Tag: Chauncey Billups (Page 5 of 5)

      John Hollinger’s Western Conference playoff odds

      November 20, 2008 /

      Yesterday, we took a look at John Hollinger’s Eastern Conference playoff odds. Today we’ll look at the Western Conference.

      1. LA Lakers (100)
      2. Phoenix (96.5)
      3. Portland (96.3)
      4. Denver (93.8)
      5. Utah (88.6)
      6. New Orleans (81.1)
      7. Dallas (80.6)
      8. Houston (78.1)
      ==============
      9. Golden State (34.4)
      10. Memphis (20.3)
      11. San Antonio (19.9)
      12. Sacramento (7.7)
      13. Minnesota (2.6)
      14. L.A. Clippers (0.1)
      15. Oklahoma City (0.0)

      He looks like he has the West pegged save for one big problem. I don’t see how the Mavericks – who are 5-7 at full strength – will make the playoffs but the Spurs – who are 5-6 and missing two of their three best players – will not. Hollinger’s formula is probably heavily mathematical, so he can’t account for injuries, and that’s part of the problem with taking a pure statistical approach to something like this. Tony Parker is due back in mid-December, while Ginobili is ahead of schedule and should be back a bit earlier. The Spurs are getting good play from George Hill and Roger Mason, and if they can stay near .500, they shouldn’t have a problem making the playoffs if Parker and Ginobili come back strong.

      As for the Mavericks, barring a major injury to one of the other eight teams (including the Spurs), I don’t see how they make the postseason. Denver’s 8-4 record seems a little odd, but they are getting good play from Chauncey Billups, who has changed the team’s attitude defensively.

      Even without Monta Ellis, Golden State has surprisingly kept its head above water, and if the Warriors can stay close to .500 until January (when Ellis is set to return), they would be a dark horse to make the playoffs.

      Fantasy Basketball, NBA, NBA Finals

      Chauncey Billups is changing the Nuggets…for the better

      November 17, 2008 /

      Dave Krieger of the Rocky Mountain News says that Chauncey Billups is changing the Nuggets, especially on the defensive end. It’s hard to argue, as the Nuggets are 5-1 since he joined the team.

      Remarkably, the Nuggets have scored more than 100 points in just one of those five wins – the first one. Billups is rapidly changing their very identity.

      “We won a game playing defense,” Billups said after the 90-84 decision over Minnesota. “We’ve done that a couple times since I’ve been here. And I think for me personally, I get a lot more confidence winning games playing defense than winning the run-and-gun game. Now, when we can start making shots and we can get where we need to be offensively and continue to play defense, then we can be dangerous.”

      Although Billups hit only seven of his 23 shots, the Nuggets outscored the Timberwolves by 17 points when he was on the floor, the best plus-minus rating of any player on either team.

      “The scoring thing is just an extra bonus,” said Billups, who finished with a game-high 26 points. “So if I’m struggling from the field, I’m not going to let everything else in my game just lay down. I won’t allow that to happen. And I’ll try to teach a lot of the other guys on this team the same thing: ‘So what if you don’t make shots? Give me something else.’ And I try to lead and do that by example.”

      Carmelo Anthony, among others, seems to be getting the message. Despite hitting only four of his 17 shots, Anthony grabbed a team-high 12 rebounds, his second double-figure night on the boards in as many games.

      For the last few years, the closest thing the Nuggets had to a defensive identity was Marcus Camby, and they gave him away to the Clippers last summer. Billups brings hard work and determination, and that can be infectious, especially for a young team. George Karl’s teams have a notoriously short attention span when it comes to defense, so it will be interesting to see how long this renewed focus lasts.

      And I wonder just how much better they would be with Camby manning the middle.

      Fantasy Basketball, NBA

      Allen Iverson debuts in Pistons’ loss

      November 8, 2008 /

      It was an inauspicious beginning to the AI Era in Detroit.

      Iverson himself was respectable (24p, 6a), but the Pistons lost to the Nets, 103-96.

      According to ESPN’s Chris Sheridan, the Billups-for-Iverson trade might be more about how Detroit feels about Rodney Stuckey than either of the players involved.

      When Detroit needed buckets in the fourth quarter, it was Stuckey running the show at the point, with Iverson off the ball.

      And when the Pistons needed stops in the second half, it was Stuckey who continually was getting burned by Devin Harris (career-high 38 points, with 22 of his 24 free throw attempts coming in a second half in which Detroit surrendered 64 points to one of the NBA’s worst teams). All that time, Pistons coach Michael Curry refused to switch Iverson onto Harris — even as Stuckey was committing five fourth-quarter fouls on Harris.

      “Stuckey’s the point, and Harris is the point. What we do here in Detroit, you guard your position. And when he comes into the game, Allen slides to the 2. and if Devin Harris is outplaying you, you’re going to have to get better. That’s what you’re going to have to do — play your matchup,” Curry said.

      A couple of things jump out from this game: 1) Devin Harris blew up, and he was on my list of “Six NBA players who are about to break out” and 2) Curry refuses to go with the best matchup defensively, instead insisting that each player guard his position (even if it is to the detriment to the team).

