- Tom Knott of The Washington Times: "LeBron James is ascending to rarefied air as a force all his own. He is not the next Jordan or Bird or Magic Johnson. Each of those legendary figures had a celebrated support system. Jordan had Scottie Pippen, plus Dennis Rodman in three of his six championship seasons. Bird had Kevin McHale and Robert Parish, and Johnson had Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and James Worthy. James has Zydrunas Ilgauskas and Mo Williams, decent enough players but hardly game-changers. Ilgauskas, who turns 34 next month, is four years removed from his last All-Star appearance and is not nearly as active as he once was. Williams is a nice shooter but limited otherwise. James is so good that he is mocking the NBA's conventional wisdom that championship-caliber teams are built with three special talents. That is the model in Los Angeles, San Antonio and Boston. The latter two teams are now in trouble because of the absence of an essential piece."
- Chris McCosky of The Detroit News: "The NBA is at a fascinating juncture with a dynamic convergence of brilliant, young players and older, established stars. The league has spent considerable energy and resources to promote the likes of Chris Paul, LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, Dwight Howard, Derrick Rose, Kevin Durant, Deron Williams and Brandon Roy. But old hands Kevin Garnett, Tim Duncan and Shaquille O'Neal have been featured players on the last three championship teams. Add Kobe Bryant, Jason Kidd, Steve Nash, Dirk Nowitzki, Ray Allen, Grant Hill, Derek Fisher, Rasheed Wallace and Antonio McDyess and you have a wealth of 30-somethings still playing at a high level. But it can't go on forever. With James almost a lock to win Most Valuable Player honors, and his Cavaliers heavy favorites to win the Eastern Conference title, the 2009 playoffs might signal a passing of the torch. 'It is a new era,' said McDyess, who at age 34 averaged a double-double for the last 30 games of the regular season. 'There is a new generation coming in. It seems like every young guy now is a freakin' amazing athlete, an amazing talent. From one to five (positions), it's like everybody coming in now is an outstanding athlete. ... You look at it, I think you are going to start to see some of those younger teams get to the Finals. The new phase of the league is coming in."
- Drew Sharp of the Detroit Free Press: "It's generally assumed that the Pistons will immediately recover from what's looking like a quick, ugly first-round playoff exit. This will be only a one-year aberration because the Pistons will have plenty of salary-cap room and Joe Dumars' strong reputation with players. It won't be that easy finding the right regenerative pieces. More than half of NBA teams have assembled enough disposable contracts to place them well under the salary cap in the summer of 2010, when the free-agency class of LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, Chris Bosh, Amare Stoudemire and Joe Johnson, among others, hits the market. But the Pistons' biggest concern is the division it dominated this decade. Barring a significant immediate talent upgrade, the Pistons could find themselves staring uphill at the Central Division for quite some time."
- Rich Hofmann of the Philadelphia Daily News: "The Sixers are big underdogs against the Magic; this just in. But it is the time of the year when reputations are made and unmade, and now they have won Game 1, and now Andre Iguodala has led them with a fine playoff line: 20 points, eight rebounds, eight assists, and the game-winning dagger. Reputations, made and unmade . . . 'I think my teammates expect me to make big plays and I have to make them in order to be a leader for this team,' Iguodala said. 'Missing those free throws, they gave me an opportunity to get it back. That speaks volumes for those guys. They said, 'We're going to give our leader another chance.' And they stuck with me, too. Right after I missed them, Thaddeus Young looked at me and said, 'We'll get it back.' I think tonight we did a good job of sticking together as a team, and as one unit, and it showed when we were getting back in the game.'"
- Mike Bianchi of the Orlando Sentinel: "This inexplicable, inexcusable loss was an indictment of the Magic's heart and will. To blow an 18-point second-half lead at home to an inferior opponent is indefensible. In fact, that resounding 'Pfffffttt' sound you heard coming from Amway Arena Sunday was the air being let out of the Magic's playoff balloon. I know, I know, it's only one game and it's no time for the Magic or their fans to panic. As Magic forward Rashard Lewis said afterward, 'This isn't the NCAA Tournament where you lose one game and you're eliminated.' If you must know, Philly won Game 1 last year against Detroit, but the Pistons still ended up advancing to the Eastern Conference finals. Still, you can't ignore the numbers. The fact is, the team that wins Game 1 ends up winning a seven-game series 79 percent of the time."
