- A peek at the MVP race with Google trends. Note how lately, people searching Google have tended to be more fascinated by LeBron James, but the media has stuck on Kobe Bryant.
- As we head down to the wire, does anything matter more than health? Kevin Garnett, Tim Duncan, Yao Ming, Ben Wallace, Rashard Lewis, Tyson Chandler, Carlos Boozer ... a huge percentage of the league's key big men may or may not be 100% when the playoffs start this weekend. John Hollinger digs deeper into the injury scene.
- Ross Siler of the Salt Lake Tribune: "There are still two games left in the regular season, followed by at least four games in a first-round playoff series, but Saturday's loss felt like a season-ender for the Jazz. Yes, there's a chance to regroup, but the Jazz seem unlikely to do so in time for a tunaround. They lost to a Warriors team with only seven healthy players and missing its four leading scorers. Those seven included four who went undrafted, three who are rookies, four who played in the Rocky Mountain Revue last summer and two with D-League backgrounds. I think you could take the feelings after the Oklahoma City loss, the Miami loss, the Portland losses, the Denver losses, the Minnesota loss and the Dallas loss and it still wouldn't add up to the despair after losing to the Warriors in those circumstances. Not only that, Warriors coach Don Nelson pretty much gave up on the game before it started, letting assistant Keith Smart coach the team, although you could see Nelson giving instruction during timeouts, though he barely got up during the game. It was one of the few games for which pregame introductions were necessary. I learned, for instance, that Kelenna Azubuike went to Kentucky, C.J. Watson to Tennessee, Rob Kurz to Notre Dame and Anthony Morrow to Georgia Tech."
- If Flip Saunders ends up being the new Wizards coach, he and his star guard Gilbert Arenas may want to have a quick chat about the time Arenas used anti-Saunders rhetoric to rile up his teammates.
- The NBA's Board of Governors will meet this week in New York. Reportedly on the agenda is the NBA's China plan, and an update on the state of collective bargaining agreement talks.
- Finding a new coach in Sacramento. By now Geoff Petrie and the Maloofs have done this so many times that it's possible to predict what the process will look like.
- Joel Przybilla has just started his 41st game, and will not be a candidate for the NBA's Sixth Man of the Year award. But if he had started a couple of fewer games, he would have been a mammoth contender that nobody was talking about. By David Berri's math, Przybilla has contributed more than any other major candidate. Another name Berri suggests is Kevin Love.
- Yi Jianlian is Kiki Vandeweghe's second gamble to find a player much like himself -- long, tall, and sweet-shooting -- from overseas. The first was Nikiloz Tskitishvili, which is a name that wouldn't be mentioned now if Yi had been playing more.
- If somehow high-school guard Abdul Gaddy could end up with the Grizzlies there would be the potential of Gaddy-Haddadi alley-oops, and could there be anything more fun to say than that?
- Sonic fans are heading down I-5 to make their presence felt as the Thunder visit Portland. Save Our Sonics are hoping to get some momentum for a Washington State bill that add some arena cash to what Microsoft executive Steve Ballmer and the City of Seattle have pledged. Meanwhile, Seattle-based writer Sherman Alexie bought tickets to ten Blazer games this season, and was auditioning to become a Blazer fan. But he has lost all interest. It just didn't work. He writes on BlazersEdge: "There's something worse about my inertia. I didn't even have the energy to defend pro basketball during this year's March Madness. As the guys in my health club went crazy for college basketball, as they do every year, I didn't even have the energy to give them crap. I didn't remind them that the Sacramento friggin' Kings would beat North Carolina by sixty points. I didn't remind them that LeBron James would score 123 points against Michigan St. When one of my friends, a college basketball cultist, said, 'I don't think I've watched even a minute of pro basketball in the last six years,' I just shrugged my shoulders. In previous years, I would have good-naturedly stuffed him into a dumpster. It's not that I've become one of those losers who think that college basketball is 'more real' than pro basketball. I've just realized that pro basketball is not worth defending. At least, I don't feel like defending it in my present condition. Of course, I still love all basketball. I love college basketball, too. But this year, I found that my Sonics grief extended into all of my basketball interests. This year, I only watched a handful of tournament games and less than ten regular season college games. I didn't watch any college game in person. But here is the most personal and shocking aspect of my grief. For the first time in adulthood, I didn't play in any recreational or health club basketball leagues. Oh, I still played rat ball once a week with my friends, but I didn't feel the hunger to put on a uniform and compete against strangers."
- Orlando's Marcin Gortat, "the Polish Hammer," is reportedly losing playing time to Dwight Howard's charity-driven quest to get as many double-doubles as possible.
- Dan Feldman from Piston Powered: "The Pistons' ideal first-round opponent is Orlando, which has the third seed. The Pistons have played the Magic extremely well because Detroit doesn't have to double team Dwight Howard. Boston, the second seed, would be the Pistons' second-best option with Kevin Garnett out or still affected by a knee injury. Cleveland, the top seed, is the worst-case scenario. The Cavaliers have the league's best record. There's no clear vulnerability here. So, there's no trick here for positioning. The more the Pistons win, the better chance they have to get a more favorable first-round matchup."
- Reed from Forum Blue and Gold looks back at the Gasol trade: "I want to review the Gasol trade with the benefit of a little hindsight. Memphis got absolutely blasted at the time. I'm sure many still believe that's right, but I think the trade is much more of a win-win than Memphis gets credit for.
The Grizzlies accomplished several things in trading Pau: (1) long term financial relief -- they cut Gasol's $60M remaining contract and have the league's lowest payroll this year (a must given their revenue issues); (2) cap flexibility -- they'll be over $20 million under the cap this summer (whether they spend it is another story); (3) lose games to get a better draft pick -- if they kept Pau they would have won several more games and not been in a position to draft Mayo, their #1 building block; and (4) acquire young, cheap talent and draft picks - they landed a center of the future in Marc Gasol, Darrel Arthur (with the Lakers pick), and have one more pick to come (Crittenton didn't work out). Many say that Chicago was offering more with some kind of Nocioni + Gordon/Hinrich package, and maybe that's true (I question whether Reinsdorf was truly willing to pony up and take on the long term salary), but would Memphis really be in a better position locked into those longer contracts and no man's land status (too good to rebuild and too bad to contend)? I say, give me Marc Gasol, a few draft picks, the shot at Mayo, and all the cap flexibility." I would also wonder: Factoring in age, contract, the recession, the upcoming free agent picture, injury history and everything else -- which Gasol brother would most NBA GMs rather have right now? Probably still Pau, but that'll change at some point, even if Marc never plays as well as Pau. - Shaun Livingston has been posting up smaller guards, and on Saturday made all seven of his shots. That's a great example of someone who used to be defined by athleticism redefining himself a bit with time in the gym after a major injury.
- Yao Ming sits out to rest his foot, and 198-year-old Dikembe Mutombo comes off the deep bench to play like a very poor man's All-Star.
- A Q+A with USC freshman Demar DeRozan, who is the hardest-not-to-watch of this year's prospects.
- To watch this video is to know the inner-most thoughts of Sasha Vujacic.
- I did not know this: Apparently it's against league rules for teams to whip up crowds by showing video of hard fouls, flagrant fouls, fights and the like. Phil Jackson noted it in Portland ... and I have noticed it in Boston, too, where a stirring pre-game video package included plenty of thrown punches from Celtics' history.
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