      I don’t know too many coaches that don’t try to utilize the best matchups defensively. Regular readers know that I played for (current UW coach) Bo Ryan at the University of Wisconsin-Platteville. The other starting forward was the better defender, so Ryan would have him cover the other team’s best scoring forward. That left me with an “easier” matchup, and since I was one of my team’s primary scorers, going with that matchup would save my legs so I could hit crucial jump shots at the end of the game.

      So why is Curry insisting that Stuckey – who is actually more of a combo guard – cover the lightning-quick Harris when he has his own lightning-quick guard on the court? It might be pure stubbornness, thickheadedness or he could be trying to light a fire under Stuckey defensively.

      But back to the decision to play Iverson off the ball. More and more this trade is looking like one that is meant to keep butts in the seats for this season while giving the team salary cap flexibility to sign one or two big name free agents over the next two summers. Joe Dumars likely saw that, with Billups, the team was going to be competitive, but it wasn’t going to be a legitimate contender. With the backcourt shakeup, it looks like the team is going to give the ball to Stuckey and ask him to create, and it doesn’t really matter if this is the best thing for the 2008-09 Detroit Pistons.

      Fantasy Basketball, NBA

      Detroit now a possible landing spot for LeBron?

      November 3, 2008 /

      One of the by-products of the Billups-for-Iverson swap is that the Detroit Pistons will have a ton of cap space in the summer of 2010, when LeBron James and a number of high-profile free agents could potentially hit the free market. Henry Abbott of TrueHoop goes through the options.

      Down the road the Pistons becomes the driving force of big-time free agency as soon as Iverson’s contract comes off the books next summer. The Pistons will combine a winning environment, one of the most respected general managers in the game, and — depending on salary cap levels that are yet to be set, and extensions that may yet be given to existing Pistons — likely enough cap space to sign two free agent players to max contracts over the next summers of 2009 and 2010.

      Feast your eyes on this list of players who will be available. 2010 free agents include LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, Chris Bosh, Amare Stoudemire, Ray Allen, Tyson Chandler, Manu Ginobili, Richard Jefferson, Joe Johnson, Tracy McGrady, Yao Ming, Steve Nash, Dirk Nowitzki and Michael Redd.

      The two that jump out to me are, of course, Chris Bosh and LeBron James. They played together nicely on Team USA, and now Dumars can at least entertain the notion of signing not one of those two, but both.

      A team that suspects one of those players might leave via free agency in 2010 might be compelled to realize some value for the player by dealing with a team under the cap like the Pistons in the summer of 2009. (The NBA’s rules about matching up salaries in trades only apply to teams that are over the salary cap. Once Iverson’s big contract is off the books next summer, the Pistons will be able to deal freely.)

      Other than Tayshaun Prince and Jason Maxiell, no other Piston is currently signed through 2011 (though the franchise is likely to exercise its option on Rodney Stuckey’s rookie contract). That puts Detroit’s payroll at an estimated $19 million for the 2010-11 season, which should give the team major salary cap flexibility during the summer of 2010.

      Abbott thinks that the Pistons can turn this cap space into two premier players. Throw in Prince, Maxiell and Stuckey, and that’s a nice core.

      Update: The Pistons signed Rip Hamilton to a three-year extension worth $34 million that would presumably keep him in Detroit through the 2013 season.

      Fantasy Basketball, NBA, Rumors & Gossip

      2008 NBA Preview: #9 Detroit Pistons

      October 23, 2008 /

      Offseason Movement: The Pistons’ biggest offseason signing was Kwame Brown. That’s right…Kwame Brown.
      Keep Your Eye On: The Pistons’ age
      Chauncey Billups (32), Rip Hamilton (30), Rasheed Wallace (34) and Antonio McDyess (34) are all at the end of or past their respective primes, so the Pistons are going to hit the wall, it’s just a matter of when. Will it be this season? The team does have some youth in Tayshaun Prince (28), Rodney Stuckey (22), Jason Maxiell (25) and Amir Johnson (21), but Prince is the only completely dependable player on that list. Stuckey has a chance to be a star, but he’s going to be playing behind Billups and Hamilton for the foreseeable future.
      The Big Question: Does this group have another run in it?
      After last season, it looked like the Pistons were going to make some big changes, but after a few rumored trades fell through, they’re left with pretty much the same roster as last season. So this leaves the Pistons in a tough spot. They’re good enough to (easily) make the playoffs, but are they good enough to make another Finals appearance?
      Outlook: Fruitless. Unless everything breaks their way, it’s hard to see the Pistons making the Finals with this group. I like the roster, and when they’re firing on all cylinders, they’re very tough to beat. But they are at times complacent, and they’re just not good enough anymore to be giving games away in the playoffs. They almost lost to an upstart Philly team due to a lack of focus. Once again, they’ll make the playoffs and, once again, they’ll probably win their first round series, but barring a big leap by one of their young players, that’s probably as far as they’ll go.

      Fantasy Basketball, NBA

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