Royals

Curry Arena

When&nbsp;<a href="https://www.basketballnews.com/stories/kings-making-buddy-hield-richaun-holmes-harrison-barnes-available" target="_blank" rel="noopener">seeing the report late last week</a>&nbsp;of the Sacramento Kings making Richaun Holmes available for trade, there should&rsquo;ve been several NBA teams channeling a 1980 Muhammad Ali saying, &ldquo;I want Holmes! I want Holmes!&rdquo;&nbsp;
(Couldn&rsquo;t find the clip, but I remember watching it long ago.)
Of course, Ali was talking about former World Heavyweight Champion Larry Holmes, whom he lost to later that year &mdash; 42 years later, we&rsquo;re talking about an underrated Kings center, but the point stands. Nothing, not even 50-year-old <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFK9zh2yHO4" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Johnny Knoxville being in this week&rsquo;s Royal Rumble</a>, is less surprising than the Kings looking to revamp their roster in some form. That basketball team in Sacramento rebuilds more often than Griselda releases music.&nbsp;
But, again,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.spotrac.com/nba/sacramento-kings/richaun-holmes-17865/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">less than five months after signing a four-year, $46 million extension</a>, including a $12.9 million player option for 2024-25, Holmes is possibly available. At just $10.3 million this season, he&rsquo;s very affordable by NBA standards. Having turned 28 years old in October and playing in year seven, he&rsquo;s in the prime of his career. Given where he currently is, he might indeed be better off elsewhere.&nbsp;
Holmes has&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nbcsports.com/bayarea/kings/richaun-holmes-commits-goggles-recounts-scary-eye-injury" target="_blank" rel="noopener">battled an eye injury</a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.sacbee.com/sports/nba/sacramento-kings/article256988807.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">COVID</a> this season, but has been productive despite a drop in playing time, logging 25.8 minutes through his 32 games (all starts) compared to last year, where he was at 29.2 minutes. He&rsquo;s posting 12.3 points, 8.1 rebounds, and 1.1 blocks per game this season while shooting a career-best 70% from the floor. Per 36-minutes, he&rsquo;s at 17.1 points, 1.5 blocks and a career-best 11.3 boards. Holmes is a distant first in win shares per 48 minutes at .179 (second is .111). He&rsquo;s also second in team box plus-minus (1.3) behind Tyrese Haliburton&rsquo;s 2.5 and ahead of Harrison Barnes&rsquo; 0.5; everyone else is in the negative. (Yes, that means De&rsquo;Aaron Fox, for whatever that&rsquo;s worth.)&nbsp;
Ideally, if you&rsquo;re the team making this move, you&rsquo;d look to solidify your center position while prepping for your playoff push. The good news is that all of the following teams are in the playoff hunt &mdash; so don't worry, my fellow rec spec-wearing friend, let's get you outta there.&nbsp;
Charlotte Hornets
The Hornets are (quietly?) 27-22 as of this writing, and are seventh in the Eastern Conference. At least they're quiet for a team run by a rising star in LaMelo Ball, his underappreciated backcourt mate Terry Rozier, Most Improved Player candidate Miles Bridges and steady swingman Gordon Hayward&nbsp; That&rsquo;s four-fifths of their starting five, with the center spot being occupied by Mason Plumlee. Kelly Oubre Jr. and PJ Washington play significant minutes off the bench, meaning the Hornets &mdash; who are 21st in rebounding and allow the third-most rebounds per game &mdash; are often playing small.&nbsp;
PJ Washington, in particular, is a&nbsp;<a href="https://hoopshype.com/storyline/pj-washington-trade/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">trade piece that&rsquo;s been rumored to be available</a> and likely has to be included in the deal, since his minutes and production have declined since last season, where he was an everyday starter. It should be added that, entering the last of his rookie-scale contract next season, it&rsquo;s likely the Hornets won&rsquo;t extend him by 2023.&nbsp;
The trade logistically couldn&rsquo;t be PJ for Holmes straight up since Washington only makes $4.2 million this season. The Kings also are rumored to be shopping others on their team, so there&rsquo;s a potential for this to extend beyond Holmes arriving from Sacramento by himself in this hypothetical &mdash; your simplest route is to pair Washington with Plumlee&rsquo;s $8.1 million, which mathematically makes this work straight up. Plumlee has a partially guaranteed $8.5 million coming to him next season, and the Kings should also receive a couple of second-rounders or a first coming back to them, both of which the Hornets <a href="https://www.prosportstransactions.com/basketball/DraftTrades/Future/Hornets.htm" target="_blank" rel="noopener">have enough to entice with</a>.&nbsp;
A Ball-Rozier-Hayward-Bridges-Holmes lineup sounds fun as hell.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-theme="dark">
Richaun Holmes is dunking all over the Lakers 😤 <a href="https://t.co/y9fO2OprSI">pic.twitter.com/y9fO2OprSI</a>
&mdash; NBA on ESPN (@ESPNNBA) <a href="https://twitter.com/ESPNNBA/status/1465891771489996805?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 1, 2021</a></blockquote>

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Dallas Mavericks
Between Dwight Powell, Moses Brown, Maxi Kleber, Willie Cauley-Stein, Marquese Chriss and Boban Marjanović, the Dallas Mavericks have had what&rsquo;s felt like a 💩 ton of bigs this season. Even so, as our Nekias Duncan wrote last week, without a true anchor, the Mavs have recently <a href="https://www.basketballnews.com/stories/how-do-the-mavericks-have-an-elite-defense" target="_blank" rel="noopener">become one of the league&rsquo;s best defenses</a>.&nbsp;
Still, on the roster, there isn&rsquo;t a clear long-term answer there as you continue to build this around the already extended Luka Dončić and, for now, the seemingly bought-in Kristaps Porziņģis. Enter Holmes, who is signed through at least the 2023-24 season. Powell and Kleber, who generally eat the lion&rsquo;s share of minutes next to KP, are both signed through 2022-23 before they&rsquo;d each become unrestricted free agents. Though Kleber makes $8.9 million this season and Powell is at $11 million, both work for Holmes mathematically straight up. Obviously, Dallas would attach at least one or two second-round draft picks, if not a protected first, to either guy (Powell more likely) and make it nearly a straight-up trade.&nbsp;
There&rsquo;s room to open this up further. Buddy Hield makes $22.5 million this season, and his contract descends to $20 and $18 million until it expires in the summer of 2024. Tim Hardaway Jr., who Dallas extended this past summer and <a href="https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/33148625/dallas-mavericks-tim-hardaway-jr-ruled-game-left-foot-injury" target="_blank" rel="noopener">is now out with a fractured left foot</a>, makes $21 million this year but is also on a descending deal that drops to $19.6, $17.9, and $16.1 million through the 2024-25 season. Both struggling shooting guards probably aren&rsquo;t long for their organizations, even as they were both recently extended. Hardaway Jr. was also moved to the bench for Jalen Brunson, who&rsquo;s facing a contract situation of his own given his pending free agency (keep him, Dallas).&nbsp;
So there&rsquo;s a path to this becoming a Powell and Hardaway plus draft picks for Holmes and Hield exchange. Holmes is the type of hustling, dirty-work, efficient and quality center that the Mavericks could use. Unlike in 2K, you can trade injured players in real life &mdash; sorry Tim. Just imagine the push shots off Luka feeds.&nbsp;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-theme="dark">
death, taxes, and richaun holmes hitting 62.5% of his push shots (20-of-32) <a href="https://t.co/iGH0xuA7Gn">pic.twitter.com/iGH0xuA7Gn</a>
&mdash; Dan Favale (@danfavale) <a href="https://twitter.com/danfavale/status/1465715242952900614?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 30, 2021</a></blockquote>

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Toronto Raptors
I mean, could you think of a more Raptor-ass center than Holmes? Who better be run with Fred VanVleet, Scottie Barnes, OG Anunoby, Pascal Siakam and Gary Trent Jr.?&nbsp;
Now, how do you make this happen? First, with that being the Raptors&rsquo; starting five, where does Holmes fit? Well, it&rsquo;s really their starting five out of necessity because Precious Achiuwa hasn&rsquo;t had the second NBA season they&rsquo;d been hoping for. Ideally, you&rsquo;d still want an actual center in that mix as one of your top six minutes getters so that you have a bit more reliable size. The Raptors don&rsquo;t currently have a true center you could trust for extended periods, and Holmes fills that void.&nbsp;
Now, regarding trade pieces, Chris Boucher is on a $7 million expiring contract, and Khem Birch is on the first of a three-year, $19 million contract, which lands him at $6.3 million this season. Combining those two does work, and it would obviously have to come with considerable draft capital, but even the Kings would probably ask wtf are they going to do with that and have a point.&nbsp;
Remove Birch and insert Achiuwa? That works &ndash; would the Raptors already want to move off the centerpiece of their Kyle Lowry trade, who is just due $2.8 million next year with a $4.3 million team option the season after? I mean, maybe? It would certainly help preserve some draft capital in a hypothetical Holmes trade and, you figure, if you&rsquo;re acquiring a center Achiuwa would have a tougher time seeing minutes anyway. But that&rsquo;s generally what you&rsquo;d be looking at moving if you&rsquo;re Toronto: Boucher and Birch, Boucher and Achuiwa; Boucher, Achiuwa and Malachi Flynn, along with some combination of picks or a first-rounder, for Holmes.&nbsp;
And if I&rsquo;m Holmes, I&rsquo;m down for whatever, as long as I could leave Sacramento.&nbsp;
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Bonus: Golden State Warriors
Okay &hellip; here we go.
There&rsquo;s really only one way to do this, and it&rsquo;s using James Wiseman&rsquo;s $9.1 million salary this season straight up. Y&rsquo;all could determine what picks may or may not go where, but these are the two names because the Golden State Warriors don&rsquo;t have much middle-class salary to use, nor do they probably want to shake up their roster a ton, including even this. But if they determine that Wiseman, who hasn&rsquo;t played since Apr. 10 of last year due to a torn meniscus that <a href="https://theathletic.com/news/warriors-james-wiseman-needed-additional-knee-surgery-in-december-sources/DyEHJgzTblrO/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">required additional arthroscopic surgery in December</a>, isn&rsquo;t worth waiting for, then there you have it.&nbsp;
Wiseman showed flashes, but struggled defensively as a rookie while only logging 39 games (though he posted 11.5 points and 5.8 rebounds on 52% percent shooting in 21.4 minutes per contest). He&rsquo;ll turn 21 in March, and because of NCAA nonsense, we were only able to see him three times in college. Wiseman&rsquo;s due $9.6 million next year and will likely bank another $12.1 million, assuming his option gets accepted.
I&rsquo;m still a Wiseman stockholder, but I&rsquo;m also pro going for a championship now in this seemingly wide-open NBA season &mdash; an immediate upgrade at center might be what Golden State sees as a necessary step. It makes something like a possible Holmes deal reasonable to think twice about. Just sayin&rsquo;.
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Bryan Fonseca ponders a handful of teams who could be a good fit for Kings big man Richaun Holmes.

Examining potential trade destinations for Richaun Holmes

On Tuesday, Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas tweeted that KC wants to host the Toronto Raptors' home games for the 2020-21 NBA season. In fact, Mayor Lucas made a pitch to NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, explaining why Kansas City would be perfect as a host city.
"We heard you might need a temporary home for the upcoming NBA season, Raptors. We'd love to have you in Kansas City," <a style="color: #ffffff;" href="https://twitter.com/MayorLucasKC/status/1321202561429479430" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Mayor Lucas tweeted</a>.&nbsp;"Mayor Lucas and members of the KS and MO delegation today encouraged the NBA and Raptors to select Kansas City as the team's host city for the 2020-21 season."
The tweet included the following letter to Commissioner Silver:
&ldquo;In the event the Toronto Raptors seek a temporary home for the 2020-21 National Basketball Association (NBA) season, please note our strong support for Kansas City to serve as the team's host city.&nbsp;
&ldquo;Kansas City is a great sports city. Not only does Kansas City boast the 2019 World Champion Kansas City Chiefs, the 2017 U.S. Open Cup Champions Sporting Kansas City, and the 2015 World Series Champion Kansas City Royals, but Kansas CIty is also preparing to host the 2023 NFL Draft and enjoys regularly hosting the best collegiate athletes from across the country for tournament and championship games in a variety of sports.&nbsp;
&ldquo;Kansas City sports fans are unmatched, already providing an avid fanbase for the Chiefs, the Royals and Sporting - and would be eager to extend that support to the Raptors. Our T-Mobile Center, a first-class arena located in the heart of downtown, would make a great home for the Raptors as they look to match last season's impressive winning record. 
"In addition, Kansas City has plenty to offer with our wonderful food, attractions, and entertainment for basketball fans of all ages. Kansas City has the fifth-fastest growing downtown population in the nation, according to the Brookings Institute, and offers convenient air and ground travel across the continental United States and beyond. The Kansas City metropolitan area is primarily served by the Kansas City International Airport, which is currently undergoing a $1.5 billion state-of-the-art terminal renovation to meet the needs of our growing economy and booming tourism industry. The fare-free Kansas City Streetcar runs through Kansas City's downtown and has stops just a minutes' walk from the T-Mobile Center and many of the city's premier dining and entertainment venues. Kansas City also proudly provides fare-free public bus transportation across the city, with several stops near T-Mobile Center.
&ldquo;Again, Kansas City is well-suited to host the Toronto Raptors for the 2020-2021 NBA season and our dynamic fans would be thrilled to adopt the team as our own. On behalf of our bi-state region, we thank you for your consideration of Kansas City as you move forward in the selection process and stand ready to answer any questions you may have.&rdquo;
ANALYSIS: The Toronto Raptors will be forced to play elsewhere for their home games next season because of the ongoing travel bans in Canada. What started as just a rumor that Kansas City could be a potential host city for the Raptors now seems to be gaining some serious momentum. Kansas City's Mayor has given the thumbs up for the Raptors to play its home games in Missouri next season and is encouraging the NBA to select KC.
Missouri is currently without a professional basketball team, so this could be an exciting time for NBA fans in the state since they may have a home team to cheer on next season. Louisville has also been mentioned as a possible host city for the Raptors.

With rumors that Kansas City could be a potential host city for Toronto's home games next season, the KC mayor has now signed off on it.

Kansas City angles to host Raptors next year

Team USA players came inside the Kerry Sports basketball facility one by one, each sporting their preferred and comfortable gear from the blazing heat of the Philippine weather they were not so accustomed to. They were about to hold their first practices in Manila for the FIBA World Cup 2023, the sport&rsquo;s world championship meet.
Anthony Edwards was one of the last ones to enter the gym along with fellow NBA no.1 overall pick Paolo Banchero. He had his Adidas Adilette comfort slides put on with black Team USA jogger pants and an Adidas triple-colored hoodie. Edwards was fixated on his phone, walking past whispering reporters onto the team&rsquo;s huddle at center court, clearly being the center of attraction for the young Team USA squad.
&ldquo;That&rsquo;s who they call the Ant-Man.&rdquo;
Once upon a time, Edwards&rsquo; name was held in a much lower regard. The 22-year-old is considered to be one of the best and brightest young players in the league but has yet to establish himself as one of the staples and premier superstars with an iconic and deep playoff performance that cements him in that tier.
Until these playoffs.
Edwards has separated himself from the pack of young superstars leading their teams and entered the upper echelon of basketball royalty in the NBA. With the league anticipating the &lsquo;changing of the guard&rsquo; as current faces LeBron James, Stephen Curry, and Kevin Durant eventually diminish their shining glories as the league&rsquo;s best of the best, Edwards comes in as one of the hopefuls to take the mantle when that inevitable day comes.
&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve been saying that he (Edwards) is the face of the league but he hates it when I say it &ndash; but it&rsquo;s true. The future&rsquo;s so bright you gotta put the sunglasses on when you&rsquo;re walking around him,&rdquo; Karl-Anthony Towns said, in their post-game interview after their first-round series with the&nbsp;Phoenix Suns.
Edwards glanced briefly at Towns, who was beside him at the podium. He had that little smile on his face while bowing down his head as his teammate praised him in front of the listening reporters. He looked at Towns again, this time shaking his head in disbelief, but it had the element of confidence. There was obviously a focus on what Towns was talking about but with Edwards&rsquo; elite level-headedness through it all.&nbsp;
&ldquo;You&rsquo;re a young superstar in the league and you have to face it,&rdquo; the statement emphasized on Edwards as he&rsquo;s trying to soak it all in.
Ever since Edwards has been adamant about not calling himself anything until he wins in the playoffs. Now that his Wolves beat the Suns to win the franchise&rsquo;s first playoff series since 2004, Edwards certainly has all the right in the world to give himself even the tiniest bit of praise.
He thought for a good three seconds, glancing at the reporter and the horizon for a moment. He was just asked if he was now able to give himself some grace in that regard when people call him that &lsquo;young superstar&rsquo; label. A small grin emerged onto his face, clearly oozing with confidence albeit a controlled one. He looked back with that smile on his face while nodding, he said:
&ldquo;Nah, not yet a man. Not yet.&rdquo;
Behind this usual brash, confident, and charismatic Edwards is a hungry side that never gets contented and satisfied until he achieves his ultimate goal: winning a championship. Maybe he&rsquo;ll have the guts to call himself one when they reach the Finals and end up going all the way. But that remains to be seen.
He&rsquo;s got the swagger, the personality, and the charisma to be marketable by the league. Edwards mentioned wanting to go kill everybody that&rsquo;s in front of him, and boy, he did.&nbsp;
Edwards swept the Suns featuring his childhood idol and favorite player of all time Kevin Durant, who he has been jawing back and forth at several times in the series. This was him going at his childhood hero, taking on the challenge and never backing down. However, the play of the series happened in Game 4 when Minnesota was trying to put the nail in the coffin for Phoenix.&nbsp;
With 2:18 left on the clock in the 4th quarter, Edwards blew by Beal and rose through the air as high as he could. Durant made the right business decision by not going up together with a rampaging bull as he should For a brief moment, he looked like the second coming of a certain Michael Jordan &ndash; yet again &ndash; after he&rsquo;s been labeled as such throughout the course of the season after each jaw-dropping spectacular play. Edwards threw down a ferocious poster slam dunk that might have literally blown the roof over the Footprint Center as the play signaled the beginning of the end for the Suns.
Durant and Edwards will play together in Team USA in August for the Paris Olympics, and these two for sure would go head to head making their practice sessions much more interesting. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s definitely a good feeling because he&rsquo;s my favorite player of all time, and I can tell him that I was the one who sent him home. It&rsquo;s gonna be a fun summer for sure,&rdquo; Edwards said.
First game of the Western Conference Finals and up against the Nuggets, Edwards scored a playoff career-high 43 points. He dissected their entire defense, scoring in all types of ways imaginable for a superstar. Edwards hit threes, blown by some of the toughest defenders in the NBA Aaron Gordon, and hit fadeaway mid-range jumpers reminiscent of Jordan. More importantly, Edwards displayed the level of maturity a superstar has to make in the playoffs &ndash; playing off of your teammates and playmaking for the entire team. He has done it so far with relative ease and that&rsquo;s why the Timberwolves have found their early success in this postseason.
He&rsquo;s doing it against supposedly their biggest challenge &ndash; the defending champions &ndash; who sent them home a year ago. &ldquo;Last year we didn&rsquo;t have Jaden (McDaniels) and Naz (Reid) against them so it was quite frustrating. Now that we have both I think we can definitely do better,&rdquo; Edwards said about their biggest thing in this rematch series vs Denver is being healthy.
Before the season started, Edwards was this up-and-coming 22-year-old star leading his nation at the World Championships for a chance at glory. Although the Americans ended up not medalling after losing to eventual world champions Germany in the semifinals and to neighboring Canada in the third-place game, Edwards was clearly the best player on the team filled with young American talent. He led Team USA in scoring, and at 22 years old, this was only the start of a big year ahead.
Edwards then was the clear-cut best player for the third-best team in the West, with Minnesota having a 56-26 record. Those 56 wins were the most since 2004 when they had 58 and went to the Western Conference Finals. They were led back then by legend Kevin Garnett but that was also their last time seeing the playoffs.&nbsp;
20 years later, Edwards is now shouldering all the burden by taking this Wolves team back to relevance, basking in all the glory he&rsquo;s worked so hard to attain. He&rsquo;s one of the bonafide young rising superstars in the league, and he intends to take them all the way.
Edwards&rsquo; huge season and ascension to superstardom could be attributed back to something you see coming even from a mile away. And it all started in that summer lengthy yet productive summer in 2023.
While most players use their summers to recuperate, have a vacation somewhere, and spend time with families and loved ones, Edwards took a privileged yet opportunistic route: play with the National Team at the FIBA World Cup. Usually, NBA superstars all express their willingness to play with the National Team at the Olympics. For no definite reason, somehow the FIBA World Cup does not seem appealing to play for the older/senior superstar guys, so it&rsquo;s usually the juniors/young guys who represent Team USA. Anthony Edwards took up that challenge and became the best player for the team and in turn, he&rsquo;s reaping the benefits of it in the playoffs.
&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve put in work this summer. Big shoutout to the USA team, man. They got me ready for the season.&rdquo;
That killer mentality that Edwards has is something that&rsquo;s never seen often and has been with only a select few in the history of the game, particularly Jordan and Lakers great Kobe Bryant. Behind all that bold and tough personality, however, is a side of himself that genuinely enjoys playing with his teammates.
When asked about the prospect of having his Wolves&rsquo; teammates, the first thing out of his mouth was how he was excited to meet them while playing for their respective countries (Rudy Gobert for France, Karl-Anthony Towns for Dominican Republic, Kyle Anderson for China, and Nickeil Alexander-Walker for Canada). He looked forward to playing against them, citing how much fun he would have once it happened.
Despite his clear burgeoning superstardom, however,&nbsp; Edwards still deflected every credit thrown towards him. When asked what he feels as one of the guys being billed as one of the next faces of the league, Edwards dismissed the idea faster than a Math teacher dispersing students after giving out a tough assignment due &ndash;&nbsp; immediately answering without hesitation that he does not make anything of it.&nbsp;
&ldquo;I&rsquo;m just gonna keep working, man. I make nothing of it, yeah. I just hope that I keep getting better.&rdquo;
It was clear all along among all the people in the gym that fateful day: Edwards had the most aura out of them all. It was just oozing, something you can feel when you&rsquo;re around certain people. It&rsquo;s kind of intimidating, but only to a certain extent. You can just feel the energy brewing and that certain look when you come across one of the ones. The underlying factor before the season was Minnesota only having five national TV games all season long. With most of their games out of the eyes of the majority, Edwards assured one thing going into the season sternly and convincingly.
&ldquo;We just gonna try to keep playing, man. We&rsquo;re not really worried about the national TV games. As long as we win, we&rsquo;ll be on TV when we make it into the playoffs. The world will know about us.&rdquo;
As their playoff mantra suggests, the Timberwolves have been waiting for this moment since 2004. From the annals of the great Kevin Garnett&rsquo;s era to ushering this new one paved by superstar-in-the-making, young Anthony Edwards, the Minnesota Timberwolves have arrived.

