I thought about awarding this to Deron Williams for his 27-point, nine-assist, seven-rebound effort in Utah’s 113-99 win over the Spurs, but then I remembered that Tony Parker isn’t exactly known for his defensive prowess. Tim Duncan is. So that makes Carlos Boozer’s line — 27 points, 14 rebounds, three assists, two steals and two blocked shots — all that more impressive. He went 12-20 (60%) from the field and regularly scored on Duncan, who has been named to the All-Defensive team 12 times in his illustrious career.

The final score should be no surprise. The game was in Utah, and the Jazz had their backs up against the wall a little bit as they started out the season with a 1-3 record, which included a home loss to the Rockets.

Spurs rookie DeJuan Blair had another nice game, posting 14 points and nine rebounds in 21 minutes. He’s averaging 9.8 points and 8.5 rebounds through four games and is shooting better than 70% from the field. The Spurs will use him extensively during the season to keep Duncan as fresh as possible for a playoff run.

Check it out at the 0:40 mark. The legend of Manu grows…

This year, we’re doing a division-by-division preview with quick-hitting analysis for every team in the league. If a franchise is a legitimate championship contender, I’ll focus on what stars have to line up for a title run. If a team is a playoff “also-ran,” I’ll identify the weaknesses that have to be shored up via trade, free agency or draft over the next couple of seasons to make it a contender. If a team is likely to miss the playoffs, I’ll take a look at the salary cap, and provide a blueprint for how the team should proceed in the near future to get back in the postseason. At the end of each divisional preview, I’ll provide some (random) thoughts for the fantasy hoopsters out there.

For each division, I’ll pick the order of finish. You’ll also see the team’s league-wide preseason rank in parenthesis. Be sure to check back over the course of the next couple of weeks for previews of each division.

San Antonio Spurs (3)
Did the Spurs do enough this summer to make another title run? On paper, it sure looks like they did. They added Richard Jefferson to shore up the small forward position, which has declined as Michael Finley and Bruce Bowen have aged. He’s a good defender, especially when he’s not asked to score 20 points a game, and the Spurs won’t put him in that position. The Spurs also signed Antonio McDyess, who is 35 years old, but was quite productive last season as he proved that he still has some gas left in the tank. San Antonio also had the luxury of a top 10 talent (DeJuan Blair) falling into its lap in the second round of the draft due to concerns about his knees, which served him quite well at Pitt. And, of course, the Spurs return their three principals. Tony Parker has developed into one of the best point guards in the game, Manu Ginobili is a clutch closer, and Tim Duncan is still Tim Duncan. Since his game isn’t dependent on athleticism, it continues to age well. The key for the Spurs is staying healthy. If Parker, Ginobili, Duncan and Jefferson are all healthy heading into the playoffs, San Antonio will be a very tough out, even for the Lakers.

Read the rest of this entry »

The NBA offseason is by no means over, but the lion’s share is behind us, so it’s a good time to take a look back at a few of the…um…let’s say “questionable” decisions of the summer. Here are my Top 10, in no particular order. Feel free to add to the list if I missed something.

1. Trevor Ariza plays spiteful hardball…and loses.
Let’s get this straight — the Lakers offered Ariza the same deal he was getting on the open market, and he refused since the Lakers could have offered more, but didn’t? Um, okay. David Lee (the agent, not the Knicks forward) says that Ariza wanted to go somewhere where he’d be “appreciated.” Lee overestimated the market for his client, and the Lakers quickly moved on to acquire Ron Artest. Now instead of playing for the world champs, Ariza is stuck in Houston on a team that faces a very uncertain future. Lee now says that Ariza turned down a deal worth $9 million more, but still picked Houston. It sounds to me like he’s just trying to save face.

2. Grizzlies acquire Zach Randolph.
Once the Clippers traded for Randolph (and his toxic contract) last season, I thought the bar for NBA general managers had hit a new low thanks to Mike Dunleavy and his wily ways. But Dunleavy proved that he wasn’t the dumbest GM in the league when he convinced the Memphis Grizzlies to take on the final two years Randolph’s contract at the tune of $33.3 million. Remember that $25 million or so of cap space that the Grizzlies were going to have next summer? Yeah, that’s down to about $8 million with this brilliant move. Just when it looked like Chris Wallace was going to rehab his image after the Pau Gasol trade — Marc Gasol panning out, trading for O.J. Mayo — he goes and does this. Sigh.

Read the rest of this entry »

The NBA offseason is about getting better. Players are (or should be) in the gym, working on their games, getting stronger, running faster, whatever. Meanwhile, general managers try to draft well and make some moves in free agency that will help their respective teams make that jump to the next level.

There’s an old Beatles song, “Getting Better,” that goes…

I’ve got to admit it’s getting better
A little better all the time (It can’t get no worse)
I have to admit it’s getting better
It’s getting better since you’ve been mine

Now Paul McCartney and John Lennon were talking about a girl, but those lyrics could easily be applied to an NBA team during the summer. With that in mind, here are three teams that are getting better and three that are getting worse. (And, by the way, just because a team is adding talent, it doesn’t mean that they’re making the right moves.)