- Mark Bradley of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution: "If we weren't still acclimatizing ourselves to the notion of the Hawks being good, we'd be getting really excited right about now. But we're Atlantans, and it takes us a while. There were empty seats at Philips Arena for Game 1, and while there are easy explanations -- it was a school night, and the economy isn't in the pink -- it still seemed a shame. This is a good-looking and hard-working and smart-playing (well, most of the time) club, and we as a city needn't wait until LeBron James arrives for Game 3 of Round 2 to do the bandwagon hop. 'I saw some empty seats tonight,' Mike Woodson said. 'I'm begging and I'm pleading for people to come out.'"
- Israel Gutierrez of The Miami Herald: "As ridiculous as it sounds for a team that just put up 64 points, Dwyane Wade's offensive approach won't be the difference in this series in the long run -- if it even becomes a long run. Defensively is the only way the Heat can recover from this Game 1 beating with any hope of winning the series. If the Heat matches the Hawks on the defensive end (for starters, someone might want to put a body on Josh Smith), maybe the promise Erik Spoelstra spoke of can emerge. Otherwise, this ''unknown element'' Spoelstra was referring to will be more of the disgusting kind that showed up at Philips Arena on Sunday."
- Ramona Shelburne of the Los Angeles Daily News: "The Lakers don't go seven or eight players deep, they go 13. Their roster is like a deluxe barbeque set filled with specialists and tools for every need. Need defensive toughness one game? Plug in Shannon Brown or Josh Powell. A shooter? How 'bout Sasha Vujacic? More ball movement? Sounds like extra minutes for Luke Walton. At times the hardest part about filling out the li
neup card this year was deciding which two players to put on the inactive list." - Ross Siler of The Salt Lake Tribune: "Jerry Sloan raised eyebrows with his comments Tuesday that the Jazz's odds looked 'pretty bleak' in this series against the Lakers. He did so again when asked Sunday about some of the point totals -- 113 being the latest -- his team has given up recently. 'We're not a nasty team,' Sloan said. 'Most of the teams that we've had here been pretty nasty in that they will get after you from daylight to dark. We're just learning how to get after it a little bit more as we go along with younger guys. Part of that's my fault. I take full responsibility for that because I haven't probably been nasty enough with them.' Told about Sloan's assessment, Deron Williams said: 'I think we definitely have it. I don't think we've showcased it this year. I don't think we've been the same team confidence-wise as we have been in the past, because pretty much we've got the same group of guys we've had for the last two years, that's advanced in the playoffs and been to the Western Conference finals. It's just a mentality that we have that we haven't brought out and we do have to get if we want to win this series.'"
- Sam Adams of INDenver Times: "See Chris Paul dribble. See Chris Paul pass. See Chris Paul draw fouls, steal passes and crash to the floor. See the crowd -- and the rest of the New Orleans Hornets -- watch Chris Paul. That's sort of how the night went for the Hornets at Pepsi Center on Sunday night. Paul did a little bit of everything, but it wasn't enough to keep the Nuggets from scoring a 113-84 victory over New Orleans in Game 1 of their Western Conference playoff series. The Hornets' All-Star guard – and 2008 U.S. Olympian – finished with 21 points and 11 assists. But they were harmless numbers on the stat sheet."
- Jeff McDonald of the San Antonio Express-News: "The Spurs watched Brandon Bass sink one 15-footer, then another. They saw him bury a turnaround jumper along the baseline, then watched as -- in the mother of all H-O-R-S-E shots -- Bass banked another turnaround off the top of the backboard without so much as calling glass. After seeing all of Bass' shenanigans unfold again during a Sunday film session, the Spurs emerged with a message for him, as well as the other bit players who spearheaded the Mavericks' Game 1 victory: Good job. Now go do it again. 'We stuck to our game plan for the most part, put them in positions we wanted them to be in,' Michael Finley said. 'And they made big shots.' Tonight, in what should be a series-defining Game 2 at the AT&T Center, the Spurs appear willing to let Bass and anyone else not named Dirk -- or nicknamed Jet -- make a run at a role-player repeat."
- David Moore of The Dallas Morning News:"The Mavericks haven't run a play for him since the last depression. Smaller, quicker athletes often leave him planted on the bench. He was outscored, 27-10, to open the series. And if he continues to play the way he did in Game 1, the Mavericks can knock San Antonio out in the first round. Admit it. You don't appreciate Erick Dampier. You see a big man with an even bigger contract who comes up small statistically. You cringe when he touches the ball in the low post and long for Brandon Bass or Ryan Hollins to take his place. Dampier doesn't swat shots away at the rim. He seals the lane. He doesn't soar. He sets rock-hard screens. Dampier doesn't dazzle centers with his athletic ability. He muscles. Compile a list of the strongest players in the league, and Dampier is in the top 10."