The underlying factor before the season was Minnesota only having five national TV games all season despite having Anthony Edwards.

‘WOLVES BACK’: Anthony Edwards introduces the Timberwolves back to the world

SAN ANTONIO (AP) &mdash; The first dinner that Victor Wembanyama had in his new home city was filled with San Antonio royalty. Gregg Popovich was there, of course. So were Tim Duncan, David Robinson, Manu Ginobili and Sean Elliott.
NBA champions, all of them.
Wembanyama now starts his quest to join their club.
Even as the welcomes for Wemby continued Saturday &mdash; one at San Antonio&rsquo;s iconic downtown River Walk, another at the arena &mdash; the French teen who has been labeled a generational basketball talent already was thinking about what comes next. He&rsquo;s got a visit to Nike headquarters in Oregon in the next few days, appointments to see some houses in San Antonio that he might be calling home for the next few years and then practices for the NBA Summer League.
&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve got a lot to do,&rdquo; Wembanyama said. &ldquo;But it&rsquo;s all right. It&rsquo;s OK. It&rsquo;s all going to fit in.&rdquo;
He&rsquo;s excited, and rightly so. He put on a Spurs uniform on Saturday for the first time and will play in one for the first time sometime in early July in either Sacramento or Las Vegas; San Antonio plays in both of those summer leagues. He offered high-fives to hundreds of Spurs employees who showed up at the arena on Saturday to welcome him, smiling the whole way.
&ldquo;These are exciting times,&rdquo; Spurs CEO R.C. Buford said.
They come with the biggest expectations. The morning party on the River Walk took place at the spot where the Spurs&rsquo; championship celebrations usually are centered. And the news conference that followed at the arena came with Wembanyama seated on a stage that just happened to be at the same end of the court as San Antonio&rsquo;s five NBA championship banners.
&ldquo;To Victor, I wanted to say to you directly, we&rsquo;re excited to grow with you, support you, challenge you, especially Coach Pop &mdash; there&rsquo;ll be a lot of challenging days &mdash; on your journey through life and basketball,&rdquo; Spurs general manager Brian Wright said as he sat to Wembanyama&rsquo;s left. &ldquo;Your talent is obvious, but as we got to know you, the maturity, the approach, the character really showed us how special of a young man you are.&rdquo;
It was part of a whirlwind first 20 hours or so in San Antonio for Wembanyama,&nbsp;<a class="paragraph-link" href="https://apnews.com/article/spurs-wembanyama-draft-nba-11b2b43bc27076ab5036769bf5d4160b">who flew in from the NBA draft on Friday</a>&nbsp;and had dinner with Popovich and some former players that night. Wembanyama said he learned more about the NBA in those two hours than he had learned in the last few years.
&ldquo;Honestly, that was one of the best dinners of my life,&rdquo; Wembanyama said. &ldquo;And not because of the food. The food was good. But the people was crazy.&rdquo;
Saturday started with Wembanyama enjoying a bag of the city&rsquo;s famed breakfast tacos &mdash; bacon and egg, and bean and cheese, he said &mdash; before heading to the Arneson River Theater for the day&rsquo;s first introductory event. Robinson was there, sitting in the front row. So was San Antonio Mayor Ron Nirenberg, wearing a Wembanyama jersey.
There&rsquo;s someone driving around San Antonio with a Wemby license plate. There&rsquo;s a burger with foie gras on the menu at a local sports bar, as a tribute to Wembanyama. There&rsquo;s a mural of him on the outside of a business directly across the street of another mural featuring Duncan, Ginobili and Tony Parker. There&rsquo;s even a mariachi band that already has a song about Wembanyama.
&ldquo;The fans have been the best at their job,&rdquo; Wembanyama said. &ldquo;I can only hope to be at their level.&rdquo;
The Spurs also introduced&nbsp;<a class="paragraph-link" href="https://apnews.com/article/nba-draft-2023-wembanyama-report-card-2b66d099d445bf3f1f8e3c697dcc9efb">second-round pick Sidy Cissoko</a>&nbsp;on Saturday &mdash; another player from France who has known Wembanyama for about a decade. Cissoko played in Spain before ending up with the G League Ignite, and he already has endeared himself to San Antonio, a city with a strong Latin influence, by taking questions in English, French and Spanish.
&ldquo;The hoop gods have been incredibly generous to San Antonio for a long time, and they blessed us again with Victor and Sidy,&rdquo; Buford said.
Wembanyama said he hasn&rsquo;t had much time for sleep, and he&rsquo;s looking forward to things calming down a bit so he can get back into his basketball routine &mdash; one that has been understandably disrupted in recent days. But first, there was luggage to unpack, more people to meet, more jerseys to sign.
It was hectic. It&rsquo;s going to be hectic for a while. And Wembanyama says he&rsquo;s enjoying it all.
&ldquo;This is the life I wanted,&rdquo; Wembanyama said. &ldquo;This is what I worked for and it&rsquo;s what I&rsquo;ve been wanting for a long time. So, it feels normal to me.&rdquo;

The 48 hours after Victor Wembanyama was drafted No. 1 overall by the San Antonio Spurs have been a whirlwind.

Spurs, fans welcome No. 1 pick Victor Wembanyama to San Antonio

DENVER (AP) &mdash; Miami Heat coach Erik Spoelstra practically snickered when asked about neutralizing the effective two-man game played by Denver Nuggets teammates Nikola Jokic and Jamal Murray.
&ldquo;Yeah, where do you start? You have two guys that can score 50 in a playoff game. One guy is a triple-double machine that loves to get guys involved,&rdquo; Spoelstra said.
&ldquo;You go down the list of myriad of things you can do defensively, you have to check off some things that you don&rsquo;t really want to do because of both their ability to score and Jokic&rsquo;s ability to create something off-script.&rdquo;
Spoelstra knows what the Heat are up against; it&rsquo;s nothing new for Denver. The Nuggets&rsquo; potent duo has been nearly unstoppable in powering Denver&rsquo;s 13-3 run through the playoffs, including a&nbsp;<a class="paragraph-link" href="https://apnews.com/article/nba-finals-2023-heat-nuggets-jokic-278674ca5c096db5880b812c7cc348dc">104-93 win in Game 1</a>.
A win Sunday night would make them just the second team this century to win its first 10 home games in a single postseason. The Nuggets&rsquo; run to what they hope is their first NBA championship is being fueled by Jokic and Murray.
They&rsquo;re entering the pantheon of pick-and-roll royalty of standard-bearers John Stockton and Karl Malone. But the Nuggets do it with a different twist.
Whereas Malone set up almost all of the screens for Stockton when they were Utah Jazz teammates, Denver&rsquo;s version is ambidextrous, doubling the difficulty of deciphering much less defusing it.
&ldquo;Three, four years ago, the No. 1 pick-and-roll combo in the entire NBA was Nikola and Jamal,&rdquo; Nuggets coach Michael Malone recalled. &ldquo;And most people would just assume that it was Nikola setting for Jamal. It was actually the opposite. It was Nikola handling and Jamal setting.
&ldquo;The reason it was so effective, aside from the obvious &mdash; two really talented players &mdash; is that Jamal is big, strong, physical and not afraid of contact. Some guys like to slip out of every screen because they don&rsquo;t want to make that contact, they don&rsquo;t want to give themselves up,&rdquo; the coach added. &ldquo;Jamal from early in his career here, he&rsquo;s shown that he&rsquo;s willing to go and set a screen on a big guy, small guy, doesn&rsquo;t matter, because he&rsquo;s tough.
&ldquo;The second part of that is he also knows that if Nikola has the ball and he screens, his man has to help, which will give him separation. If you want to simplify the game of basketball, it comes down to separation.&rdquo;
Both Murray and Jokic are three-level scorers who can shoot 3-pointers, make midrange jump shots and drive to the basket. Their Game 1 performance put them in some elite company.
Heading into the series opener, only Michael Jordan in 1991 and Russell Westbrook in 2012 had at least 25 points, 10 assists and five rebounds in an NBA Finals debut. Jokic and Murray added their names to that list Thursday night &mdash; Murray had 26 points, 10 assists and six rebounds and Jokic extended his NBA record with his ninth triple-double in these playoffs, getting 27 points, 14 assists and 10 rebounds.
The only other pair of teammates to have 25 points and 10 assists in an NBA Finals game was Magic Johnson and James Worthy, who did it for the Los Angeles Lakers against Boston in Game 1 in 1987.
Murray and Jokic have been refining their on-court relationship since Murray&rsquo;s rookie season in 2016, a year after Jokic joined the Nuggets as the now-hard-to-fathom 41st overall draft pick. Murray was backing up Gary Harris and Jokic was coming off the bench behind Jusuf Nurkic.
&ldquo;We would actually come into the game together, and we would run post-ups or just simple give-and-goes ... and I&rsquo;d say then we kind of developed a chemistry,&rdquo; Murray said. &ldquo;Soon we both started, we started playing off each other. We started to figure out where we like the ball, when we liked the ball, when I&rsquo;m going to pass, when he&rsquo;s going to pass, when he&rsquo;s driving, when to relocate, where to relocate.&rdquo;
Heat guard Kyle Lowry, who is in his 16th NBA season, is hard-pressed to come up with a better point guard/big man combo.
&ldquo;Jamal and Jokic, they&rsquo;re deadly because they both can score and pass the ball,&rdquo; said Lowry, noting he played against the San Antonio Spurs&rsquo; &ldquo;great combination&rdquo; of Tim Duncan and Tony Parker. &ldquo;They&rsquo;re big targets, and they have a great feel for each other.&rdquo;
Nuggets guard Ish Smith has been on a record 13 teams in 13 NBA seasons and said he has never seen anything quite like Denver&rsquo;s duo. Smith said what makes Jokic and Murray so effective is both players are the antithesis of superstars who&rsquo;d rather go 1-on-1 in isolation.
&ldquo;It wouldn&rsquo;t work if Nikola was selfish and, &lsquo;I need the ball,&rsquo; and Jamal was a guy that was like, &lsquo;I need the ball all the time,&rsquo;&rdquo; Smith said.
The Heat know they have to at least slow down the Nuggets.
&ldquo;We have proven that we can win and overcome regardless of how the game is going,&rdquo; Spoelstra said. &ldquo;Ideal situation would be if it&rsquo;s on our terms and we are controlling the tenor of the game, but we have also won games where we haven&rsquo;t been able to do that for the entire game.&rdquo;

The Nuggets’ potent duo has been nearly unstoppable in powering Denver’s 13-3 run through the playoffs.

Nuggets’ 2-man game of Jokic, Murray setting new pick-and-roll standard

The following is a list of the 15 teams that forced at least a Game 6 in a best-of-seven NBA playoff series after dropping the first three games:
___
1947 BAA Semifinals: Washington Capitols trailed Chicago Stags 3-0, lost in six.
1949 BAA Finals: Washington Capitols trailed Minneapolis 3-0, lost in six.
1951 NBA Finals: New York trailed Rochester Royals 3-0, lost in seven.
1962 Western Division finals: Detroit trailed L.A. Lakers 3-0, lost in six.
1994 Western Conference semifinals: Denver trailed Utah 3-0, lost in seven.
1996 NBA Finals: Seattle trailed Chicago 3-0, lost in six.
2000 Eastern Conference semifinals: Philadelphia trailed Indiana 3-0, lost in six.
2003 Western Conference first round: Portland trailed Dallas 3-0, lost in seven.
2007 Eastern Conference semifinals: Chicago trailed Detroit 3-0, lost in six.
2010 Eastern Conference finals: Orlando trailed Boston 3-0, lost in six.
2013 Eastern Conference first round: Boston trailed New York 3-0, lost in six.
2013 Western Conference first round: Houston trailed Oklahoma City 3-0, lost in six.
2015 Eastern Conference first round: Milwaukee trailed Chicago 3-0, lost in six.
2022 Eastern Conference first round: Toronto trailed Philadelphia 3-0, lost in six.
2023 Eastern Conference finals: Boston trailed Miami 3-0, forced Game 6 on Saturday.

Here is a list of the 15 teams that forced at least a Game 6 in a best-of-seven NBA playoff series after dropping the first three games.

The 15 NBA teams that came closest to overcoming a 3-0 series deficit

Milwaukee Bucks guard Jrue Holiday is the recipient of the Twyman-Stokes Teammate of the Year award, the NBA announced today. This honor recognizes the player who's deemed the best teammate based on his selfless play, leadership and dedicaton to the team.
This is Holiday's third time winning the Teammate of the Year award, as he also won it last season and in 2019-20. The award has been around for a decade, as it was first handed out in the 2012-13 season.
Unlike the other end-of-season awards, this honor is voted on by NBA players, who choose the winner from a list of 12 finalists (six from each conference) selected by a panel of team executives. Nearly 400 NBA players voted on this award.
Holiday received 57 first-place votes and 1,359 total voting points. Brooklyn Nets wing Mikal Bridges was the runner-up, with 39 first-place votes and 1,190 total voting points.
Golden State Warriors guard Stephen Curry (42 first-place votes, 1,117 total points), New York Knicks guard Derrick Rose (36 first-place votes, 1,097 total points) and Miami Heat forward Udonis Haslem (52 first-place votes, 1,023 total points) rounded out the top-five.
Here are the complete voting results:
<img src="https://cdn.basketballnews.com/images/story/body/tm2.png" alt="" width="752" height="265" />
The Twyman-Stokes Teammate of the Year award is named for Jack Twyman and Maurice Stokes, whose storied friendship transcended their Hall-of-Fame accomplishments. Twyman and Stokes were teammates on the Rochester/Cincinnati Royals from 1955-58. In the last game of the 1957-58 regular season, Stokes sustained an injury that led to him falling into a coma days later and becoming permanently paralyzed. He was diagnosed with post-traumatic encephalopathy, a brain injury that damaged his motor-control center. Stokes was supported for the rest of his life by Twyman, who became his legal guardian and advocate.
Twyman helped organize the NBA&rsquo;s Maurice Stokes Memorial Basketball Game, which raised funds for Stokes&rsquo; medical care and, after Stokes&rsquo; death in 1970 at age 36, for other players in need. In 2004, after years of lobbying by Twyman, Stokes was enshrined into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. Twyman, who was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1983, died in 2012.

Milwaukee Bucks guard Jrue Holiday is the recipient of the Twyman-Stokes Teammate of the Year award, the NBA announced today.

