April 26, 2008 at 4:17 pm · Filed under NBA, Videos
At the beginning of the season, most NBA fans realized that the Miami Heat are not the same team that one the NBA championship a couple seasons ago. The team would sneak into the playoffs, but nobody expected the team to dominate the competition.
And they didn’t. After starting 0-5, it was apparent that things could get ugly. In December, the team managed to win two games in a row — the only time it happened throughout the season. During the month of January, the team won one game. Uno, un, ein, 一個. Just enough to end a 15-game losing streak.
The team finished 15-67. Sure, the team was severelybogged down by injuries, but this is the Eastern Conference! Every team has years when it needs to “replenish” its team, but it’s a really bad sign when you’re head coach decides to “take leave” to scout some new players.
Dwyane Wade needs a new team. That could include trading him out of Miami, or the Heat acquiring several new role players. D-Leaguers don’t cut it. Wade was the first member of the “Class of 2003 All-Stars” to win a championship, and he made it happen by carrying his team through the NBA Finals. LeBron James aside, Wade may be the most skilled player in his draft class.
How can Miami Heat rebuild this team?
The first area to look at is free agency. They’ve already got the 7th-highest payroll in the NBA, and between Wade and Shawn Marion, most of of next season’s cap space is taken — with only 2/3 of a roster to show for it. The big kicker here is that Marion has a player option for next season. You can make a case for both keeping him, and asking him to leave. The team desperately needs cap space to acquire some solid players, but Marion is likely as talented as the Heat can get.
One “benefit” of this horrible season is that the Heat will have a top-four draft pick. For now, they’ve hypothetically got #1 and #52. Assuming that the #52 isn’t ready to play, the Heat need to find one player that can make all of the difference. This year has a solid group of talent at the top. However, most of the popular votes for the #1 pick are guards (O.J. Mayo and Derrick Rose) and forwards (Michael Beasley).
The only other option is the trade market. Wade needs to demand a trade. Not for him, but to bring in new talent to play alongside him. Because they lack any big commodities besides Wade and Marion, they need to either trade the #1 pick or hope to sign-and-trade away a few of their upcoming free agents (Jason Williams and Ricky Davis).
Free Dwyane! I don’t know how you can do it, but Pat Riley, make it happen.
Arguably the player who inflated the salaries of NBA players, Kevin Garnett was the second legitimate player to go from high school straight to the pros (Moses Malone would be the first). The #5 pick in the 1995 draft, Garnett played his high school ball at Farragut Academy, another high school legend in Chicago.
April 21, 2008 at 8:40 pm · Filed under NBA, Videos
San Antonio Spurs guard Manu Ginobili was the clear choice as the NBA’s Sixth Man of the Year, gathering 615 out of a possible 620 points. Ginobili led the defending champion Spurs with scoring with 19.5 ppg, and provided a powerful spark off the bench. Ginobili started only 23 of the 74 regular season games he played in, shooting a solid 46% from the field, 40% from downtown, and 86% at the free-throw line.
April 19, 2008 at 4:36 pm · Filed under NBA, Videos
The NBA deserves a nice pat on the back for their “Where Amazing Happens” slogan and commercials. “I love this game!” and “It’s fan-tastic!” were admirably cheesy, but “Where Amazing Happens” blown out the competition. How many other sports league have built up an incredibly well-branded slogan in just one year?
Hundreds, if not thousands, of spoof videos have shown up on YouTube. Some are serious, but some are humorous. Most lay somewhere in between. While some of these videos (see below) are hardly supportive of David Stern and the NBA, they should be giving some PR guy a raise.
In case you’ve been hiding under a rock, one of the biggest stories around the NBA right now is Clay Bennett attempting to move the Seattle Sonics to Oklahoma City. Fans around the entire league have joined the crisis facing Sonics fans, with much discussion going on over at SonicsCentral and SuperSonicSoul.
Today, April 18, all 30 of the NBA’s team owners voted on the proposed move to Oklahoma City. However, numerous fan petitions and threats were not enough to sway owner voting in their favor. In fact, the decision was somewhat of a landslide, 28-2. Thank you, Mark Cuban and Paul Allen.
Unless we see some miracle in the future (i.e. forcing Bennett to sell), everybody will be losing in the situation. While a deserving Oklahoma City community receives a franchise with solid building block in Kevin Durant, it’s an expensive move for the city. Needless to say, Seattle would prefer to keep their historic franchise.
Clay Bennett and David Stern are drawing a lot of criticism. Some of its unnecessary, but most of it’s reasonable. Wasn’t it apparent that Bennett would eventually take the team back to his home in Oklahoma? Take a quick look around the NBA blogosphere, and you can find plenty of evidence that Bennett never planned to keep the team in Seattle. However, if the case is awarded to Bennett, the team still has to get out of its lease.
The legal promises to keep the franchise in Seattle seem fairly iffy, but right now, the future of the Seattle Sonics (as far as I understand) is dependent on what seems to be a turn in the plot fit for a movie. Howard Schultz, the team’s former owner, plans to take on Clay Bennett in a court case sure to be as monumental as Marbury v Madison. Okay, maybe not, but Schultz and his now-loyal fans won’t be going down without a fight.
Today is the conclusion of our three-part interview (Part 1 and Part 2) with international scout Bruno Baltazar. In this portion of the interview, we discuss the importance of scouting for the NBA, and the top international players you’ll be seeing in this summer’s Olympic games.
DB: Explain why you think foreign scouts like yourself are important to the NBA.
Bruno: Foreign scouts are important because most grow up outside America. They understand and have a global perspective of the game, ways more then the Americans have. You always follow the NBA if you love basketball, but outside America, you watch others champs, and you move from country to country so you have a different perspective of the game. Didn’t you notice more and more foreign players are coming to the NBA? Maybe foreign scouts have something to do with it.
Some scouts are signed because they know a lot of people, not always because they great scouts. That’s what I witnessed last summer in the NBA Without Borders when I heard the Knicks’ general manager asking a African if he wanted to work for them just because he knew African basketball.
That’s why many scouts are foreign scouts. They bring a well-known system of basketball outside USA. Plus, when you know how to speak another language it’s a big plus, just like having a lot of basketball connections. For example, I never worked for Besiktas, Galatasaray-Turkish teams or ACB teams but I know many of their coaches and when they give you inside information it’s great.
Pete Philo, my friend and scout of the Minnesota Timberwolves, is the Reebok Summer league director in Treviso. Many of the best youth European players are, wonder why the Wolves signed him?
DB: What’s your biggest strength in regards to coaching and scouting?
Bruno: I’m really communicative. I like to speak, meet new people, and make friends. When you build a relationship like that, both players and coach understand better and are more to each other, building a better relationship that is well needed in order to win.
I like to help, and they sure will help me as well. I listen, but I also speak. I like to learn philosophies and mentalities. I’m not afraid of trying new things, and I don’t feel pressure on anything I do, as far as having food on the table.
But in the scouting profession, each person likes to focus on something. I pay special attention to the foot work of a player, as it shows a lot about his technique, and I also like to see how well a player fits in a system.
DB: Do you find your job relative easy-going, or is it stressful?
