoke. This is a man with basketball credibility and a personal charisma that hasn't diminished with age. And, if the young Blazers came away impressed, so did the ol' coach. 'You know, when you talk to a group of people, you get a feeling about them,' he said. 'I looked around the room, and every guy was looking me right in the eye. I liked that a lot. I really like what they're doing here. In Nate (McMillan), they've got an outstanding coach and leader, and the young players are going to be good. I'm very impressed.' Ramsay, by the way, looked terrific and said he was doing well. It's no secret he's been fighting cancer for a while, but if not winning he's at least holding his own. 'I feel good,' he said. 'Still swimming just about every day.'"
- Phil Jackson's video message to Michael Jordan in his prime: Holding the ball too long is cutting your own throat.
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