Bucks' Jrue Holiday named NBA's Teammate of the Year once again

On Wednesday afternoon, Ed Cooley was introduced as the new head coach for the Georgetown Hoyas.&nbsp;
This move follows 12 successful seasons at Providence, including seven NCAA tournament bids in the past nine years it has been held and a Big East regular-season championship in 2021-22.
"I am excited for the opportunity to lead the men's basketball program at Georgetown University," Cooley said in a statement. "I plan on hitting the ground running, getting to work on the court and cultivating relationships in and around the District. Accepting this opportunity with Georgetown is not a decision I took lightly."
In an <a href="https://www.foxsports.com/stories/college-basketball/exclusive-ed-cooley-on-why-he-left-providence-for-georgetown" target="_blank" rel="noopener">exclusive interview with John Fanta of FOX Sports</a>, Cooley described his reasons for leaving Providence.
"When I did a deep dive of what's important &mdash; I always said yes to everybody, and I always said no to Ed. Coach Cooley did everything, but Ed needed a change," Cooley said. "I thought Georgetown was the place for me to make that change. As hard as it was because it's in-conference, and because a lot of people look at that as villainous or betrayal, I hope people give me an opportunity to serve Ed. And it sounds selfish, it sounds real selfish, but sometimes change is need on both sides and I felt for me change was needed...
"The Big East has a lot to do with the change even though it's tough because it's in-conference. I love the Big East. I love basketball-centric places. They're the recruiting fertile ground of the DMV area that expands.&rdquo;&nbsp;
I caught up with two Georgetown Hoya legends in Jerome Williams (a.k.a. Junk Yard Dog) and Michael Sweetney to discuss their thoughts on the changing of the guard at their alma mater and the direction of the program.&nbsp;
Jerome Williams (JYD)&nbsp;
<img style="display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" src="https://cdn.basketballnews.com/images/story/body/280613766_5301049609946020_6743750996342787581_n.jpg" alt="" width="515" height="515" />
Etan: Talk to me about your first thoughts on the new hire Ed Cooley for Georgetown.
JYD: "From first impressions, he hit the ball out the park. He really ushered in the alumni. He even got people like Reggie Williams commenting positivity about him taking over the reins of Georgetown&rsquo;s basketball program, and that&rsquo;s a long-term Hoya alumni who helped bring a national championship to the hilltop. So right now, all of the alumni, myself included, we're very excited.
"We&rsquo;ve always supported every regime that has been at Georgetown since I&rsquo;ve been here, and that includes Coach Patrick (Ewing), Coach JT3 (John Thompson III), Coach (Craig) Esherick. And obviously, I was blessed to have Coach John Thompson. So Ed Cooley is no different in terms of the support that he will receive from me, and the Junk Yard Dog Dogg Pound. I&rsquo;m here to support this alma mater through thick and thin. But like I said, Ed Cooley&rsquo;s first impression has really gone over well with everyone. And add to that &mdash; he has the resume of what he accomplished at Providence that has really energized this entire Georgetown community, with him being a Big East Champion and Coach of the Year, so that all helps. So yeah, we&rsquo;re all definitely excited."
Etan: Yeah, people are really buzzing here in the DMV. This seems like this was the coach that a lot of people wanted. You heard the chatter even during the tournament before Providence lost. But the electricity around the program seems to have been reignited. Would you say that&rsquo;s an accurate description?&nbsp;
JYD: "Definitely, the electricity is back. When he says he wants to sell out the arena which holds 20,000 [people], that&rsquo;s exactly what needs to happen. And that starts with the alumni, it starts with the students and it starts with the overall community. So that&rsquo;s the key."
Etan: Now, of course, programs don&rsquo;t turn around overnight and it&rsquo;s been a tough few years for Georgetown just as far as wins and losses. So what would your advice be to Hoya fans as far as patience?&nbsp;
JYD: "My advice would definitely be that everything is a process and Rome wasn&rsquo;t built in a day. But, with the world the way it is around college sports and the transfer portal, you look at teams like Missouri, who transformed very quickly into a winning program. And that was largely due to the transfer portal."
Etan: Yeah, the <a href="https://www.basketballnews.com/stories/is-the-ncaas-transfer-portal-getting-out-of-control" target="_blank" rel="noopener">transfer portal is definitely a game changer</a>, but it&rsquo;s like musical chairs; you lose four players and then you get four new players. It&rsquo;s an interesting dynamic right now that we&rsquo;re in with college basketball.
JYD: "That's absolutely correct. In some ways it&rsquo;s damaging, and in other ways, it can be transformative."
Etan: Very true. So let&rsquo;s talk about the history of Georgetown and why it&rsquo;s so historically special as a program and what it means to the DMV area and really all of college sports.
<div class="mceNonEditable"><spike>&nbsp;</spike></div>
JYD: "Well, it helps when the Georgetown University basketball program is in a good place. It helps all of college basketball. And Georgetown has meant so much to the Black community from what Coach Thompson has built not only as an individual for himself, not only as a program and a university, but for what he has done for other Black coaches who helped build other programs. The John Chaneys and Nolan Richardsons and countless others who he has helped open doors for, including Ed Cooley. So that&rsquo;s where, when Georgetown is in a good place, they represent a larger piece to the masses."
Etan: That&rsquo;s great. So are we going to see you at some of the games? Can fans expect to see you and the Junk Yard Dog Dogg Pound representing on the sidelines this season?
JYD: "Yes sir, you saw me at many of the games this season supporting Patrick (Ewing) and the program. I was able to move back to the area this year. My son [Jeremiah] goes to St. Albans now and plays for Team Takeover, so I&rsquo;m here ready to continue to support the program. My daughters [Gabby and Giselle] are playing volleyball for Georgetown, so I&rsquo;m here."
Etan: That&rsquo;s great, and what year is your son? I&rsquo;ve seen some of the clips you&rsquo;ve posted on social media. He looks like he&rsquo;s gonna be good&nbsp;
JYD: "Thanks I appreciate that, and your son [Malcolm] as well. But my son is a little younger. He&rsquo;s [in the] 2029 [class] and he is just loving the game, working hard, and getting better and better. And that&rsquo;s all you can ask at this age. But let me say, thank you for writing this and showing some love to your school&rsquo;s biggest rival historically."
Etan: No problem, it&rsquo;s always been nothing but respect for Georgetown.
Michael Sweetney&nbsp;
<img src="https://cdn.basketballnews.com/images/story/body/97028325_3148150111902658_5846889772051595264_n.jpg" alt="" width="517" height="641" />
Etan: Okay, so how do you feel about the new hire of Coach Ed Cooley and the new direction that Georgetown is going in? What were your first initial thoughts?&nbsp;
Sweetney: "Well, first let me say that it was sad for me personally to see how it went for Patrick (Ewing) these last couple of years. Winning trumps everything, and we&rsquo;ve had it tough for his last few years, so I was definitely sad to see Patrick struggle the way that he did. He loves Georgetown so much and had such a special relationship with Coach Thompson, and I know he really wanted to be successful. So that part was definitely sad for me to see."
Etan: Yeah, I grew up a Patrick Ewing fan. I was a Knicks fan. I actually <a href="https://www.basketballnews.com/podcasts/the-rematch/episodes/basketballnews-com-episode-48-nba-hall-of-famer-patrick-ewing-talks-knicks-days,-turning-the-hoyas-around,-charles-oakley,-more" target="_blank" rel="noopener">interviewed him on The Rematch last year.</a> It was just an honor to be able to sit down with him. I mean, Patrick is a legend.&nbsp;
Sweetney: "Exactly, I definitely feel the same way. And he&rsquo;s a great guy all around. But to answer your question about the Ed Cooley hire, I think everyone is excited about what&rsquo;s to come. I personally really respected the way he immediately connected with the alumni and made a concerted effort to make the point clear that he wanted the alumni to be involved, and that&rsquo;s important. It&rsquo;s no secret that, for a long time, a lot of the guys felt distant from the program. So for him to come in and that&rsquo;s one of the first things on his agenda was to reach out to the alumni, it made a lot of ears throughout the Georgetown community perk up. It was a great first impression for all of us, so we&rsquo;re all excited about that aspect for sure."
Etan: Now, I&rsquo;ve heard that from a few guys that over the last decade or so, there has been distance from the program. I don&rsquo;t understand why, but I&rsquo;ve heard quite a few former players mention that.&nbsp;
Sweetney: "Yeah, that&rsquo;s pretty accurate, because a lot of guys have been feeling like that. I don&rsquo;t think it was intentional. It&rsquo;s just a lot of people from the program never reached out and said, 'Hey guys, come to the games,' or, 'We&rsquo;re going to have this special program to bring the alumni back together and back into the fold of the program.' It was really no interaction. It was almost like, 'Hey if you want to come to the game, you have to jump through hoops.'
"Luckily for me, I had direct access. So I would just call Pat Jr. and he would always look out. But it was never anyone from Georgetown who ever contacted me and said, 'Hey, come around. We have this event.' I don&rsquo;t even know if they had anyone assigned to do that &mdash; not really sure why. I don&rsquo;t think it was personal. But yeah, a lot of guys felt they weren&rsquo;t embraced the way alumni who have given so much to the program should be."
Etan: And what did Coach Cooley do differently? You and JYD both mentioned this, so I'm just curious. What exactly did he do?&nbsp;
Sweetney: "Well, for example, he held a Zoom [meeting] just yesterday and JYD was on there. But it was just with a lot of Georgetown former players and he introduced himself to us, told all of us how honored he was to be given this opportunity for a program he has so much respect for. He was knowledgeable of the history of the program, and he specifically told us, 'Hey, I want you all to be involved. This is a family thing and whatever I have to do to make things comfortable for you all, just let me know because I want you to be a part of this entire process.'
"And a few players &mdash; I don&rsquo;t want to say their names because it wasn&rsquo;t a public meeting &mdash; but a few guys specifically said that, for years, they thought the program didn&rsquo;t like them or respect them, so this was a breath of fresh air. So yeah, Coach Cooley definitely started off on the right foot with all of us."
Etan: You know, the DMV is really excited about the direction of the program. Do you get that same feeling?&nbsp;
Sweetney: "Definitely. And a large reason for that is because Cooley is saying all the right things. And what he did at Providence, when he got there, the program was where it was, and he&rsquo;s shown that he can turn programs around. He has the resume to support that, and people in the DMV are hoping that he can do the same thing here. And also, with the DMV being a hotbed as far as recruiting, it&rsquo;s one of the top places in the country for high school players going on to play Division I. So hopefully, he can get in and develop those relationships in the DMV and get some of this local talent."
Etan: So you mentioned that, and that&rsquo;s something else that&rsquo;s always brought up. One of the biggest criticisms you hear around the DMV is that two of the biggest schools in the area &mdash; Georgetown and Maryland &mdash; haven&rsquo;t kept the local DMV talent local. You saw Coach Kevin Willard came in on Day 1 last year and made a concerted effort to recruit guys from the DMV: Jamie Kaiser, Deshawn Harris-Smith and Jahnathan Lamothe. All of them are from the area.
Do you expect that same level of focus from Coach Cooley? People don&rsquo;t understand the level of talent in this area, but for a long time, so many have left to play somewhere else. I just watched Jordin Hawkins for UConn light up Arkansas for 24 points last night. They&rsquo;re headed to the Sweet 16 and he&rsquo;s from right here and went to DeMatha.
Sweetney: "Definitely, that&rsquo;s one of the things Coach Cooley mentioned. He&rsquo;s definitely aware of it and he told us specifically that he wanted to focus on and develop those relationships in the DMV and get some of this local talent to stay home. And I hope that&rsquo;s the case because there is so much talent in this area."
Etan: There definitely is. It&rsquo;s really amazing. KD made that documentary a few years ago &mdash; "Basketball County: In The Water.&rdquo; So I think that really showed the world how special the DMV is.
<div class="mceNonEditable"><spike>&nbsp;</spike></div>
Sweetney: "Now, let me ask you a question if you don&rsquo;t mind?"
Etan: Oh, you&rsquo;re gonna take over the interview? (Laughing) Sure, go ahead.
Sweetney: (Laughing) "No, but seriously. Because we were discussing the DMV talent and I&rsquo;ve seen your son Malcolm play, he is a tremendous talent and can do a lot on the basketball court. But would you be open to him coming to Georgetown? I know we&rsquo;re a rival school and you&rsquo;re Syracuse royalty, but 'What If' you know?"
Etan: Oh, you just gonna put me on the spot huh? (Laughing) Well honestly, and people ask me this all the time, that&rsquo;s one of the reasons <a href="https://www.basketballnews.com/stories/high-school-basketball-malcolm-thomas-qa-dematha-stags-season-acit-championship-recruiting-maryland-dmv-etan-thomas-prospect" target="_blank" rel="noopener">I did an article with Malcolm</a>. We sat down and discussed this because so many people say to me, "So Malcolm is definitely going to Syracuse?" And I always respond with, "He&rsquo;s going to whatever situation is best for him, whether that&rsquo;s Syracuse or somewhere else." Of course, both his parents went there, so yes, there is history there. But I was glad to hear him echo that he wants to go to the best place for him.&nbsp;
Sweetney: "So it wouldn&rsquo;t be weird for you to cheer for Georgetown if he came to us?"
Etan: Not at all. Listen, I bleed Orange, make no mistake, but I genuinely want him to go to the situation that&rsquo;s best for him. My situation at Syracuse worked out for me, but it has to be the right situation for him.&nbsp;
Sweetney: "That makes total sense."
Etan: I mean, Malcolm grew up here. He&rsquo;s a PG County kid. Although he has his love for Syracuse because both his parents went there, he grew up watching Georgetown, Maryland and all the DMV schools and surrounding schools like all of the other kids who grew up here. What do you think with your sons? I know they&rsquo;re a little young now, but when they get older.
Sweetney: "It&rsquo;s funny because people always say that to me too. They say they&rsquo;re future Hoyas and I&rsquo;m like, 'Well I don&rsquo;t know, we&rsquo;ll see.' But like you said, I want them to do whatever is best for them. Whatever fits their needs and their happiness. So I get it. Just had to ask you that, and honestly, that&rsquo;s good to hear because your son can play. So I'm glad to hear that you&rsquo;re open to it.
"But yeah, we&rsquo;re in a good place as a program and going in a good direction, so I think fans can expect an entire wave of local talent coming to Georgetown and exciting times in the near future."

Etan Thomas talks to Jerome "Junk Yard Dog" Williams and Michael Sweetney about their first impressions of Ed Cooley at Georgetown.

Georgetown legends Jerome Williams, Michael Sweetney on Ed Cooley hire

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) &mdash; Domantas Sabonis had 19 points, a career-high 16 assists and 15 rebounds in his fourth triple-double of the season, and the Sacramento Kings beat the skidding Houston Rockets 139-114 on Friday night for their third straight win.
The Kings (23-18) moved five games over .500 for the first time since April 2006, when they made their most recent playoff appearance.
&ldquo;You don&rsquo;t just feel it at the arena, you feel it out and about in Sacramento,&rdquo; Kings coach Mike Brown said of the response to the highest-scoring team in the NBA. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s genuine. You genuinely feel their joy when you talk to them... We love them to death, and we are happy that we can bring some joy to them.&rdquo;
Sabonis joined Oscar Robertson as the only players in franchise history with at least 15 points, 15 rebounds and 15 assists in a game. Robertson did it 15 times for the Cincinnati Royals.
Harrison Barnes scored 27 points and De&rsquo;Aaron Fox added 24.
&ldquo;They were making a ton of 3s in transition,&rdquo; Rockets coach Stephen Silas said. &ldquo;We are a help team and we&rsquo;re gonna give up some, but too many.&rdquo;
With 11:09 left, Malik Monk, Chimezie Metu, Tari Eason and Garrison Matthews were all ejected. Monk and Matthews went face-to-face after a foul was called on Monk during a fast break.
&ldquo;I had no issue with it,&rdquo; Barnes said of the altercation. &ldquo;At the end of the day that&rsquo;s the fight that we need as a team, that&rsquo;s the fight that we&rsquo;ll need this season, and that&rsquo;s the fight we&rsquo;ll need for the playoffs.&rdquo;
Jalen Green and Jabari Smith Jr. each scored 27 points for the Rockets (10-32). They have lost nine consecutive games and 14 of 15.
&ldquo;Just my teammates trusting me,&rdquo; Smith, the No. 3 pick, said of his career night. &ldquo;Me trying to get to the basket more and trying to expand my game a little bit."
TIP-INS
Rockets: G Kevin Porter Jr. was ruled out with a bruised left foot.
Kings: G Kevin Huerter was ruled out for the second consecutive game with a non-COVID-19 illness. Terence Davis started in his place and scored 22 points.
&nbsp;

Domantas Sabonis had his fourth triple-double of the season, and the Sacramento Kings beat the skidding Houston Rockets 139-114.

Sabonis has triple-double, Kings rout skidding Rockets

In his "Blazing the Trail" series, Mat Issa analyzes Chauncey Billups' dual-threat nature and impact on the next generation of point guards.

Blazing the Trail: Chauncey Billups, the basketball cheat code

NEW YORK (AP) &mdash; Ben Simmons streaked behind the defense and caught a pass in transition that he dunked. About a minute later, he fired a cross-court pass to a Brooklyn Nets teammate for a 3-pointer.
Those were the types of plays the Philadelphia 76ers had seen many times before.
On Monday, Simmons finally made them for another team.
Simmons played against his former club in his first NBA game since June 2021, making him among a number of big names who got back to basketball action.
&ldquo;I&rsquo;m grateful just to be able to step on that floor, step on an NBA floor again,&rdquo; Simmons said. &ldquo;So I had a lot of fun out there.&rdquo;
Kawhi Leonard also returned for the Los Angeles Clippers, as did Jamal Murray for the Denver Nuggets, after they both sat out last season recovering from surgeries for ACL tears.
&ldquo;539 days later&hellip; BOUT THAT TIME!!&rdquo; <a href="https://twitter.com/BeMore27/status/1577028842304462850?s=20&amp;t=ONs7jrBtujD6lJ4WvMznnw">Murray wrote on Twitter</a>.
&ldquo;Just being able to put all that hard work that I did throughout the, whatever, 14, 16 months, just being able to put that into test playing against NBA talent was good,&rdquo; Leonard said after the Clippers 102-97 win over Portland. &ldquo;Just being out there with the guys, talking, I missed it. It was a great experience for me.&rdquo;
That's no doubt how their teams felt after expecting to be title contenders last season but instead having those hopes wrecked by injuries. Paul George also missed significant time for the Clippers, and Michael Porter Jr. was out for all but nine games for the Nuggets.
They all played Monday, along with Damian Lillard returning for Portland after missing the final 47 games last season, when the Clippers and Trail Blazers met in a preseason game.
&ldquo;As a fan of the game, Kawhi being back is great for basketball, Jamal Murray being back is great for basketball,&rdquo; the Nets' Kevin Durant said. &ldquo;All the guys that have been out injured and able to play again, it&rsquo;s a great feeling just seeing them out there.&rdquo;
Simmons hoped he was close to playing last February after getting traded to the Nets in a deal headlined by James Harden. Simmons had cited mental health reasons in seeking a trade from the 76ers following a disappointing postseason when he took a bulk of the criticism after the No. 1 seed in the Eastern Conference was ousted by Atlanta in the second round.
But a herniated disk kept him from making a late-season debut and forced him to get offseason surgery.
Fully cleared now, Simmons was in the starting lineup and finished with six points, five assists and four rebounds in 19 minutes. He went weakly out of Philadelphia, with the last memory of the 2016 No. 1 pick's time there passing up a layup down the stretch of the Game 7 loss to the Hawks. But he looked confident pushing the ball in transition or playmaking from the post &mdash; though did miss his only two free throws.
Simmons said he thought he would feel nervous but didn't. Durant recalled feeling anxious when he returned after missing the 2019-20 season after Achilles tendon surgery.
&ldquo;You wonder how your lungs are going to feel playing in an organized game because playing pickup, working out is different than playing in a game,&rdquo; Durant said. &ldquo;So you just want to see where your legs are on the jump shot. So being away for a year, you get a lot of anxiety coming back. I know I did.&rdquo;
In Seattle, a bevy of big names made their preseason debuts before a sold-out crowd in just the second preseason game between NBA teams in the Emerald City since the departure of the SuperSonics for Oklahoma City.
While there were Clippers and Blazers fans, the prominent color was overwhelmingly green and gold amid constant hope that some day the Sonics will return.
The fans that showed up were treated to Leonard&rsquo;s first action since injuring his knee during the 2021 Western Conference semifinals, just a few days before Simmons.
Leonard looked just fine, knocking down his first shot 15 seconds into the game and scored 11 points in 16 minutes in the first half. John Wall also made his debut with the Clippers after the five-time All-Star did not play last season. Wall scored five points in 11 minutes and George added 12 points in 16 minutes. All three played just the first half.
Lillard played into the second half and had 16 points in 23 minutes.
The royalty of Seattle basketball turned out, including Lenny Wilkens, Shawn Kemp, Gary Payton, Jamal Crawford, George Karl, Detlef Schrempf, Sam Perkins and many others connected to the city&rsquo;s hoops history. Clippers owner Steve Ballmer grabbed the microphone before tipoff and thanked his hometown for turning out.
&ldquo;I watched thousands of basketball games in Seattle &mdash; CYO, little kids, AAU, pro, college, you name it. So if this is a basketball city, damnit, let&rsquo;s hear it,&rdquo; Ballmer screamed right before tipoff, eliciting huge cheers from the crowd.
Murray's absence in Denver was even longer, having torn his ACL in April 2021 and leaving him unable to try to duplicate the brilliant postseason he had while leading the Nuggets to the 2020 West finals at Walt Disney World.
Murray scored 10 points in 15 minutes for the Nuggets in their loss to Oklahoma City.
&ldquo;Those long-term injuries are tough, dark,&rdquo; Oklahoma City coach Mark Daigneault said. "These guys do not have long windows to play basketball, they cannot play until they are 50. It&rsquo;s tough and takes a lot of commitment and work. The progress, especially early on, is almost invisible. You are non-weight bearing for a large amount of time with those types of injuries. Certainly happy for him and wish him well, in terms of staying healthy. He&rsquo;s a really good player and their team will benefit from having him back.&rdquo;
___
AP Sports Writers Pat Graham in Denver and Tim Booth in Seattle contributed to this report.

