Page 2402 of 2957

      Durant edges Horford for ROY honors

      April 30, 2008 /

      The Seattle Times is reporting that Kevin Durant will win Rookie of the Year.

      Kevin Durant, who led all first-year players in scoring, assists and free-throw percentage, will be named the NBA’s rookie of the year and become the first Sonics player to win the award.

      Two league sources confirmed Durant outdistanced second-place finisher Al Horford, an Atlanta forward. The sources spoke anonymously because the official announcement is scheduled for Thursday.

      In my year-end awards column, I made the case for Al Horford, but predicted that the sportswriters would go with Durant due to his high scoring average.

      ROY is a two-horse race between Kevin Durant and Al Horford. There’s no doubt in my mind that Durant is going to be a superstar, but Horford has the edge efficiency wise (16.5 to 15.2) and has done it in three fewer minutes a game. In the end, I think voters will gravitate towards Durant’s 20.1-point average (along with his unequaled potential), but Horford has a big edge in rebounds, FG% and PPS. Let’s not forget that the Hawks are playoff-bound while the Sonics have the second worst record in the league. There’s something to be said about the timing of Horford’s arrival in Atlanta and their sudden development into a playoff team, albeit a bad one.

      I think Horford has the edge, but Durant will probably win it. Given the fact that KD has played his best ball in the second half of the season despite having virtually no help, it won’t be a huge travesty if he goes home with the trophy.

      Horford deserves the award, but Durant won it. Life goes on.

      I’m now four-for-four in my predictions, but the MVP is the big one, and I have the feeling I backed the wrong horse.

      Fantasy Basketball, NBA, Rumors & Gossip

      Underclassmen in the Draft

      April 29, 2008 /

      Are you kidding me? Who’s next for the NBA draft? I hear there is a back up guard at New Jersey Tech who is putting his name in the draft. Not really, but that’s how cheap the list of underclassmen entering the draft has become. The NBA needs to do something to fix this before it becomes even more of a joke.

      Take for example the fact the Tyler Hansborough, the collegiate player of the year, is coming back for his senior year. However, three of his teammates have put their name into the draft. I can’t blame the players. They don’t listen to their coaches anyway. And most coaches just say go ahead. It gives them a little publicity for their program. Why shouldn’t the players get free trips to work out for teams all across the country. It’s just like being recruited again.

      David Stern you need to either step in and close the loop hole or better yet. Allow players to jump to the NBA right out of high school. LeBron James has done pretty well for himself. Even Darius Miles, whose playing career has been a bust, still banked more money than most people can only dream about.

      Here’s my suggestion. Let the players put their name in after their junior year. Make it closer to the baseball rule. You can be drafted out of high school, but once you are in college you can’t look at the NBA until after your third year in college. Forget about age. A lot of kids go to prep school and are 19 or 20 by the time they get to college.

      Close the loophole and give acedemics more than just lip service.

      Speaking of Tyler Hansborough: His little brother Ben has tranferred from Missisippi State to Notre Dame. Ben averaged, 10 points a game for the Tigers last year. Give Rick Stansbury credit he was the only one who thought he was good enought to play at that level coming out of high school. And this is how Ben repays him.

      College Basketball

      What would it take to make the Hawks a contender?

      April 29, 2008 /

      As I watched the young Atlanta Hawks win two home games against the far more experienced Celtics, I wondered – what would it take to turn Atlanta into a serious contender?

      My first thought would be to build a time machine and go back to the ’05 draft and take Chris Paul instead of Marvin Williams. This team is in desperate need of a playmaking point guard and Paul would be a perfect fit. The Mike Bibby trade gave the team some experience at the position, but his poor shooting after he came to Atlanta (41%) coupled with his horrible accuracy in the playoffs (35%) leads me to believe that his 19-point, seven-assist seasons are long gone. He is a 14/6 guy now (at best) and for that, the Hawks will pay him $15.2 million next season. Yeesh.