- Richard Justice of the Houston Chronicle: "Aaron Brooks is on his way to becoming an impact NBA player. Of that, the Rockets have little doubt. That's because he has a gift that translates at any level. That gift is speed. Not just speed, but the kind of speed that can dominate games. 'He can be a difference-maker,' Rockets coach Rick Adelman said. Brooks has an array of other skills. His outside shot is plenty good enough, and he has the ball-handling ability to get into the paint and make plays for others. In the end, though, it's his speed that compelled Rockets general manager Daryl Morey to trade into position to take him two years ago."
- Joe Freeman of The Oregonian: "About 12 hours after the Trail Blazers suffered a humbling and humiliating defeat in their first playoff game in six years, coach Nate McMillan gathered his fragile team together for a post-practice chat. With players, coaches, the management team and staff huddled around him Sunday on the practice court in Tualatin, McMillan gazed from player to player, coach to coach -- sometimes flailing his arms to illustrate his point -- and relayed a simple message: It's time to put Saturday night's debacle against Houston behind them and look to a future that can't possibly be any worse. 'He just said we can't feel sorry for ourselves,' center Joel Przybilla said. 'We worked so hard this year to get where we're at and we didn't play the basketball we're capable of playing. We didn't play Blazer basketball (Saturday) night.'"
- Mark Murphy of the Boston Herald: "Practices usually don't run this long or hard so late in the season, but everyone -- Ray Allen especially -- needed something yesterday to create a spark. The Celtics guard, who was just 1-for-12 from the field in Saturday's Game 1 first-round playoff loss to Chicago, sliced out to the top of the circle and buried a jumper. The ball rattled through -- not with Allen's customary swish but certainly better than all but one shot he took in the opener. Coach Doc Rivers called everyone in and ended practice at that moment. Muscle memory will be important in Game 2 tonight at the Garden. So too will effective pick setting - one of the many skills the team lacked in Game 1. 'Our job is to get him open,' captain Paul Pierce said of Allen. 'He's one of the deadliest shooters to ever play the game, so we have to do a better job of get him open. Despite all that, we still had our chances. The bigs and even myself have to set screens for him, because that's what we've done for him all year. It has to come from all of us.'"
- John Jackson of the Chicago Sun-Times: "Derrick Rose's most interesting comment came after he was asked why he didn't watch ESPN following such a strong performance. 'I know what I did in the game,' he said. 'I think about the days I didn't have a good game. Would I still look at that then? So why would I look at it if I had a good game?' Aside from his choice of movies ('Coraline'?), you'd never suspect by speaking with him that Rose is a 20-year-old who was in high school two years ago. To say the least, he's mature beyond his years, and a lot of veteran players -- on the Bulls and other teams -- would be wise to follow his example."
- Frank Zicarelli of
the Toronto Sun: "Here's hoping that Raptors general manager Bryan Colangelo cuts straight to the chase today and talks about the off-season work that awaits without engaging in double talk. Here's hoping he provides clarity on the status of Jay Triano. Here's hoping Colangelo admits that the Raptors need to get tougher and need a complete upgrade among their reserves. Here's hoping for the best, but many suspect the worst, given Colangelo is the master spinmeister when it comes to what he thinks is required in Raptorland. If anyone possibly can predict what Colangelo has in store to remake the Raptors, they are flat-out lying. Only Colangelo knows, and hopefully he will come clean today when he addresses the media during his annual end-of-season news conference." - Bob Young of The Arizona Republic: "Breaking up might be hard to do. The Phoenix Suns, a team that has given the Valley an elite playoff contender the past five years, face the prospect of an overhaul after failing to reach the postseason this year. Egos, age and the economy have conspired to bring the Suns to a crossroads - and there is no shortage of opinion as to the proper course. Do they continue to try to build around their aging - and expensive - core of stars, attempt another run at an NBA title and then re-evaluate with some big contracts coming off the books in the future? Or do they concede that the run is over, stop the financial bleeding and begin an extreme home-team makeover? Either choice presents obstacles, if not outright risks."
Sort comments by: Most Recent | First Posted
Comments that include profanity, or personal attacks, or antisocial behavior such as "spamming" or "trolling," or other inappropriate comments or material will be removed from the site. We will take steps to block users who violate any of our terms of use. You are fully responsible for the content that you post.
TRUEHOOP CONTRIBUTORS
Henry AbbottTrueHoop ESPN Archive |
J.A. AdandeTrueHoop ESPN Archive |
Kevin ArnovitzTrueHoop ESPN Archive |
Chris BroussardTrueHoop ESPN Archive |
Chad FordTrueHoop ESPN Archive |
John HollingerTrueHoop ESPN Archive |
Chris SheridanTrueHoop ESPN Archive |
Marc SteinTrueHoop ESPN Archive |