"All the guys that have been out injured and able to play again, it’s a great feeling just seeing them out there," Kevin Durant said.

Ben Simmons, Kawhi Leonard, Jamal Murray among happy NBA returns

Players across throughout the NBA will attest to a common slogan for long-term staying power: Know Your Role.
For Bruce Brown, that catchphrase has challenged him, helped him thrive and led him to Denver.
In his four-year NBA run to date, Brown has shapeshifted into all sorts of roles and archetypes while playing for the Detroit Pistons and Brooklyn Nets. He opened his career playing as a shooting guard, shifted to point guard in his second season, reinvented himself as a <a href="https://www.basketballnews.com/stories/nba-stats-notebook-bruce-brown-is-an-enigma-in-all-the-right-ways" target="_blank" rel="noopener">jack-of-all-trades wing in Brooklyn</a> and even logged meaningful time as a small-ball center while solidifying himself as a critical piece for the Nets.&nbsp;
This summer, the 25-year-old finally received some control of his destiny as an unrestricted free agent. As Brown negotiated with multiple prospective franchises, he wanted to know his role &mdash; not just in terms of playing time, but also in his own stylistic fit. When Brown signed a two-year, $13.2 million contract with the Denver Nuggets, he asserted that Denver would provide a fruitful on-court marriage of scheme and talent.
"[Knowing my role] was huge, because you don't want to go to a team where it just won't work, right?" Brown told Basketball News in a phone interview. "So I knew coming to Denver &mdash; the way they play, it's a lot of cuts, slips [and] corner threes. And then, they got a lot of guys who know how to play the game of basketball, so the game would be a lot easier."
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Of course, Denver also rosters an off-ball cutter's dream in Nikola Jokic. Brown expects easy on-court chemistry with the back-to-back reigning MVP.
"I feel like I'm one of the best cutters in the league," he said. "So I can find open spots. make the game easier for him, knock down corner threes [and] just take some pressure off."
Those cuts, slips and corner threes became pillars of Brown's game after he joined the Nets. With Kyrie Irving, Kevin Durant and James Harden in the fold, Brooklyn didn't have room for another lead guard. To stay on the court, Brown's usage underwent a dramatic overhaul. Just look at this play-type data from Synergy:
<table style="border-collapse: collapse; width: 100%; height: 154px;" border="1">
<tbody>
<tr style="height: 66px;">
<td style="width: 10.4071%; height: 66px;">Year</td>
<td style="width: 19.5455%; height: 66px;">PnR Ball-Handler Play Freq.</td>
<td style="width: 18.8929%; height: 66px;">PnR Roll-Man Play Freq.</td>
<td style="width: 10.5377%; height: 66px;">Cut Freq.</td>
</tr>
<tr style="height: 22px;">
<td style="width: 10.4071%; height: 22px;">2018-19</td>
<td style="width: 19.5455%; height: 22px;">15.8%</td>
<td style="width: 18.8929%; height: 22px;">N/A&nbsp;</td>
<td style="width: 10.5377%; height: 22px;">11.7%</td>
</tr>
<tr style="height: 22px;">
<td style="width: 10.4071%; height: 22px;">2019-20</td>
<td style="width: 19.5455%; height: 22px;">29.5%</td>
<td style="width: 18.8929%; height: 22px;">N/A</td>
<td style="width: 10.5377%; height: 22px;">10.3%</td>
</tr>
<tr style="height: 22px;">
<td style="width: 10.4071%; height: 22px;">2020-21</td>
<td style="width: 19.5455%; height: 22px;">3.6%</td>
<td style="width: 18.8929%; height: 22px;">12.1%</td>
<td style="width: 10.5377%; height: 22px;">26.2%</td>
</tr>
<tr style="height: 22px;">
<td style="width: 10.4071%; height: 22px;">2021-22</td>
<td style="width: 19.5455%; height: 22px;">4.4%</td>
<td style="width: 18.8929%; height: 22px;">9.3%</td>
<td style="width: 10.5377%; height: 22px;">23.7%</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
(Scroll right to view full table on mobile. Note that N/A means Synergy tracked less than 10 total possessions of a play type)
"My first year, I was more of a 2, and the second year moving to the 1 [was] just a learning experience," Brown said. "That was the first time I've ever played the 1, so [I'm] knowing every position, knowing where players are supposed to go; I'm knowing every single play from every position.
"And then when I get to Brooklyn, it was a completely different situation where they already have their starting guards. Second season, I was like, I need to do something to fit in to get on the floor. Defensively, I can get on the floor that way. But on the offensive end, I need to do something to stay on the floor to at least help the guys out there on the floor. And then that's when I just started being a little rover. They were helping off me, so I would cut and get easy layups just to keep them honest."
Brown credited former Nets director of player development Adam Harrington for helping him make the change in his first year with Brooklyn. Entering his second season with the Nets, Brown wanted to incorporate more perimeter skills back into his role, so he spent time with Brooklyn assistant coach Royal Ivey (a.k.a. "Coach Smoke") developing his three-point shot. The work led to a 40.4% long-range clip in 2021-22, by far a career-high.
But Brown's past experience as a playmaking guard didn't just fall by the wayside. In fact, he believes it gives him extra advantages when he slips screens, cuts or rolls to the basket. Brown knows what he should be looking for in defensive rotations from his time as a primary ball-handler, and that opens up extra passing lanes and scoring opportunities.
"Me being the 1, I know if I hit the big in the pocket, I know where the help's coming from [and] what I wanted to do," Brown said. "So it just made it a lot easier &mdash; like, I knew the low man is always gonna help off the corner, so either the corner pass or the man up top is gonna go. But if I don't roll too far to the rim, the floater's always open."
The <a href="https://www.basketballnews.com/stories/nba-stats-notebook-bruce-brown-is-an-enigma-in-all-the-right-ways" target="_blank" rel="noopener">floater is a gold mine if Brown can level up his efficiency with the shot</a>. But the below clips demonstrate his unique wiring as a cutting and rolling playmaker.
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Brown needs a mere split-second to diagnose where defenses will help, and from there, he can throw lobs, hit bigs for layups or send the ball out to the corners. Rarely can players make passing reads with such little time on the ball. It's easy to picture him in a two-man action with Jamal Murray that results in a quality assist, or him cutting off of Jokic and making the extra pass to a shooter.&nbsp;
Over the summer, Brown has continued to refine the three-ball, and wants to add consistency shooting above the break in addition to his sweet spots in the corners. When the Nuggets laid out their vision for Brown, they pitched that he wouldn't need to completely reshape his game again. The tools Brown added in Brooklyn can easily work alongside Denver's stars.
"Come in, basically play the same role [with cuts, slips]," Brown said of what the Nuggets asked of him. "I mean, the ball's gonna be in Jokic and Jamal's hands the majority of the game. So really, just play off them like I was doing in Brooklyn with KD and Kyrie, so, basically the same thing."
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With Brown and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope among the new additions in Denver, the Nuggets didn't just bolster their defense &mdash; they also added two players who understand their offensive fits alongside the team's hubs.&nbsp;
"I think [with] all the new pieces, that everybody knows how to play basketball. Everybody knows their role," Brown said. "Nobody gonna try to do too much. We know the main guys who are gonna have the ball in their hands... We just do what we're supposed to do and we'll take care of everything else."

Bruce Brown signed a two-year deal with the Nuggets this offseason after reinventing his role with the Nets.

Bruce Brown feeling secure in his new role with the Denver Nuggets

<a href="https://www.fiba.basketball/eurobasket/2022/news/greece-eke-out-win-over-italy-amid-saturday-night-fervor-in-milan" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The following game recap</a> was originally published on FIBA's official website. Check out their <a href="https://www.fiba.basketball/eurobasket/2022/news" target="_blank" rel="noopener">complete coverage of FIBA EuroBasket 2022</a>.
MILAN (Italy) &ndash; Greece maintained their 100 percent start at FIBA EuroBasket 2022 by outlasting co-hosts Italy&nbsp;<a href="https://www.fiba.basketball/eurobasket/2022/game/0309/Greece-Italy#tab=boxscore">85-81</a>&nbsp;in a compelling encounter that eventually went to the wire.
It showcased everything that is great about international basketball, great stars at their peak, battling one another intensely, in front of 11,742 fans at the Milano Assago Arena.
The Greeks began vigorously, their pressure defense amped to the max, and the combo of Giannis Antetokounmpo and Tyler Dorsey finding opportunities to build an early 16-7 lead.
After starting 0-for-5 from three-point range, Gigi Datome kickstarted an Italian revival from deep amid an 8-2 burst in the first - and despite an 11-3 Greek surge in the second, an ability to get to the foul line accelerated the home side within reach at 47-40 at the half.
Saturday night fervor was in plentiful supply in front of a capacity crowd sprinkled with basketball royalty in the shape of Spurs coach Gregg Popovich and an array of former charges including Marco Belinelli and Luis Scola.
They received a second half treat as the rivals danced and swayed back and forth, Greece up 14 in the third but then bombarded by consecutive threes from Simone Fontecchio inside a minute and then another from Achille Polonara.
The Azzurri were forced to scrap for every chances when their guests re-opened a double-digit advantage entering the fourth. This time, Greece had just enough breathing space to shrug off a late rally, inspired by Fontecchio and a small ball switch, that slashed the lead to just three with Stefano Tonut's attempt to force overtime with two seconds left missing its mark.
Turning Point:&nbsp;Italy never led but continued to find ways to respond to each Greek surge until late in the third when a 12-2 run broke their resolve. It began with two free throws from Giannis Antetokounmpo but when he immediately went to the bench, his colleagues seized the spotlight to build a 71-56 advantage that proved insurmountable.
TCL Player of the Game:&nbsp;Giannis Antetokounmpo was very much The Greek Freak, notching 7 of his game-high 25 points in a tone-setting opening period as defensive anchor and eventually adding 11 rebounds, 3 assists and 3 steals.
Stats Don&rsquo;t Lie:&nbsp;Greece found efficient scoring, converting 27-for-60 and finding sweet spots under the basket and off screens to find open threes on the left, a mirror image of Italy.
Bottom Line:&nbsp;Greece is 2-0 following what were expected to be its two toughest games in Group C. There are still wrinkles to iron out before the transfer to Berlin. Italy, now 1-1, may need to nurse bruises before Monday&rsquo;s meeting with Ukraine.
They said:
"I think if we fight, we're going to make mistakes every game. But if we fight, we keep battling, no matter if we're up or down. We just keep pushing - I think that's the goal. Because when we get down, when they make runs, that can be contagious. We've just got to keep our body language right and just keep fighting." -&nbsp;Greece guard Tyler Dorsey
&ldquo;We remained competitive and that&rsquo;s the good thing,. We refused to step back. We were always on the level of being very competitive, We had our good moments. Unfortunately the bad moments, Italy came back. They`re such a team. We prepared for that in terms of Italy playing small ball. They played ball out with great shooters in Melli and Polonara but we managed to control that with switches. We had our challenges with our system and our play with the big bodies out there but the forwards and guards did a great job.&rdquo; &ndash;&nbsp;Greek head coach Dimitrios Itoudis
&ldquo;I&rsquo;m really proud of my players. We played so hard. But the best thing that we showed tonight is that we never give up. Probably another team in that situation, where we were in the third quarter, when we were a little bit tired, Greece&nbsp; was playing great and I was a little bit worried. But my players showed me I had no need to be worried.&rdquo; &ndash;&nbsp;Italy head coach Gianmarco Pozzecco

Greece gets a tough win against Italy in the group stage of EuroBasket 2022.

Greece eke out win over Italy amid Saturday night fervor in Milan

A league source has told BasketballNews.com that the Phoenix Suns will submit a bid to host the 2025 NBA All-Star Game. If they are unsuccessful, they will submit a second bid to host the event in 2026, as the Suns and the city of Phoenix are all-in on obtaining the league's most popular weekend of the season.
Entering into a new golden age of basketball, the Suns organization wants to capitalize on a unique opportunity. Phoenix hasn&rsquo;t hosted an All-Star Weekend since 2009, and it would definitely be a nice change of pace as far as climate is concerned. With this past year&rsquo;s event in Cleveland, the next two will be hosted in Salt Lake City and Indianapolis.
If Phoenix is successful and lands the the exciting weekend in 2025, it could be perfect timing with Chris Paul&rsquo;s potential swan-song send-off in the Valley during his final All-Star appearance. Paul could certainly play at a high level for years to come, but his current contract is set to expire after the 2024-25 season. Wouldn&rsquo;t it be awesome to see CP3 get the royal treatment alongside his All-Star teammates at the Footprint Center?
Upgrading the Footprint Center across the board with extensive renovations, the Suns are confident in the quick turnaround of hosting another massive event like All-Star Weekend. And with a booming economy growing continuously in Phoenix, this feels like the ideal location to host such an event.

The city of Phoenix is ready to host another All-Star Game. A league source told BasketballNews.com a bid will soon be submitted.

Exclusive: Phoenix will submit bid to host 2025 NBA All-Star Game

We're nearing the end of the NBA regular season, which means award ballots will be due pretty soon. And because award ballots will be due pretty soon, the conversation around who deserves what award or team selection will ramp up.
We've seen recent pushes for Devin Booker (and to a lesser extent, Jayson Tatum) to get MVP love; Pascal Siakam is making a compelling case for an All-NBA forward slot, while his rookie companion Scottie Barnes is, at worst, making a serious push for Rookie of the Year. The Defensive Player of the Year award competition seems very much in the air right now.
These conversations fluctuate between fun, informative, nauseating and flat-out toxic &mdash; please check any and all xenophobia at the door, for example &mdash; but the conversations happen for a reason. We're watching (and hopefully enjoying!) the best men-ballers in the world, and want them to be rewarded for their excellence. It's a status thing, as well as a legacy thing, once you zoom out to Hall-of-Fame or GOAT talks.
As someone who doesn't have a ballot (email me whenever you're ready, NBA), I generally love digging into the awards. On the flip side, my level of care for it leads to frustration. While it would be unrealistic and unwise for everyone to follow the exact same rubric, the lack of consensus from the league and/or voters on key factors can get bothersome.&nbsp;
Heading into the final two weeks of the season, I have a few questions that I think the voting pool should come to a general understanding on, even if the selections themselves differ.
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HOW AVAILABLE DO PLAYERS NEED TO BE?
Before digging into specific award questions, I don't think there's a more pressing issue than this one. The combination of injuries and COVID absences have ravaged the NBA over the past couple of seasons. It's hard to blame&nbsp;a player for missing games due to either, but you have to split hairs once award time comes.
I think the voting choices could be made a little easier if there was a baseline expectation in terms of games played or minutes played. For my personal, fictitious ballot, I filtered for 70% of games played last season. I dropped that threshold to 60% this year in light of how wild the absences were at the beginning of the season.
Whatever the marker is &mdash; 50 games, 2,000 minutes &mdash; having something objective in place to limit the pool off rip could be beneficial.&nbsp;
"Voter X" doesn't hate your team and shouldn't get death threats in their DMs; your favorite player simply missed half the season. Sorry!
WHAT TO DO ABOUT NIKOLA JOKIC AND JOEL EMBIID?
The MVP conversation is exhausting enough; they're both worthy candidates for different reasons. It would not &mdash; NOT &mdash; be a "robbery" if Embiid beats out Jokic, or if Jokic beats Embiid. You can disagree, but they've been two of the top three players in the league all year long.&nbsp;
The more pressing concern comes with All-NBA voting. As mentioned, Jokic and Embiid have been two of the top three players in the league this season. They also play the same position (center); more importantly, that is the&nbsp;only&nbsp;position those two have played.
I don't love Basketball-Reference's position estimates because they seem to be height-based more than role-based, but it's telling that Embiid and Jokic have played 100% of their minutes at the 5 by their tally. That number was at 99% for Jokic last season, but reasonable folks are not giving Jokic the forward/center designation because he played 37 seconds with Bol Bol.
But yet, here we are, with Jokic and Embiid being eligible at forward for All-NBA voting.&nbsp;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-theme="dark">
Small note: I&rsquo;m told that both Nikola Jokic and Joel Embiid will be eligible at both forward and center on the All-NBA vote. So both players can make first-team.
&mdash; Mike Singer (@msinger) <a href="https://twitter.com/msinger/status/1507771123806601216?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 26, 2022</a></blockquote>