GETTING BETTER

San Antonio Spurs
The Spurs’ willingness to take on salary to improve their roster resulted in the acquisition of All-Star-caliber forward Richard Jefferson from the Bucks, who were looking to dump salary. To add Jefferson, they only had to give up Kurt Thomas, Bruce Bowen and Fabricio Oberto. RJ is a good all-around wing that can score and defend. The Spurs also added Antonio McDyess with a three-year, mid-level deal. McDyess is 34, but his PER of 16.63 last season is still well above average. To top it all off, San Antonio benefited from DeJuan Blair’s free fall on draft night. Blair is arguably the best rebounder in this year’s draft class and he’ll provide immediate toughness on the inside. Really, at the cost of a second rounder, do the Spurs care if his knees break down in three or four years? If San Antonio has everyone healthy come playoff time, they have a great shot of upending the Lakers in the West.

Read the rest of this entry »

Chad Ford is reporting that the Bucks and Spurs have agreed to a swap that would include star swingman Richard Jefferson.

The Milwaukee Bucks agreed to trade Richard Jefferson to the San Antonio Spurs for Bruce Bowen, Kurt Thomas and Fabricio Oberto a Bucks source told ESPN.com.

The two teams have agreed to the deal in principle. A trade call to make the deal official is coming later Tuesday.

The move gives the Spurs a dynamic wing scorer to play alongside Tim Duncan, Tony Parker and Manu Ginobili. The Spurs had promised to make their team better this summer and adding Jefferson for role players should give them a huge shot in the arm.

The Bucks incentive to make the trade is largely financial. Bowen, Oberto and Thomas are all in the last year of their contracts. The deal will clear $15 million off the books for the Bucks next season and give Milwaukee more flexibility for next year. It also saves them roughly $3 million this year. That may give the Bucks the wiggle room to sign one of their restricted free agents — either Charlie Villanueva or Ramon Sessions — next year.

Largely financial? How about purely financial, Chad?

For the Bucks, this is a straight salary dump. Jefferson has two years and $29 million remaining on his deal, and the Bucks are dangerously close to the luxury tax threshold. They have two pretty good free agents in Villanueva and Sessions that need to be addressed. It looks like they’ll have an extra $3 million this season to sign one or both to long-term deals.

The funny thing is that I just saw an interview with Bucks GM John Hammond where he said that the franchise wasn’t in a position where they had to dump salary just to dump salary. Yeah, right. Talent-wise, the Bucks just lost a big piece in this trade, but if they’re able to retain Sessions and Villanueva, they might be able to recover some of that talent. The move may be a sign that the team is ready to give Villanueva starter’s minutes at one of the forward spots while playing defensive specialist Luc Richard Mbah a Moute at the other forward position.

For the Spurs, if this trade does indeed go down, it will go a long way to getting the franchise back into serious contention in the West. Jefferson is an energetic defender who can hit the three and score on the break. He is just a good all-around player. The Spurs know that their championship window is closing, and if the do acquire Jefferson, they will prove they are willing to pony up to put a championship-caliber supporting cast around Tim Duncan.

Ever since David Robinson retired, the Spurs have been trying to find a post partner for Tim Duncan. Rasho Nesterovic, Nazr Mohammed, Fabricio Oberto, Kurt Thomas, Matt Bonner, Tiago Splitter — the list goes on and on. Their latest attempt is a rumored offer to Yiannis Bouroussis, who plays for the Greek team Olympiakos.

According to reports out of Greece, the Spurs have offered Bouroussis a 3 year contract worth between 10.5 and 12 million. We’ve not received confirmation from anyone within the Spurs organization, so proceed with caution.

If true, this means the Spurs have offered him a significant share of their MLE. According to the reports, the Spurs made their offer during their recent trip to the Euroleague Final Four.

Bouroussis signing with the Spurs makes sense on several levels. He’s tremendous in the pick and roll and has three point range. His per minute stats are off the charts. The Spurs are making a calculated gamble, and the potential payoff is huge. When John Hollinger begins to translate his stats from Europe to the NBA, he’ll need to unbutton his collar and wipe the steam off his glasses. Bouroussis is all kinds of productive.

For more on the 6′ 11″ Bouroussis, check out his DraftExpress profile. He looks like an interesting prospect. There are concerns about his foot speed and lateral quickness, but he’s highly productive and is known to be a bruiser.

Anyone catch Spike Lee’s “documentary” about Kobe Bryant last night? Why am I putting the word “documentary” in quotes? Well, this wasn’t so much a documentary as it was a carefully constructed way to paint Kobe in the best possible light.

That’s not to say that it wasn’t informative. The format is this — Spike Lee had roughly 30 cameras on Kobe during a Lakers/Spurs game last year, and even gained access to the locker room for the pregame, halftime and postgame activities. Then, after a game against the Knicks, Kobe sat down with Lee and laid down a commentary track where he described everything that was going on.