      The time machine theory is fine, but had they drafted Paul they probably wouldn’t have Al Horford on the roster and that would be a setback. Let’s move on to more real-world possibilities…

      Josh Smith and Josh Childress are both restricted free agents this offseason. Will they pay them both? They should. Smith is a star on the rise, and as soon as he figures out to limit his outside jumpers (or learns to shoot them), he’s going to be extremely difficult to stop. Childress is a do-it-all role player that shoots a great percentage and plays defense. The problem is that there aren’t enough minutes for him with Williams on the roster.

      So I say sign both Smith and Childress to long-term deals and try to move the less-efficient Marvin Williams for a point guard. Certainly there is some team out there who wants a relatively inexpensive, athletic, 21 year-old forward that regularly puts up 15/6, right? The Hawks should target the Raptors, who have two good point guards in Jose Calderon and T.J. Ford. Toronto is going to keep Calderon, so Ford seems like a logical fit for the Hawks.

      If the Hawks re-sign Smith and Childress, they’re not going to have the salary cap flexibility to sign a free agent point guard for the foreseeable future. I like the idea of a sign-and-trade with Washington for Gilbert Arenas, but Agent Zero could ruin the team’s budding chemistry.

      Either way, the team will eventually have to choose two of their three forwards – Williams, Smith and Childress – as it doesn’t pay to have that much money locked up in three guys that basically play the same position. Considering that Childress (9.4) gets more fourth quarter minutes than Williams (8.4), it appears that head coach Mike Woodson has made his choice.

      Fantasy Basketball, NBA, NBA Finals

      Larry Brown will coach the Bobcats

      April 29, 2008 /

      Michael Jordan hired fellow ex-Tar Heel Larry Brown to a four-year contract to coach the Charlotte Bobcats.

      “How are you going to say no to Michael?” Brown said. “I’ve known him a long time. The things he stands for have made our game better. There’s no way I could say no to him. It was a pretty easy decision once my wife said yes.”

      Brown’s nine NBA teams are three more than any other coach — Kevin Loughery and Lenny Wilkens each coached six.

      “I think I’ve coached almost everybody in the NBA, but I’m going to challenge everybody to do their best,” Brown said. “That’s what Michael is about and that’s what I’m about.”

      The Bobcats are in their fourth year, and Brown gives the struggling franchise instant credibility. He’s one of only five NBA coaches with more than 1,000 wins and the only coach to lead teams to NBA and NCAA titles.

      Counting the ABA’s Carolina Cougars, the Bobcats will be Brown’s 10th job as a professional basketball coach. He’s a turnaround specialist in that he likes to take teams with losing records and make them winners. He has a career winning percentage of 0.577. Here is a list of his team’s records before and after his arrival:

      Denver Nuggets: 37-47 –> 65-19
      New Jersey Nets: 24-58 –> 44-38
      San Antonio Spurs: 31-51 –> 21-61 –> 56-26
      Los Angeles Clippers: took over a 22-25 team and went 23-12 down the stretch, 41-41 the next season
      Indiana Pacers: 41-41 –> 47-35
      Philadelphia 76ers: 22-60 –> 31-51 –> 28-22 –> 49-33
      Detroit Pistons: 50-32 –> 54-28 (NBA Champions)
      New York Knicks: 33-49 –> 23-59

      As with the Spurs and the Sixers, it sometimes takes Brown two or more seasons to turn his team into a winner. The only team that Brown left as a loser without at least one 52+ win season was the Knicks, and if he hadn’t clashed with management, he probably would have eventually turned that team around as well. (To be fair, when he took over the Knicks, the roster was even worse than it is now.)

      So what does this mean for the Bobcats?

      Well, it’s good news if the players buy in to Brown’s plan and don’t get miffed by his sometimes-abrasive coaching style. The Bobcats don’t have any superstars that can put themselves above the team, so everyone is expendable. Emeka Okafor is a restricted free agent, so barring a surprise, he’ll have a year to decide if he likes playing for Brown before he has to sign a long-term deal. Brown has a history of improving the play of his point guards, but those relationships are often tenuous, so it will be interesting to see how Ray Felton responds to Brown’s style. Expect a big improvement on the defensive end, where the Bobcats were 23rd in the league in defensive efficiency.

      Brown talks about his return to coaching:

      Fantasy Basketball, NBA

      « Older posts Newer posts »

      © 2026 The Scores Report – The National Sports Blog

      Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