<script src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script>

On the surface, it's a welcome loophole to give both players the First Team selection they deserve. Zoom in even a small percentage, and you'll see that it's a level of fudging that royally screws a forward on the third team. The debate then becomes: Has the NBA's fourth-best center (Rudy Gobert?) been better than the NBA's sixth-best forward (Siakam? Jimmy Butler?). And... probably not? But that shouldn't be the discussion to begin with.
I know, you know, we know that Jokic and Embiid are not forwards in the slightest. If you want to get into the role-played discussion, why is Jokic more of a forward than a guard? Explain it to me like I'm 5.
If you have Jokic over Embiid for MVP, you're admitting Embiid has been the second-best center in the NBA. The inverse is true if you're voting for Embiid. There are some positional gray areas to sort through this year (hi DeMar DeRozan and Luka Doncic); there is no debate about what position Jokic and Embiid play.
The&nbsp;real&nbsp;solution here is for the NBA to change the ballot, either going completely positionless or using the All-Star game format (two backcourt, three frontcourt). I've seen a middle ground mentioned &mdash; two backcourt, two frontcourt, one wild card &mdash; and I'd be cool with that.&nbsp;
Until then, my take is to make the tough choice. One of Embiid or Jokic should be the Second Team center &mdash; because they're centers.
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HOW MUCH SHOULD DEFENSE MATTER FOR ROOKIE AWARDS?
This has been heavily debated due to the outlier (at least until recently) production of Cleveland Cavaliers big man Evan Mobley.&nbsp;
In years past, Rookie of the Year has mostly been the "who has the best per-game stats" award. Naturally, guards (or wings) have the leg up because they have the ball in their hands; Blake Griffin (2011) and Karl-Anthony Towns (2016) are the only bigs to win the award in the last 15 years.
Mobley has a good enough case with numbers &mdash; roughly 15 points and 8 rebounds with 2.5 stocks (steals plus blocks) is nothing to sneeze at &mdash; but the foundation of his case has been what he's been able to do on the non-glamour end.&nbsp;
He hasn't just been rookie-good; he's made a <a href="https://www.basketballnews.com/stories/defensive-awards-and-a-celebration-of-defense" target="_blank" rel="noopener">legit All-Defense case</a> for his work this season. There's been slippage as of late, a natural byproduct of the team falling apart around him (bye Jarrett Allen), but his unique skill set unlocks a lot of what the Cavs have done from a scheme perspective.&nbsp;
While acknowledging that Mobley gets fair usage as an elbow or handoff hub, it's still fair to dub him as a play-finisher. That's in contrast to Barnes, who's had to wear a multitude of hats offensively, and the show-running that Cade Cunningham has assumed in Detroit (with the worst roster context among the serious ROY candidates).&nbsp;
It's become a sort of fundamental debate: Do you value the on-ball responsibility or the defensive aptitude more?
I don't like that question &mdash; too broad for my taste &mdash; but I'd like to get to a point where the defense is factored in, period, before getting to where it's valued in relation to that.
(As an aside: On March 14, I tweeted that I <a href="https://twitter.com/NekiasNBA/status/1503403710579359749?s=20&amp;t=ewDkbXyUS_MbRcFjhASW_g" target="_blank" rel="noopener">didn't see a real case</a> for a non-Mobley guy to win the award to that point. Barnes has thoroughly shut me up in that time frame; 16-7-5-1-1 while taking on a multitude of tough defensive assignments is pretty darn impressive. Toronto's 6-2 record helps too. I'll take my L.)
WHY CAN'T JA MORANT WIN THE MOST IMPROVED PLAYER AWARD?
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This was a question born from a <a href="https://twitter.com/i/spaces/1YpKkZnAlRPxj?s=20" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Twitter Space held by the Basketball News staff </a>on Friday. There seems to be a pretty common sentiment that a player of Ja Morant's stature &mdash; an All-Star, easy All-NBA candidate and fringe MVP candidate &mdash; has been too good&nbsp;to win Most Improved, especially within the context of his draft selection.
I'm not saying Morant would be my choice; to be transaparent, I had Miles Bridges as my front-runner when discussing this on The Dunker Spot (<a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-dunker-spot/id1547857052" target="_blank" rel="noopener">subscribe</a>!), and I want to take the next week or so to solidify my selections.&nbsp;
But the logic doesn't track for me. If the award is "Most Improved", the criteria should be "who improved the most." If the answer if Morant, who has taken substantial statistical leaps and has improved in virtually every area of his game, why should he be disqualified off rip?
If the spirit of the award is "who made the most unexpected leap", then I'd like for that to be agreed upon and carried out moving forward.&nbsp;
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Nekias Duncan poses key questions to voters ahead of NBA award season.

Laying out 4 questions that need to be answered before NBA award time

Mark Schindler teams up with Nekias Duncan and Jackson Frank to create a consensus All-Defensive Team ballot and choose a DPOY.

Celebrating defense: Selecting the 2022 NBA DPOY, All-Defensive Teams

I feel like I've learned a quarter of a million things this year as I've gotten deeper and deeper into basketball. Pace is critically important as a ball-handler, defense is way more complicated and complex than I grasped even last season, and development is about as linear and predictable as the stock market.
Add another detail to the list: We need to appreciate screening more! I keep coming back to this. It's an essential part of the game that tends to get overlooked and, in some ways, I've felt its impact more this season.
Sure, I've noticed a nice bone-crunching screen time and time again, the kind that makes you go, "How is that legal?!" Like, when Nikola Pekovic destroyed Brandon Knight simply for being Brandon Knight.
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This isn't the kind of screen we need to appreciate, but please don't tell Pek I said that!
Pick-and-roll has notably grown as an offensive staple and foundation over the last decade, but what's the first thing that you think of when someone says pick-and-roll? I don't mean to assume your thoughts, but I bet you probably thought about a ball-handler canning a pull-up three or getting downhill off the screen.
The action is all about creating an advantage, kickstarting the offense and either creating a shot directly or forcing the defense into rotation until a better opportunity presents itself. As the screen-and-roll has continued to dominate in relevance, something that seems to have gotten lost in the sauce is that the screening part is pretty darn important! It's a means of amplifying creation, exacerbating an advantage; the best screens are creating an even better advantage. In a way, the highest levels of screening could&nbsp;be viewed as a means of self-creation when factoring in other aspects.
Defenses have really adapted this season. Coverage versatility has become a must for the majority of teams, throwing some funk into the mix to make easy offense a bit harder. Teams are more comfortable blitzing ball-handlers &mdash; sending two to the ball against ball-screens &mdash; to try to negate the initial advantage and force secondary options to beat them.
The Minnesota Timberwolves built their defense on it (less recently), the Chicago Bulls routinely play with their 5-man high on screens and the Milwaukee Bucks have made it a near automatic response. It's hard to get by playing defense just being solid in one way because offenses are just that good.
Rudy Gobert, screen-assist royalty, is doing so much more as a roller than he gets credit for routinely. For starters, he sets hard screens. Defenders feel them and don't often get through them. While he doesn't necessarily roll fast, his downhill gravity is a key matchstick that ignites the Utah Jazz's offense.&nbsp;
More importantly, on top of that, he can make solid reads and decisions on the roll once he receives the ball.
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It's not perfect. Gobert can show some clunkiness if he has to put the ball on the deck, but he's threatening enough with his roll presence and capable enough of a decision-maker that defenses have to respect the process (don't ask about post-ups).
Gobert passes the threshold required of a screen-and-roll player, which has only risen over the past few years, and I feel, particularly, this season. If you can't make quality decisions off an action or finish the advantage efficiently yourself, that's a win for the defense. It's extremely hard to strictly be a finisher at the basket or a lob threat. You need more juice now! Even if you are capable of the decision-making, can you put the ball on the floor once or twice and craft an efficient look? More importantly, can you make the defense care?
We've hardly even gotten into the meat of the screening yet, but it's so important to point out just how difficult it is to be a big in the current NBA. There's often a train of thought along the lines of "screen-and-roll bigs grow on trees," and sure, it's reductive, but I guess not entirely incorrect. However, how many bigs can you just go pick up in the free-agency pool that can meet all the requirements? Being at least a neutral on both ends is extremely hard, especially as a starter!
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Bulls center Nikola Vucevic is one of the best screeners in the league, and shows his versatility and dynamic ability to loosen things offensively for both himself and others. While he's drawn ire from many a Chicago fan for his shooting inconsistency, this offense would not be what it is without Vucevic. We know he can score in a variety of ways, we know he can pass and we know he can screen. The way he blends the trio is what makes him a special offensive player and vital to the Bulls.
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While Vucevic doesn't screen Zach LaVine completely open for the action, watch how he tracks and moves with Jrue Holiday, toeing the line of legality. He screens initially and re-screens again before using his forward momentum and footwork to open himself on the roll.
So while LaVine isn't cleanly open &mdash; largely due to Holiday cheating the action and dodging the first screen from Javonte Green &mdash; Vucevic salvages space with screening. Holiday can't fully reconnect before LaVine starts his way downhill, occupying Serge Ibaka's attention before hitting Vucevic with the pocket pass; the Chicago big man then rumbles into a mesmerizing balletic hook shot. It's quick, Ibaka was already off-kilter and Vucevic takes advantage.
While you could reduce the possession down to a screen and a slow roll, so much more goes on in that space that makes it impressive.
Per Second Spectrum Tracking, Vucevic averages 1.58 seconds per touch, the third-lowest mark amongst players who receive 50 or more touches per game. He touches the ball often, but not for long. He gives the ball energy, adds zest to the possession and serves as a turnkey for the offense.
Send two to one of Chicago's All-NBA candidate guards, and Vucevic slips into space to quickly hit cutters as the defense adjusts to him.
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Or he'll throw in a timely slip when the drop defender is committed to the ball-handler, sure to use his arms to generate some contact with the defender, adding some slight oomph before flipping his hips into a lightning-quick touch shot or jumper. The quickness with which he gets his shots off along with the downhill threat of Chicago's drivers gives the defense headaches.
Speaking of slipping screens, look no further than John Collins!
Trae Young's threat as an elite pull-up shooter, terrifying downhill quickness and immaculate court vision are already a nightmare for defenses. Teams have to often sell out due to Young's advanced craft. Collins slips seemingly every ball-screen, and uses his own explosive downhill dynamism to put the low-man in a torture chamber.
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Rotations are extremely important to executing defense but, man, how do you stop someone like Collins coming down the lane full force even with a perfect rotation?
He creates sinkholes on the perimeter at times with even the mere thought of a slip, as a game has progressed. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, dear God please don't do it again.
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While this is largely a byproduct of bad defense and miscommunication, in the end it's happening because of Collins. Good defensive teams will try to find ways to neutralize the slip and more effectively handle the perimeter, but silencing the slip is easier said than done. Young needs but a sliver of space to be dangerous.
His verticality and touch are nutty. The ball skills have come along, and he's improved greatly on his passing reads.
Next up is one of my favorite possessions in basketball over the past year. Indiana Pacers rookie Terry Taylor screens Khris Middleton into the abyss and makes getting over a screen an absolute terror.&nbsp;
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Buddy Hield is a very good off-ball mover and one of the best shooters in basketball, but this shot is not clean without Taylor.
He screens Middleton just before Tyrese Haliburton passes the ball to Hield. He moves and re-screens with a flip of his hips, as Hield sets up Middleton to his right. He just stays active and makes Middleton work &mdash; which sounds simplistic, but that's the point... it's not. It's the continuous little efforts to open a half-foot of space that can make a significant difference acquiring said real estate.
Next up, the quintessential Jakob Poeltl possession!
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Dejounte Murray isn't a pull-up shooter like that, and the Orlando Magic know, so they go under the screen. But here's the nice subtlety &mdash; so does Jakob.
Like, of course he knows that teams don't go over on screens for Dejounte, but the quick flip and re-screen allows for the Murray snatch-back and an open lane. I can feel that thudding hip check through my laptop.
But we are not done yet folks!
Poeltl rolls and throws in some more trickery, sealing Mo Bamba with yet another "Is this legal?" (Jakob Poeltl, habitual line-stepper) screen. It's the Daniel Theis/Al Horford seal, but Jakob does it better, so it deserves a cooler name. (I'm not sure what, but think on it!)
Murray is a really nice player (an All-Star, of course), but without Poeltl there is no advantage being created here. He eases the burden of primary creation for Murray and amplifies the offense.
As good as Poeltl is as a dribble-handoff operator, there may not be a more explosive and fluid artist at the elbow and slot than Bam Adebayo.
Adebayo sprints into early offense DHO's with the Miami Heat's movement shooters.&nbsp;
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He's another non-stationary screener. He keeps his arms down to try and blur the lines of legality, making it harder to call a moving screen. I absolutely love it.
Try and sell out to stop the quick hitter? Well, Adebayo might have the most fluid hips and change-of-direction ability of any big in the NBA. He flips screens and thuds you for the audacity to try and cheat the action.
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If you're wondering why Miami had an open three even without Adebayo handling the ball &mdash; rewind, and look for the chaser who gets taken out along the way. He cracks back on off-ball defenders like a wide receiver excited to dole out punishment for a change.
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Ja Morant is one of the most punishing drivers in the NBA, with an absurd guile and vertical pop. His audacity is unfathomable.&nbsp;
While Steven Adams certainly has some drawbacks as an offensive player and limitations defensively, he's been a very nice fit for the Memphis Grizzlies. He paves wide open lanes for Morant in a way that few players can. Often when I watch the Grizz, I see Ja wide open in space, gunning towards the rim with a big on his heels and say to myself, "Where is the fifth defender?"
Well, Steven Adams might play a significant part in that!
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He just erases the defender from the picture with his frame.&nbsp;
More on those driving lanes &mdash; Adams will set interior screens on the roll as well, taking the rim-defender out of the picture, parting the sea in the paint for Morant and guiding to easy buckets at the rim.
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Don't forget about impromptu screens!
Oshae Brissett is a joy to watch, as he takes note of ball-watching defenders and sets up wide-open shots for teammates or generates an unwanted matchup for the defense.
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I don't quite know how to quantify screening, but it is&nbsp;something&nbsp;and it's so much more valuable and complex than it generally is made out to be. As the season winds down, take note and appreciate some of the really cool things happening both on and off the ball &mdash; the impact on play, and why it's happening.
I'm still learning more and more about the game each week, and that's awesome to me. Screening is a whole new world this season, and I can't wait until the next realization that opens my eyes even more about the game!
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As the NBA has continued to evolve on both ends, it's worth taking a minute to appreciate the art of screening, writes Mark Schindler.