Lee utilizes a ton of camera angles — and even inserts photographs here and there — to break up the monotony of watching a year-old NBA game. The camera is almost always focused on Kobe, but occasionally there are shots of other people in his life (Pau Gasol, his daughters, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, etc.).

Kobe does a good job of describing what he’s thinking during the course of a game and explaining why he did what he did. This is all well and good, but based on how positive he was being towards his teammates, it’s clear that he filtered and censored himself for this project. In fact, I’m guessing that once his teammates heard that he’d be mic’d and filmed for the entire game, they were happy to have a night off from the real Kobe.

Do fans know exactly how Kobe deals with his teammates and the officials? No, but we can put two and two together. (Guess what, it equals four.) I know that every time I watch a Laker game, Kobe bitches out one of his teammates at least two or three times, and that’s just when the camera catches him doing it. He is constantly working the refs, and oftentimes acts like a frustrated kindergartner when he doesn’t get his way. Not once did Lee catch him waving his hand at an official in dismissal of his call and/or opinion on a play, which is something that Kobe does an average of five times a game, by my count.

Part of his good mood probably had something to do with the fact that the Lakers blew out the Spurs that night — it would have been a hell of a lot more interesting to see the Lakers lose in a tight one. Let’s see what happens when Kobe and his teammates have to deal with so much adversity that he forgets that he’s being filmed. Then we might get a glimpse into what he’s really like.

But it’s not Lee’s fault — he can’t control how the game plays out. In the end, “Kobe: Doin’ Work” is what it is. An authorized all-access pass that “reveals” the carefully constructed public persona of Kobe Bryant that we’ve been spoon fed since his debacle in Colorado several years ago. The basketball action and strategy are top notch, but even after listening to Bryant speak for an hour and a half, I didn’t feel like I knew him any better, and while it’s not all that surprising, it’s still disappointing.

ESPN is running “Kobe: Doin’ Work” again this week. Check your local listings.

The NBA admitted the game officials were wrong for not calling an intentional foul on the Dallas Mavericks prior to Denver Nuggets Carmelo Anthony’s game-winning three-point shot on Saturday evening.

The Mavericks had a two-point lead and a foul to give. The play began with Anthony receiving the inbounds pass with less than eight seconds left in the game. Antoine Wright clearly body checks Anthony twice, but no whistle was blown. Melo kept playing and hits the three-pointer to give the Nuggets a 106-105 victory and a commanding 3-0 series lead.

After reviewing the game tape, NBA president of league and basketball operations, Joel Litvin, issued this statement:

“At the end of the Dallas-Denver game this evening, the officials missed an intentional foul committed by Antoine Wright on Carmelo Anthony, just prior to Anthony’s three-point basket.”

In the aftermath of a gambling scandal involving former referee Tim Donaghy, the NBA has been public to acknowledged officiating mistakes in playoff games. Last year, the league ruled a foul should have been called against Derek Fisher on Brent Barry’s three-point shot at the conclusion of Game 4 of the Western Conference finals. The play was at the end of a two-point contest, and a foul could have given the Spurs a chance to win the game and even the series at two games apiece.

With the Mavericks’ 106-93 Game 5 win in San Antonio, it is the first time that Tim Duncan has lost a first round series. Tony Parker shot 55% from the field, and averaged 28.6 points, 6.8 assists and 4.2 rebounds per game. Battling sore knees, Duncan still shot 53% from the field, averaging 19.8 points and 8.0 rebounds. Normally, those kinds of numbers from the Spurs’ top two players would result in a series win. What happened?

1. No supporting cast.
Manu Ginobili was out. Duh. But the rest of the Spurs failed to step up in his absence. Parker and Duncan combined to shoot 100 of 185 (54%) in the series, which means everyone not named Tim or Tony combined to make just 75 of their 198 attempts (38%). Roger Mason shot 42% from long range during the season, but made just 37% in the series. The midseason addition of Drew Gooden was a bust; he averaged just 7.3 points and 3.8 rebounds, and shot 33% from the field. Without Ginobili, there wasn’t a third scorer to take the pressure off of Parker and Duncan.

2. Mediocre defense.
The Mavs averaged 96.4 points per game, shot better than 46% from the field and better than 38% from long range during the series. Now those numbers are by no means eye-popping, but they are very un-Spurs-like. San Antonio just couldn’t get the consistent stops it needed to make up for its overall lack of scoring. Josh Howard and Dirk Nowitzki were both stellar, while J.J. Barea and Brandon Bass played great off the bench when Dallas needed it.

The Spurs head into the summer with zero cap space, but with the fiscal state of the league, they’ll have a good opportunity to add a quality player at the mid-level exception, assuming they want to spend the money. My guess is that they will, given that Tim Duncan’s championship window continues to get smaller and smaller. The team is fine in the backcourt, with Parker, Ginobili, Mason and George Hill. They need help on the wing and in the frontcourt, so the priority will likely be a big man. Rasheed Wallace’s name has been floated, but Zaza Pachulia, Anderson Varejao, Brandon Bass, Chris Andersen and Antonio McDyess are cheaper options.