An explanation of why we need to appreciate screening more

Last month, as COVID-19 ravaged NBA rosters, a record number of G League players were called up and veterans who hadn&rsquo;t put on an NBA jersey in several years were signed.
It seemed like the perfect opportunity for Joe Young to make his NBA comeback and get the second chance that he&rsquo;s dreamed about for four years.
After being drafted No. 43 overall in the 2015 NBA Draft, Young spent three seasons with the Indiana Pacers, but he hasn&rsquo;t been on an NBA roster since the 2017-18 season ended. Instead, he's been putting up impressive numbers in the G League and Chinese Basketball Association.
This season, Young is thriving with the Birmingham Squadron, averaging 19.4 points, 4.2 rebounds, 3.7 assists, 2.3 threes and 1.1 steals on .473/.353/.931 shooting splits. He recently turned heads with a 42-point, 8-assist, 7-three, 3-steal, 1-turnover performance against the Stockton Kings.&nbsp;
&ldquo;Sign that man!&rdquo; his former Pacers teammate Myles Turner pleaded <a href="https://twitter.com/zapearsonNBA/status/1479417688216768513" target="_blank" rel="noopener">on Instagram</a>.
However, even when nearly 150 players were sidelined due to the league&rsquo;s health and safety protocols in late December, Young still didn&rsquo;t get called up.
Young admits that it was hard for him to watch so many other players get the NBA call that he&rsquo;s desperately waited for.
&ldquo;It was very frustrating,&rdquo; Young told BasketballNews.com in an exclusive interview. &ldquo;You know me: I'm all for anybody. I don't hate. A lot of those guys that got called up are from my draft class, and they're my friends. Of course, when I saw it happen, it hurts a little bit inside, man. Because I&rsquo;m a guy who gets up every day and kisses his kids goodbye at 5:45 a.m. to work out and better myself. I really take pride in this game. I love this game. I think about the game all day, every day. The game is all I know. That's my profession, so I try to perfect my craft."
Squadron head coach Ryan Pannone wanted some answers. Last month, at the NBA G League Showcase in Las Vegas, Pannone asked a number of NBA executives about Young, and they all said the same thing: They weren&rsquo;t interested because of concerns about his maturity and character after hearing stories from his Pacers days.
This frustrated Pannone, since he has grown close to Young this season and couldn&rsquo;t be happier with the 29-year-old&rsquo;s leadership, maturity, coachability, work ethic and effort.
&ldquo;Everyone has the right to grow up, and your past mistakes don&rsquo;t define who you are today," Pannone told BasketballNews.com. "But they can help shape and mold you into a better person and father, and that is what Joe Young has done."
Young has made huge strides since his last stint in the NBA, but the mistakes he made in his early-20s have haunted him and affected how he&rsquo;s perceived now. Young knows this, and he&rsquo;s the first person to admit that he was immature while in Indiana.
When the Pacers assigned him to their G League affiliate, the Fort Wayne Mad Ants, the then-rookie Young got upset. And after a few games with the Mad Ants, he pushed back on his G League assignment, telling the Pacers&rsquo; decision-makers that he didn&rsquo;t want to be demoted again. When Pacers head coach Nate McMillan decided to decrease his playing time midseason, Young admits that he grew frustrated and stopped working as hard.
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Now, these are some of Young&rsquo;s biggest regrets and he cringes when talking about the mistakes he made seven years ago.
&ldquo;I'm a changed kid. I've grown up; I'm older,&rdquo; Young said. &ldquo;The things I did that weren&rsquo;t mature, I was 21, 22, 23 years old. Now, I'm 29. It's a whole other mindset. I come in and try to bring as much leadership as I can to a team. I feel like that's what a professional is; I come to work, do my job at a high level, work hard, lead &mdash; and I&rsquo;m professional on and off the court.
&ldquo;I didn't know [how to act] in an NBA scene. I&rsquo;d come down the middle, dunk on a player and start yelling in his face. Then, they&rsquo;d say, &lsquo;He's immature.&rsquo; It's the little things like that. When I came into the league, I was very confident. I was playing great basketball in practice. Coach Nate commended me and said I [was] doing good. But it was just my maturity level. I&rsquo;d do good, and Coach didn't play me, and I started slowing down because he didn't play me. But that's not what a professional does. A professional gets up every day even though he's not playing and he gets his work in because he never knows when his name might get called.&rdquo;
Prior to joining the Squadron, Young was candid about his past with the team&rsquo;s decision-makers.
&ldquo;Before we drafted Joe, we called him to communicate our situation and style of play, and in that first conversation, without being asked, he was very honest and upfront about the mistakes he made with the Pacers &mdash; his attitude, his entitlement and [the lack of] professionalism that he displayed with them,&rdquo; Pannone said. &ldquo;He told me that he was ready to do whatever was asked, be a leader and a veteran who could help younger players not make the same mistakes that he made.&rdquo;
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Marc Chasanoff, the Squadron&rsquo;s general manager and the New Orleans Pelicans&rsquo; senior director of basketball operations, says that Young has been a pleasant surprise.
&ldquo;Entering the G League draft, we didn't have a first-round pick; we were sitting there with two second-rounders and he was at the top of our board,&rdquo; Chasanoff told BasketballNews.com. &ldquo;We were connecting with Joe leading up to the draft, and you got a sense of maturity and growth from his standpoint. He talked about how he made mistakes in the past and how he could have handled things differently. From day one, he was just looking for an opportunity. And that's what the G League is about; it should be a second chance. From day one with us, he's carried himself with the utmost professionalism and has been great with our group. He's one of the pillars of the culture that we've built. Over the past three years, we've really prided ourselves on finding high-character people and high-quality people and he fits that from our experience, for sure.&rdquo;&nbsp;
Young believes that getting married and starting a family helped him mature.
&ldquo;I've matured to a whole &lsquo;nother level, man,&rdquo; Young said. &ldquo;I'm married now, I&rsquo;ve got my kids that look up to me and I&rsquo;ve got a lot of responsibilities. When I got married and had my kids, it just changed my perspective; every time I step on this court, I'm doing it for my family. We work so hard for our kids and family. At the end of the day, I want my son to be like me or even better than me. And I just want my kids to grow up and see that I didn't give up; I continued to fight. I want my family to see me get back into the NBA. I want them to see what they should've seen when I first got to the league.&rdquo;
For the first time in three years, Young&rsquo;s family has been able to watch him play regularly, which has meant a lot to him. That wasn&rsquo;t the case when he was in China.
Young could have continued playing in the Chinese Basketball Association, where he was an All-Star. Over his three seasons abroad, he averaged 33.2 points, 5.9 assists, 4.9 rebounds, 2.8 threes and 1.9 steals. Had he stayed in China, he would&rsquo;ve made considerably more money than a G League team can offer, but he was determined to chase his NBA dream. He came to this decision after an emotional conversation with Stephon Marbury, who was his head coach with the Beijing Royal Fighters last season.
Marbury knows all about the politics of the NBA and how a series of mistakes can change the way you&rsquo;re perceived around the league. Few people can relate to what Young has been through, but Marbury absolutely can.
During their exit meeting last year, both discussed Young&rsquo;s future and how you can&rsquo;t control how people perceive you. At one point, Young and Marbury &ldquo;shed tears together,&rdquo; and Marbury said something that has been stuck in Young's head ever since.
&ldquo;I don't want to see you back in China next season,&rdquo; Marbury said, as recalled by Young. &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t belong here; you belong in the NBA. It's not going to be easy, but if you keep fighting and keep doing what you're doing, you&rsquo;ll get back to the league. Don't give up, even when it gets hard. [When you&rsquo;re doubted], that should make you go harder. Go get what you deserve."
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At that point, Young knew he had to return to the NBA G League and pursue a call-up.
&ldquo;I keep that in the back of my mind,&rdquo; Young said of Marbury's advice. &ldquo;Ever since, I&rsquo;ve been trying to do what he told me. I've been working my tail off ever since I got back from China."
Young is grateful that he got to play for Marbury and learn from him last season. He also believes playing in China helped him become a better leader and learn what it takes to run a team.
&ldquo;Playing for him was amazing, man. I could really tell he cared about me as a person and as a player,&rdquo; Young said of Marbury. &ldquo;That's big bro. He helped elevate me as a player and as a person. We won some games that they&rsquo;d never won before. And I used my time in China to better myself. [I thought], &lsquo;If I keep working here, I can take this mentality and bring it back to the U.S. and get back in the league.&rsquo;&rdquo;
Young started applying what he'd learned in China as soon as he joined the Squadron. On the first day of Birmingham&rsquo;s training camp, Young took the entire team out to Ruth&rsquo;s Chris Steak House so everybody could get to know each other. He&rsquo;s put together several of these team dinners throughout the season. Pannone says he has emerged as a terrific leader and mentor, telling the younger players about his mistakes and passing on lessons that he learned the hard way.
&ldquo;He is an asset to a winning culture," Pannone said. "Who Joe has become as a person, what he has done as a leader and his openness about his past mistakes with our players helped cultivate our culture off the floor, which has carried over to our success on the court. Even when we lost five games in a row, the bond that was built with our team led to an environment of togetherness, fun and work with a focus on the process and not the outcome.&rdquo;
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&ldquo;Joe sets the tone with his work ethic; I wish the guy slept more,&rdquo; Chasanoff added. &ldquo;He's a 5:45 a.m. guy; he gets up, does treatment, gets a lift in and gets a sweat in before other guys even get to the gym. But he also takes the time to get the team together, organizing team dinners. Obviously, he's in a different financial place than a lot of other people in the G League, but I've rarely heard of players organizing team dinners like that, and he's done it three different times. He takes guys under his wing and he's very open about the mistakes he's made in the past and how he&rsquo;s trying to grow from them. He&rsquo;s been great for our culture.&rdquo;
When speaking with his younger teammates, Young keeps his advice simple.
&ldquo;Don't let them say you don't work hard, don't let them say you aren't on time and don't let them say you have off-court issues. Do everything like you're supposed to,&rdquo; he explains. &ldquo;That's what I tell the younger kids. And it's not about just getting there; it's about maintaining and staying [in the league], and that was what I had to figure out myself. When you get that opportunity, don't mess it up because you don&rsquo;t want to be fighting like I'm fighting [to get back].&rdquo;
At one point, Birmingham's coaches had to tell Young to rest more because they were concerned he was pushing himself too hard ahead of a six-games-in-10-days stretch.
&ldquo;He was coming into the gym with our assistant coach Perry Huang at 8:15 a.m. to shoot and work out, and then he would turn around and be ready to practice hard (including twice a day in the preseason),&rdquo; Pannone raved. &ldquo;He allows us to use him as an example by coaching him hard and correcting him. When you can hold accountable and coach hard the player who has the most NBA experience and has made the most money, it helps set the tone for the on-court culture you want to build.&rdquo;
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Chasanoff believes that Young deserves another NBA opportunity, and he&rsquo;s hopeful that the 29-year-old will get a chance to show an organization just how far he&rsquo;s come.
&ldquo;I think Joe deserves the opportunity. He's done everything you could've asked,&rdquo; Chasanoff said. &ldquo;Obviously, he's grown from his past in the NBA. He's matured, he's put in the time from a work-ethic and a character standpoint. I would vouch for him. From a player standpoint, he's bought into the team concept. It's a very unique concept. The G League is the only league in the world that people sign in to leave. You sign in to get the NBA call-up or a better deal overseas. A lot of times, it could be a high-agenda [situation], especially someone in his position &mdash; a former NBA guy who&rsquo;s trying to get back.
"But he bought into the team concept. He hasn't been out there hunting for stats. He bought into the coaching staff. His coachability and work ethic have been very impressive, and he's helped contribute to a very successful team. I think he can help on the NBA side as well. He&rsquo;s looking for a second chance; if and when it comes, I think he can take full advantage of it.&rdquo;
Young appreciates that Pannone and Chasanoff are vouching for him and pushing for him to get called up, which means they&rsquo;d be losing one of their key players.
&ldquo;It means a lot,&rdquo; Young said. &ldquo;That really means a lot. I really appreciate Marc and Ryan and the New Orleans Pelicans organization for helping me get back on track and really believing in me in this process. From the first day to now, they've just been like, &lsquo;Wow, we're shocked.&rsquo; Coach is letting me lead this team. The dinners we had together and the unity is why we won seven in a row. When we lost five in a row, we didn't argue; we stuck together and that came from the dinners and us hanging out. We're a new team, but we feel like we&rsquo;ve been playing together forever.&rdquo;
Young is hopeful that an NBA team will give him a chance to prove that he&rsquo;s changed, just like Pannone and Chasanoff did at the G League level. And he wants every NBA front office to know that they&rsquo;d be getting a player who&rsquo;s extremely hungry, who won&rsquo;t take his roster spot for granted and who will do whatever it takes to stick in the NBA this time around.
&ldquo;I'm ready to show that I'm an NBA player off the court and on the court,&rdquo; Young said. &ldquo;I'm very mature. I will do anything that I need to do to get back to where I belong. I can lead a team, I can apply pressure 94 feet, I can play any role. I can do anything a coach asks me to do on the court and off the court to make a team better.
&ldquo;They're going to get high intensity on the defensive end, and leadership. Someone who will control the team as a point guard and make sure I get everyone in their spots. I&rsquo;ll control the game when I get in, like a point guard should do. I&rsquo;ll control the tempo on the offensive end and, on the defensive end, I&rsquo;ll pick up the point guard full-court and make sure they can't get into their offense. Just bring energy and be annoying. I just want to be that annoying guard where my coach is like, &lsquo;Joe, go in there and give me some energy.&rsquo; I'll go in there and pick them up 94 feet for two minutes, if I&rsquo;ve got to. Those are the little things that I want to show that I can do.&rdquo;
Young has been waiting four years for this opportunity, and he&rsquo;s not giving up anytime soon.
&ldquo;I feel like I'm going to get back in. I'm not going to give up because I know I belong in the league,&rdquo; Young said. &ldquo;I put the work in and I'm mature about it. I'm just ready to get back in, man. Once it happens, I'm going to be shedding some tears, I promise you. And I'm ready to shed some tears.&rdquo;

Joe Young wants to return to the NBA, but he had to prove that he's matured since his Pacers days. In the G League, he's done just that.

Matured Joe Young determined to make NBA comeback: 'I'll do anything'

The 2021-22 NBA campaign has been a Battle Royale-esque affair through the first third of the season, with seemingly 90% of the league jostling for postseason positioning. The Cleveland Cavaliers have popped, Indiana is potentially hitting reset, Memphis has been on a tear without Ja Morant (7-1) and DeMar DeRozan is making off-ball rotations on defense. Very little has been certain or expected in an inspiring start to the year.
Every game I watch, I seem to simultaneously understand more, but know less. So much is changing and evolving each game on a macro- and micro-scale. While my opinions on franchises and players continuously blossom, one thought has constantly reverberated in my mind: Greatness is fleeting.
I&rsquo;ve mostly found myself contemplating this with each passing Los Angeles Lakers game I watch. Anthony Davis is having a good year and will undoubtedly be an All-Star barring health, and all I can think about is how he&rsquo;s not AD. He is in body and person, but not in essence. Those rotations at the rim, a half-step later. His feet on the perimeter, not quite as nimble. He seems tired and fatigued, and is just moving slower in general.
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Davis is having his lowest impact season defensively since his second year in the league, per Dunks and Threes&rsquo; EPM. It&rsquo;s worth noting, as well, that the surrounding talent in Los Angeles does him no favors, but that&rsquo;s only part of the equation.
Flashback to 2019-20 season, the Orlando Bubble and an NBA title for the Lakers. Davis was getting mentioned as potentially the best player in the world. He&rsquo;d hit his stride and then some offensively, and was rivaled only by Giannis Antetokounmpo and Joel Embiid as bigs with the highest level of two-way impact.
A slew of injuries and an onslaught of games over the past two years have seemingly taken a toll. At the expense of sounding pessimistic, it genuinely raises concerns about whether or not Davis will hit that level again, and that&rsquo;s what&rsquo;s so wild to me. AD is still one of the very best players in the world, and all the basketball world can talk about is how he&rsquo;s underperforming. It&rsquo;s not necessarily unwarranted considering the standard he&rsquo;s built for himself in his play throughout his career. The starkness in change is just hard to cast aside. He hit that very pinnacle for a few brief months and there was an immediate, &ldquo;He&rsquo;s here!&rdquo; crowning (that was deserved), but was unable to maintain that mantle.
What makes the matter more disheartening is that it&rsquo;s nobody's fault, it just *is*. There&rsquo;s a defeating resonance in the notion that Davis may never reach those heights again as a player despite his best efforts.
Injuries and time are equally damning. I never reached remotely similar heights as an athlete, and dealing with recurring injuries and their fallout was the most trying time in my life. I don&rsquo;t intend to make a comparison, but applying my own experience to those on a grander scale is startling in looking at how these scenarios play out. It&rsquo;s one thing to have everything derailed before the train even departs on your career; it&rsquo;s another to be in the throes of your everyday life as a professional.
You go from spending all of your time focused on what&rsquo;s ahead and preparing for tomorrow, to hoping you will be able to do what was once status quo at the same level after six months of rehab. That everyday grind and repetition that built you and was your daily engine screeches to a halt because the transmission is busted.&nbsp;
You&rsquo;re not prepared for it, it just happens. When you finally do get back, you&rsquo;re not really back. You&rsquo;re scrambling to regain your condition, you&rsquo;re lagging in workouts. You might start working overtime to see if you can cut down recovery time. Maybe you have a setback. And even if you do everything right, you might never move your feet with quite the same speed, or regain that quarter-second of timing that made you a Defensive Player of the Year candidate &mdash; not because you don&rsquo;t see the drive, but because your body can&rsquo;t move and react in the same way it once did.
(And for the record, Kevin Durant returning to MVP level form after his Achilles injury is an impressive abnormality that should not be expected.)
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Michael Porter Jr. signed a max contract after a career year last season. His year ended abruptly, and his future is possibly altered due to a back injury that was clearly hampering him in the nine games he played this year (the infamous missed dunk in transition). The potential of suffering a significant injury has loomed over his career as darkly as his budding potential has been bright. Porter had back surgery during his sole season at Missouri prior to the draft and missed his entire rookie year. Hopefully, with time and rehab, he can return to who he&rsquo;s blossomed into as a player.
Kemba Walker was an All-Star two seasons ago and now is fully out of the rotation in New York. Once one of the great paint-touch artists in the league, Walker&rsquo;s knees have degraded to the point where consistent dribble penetration isn&rsquo;t in the cards. His percentage of shots taken at the rim has dropped by 10% since his All-NBA campaign in 2018-19 per Cleaning the Glass.
So often it takes injuries or inopportune events unfolding to remember that athletes are human. It&rsquo;s a necessary reminder that perfection is an impossible achievement. Greatness is fleeting, and reminiscing on recent history and the evolution of timelines pushes me to admire those apex moments with greater appreciation.
As much as we desire and long for the promise of potential and growth, it&rsquo;s worth stopping to breathe in the amazing things these players are doing presently, because the context of the present could be drastically different in the intermediate future.

Mark Schindler has thoughts on how injuries and workload take a toll on stars, and why we should take time to appreciate the present.

Greatness is fleeting, so enjoy stars in their prime while you can

The <a class="c-link" tabindex="-1" href="https://www.basketballnetwork.net/kevin-garnett-shares-how-he-and-tim-duncan-were-more-similar-than-people-think/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-stringify-link="https://www.basketballnetwork.net/giannis-antetokounmpo-shares-why-he-doesnt-associate-or-practice-with-other-nba-players-in-the-offseason/" data-sk="tooltip_parent" data-remove-tab-index="true">following article</a>&nbsp;first appeared on&nbsp;<a class="c-link" tabindex="-1" href="http://basketballnetwork.net/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-stringify-link="http://BasketballNetwork.net" data-sk="tooltip_parent" data-remove-tab-index="true">BasketballNetwork.net</a>:
Tim Duncan and Kevin Garnett embodied what it means to be a true professional and an ultimate NBA royalty as their careers intertwined with each other throughout the almost two decades they both spent in the NBA. Garnett had tremendous respect for Duncan, which he outlined in his new book. Garnett details what made him and Duncan similar.
If you were a kid watching the NBA in the late &rsquo;90s and throughout the entire 2000&rsquo;s, Kevin Garnett or Tim Duncan were probably one of the two players you regularly watched. They both came to the NBA at almost the same time and immediately made their impact felt around the league. It didn&rsquo;t take them long to become top-10 players in the league, which is a status they kept for most of their careers.
They had some great battles in the regular season and the playoffs, with Duncan coming on top the majority of times simply because he had better players around him with the Spurs. That changed for Garnett after he joined the Boston Celtics, but for the more significant part of their careers, Duncan was luckier because he was with the Spurs, which had a great system in place with an amazing supporting cast.
In his new autobiography, Garnett talks about the dynamic of their relationship and what actually made them similar rather than different. Most fans viewed them like totally two different personalities, which they obviously were, but Garnett wanted to emphasize all the similarities between them that ushered tremendous mutual respect.
"Timmy is Mr.Hyde to my Dr.Jekyll," he said. "We were opposites in so many ways. I skipped college. He stayed at Wake Forest all four years. I was loud. He was quiet. I played with furious energy. He played with calm, collectedness. And yet, we were more similar than we were different. He played 19 seasons. I played 21. We both valued loyalty and stability. And what we shared most was the way we were humble students of the game. Like Timmy, I put in the work. His work ethic was incredible. So were his moves. Damn tough dude to guard. All his finesse. The way he could back you down or face you up, do those jab steps and feints, swing the ball low and dare you to reach, take you off the dribble or kiss it off the glass, or flip-up that baby hook."
Trash-talking didn&rsquo;t work against Duncan
Garnett was a fierce trash -talker who used to throw his opponents out of their games by talking all types of smack to them. Apparently, that never fazed Duncan, who seemed immune to that, despite Garnett giving his best to get inside his game. When he learned Duncan was not responding, he got mad because there was nothing he could do anymore. Tim Duncan was playing mind games with him instead, and Garnett admits that sit well with him at all.
"Over all those years, we played against each other more than fifty times, and every one felt special," he said. "He always forced me to play at my highest level. Unfortunately, that hype could work against me. I&rsquo;d be talking all my shit, and where it would psych out most players, it only locked Timmy tighter. He fed off it. That pissed me off. I&rsquo;d be spending all this energy trying to get him off his game; I wouldn&rsquo;t realize that he&rsquo;d gotten me off mine."
Many fans believe that if Garnett had the same type of supporting cast and a coach like Gregg Popovich throughout his entire career, he would have the same number of NBA championships under his resume. Whether that is true or not is impossible to answer, but the reality is that for over a decade, Garnett was stuck with the Timberwolves, hoping for them to surround him with enough great players to make that extra step in the playoffs. That didn&rsquo;t happen, so he found his happiness in Boston, where he immediately won a championship and had a few deep playoff runs with the Celtics. Duncan spent his entire career in the playoffs, winning 5 championships and being extremely close to winning at least a few more.
It&rsquo;s great to hear a different perspective on their relationship and how Garnett actually views Duncan. The respect between the two was always there, which is essential when talking about two of the greatest power forwards ever to play the game.
Check out more articles from BasketballNetwork.net <a href="https://www.basketballnetwork.net/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">here</a>.

Kevin Garnett shares how he respected Tim Duncan, even though they had different personalities.

Kevin Garnett shares similarities with Tim Duncan

The National Basketball Players Association announced today the return of the elite TOP 100 High School Basketball Camp after canceling last year&rsquo;s in-person camp due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This year&rsquo;s TOP 100 Camp is set to take place from July 25-31 at ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex at Walt Disney World Resort near Orlando, Florida and will operate at a reduced capacity, featuring 60 of the top high-school basketball players from around the country.&nbsp; &nbsp; Since its inception in 1994, TOP 100 has helped more than 400 players successfully transition into the National Basketball Association (NBA). With comprehensive on-and off-the-court programming, TOP 100 emphasizes character, education and skill development as the core principles necessary to maximize a player&rsquo;s potential. &nbsp; TOP 100 also features two unique programs within the camp, (1) the&nbsp;Coaching Program,&nbsp;designed for current and former NBA players interested in coaching, and (2) the&nbsp;Parent Program, a diverse educational program available to the parents and guardians of the TOP 100 campers.
<ul>
<li>TOP 100 Coaching Program&nbsp;- For the last 17 years, the Coaching Program at TOP 100 has given current and former NBA players interested in coaching an opportunity to gain hands-on experience coaching a team of some of the best high school players in the world. As part of the Coaching Program, participants learn from and engage with guest speakers and professional coaches who provide detailed analysis and guidance for a career in coaching. (James Posey <a href="https://www.basketballnews.com/stories/boston-celtics-hiring-ime-udoka-as-nba-head-coach-is-step-in-the-right-direction" target="_blank" rel="noopener">recently wrote about</a> attending these camps alongside Ime Udoka, Royal Ivey, Jarron Collins and John Lucas III -- all of whom went on to become NBA coaches).</li>
<li>TOP 100 Parent Program&nbsp;- A core element of TOP 100, the Parent Program in its 18th year consists of a series of educational seminars, Q&amp;A sessions and interactive discussions for the parents and guardians of TOP 100 campers. The first of its kind among any elite camp, the Parent Program was added in 2003 as a way for parents and guardians to learn more about the recruiting process and provide the proper tools to aid in the campers&rsquo; lifetime success.&nbsp;</li>
</ul>
<div>TOP 100 will host NCAA scouting personnel for the second time since 2019 and will also be open to NBA scouting personnel who wish to observe the camp.</div>
<div>&nbsp;</div>
<div>All campers and staff will be required to undergo COVID-19 testing and adhere to the health and safety protocols established by the NBPA throughout the camp.</div>
<div>&nbsp;</div>
<div>&ldquo;This is a pivotal and exciting time for TOP 100 as we return after the unfortunate cancellation in 2020,&rdquo; said Purvis Short, Chief of Player Programs of the NBPA. &ldquo;The pandemic situation has made the TOP 100 Camp stronger, better, and the NBPA&rsquo;s eagerness to continue developing the next generation of elite basketball players has grown. We are very excited and cannot wait for the start of camp in July.&rsquo;&rsquo;</div>
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<div>&ldquo;We are thrilled to host the TOP 100 Camp in-person this year given the previous disruption of these campers' basketball schedules caused by COVID-19,&rdquo; said Michele Roberts, Executive Director of the NBPA.&nbsp;&ldquo;Many current and former NBPA members have gone through the TOP 100 Camp. The Camp is an invaluable platform for young players to learn both more about the game and the off-the-court components of being a collegiate and professional athlete.&rdquo;</div>
<div>&nbsp;</div>
<div>The ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex at Disney will be a familiar venue for NBPA members and campers taking part in this year&rsquo;s TOP 100 camp after the facility hosted the 2019-2020 NBA season restart last summer. The site has a long history of hosting professional and elite basketball events but this will mark the first time it has partnered with the NBPA to host its historic TOP 100 Camp.</div>

The NBPA announced the return of the TOP 100 High School Basketball Camp after it was canceled last year due to COVID-19.

NBPA announces return of TOP 100 High School Camp

The NBA still has a long, long way to go as it relates to opportunities being given to Black head coaches, but one thing I can say is that, at least with respect to Brad Stevens and the Boston Celtics, we&rsquo;ve taken a step in the right direction.
Ime Udoka is going to get the opportunity he&rsquo;s been working for, and at the end of the day, that&rsquo;s all that most aspiring coaches &mdash; especially former players &mdash; want.&nbsp;
I know because I am one&hellip; We just want a fair shake. For some, that opportunity never comes. Thankfully, that&rsquo;s not the case this time.
By the time I left Boston after we won the championship in 2008, I was already thinking about what I wanted to do after my playing career ended. The Players' Association was really good about helping us prepare for life after our playing careers ended, and they had separate programs to help players who wanted to go into the media or coaching or management.
For me, and Ime, coaching was the route that we chose.
Now I won&rsquo;t sit up here and act like I was good friends with Ime or anything like that, because that would be disingenuous, but I do have some firsthand experience with him. And I can tell you, straight up, that he&rsquo;s been preparing for this opportunity for a long time.
I know because, about 10 years ago, I was there.
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I first got wind of the NBPA&rsquo;s coaching camps at the University of Virginia from some of the union leaders somewhere around 2010. During the offseason, the NBPA would invite aspiring coaches to the school, where it would host a week-long program specifically designed for those who wanted to lead teams. The union would organize coaches to come in and do workshops with us and give us a bootcamp to teach us how to become effective motivators, as well as introduce us to the hard work and dedication needed to succeed on the bench. It was an eye-opening experience; we had 14-hour days, beginning at 7:30 a.m. and we wouldn&rsquo;t get back to our hotel room until 9:30 p.m...
Some of us have unrealistic expectations about what it takes to be an effective coach. As players, most of the time, once you leave the gym or the training facility or whatever, you have some time to unwind and relax. When you&rsquo;re a coach, though, the work never stops. That&rsquo;s one of the first things I learned at UVA.
There, we&rsquo;d do our own workshops and training sessions before eventually having the opportunity to coach some of the top high-school kids from across the country. They were invited to UVA&rsquo;s campus to participate in the camp and allow us to apply what we learned.
Although it was only a total of about three weeks, my experience at those mini-camps was amazing; it&rsquo;s what helped me get my feet wet and decide that coaching was truly for me. I&rsquo;m pretty sure that Royal Ivey, Jarron Collins and John Lucas III would all say the same thing. Those are just a couple of the other guys I remember working alongside at those camps.
Afterward, I got an opportunity to coach in the D-League (which has since been renamed the G League) and to work under Tyronn Lue in Cleveland. Royal is currently on Steve Nash&rsquo;s staff in Brooklyn, while Jarron got an opportunity with Steve Kerr and the Warriors and John served as an assistant in Minnesota.
There are a lot of other guys from those camps that I don&rsquo;t remember, but there&rsquo;s one more that I do: Ime Udoka.&nbsp;
Ime and I didn&rsquo;t really talk that much, but we stood shoulder-to-shoulder as we tried to absorb everything we could. The one thing that stands out to me more than anything else was us both recognizing that being a great coach would require a lot of time, energy, effort and sacrifice. Obviously, after all these years, he&rsquo;s stuck with it, and now, he&rsquo;s getting the benefit.
That&rsquo;s a big part of why his <a href="https://www.basketballnews.com/stories/boston-celtics-to-hire-ime-udoka-as-next-head-coach" target="_blank" rel="noopener">being hired by the Celtics</a> feels good.&nbsp;
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As former players and aspiring coaches, especially former players who are Black, we view a team hiring someone like Ime as a victory for the communities that he represents &mdash; the player community, and the Black-player community.
Us former players know all about competition. As players, we compete against one another, and at the end of the day, the competition doesn&rsquo;t end on the basketball court. Whether you want to go into media, the front office or coaching, you&rsquo;ve got to compete against other guys for a limited number of opportunities. There&rsquo;s just not enough of the cake for everyone to get a slice.&nbsp;
Unfortunately, most of us get passed over way more than anyone would ever know. Some of us put in the work for years and never get a shot. Some of us, like Mark Jackson or Brian Shaw, don&rsquo;t get second chances when it comes to being a head coach.
Meanwhile, we see other coaches getting recycled and getting one opportunity after another. It just makes you wonder.&nbsp;
As it relates specifically to former players, we have to overcome some negative stereotypes about our work ethic, IQ and leadership abilities. Some people assume that players are just &ldquo;dumb jocks&rdquo; and that some of us are lazy and incapable of becoming successful head coaches. It&rsquo;s tough to overcome that.
When you&rsquo;re trying to get your feet wet and learn about coaching, you typically are fed lines about &ldquo;working your way up&rdquo; and &ldquo;working hard&rdquo; and &ldquo;building a resume,&rdquo; but when you constantly see other people jump the line, doubt creeps in. I&rsquo;m sure that, at one point or another, we&rsquo;ve all been there. Is it really the resume and the accomplishments that get you hired? Or do front offices just hire whoever they want because of preexisting relationships?
At the end of the day, it is what it is. If you&rsquo;re hired to run a team as a president or a general manager, you&rsquo;re free to hire whoever you want. That&rsquo;s one of the benefits of the job. But when we continually see qualified people who&rsquo;ve put in the work over the years get passed over for great opportunities, it&rsquo;s discouraging to the entire community.
Fortunately, though, in this case, the opposite happened.
The hiring of Ime Udoka in Boston is uplifting to us all.
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So to Ime, I need to just say: Congratulations, bro. We see you and we&rsquo;re inspired. I know, firsthand, that you put in the work and that you deserve the opportunity to be the head coach of the Boston Celtics. You're someone who worked your way up from the bottom and you haven't taken any shortcuts, so it&rsquo;s great seeing you succeed Brad Stevens.
After a seven-year playing career and nine years as an assistant (including a championship in 2014), this is a well-deserved opportunity, and Brad and the Celtics organization deserve credit for opting for some fresh blood who&rsquo;s paid his dues.
Experience counts, so of course we&rsquo;ll see accomplished coaches switch teams and get multiple opportunities with NBA teams &mdash; Doc Rivers, Dwane Casey and Rick Carlisle, to name a few. But at the same time, the league needs to be just as open-minded about giving former players chances to lead teams.
Patrick Ewing and Juwan Howard both had to go to the NCAA to get a shot, while guys like Sam Cassell have been putting in the work for years, and to no avail.
Fortunately, the same won&rsquo;t be said for Ime Udoka. The league is better for this, even if we still have a long way to go.&nbsp;

James Posey congratulates Ime Udoka and shares why it's a step in the right direction for Black players who aspire to be head coaches.

Celtics hiring Ime Udoka as head coach is step in right direction

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) &mdash; Russell Westbrook became an instant hit with his ability to deliver triple-doubles.
Now, the 6-foot-3 point guard is on the verge of a home run &mdash; eclipsing Oscar Robertson's seemingly unbreakable career record.
He had 33 points, 19 rebounds and 15 assists Saturday night in a 132-131 overtime victory over Indiana to tie Robertson's mark of 181. And, fittingly, it came just a short drive away from the Lockefield Dust Bowl, where Robertson and his future Crispus Attucks High School teammates first honed their craft.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-theme="dark">
Russell Westbrook tied the all-time triple-double record in STYLE last night, clearing 80 FPTS for the second time this season. 33 PTS | 19 REB | 15 AST | 80.3 FPTS <a href="https://t.co/8sxYbmnUj3">pic.twitter.com/8sxYbmnUj3</a>
&mdash; NBA Fantasy (@NBAFantasy) <a href="https://twitter.com/NBAFantasy/status/1391392514439991296?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 9, 2021</a></blockquote>

<script src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script>

Westbrook gets his first crack to surpass Robertson on Monday night in Atlanta.
&ldquo;I take a lot of pride in doing everything I can to impact winning," he said. &ldquo;To be in a conversation with Oscar, I just want to thank him because he set the stage. The things he was able to do back in the day has allowed me to do the things that I do today. So I'm appreciative of that, and I'm appreciative of his support as well."
But the two men now linked in the record books took dramatically different paths to the top.
Robertson was an Indianapolis high school star, a three-time All-American at the University of Cincinnati and an Olympic gold medalist before playing for the Cincinnati Royals and Milwaukee Bucks.
In just his second pro season, Robertson became the first player to average a triple-double &mdash; a feat only matched by Westbrook a half-century later &mdash; and Robertson came within a whisker of achieving the feat in each of his first five seasons.
Westbrook, meanwhile, drew little college interest until his senior season in high school and started just one season at UCLA before turning pro. During his first six seasons in Oklahoma City, he logged eight triple-doubles.
Then he perfected the art and produced another 173 over the last seven seasons.
They met in 2017, a meeting Westbrook called overwhelming.
&ldquo;He flew to Oklahoma City and he didn&rsquo;t have to do that," he said. &ldquo;He took time out of his day to talk with me and my family about that moment. I was honestly more intrigued because he was dealing with social injustice when he was playing and so I was really intrigued about how he dealt with that and continued to play at such a high level."
Westbrook also found a way to produce big numbers night after night.
This season he leads the league with 35, the second-highest total of his career. He had 42 in 2016-17 when he became the first player since Robertson in 1961-62 to average a triple-double. With a week left in the regular season, he's poised to match that feat for the fourth time in five seasons.
And now, after posting 19 triple-doubles in the last 24 games, he&rsquo;s one away from breaking a record that has stood since Robertson finished his career in 1973-74.
&ldquo;To do that on a nightly basis, it&rsquo;s really hard to do,&rdquo; teammate Bradley Beal said. &ldquo;You go out there and try doing it every single night, it&rsquo;s very tough. It&rsquo;s tough mentally. It just shows how seriously he approaches the game.&rdquo;
It's also fitting that Westbrook tied the record against the Pacers, against whom he has posted a career-high 10 triple-doubles including three this season.
He became the first player in league history with a 35-point, 20-assists triple-double against Indiana on March 29 and had a career-high 21 rebounds and a career-high matching 24 assists against the Pacers in Monday's victory over the Pacers.
That's not all. He now has 7,998 career assists, passing Rod Strickland for 12th on the NBA's career list and he moved within 41 points of surpassing Larry Bird (21,791) for No. 40 on the league's career scoring list.
&ldquo;I knew he was going to get it, I didn&rsquo;t know if he would get it this year,&rdquo; coach Scott Brooks said. &ldquo;For him to pass up Oscar Robertson is absolutely incredible. I hope some way, he (Robertson) can come (to a game), I&rsquo;d love to meet him. There are certain guys in NBA history who you put on a pedestal and until you meet them they&rsquo;re sort of mythical. It&rsquo;s hard to believe coaching Russell 13 years ago, he was going to break Oscar Robertson&rsquo;s record, but I&rsquo;m happy I&rsquo;m saying that because he&rsquo;s really a special player.&rdquo;
___
More AP NBA: <a href="https://apnews.com/hub/NBA">https://apnews.com/hub/NBA</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/AP_Sports">https://twitter.com/AP_Sports</a>

He had 33 points, 19 rebounds and 15 assists Saturday in a 132-131 OT victory over Indiana to tie the Big O's mark of 181 triple-doubles.

Westbrook's 33-19-15 triple-double ties Robertson's NBA record

Fran Fraschilla discusses his upbringing, coaching career, transition to broadcasting, fatherhood, whether he'd coach again, and more.

Fran Fraschilla Q&A: 'If someone wants to take a chance on me, I'd consider coaching again'

Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban opens up about NFTs, the future of NBA Top Shot, cryptocurrency and much more.

Mark Cuban on NFTs: 'NBA Top Shot has the biggest, most rabid community'

It&rsquo;s hard to believe that the 2020-21 season is more than halfway over. The All-Star break has come and gone, and the playoffs are nearly here.
For real, it&rsquo;s been a season unlike any we&rsquo;ve seen before, but when I watch games and find myself thinking about which team is gonna walk away with the Larry O.B. trophy, there&rsquo;s one thing that has remained the same, even after all these years.
&lsquo;Bron is still that dude.
I played against him for a number of years and had the opportunity to coach him in Cleveland. And even though people have spent a lot of time talking about him, the work he puts in and the amount of money he spends maintaining his health, when you see it with your own eyes, it&rsquo;s a completely different thing.
I&rsquo;ll never forget the time I learned that he was different different.
Right after &lsquo;Bron came back to Cleveland, I went down to Miami to do some group workouts with him and some of our players. He always liked to get some summer work in and would invite people to join him, whether it was in Miami or L.A.
We were using some small gym down there for our workouts, I&rsquo;m not even sure where it was, maybe a YMCA or something. But even though I don&rsquo;t remember where the gym was, I damn sure remember what I saw.
It was me, &lsquo;Bron&rsquo;s longtime trainer Mike Mancias, Phil Handy (who, like me, was an assistant coach with the Cavs at the time) and Randy Mims (one of 'Bron&rsquo;s close friends and business partners).
We&rsquo;re down there working out, getting it in: dribbling, shooting, balancing drills, all that.
We spent a good couple hours, but what caught me off guard, was how &lsquo;Bron ended his workout.
After putting in a good session, he asked for a rebounder at each basket and once he had them in place, he took off, dribbling the ball full-speed ahead to the other end of the court. The workout was over, so I wasn&rsquo;t sure what was going on, and next thing I know: BAM! One-handed windmill dunk.
Without stopping for a second, he turns around, gets the ball back, sprints back down to the other basket full-speed ahead. BAM! One-handed reverse dunk off one leg.
Most players can do that a few times before they get tired. &lsquo;Bron did it about 12 times without stopping. One crazy dunk after another, and he made it look easy as hell.
He ran back-and-forth, basket-to-basket doing all kind of insane dunks: Statute of Liberty, cradle dunks, gliding from damn near the free throw line, everything. I lost count after 10, but after seeing that for the first time, I knew this dude was a true maniac.
Most players, including me, would do a drill like that to warm up before a workout because we&rsquo;d be too damn tired after putting in some work to do anything like that. And, honestly, we&rsquo;d probably do six lengths of the court, not 12. And yeah, we&rsquo;d probably be laying the ball in, not pulling off these crazy dunks.
Not &lsquo;Bron, though.
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Over the years, I saw first-hand that he does everything 110%, even practice. I also came to find out that this dunk drill is something that he does every so often, just as a way to get some extra cardio in. It&rsquo;s not something I&rsquo;ve even seen anyone else even attempt, much less pull off.
As a leader, &lsquo;Bron is one of the few guys who forces everyone else to step their game up and come correct. He&rsquo;s one of those guys who you couldn&rsquo;t fully appreciate unless you saw him with your own eyes.
Fortunately, I did.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-theme="dark">
In the gym with <a href="https://twitter.com/KingJames?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@KingJames</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Throwback?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Throwback</a> <a href="https://t.co/YNfHAaRVnA">pic.twitter.com/YNfHAaRVnA</a>
&mdash; James Posey (@James_Posey41) <a href="https://twitter.com/James_Posey41/status/1372958250224676869?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 19, 2021</a></blockquote>

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In my opinion, it&rsquo;s him &mdash; not Kevin Durant, not Giannis and not Kawhi &mdash; who&rsquo;s still the top dog. And what I respect most about him is the fact that, for as long as I&rsquo;ve known him, he&rsquo;s done everything possible to get to the top. And since getting there, he&rsquo;s refused to let anyone take his throne.
For someone who&rsquo;s so busy with everything he&rsquo;s got going on, no matter where he is &mdash; even if he&rsquo;s on vacation &mdash; &lsquo;Bron is gonna go to bed by 9:00 p.m. and be up early as hell in the morning to get his workout in. If you get to the gym at 6:00 a.m., you&rsquo;ll find him there already in a full sweat.
In-season or not, whether back in Akron or in the Bahamas, he&rsquo;s always approached the game as a 24/7/365 priority. I truly think that&rsquo;s why he&rsquo;s been able to perform at such a high level this season despite being 36 years old and playing in nine of the last 10 NBA Finals.
Unlike a lot of other guys, he doesn&rsquo;t have to use training camp or the preseason to &ldquo;ramp up&rdquo; or get in shape because he never ramps down.
As far as leading is concerned, the only guy I could even compare him to is Ticket &mdash; Kevin Garnett. And it&rsquo;s funny because they had a little bit of a rivalry back in the day.
When you talk about competitors, you&rsquo;re talking about these guys. Whether they were on the court, playing cards or arguing about which TV show was better than the other, these guys didn&rsquo;t ever want to lose at anything. You ever heard of a &ldquo;competitive conversation&rdquo;? I&rsquo;ve had many of those with KG and &lsquo;Bron over the years. They didn&rsquo;t want you to win at anything, not even a discussion about something they disagreed with.
It seems like such a long time ago that kids have been able to come out of high school and head straight to the league, but they both did that. They also became MVPs and champions and had some of the longest, most productive careers we&rsquo;ve ever seen. Both of these guys would wake up early and be the first ones in the gym. Ticket got Paul Pierce and Ray Allen to be more competitive in practice and we saw the effects carry over into games. &lsquo;Bron did the same thing for every single player he crossed paths with in Cleveland, and I&rsquo;m sure he had a similar impact in both Miami and L.A.
By now, everyone knows that he&rsquo;s the first player in NBA history to win NBA Finals MVP for three different teams. That doesn&rsquo;t necessarily make him the G.O.A.T., but it definitely counts for something. Now, the Lakers, even without Anthony Davis in the lineup, are hanging tough near the top out West. No matter where he goes and what the situation, &lsquo;Bron&rsquo;s team is always gonna find a way.
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As always, there are a bunch of players who are in the conversation for MVP. But just like last year, whether he wins it or not, in all likelihood, you&rsquo;re gonna have to see him if you plan on playing for the championship.
He's been sitting on that throne for a good while now. Many players that he beat on his way to 10 Finals appearances have moved on but still haven&rsquo;t reached his level of royalty.
For my money, he&rsquo;s still the top dog, and based on what I&rsquo;ve seen from him and what I know about the man, he&rsquo;s striking the right balance between leading the Lakers to a productive, winning season and saving himself for possibly another title run.
So yeah, in one major way, even though this season is much different than any other we&rsquo;ve ever seen before, there&rsquo;s still one constant: &lsquo;Bron&rsquo;s team is one of the favorites to win their conference and he&rsquo;s still leading a title contender, even after all this time.
Still the constant, there&rsquo;s no doubt that LeBron is still that dude.
Real talk: he&rsquo;s still the king.

James Posey shares his experience coaching LeBron James, who still sits upon the NBA's throne as he approaches 37 years old.

Truth be told, LeBron James still reigns as king of the NBA

Each day, BasketballNews.com scours #NBATwitter to bring you the best tweets from the previous day. Some are insightful, some are just hilarious (so we had to include them).
Without further ado, here are the tweets of the day for March 9, 2021.
Get Your Own Coach
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nick nurse&rsquo;s coaching tree by the year 2030 <a href="https://t.co/Vf6qwMLZzf">https://t.co/Vf6qwMLZzf</a> <a href="https://t.co/3NQiAGTeJx">pic.twitter.com/3NQiAGTeJx</a>
&mdash; Sahal Abdi (@sAbdi28) <a href="https://twitter.com/sAbdi28/status/1369059652537901059?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 8, 2021</a></blockquote>

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The royal family&rsquo;s family tree has fewer branches than the Dwane Casey/Nick Nurse coaching tree.
Our Very Own
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Last night, this happened! I was part of The ASG zoom scrum,and it was surreal. <a href="https://t.co/zafOIVqbpM">pic.twitter.com/zafOIVqbpM</a>
&mdash; Jannelle Moore (@Jannelle12) <a href="https://twitter.com/Jannelle12/status/1368918524987666436?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 8, 2021</a></blockquote>

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BasketballNews.com&rsquo;s Jannelle Moore did an excellent job covering the All-Star Game. Give her a read and <a href="https://twitter.com/Jannelle12" target="_blank" rel="noopener">a follow</a>!
Living His Best Life
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A few things about this: 1. Serge is, once again, living his best life 2. He&rsquo;s drinking straight margarita mix???????<a href="https://t.co/wW2I7dyyH3">https://t.co/wW2I7dyyH3</a> <a href="https://t.co/LvK8N4Ncmf">pic.twitter.com/LvK8N4Ncmf</a>
&mdash; Uhh, Basketball? (@uhhbasketball) <a href="https://twitter.com/uhhbasketball/status/1369142781000749056?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 9, 2021</a></blockquote>

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Serge Ibaka is undoubtedly living his best life during the All-Star Break, but there is one thing I need to clear up and that is that THIS IS NOT MARGARITA MIX! IT IS A PRE-MADE MARGARITA! Sure, you&rsquo;re supposed to put it in the freezer first, but you do you, Ma Fuzzy.
Nature Is Healing
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-theme="dark">
All the *supposed* beefs in the NBA got cleared up in one night lmao <a href="https://t.co/rme2P7imyX">pic.twitter.com/rme2P7imyX</a>
&mdash; Guru (@DrGuru_) <a href="https://twitter.com/DrGuru_/status/1369004803632865290?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 8, 2021</a></blockquote>

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The All-Star Game, like basketball itself, is less about winning and more about the friends we make along the way. This will go over well&hellip;.again.
Flippin&rsquo; The Script
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Ladies, do you actually like it when a man knows his sports? <a href="https://t.co/gxbvOKmEMB">https://t.co/gxbvOKmEMB</a>
&mdash; Dishes &amp; Dimes (@dishesdimespod) <a href="https://twitter.com/dishesdimespod/status/1369132680189784072?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 9, 2021</a></blockquote>

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Come for the ridiculousness of the original question, stay for the hilarity found in the replies.
Once Upon A Time
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-theme="dark">
It&rsquo;s been a year since I have drunkenly made zero sense at a basketball game 🥺 <a href="https://t.co/rlyvlsMyZM">pic.twitter.com/rlyvlsMyZM</a>
&mdash; Fan of Zhuri&rsquo;s Daddy (@Danoyella) <a href="https://twitter.com/Danoyella/status/1369070912742506499?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 8, 2021</a></blockquote>

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Aahh to be at a live sporting event, drinking a 17 dollar Coke and actively avoiding the crowd cameras again.
See a tweet that should be featured in tomorrow's Tweets of the Day piece? Send it to <a href="https://twitter.com/kelsea_lately" target="_blank" rel="noopener">@kelsea_lately</a>.

Every day, our Kelsea O'Brien scours #NBATwitter to find the best posts. Here are the tweets of the day for March 9, 2021.

NBA Tweets of the Day: No Basketball, No Problem!

Each day, BasketballNews.com scours #NBATwitter to bring you the best tweets from the previous day. Some are insightful, some are just hilarious (so we had to include them).
Without further ado, here are the tweets of the day for March 8, 2021.
Farewell BG
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live look at the Pistons front office <a href="https://t.co/KK0M89bLk9">pic.twitter.com/KK0M89bLk9</a>
&mdash; ethan (@okcfanethan) <a href="https://twitter.com/okcfanethan/status/1367884622831497218?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 5, 2021</a></blockquote>

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Any still frame from &ldquo;NBA Players Reading Mean Tweets About Themselves&rdquo; never fails to make me laugh. However, never has one stood the test of time like this one.
Thanks, Dad
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-theme="dark">
Unsalvageable? They even get fined together 😍😍😍 <a href="https://t.co/seSSkGKtN2">https://t.co/seSSkGKtN2</a>
&mdash; Joe Ingles (@Joeingles7) <a href="https://twitter.com/Joeingles7/status/1367918220280094721?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 5, 2021</a></blockquote>

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If I had to guess, I would say that Joe Ingles&rsquo; role with the Utah Jazz is &ldquo;dad who keeps his large adult sons from killing each other.&rdquo;
Third Eye Open
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-theme="dark">
boneless wings are chicken nuggets.
&mdash; solomon hill (@solohill) <a href="https://twitter.com/solohill/status/1368035251927347202?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 6, 2021</a></blockquote>

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Solomon Hill may have figured out why boneless wings (the absolute worst) are still marketed as wings when they are in fact just slightly bigger nuggets. Spoiler alert: It&rsquo;s money.
Is This Your King?
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-theme="dark">
LeBron James is so dominant that we&rsquo;ve never considered calling Paul George &ldquo;King George&rdquo;
&mdash; alan crane lewis 🏗 (@TheAlanShane) <a href="https://twitter.com/TheAlanShane/status/1368107437769842689?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 6, 2021</a></blockquote>

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The fact that I&rsquo;ve never even thought about the possibility of there being another &ldquo;king&rdquo; in the league says it all. We are more likely to call Harry Giles III &ldquo;Prince Harry&rdquo; than to call Paul George &ldquo;King George&rdquo; if we&rsquo;re being completely transparent.
How Quickly We Forget
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-theme="dark">
I literally got traded for you and a first round pick lol
&mdash; Larry Nance Jr (@Larrydn22) <a href="https://twitter.com/Larrydn22/status/1368215915528134656?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 6, 2021</a></blockquote>

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Another day, another Larry Nance Jr. tweet. This time at the expense of Channing Frye.
Another Tweet About Royals
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-theme="dark">
obi toppin prince harry 🤝 dunking on their dad on national TV
&mdash; Molly Morrison (@mollyhannahm) <a href="https://twitter.com/mollyhannahm/status/1368757207697883138?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 8, 2021</a></blockquote>

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There were two dunk contests last night. One was during halftime of the All-Star Game and the other took place during a sit-down interview with Oprah Winfrey.
See a tweet that should be featured in tomorrow's Tweets of the Day piece? Send it to <a href="https://twitter.com/kelsea_lately" target="_blank" rel="noopener">@kelsea_lately</a>.

Every day, our Kelsea O'Brien scours #NBATwitter to find the best posts. Here are the tweets of the day for March 8, 2021.

NBA Tweets of the Day: All-Star Wrap-Up

NBA players have selected New Orleans Pelicans guard Jrue Holiday as the recipient of the 2019-20 Twyman-Stokes Teammate of the Year Award, the NBA announced today.&nbsp;
The award, presented annually since the 2012-13 season, recognizes the player deemed the best teammate based on selfless play, on- and off-court leadership as a mentor and role model to other NBA players, and commitment and dedication to team.
More than 250 NBA players submitted their votes for the 2019-20 Twyman-Stokes Teammate of the Year Award through confidential balloting conducted by the league office.&nbsp; NBA players determined the winner from among the 12 nominees who were selected by a panel of league executives.
Holiday received 53 of 267 first-place votes and finished with 1,041 total points.&nbsp; Philadelphia 76ers forward Tobias Harris (806 points; 48 first-place votes) and Milwaukee Bucks forward Kyle Korver (796 points; 26 first-place votes) finished in second and third place, respectively.&nbsp; Players were awarded 10 points for each first-place vote, seven points for each second-place vote, five points for each third-place vote, three points for each fourth-place vote and one point for each fifth-place vote.
In addition to Holiday, Harris and Korver, the other finalists were Dallas Mavericks guard J.J. Barea, Denver Nuggets forward Torrey Craig, Los Angeles Lakers forward Jared Dudley, Miami Heat forward Udonis Haslem, Boston Celtics forward Gordon Hayward, Toronto Raptors forward-center Serge Ibaka, Portland Trail Blazers guard Damian Lillard, San Antonio Spurs guard Patty Mills and Indiana Pacers center Myles Turner.
Holiday, 30, has spent the last seven seasons with New Orleans after playing his first four seasons with Philadelphia.&nbsp; The 6-3 guard was selected as an NBA All-Star in the 2012-13 season and named to the NBA All-Defensive Team in 2017-18 and 2018-19.&nbsp; In the 2019-20 season, he averaged 19.1 points, 6.7 assists, 4.8 rebounds and 1.62 steals in 61 games across regular-season games and seeding games.&nbsp;&nbsp;
In July, Holiday announced that he would use the remainder of his 2019-20 season salary to start a social justice fund with his wife, Lauren, a former player for the U.S. Women&rsquo;s National Soccer Team.&nbsp; The Jrue and Lauren Holiday Social Justice Impact Fund is designed to address socioeconomic inequalities across communities in New Orleans, the Los Angeles area and Indianapolis.&nbsp; Jrue and Lauren are Los Angeles and Indianapolis natives, respectively, and Jrue&rsquo;s two brothers, Aaron and Justin, both play for the Pacers.
The Twyman-Stokes Teammate of the Year Award is named for Jack Twyman and Maurice Stokes, whose storied friendship transcended their Hall of Fame accomplishments.&nbsp; Twyman and Stokes were teammates on the Rochester/Cincinnati Royals from 1955-58.&nbsp; In the last game of the 1957-58 regular season, Stokes sustained an injury that led to his falling into a coma days later and becoming permanently paralyzed.&nbsp; He was diagnosed with post-traumatic encephalopathy, a brain injury that damaged his motor-control center.&nbsp; Stokes was supported for the rest of his life by Twyman, who became his legal guardian and advocate.
Twyman helped organize the NBA&rsquo;s Maurice Stokes Memorial Basketball Game, which raised funds for Stokes&rsquo; medical care and, after Stokes&rsquo; death in 1970 at age 36, for other players in need.&nbsp; In 2004, after years of lobbying by Twyman, Stokes was enshrined in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.&nbsp; Twyman, who was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1983, died in 2012.
Below are voting totals for the 2019-20 Twyman-Stokes Teammate of the Year Award and the list of all-time winners:
<img src="https://basketballnews-media.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/images/story/body/tyw_lg.jpg" alt="" width="478" height="AUTO" />
<img src="https://basketballnews-media.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/images/story/body/wine_lg.jpg" alt="" width="759" height="AUTO" />

NBA players selected Pelicans guard Jrue Holiday as the recipient of the 2019-20 Twyman-Stokes Teammate of the Year Award.

Jrue Holiday wins Teammate of the Year Award

The Denver Nuggets overcame a 3-1 deficit to eliminate the Los Angeles Clippers in Game 7, 104-89, on Tuesday night.
Denver advanced to the Western Conference Finals, where they will face the Los Angeles Lakers. This is the Nuggets' first Conference Finals appearance since the 2008-09 season.
Jamal Murray led the way with 40 points, 5 assists, 4 rebounds while shooting 15-26 from the field (including 6-13 from three-point range). Nikola Jokic was terrific as well, contributing 16 points, 22 rebounds, 13, 3 blocks and 2 steals while shooting 5-13 from the field and 6-6 from the free-throw line.&nbsp;
Kawhi Leonard and Paul George combined for 24 points, 10 rebounds, 8 assists, 3 steals and 2 blocks (while shooting 10-38 from the field and 4-18 from three-point range) in the losing effort.
Here are the top highlights from Game 7:
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ASSOCIATED PRESS GAME RECAP:&nbsp;
Denver's dynamic duo of Jamal Murray and Nikola Jokic led another stunning turnaround as the Nuggets advanced to the Western Conference finals for the first time since 2009.
Murray scored 40 points, Jokic had a triple-double by the third quarter and Denver again overcame a double-digit deficit to shock the Los Angeles Clippers 104-89 in Game 7 on Tuesday night.
Denver became the first team in NBA history to rally from a 3-1 series deficit twice in the same postseason.
Even more history: The Nuggets are the third team in the U.S. major pro sports to rally from a pair of 3-1 deficits in the same playoffs, joining the 1985 Kansas City Royals and 2003 Minnesota Wild.
Denver will face LeBron James and the Los Angeles Lakers in the conference finals.
The 7-foot Jokic had a monster game with 16 points, 13 assists and 22 rebounds, which were the most by a Nuggets player in an NBA playoff game. He broke his record of 19 that he set last season and shared with Marcus Camby.
In a familiar trend, the Nuggets found themselves down by 12 in the first half. They also trailed 61-54 with 10:50 let in the third when they caught fire. The Nuggets went on a 35-13 run to build up a 15-point lead in the fourth quarter.
They led by as many as 20.
Murray helped the Nuggets pour it on down the stretch to give coach Michael Malone a 49th birthday present.
The team also rallied back from double-digit margins in their last two games as well to stun the Clippers.
Despite the additions of Kawhi Leonard and Paul George, the Clippers fell short of the conference finals, where they've never been. They fell to 0-8 all-time in games where they could clinch a trip to the conference finals.
Leonard finished with 14 points on 6-of-22 shooting, while George had 10 points on 4-of-16 shooting.
It was Denver&rsquo;s talented twosome that stole the show.
Jokic insisted the third-seeded Nuggets weren't feeling any pressure. He said Game 7 was just another game. After all, this was Denver's fourth straight Game 7 dating to the playoffs last season.
After trailing by as many as 12 in the first half, the Nuggets worked their way back into the game behind the shooting of Murray. He scored 25 before intermission as the Clippers elected to double-team Jokic.
TIP-INS
Nuggets: Jerami Grant and Gary Harris each had 14 points.
Clippers: G Landry Shamet turned his right ankle in the first quarter, limped down the floor, hit a 3-pointer and then hobbled to the locker room. He returned just before halftime. ... Montrezl Harrell led the Clippers with 20 points.
FASHION FORWARD
The Nuggets coaching staff went with their customary all-black outfits (a nod to singer Johnny Cash). The Clippers wore salmon-colored polo shirts that have been lucky for them inside the bubble.
Just coaches being a little superstitious.
&ldquo;I worked with coaches that knew the record of the ties they wore,&rdquo; Malone said. &ldquo;Yes, we are a weird group. We&rsquo;ll look at any advantage necessary. As the jump ball goes up, it doesn&rsquo;t matter what we&rsquo;re wearing.&rdquo;

The Denver Nuggets overcame a 3-1 deficit to defeat the Los Angeles Clippers in Game 7, 104-89, on Thursday night.

Nuggets beat Clippers, advance to WCF

In Game 1 of the Los Angeles Lakers&rsquo; series against the Portland Trail Blazers, LeBron James had a triple-double (23 points, 17 rebounds and 16 assists) but L.A. ultimately lost. Despite James&rsquo; stat-line, Paul Pierce did his well-rehearsed and almost-perfected Skip Bayless impression to discredit James <a href="https://youtu.be/CD0e9dqBALo">during an appearance</a> on &ldquo;First Take&rdquo; the next day. Pierce looked directly into the camera and proclaimed that if the Lakers don&rsquo;t win the championship this year, James is no longer in the greatest-of-all-time conversation.&nbsp;
Is he talking about LeBron Raymone James Sr. or is he referring to someone else? He can&rsquo;t be discussing the cat who currently ranks third all-time in points behind only Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Karl Malone, right? The same guy who also ranks eighth all-time in assists and 13th all-time in steals? The one who carried his teams to the playoffs in 13 consecutive seasons with eight straight NBA Finals appearances? That LeBron James?&nbsp;
Surely, he isn&rsquo;t referring to the guy who has three rings, four NBA MVP awards, 16 All-Star selections, three Olympic medals and (by far) <a href="https://www.basketball-reference.com/leaders/vorp_career.html">the highest Value Over Replacement Player rating</a> of anyone who has ever stepped foot on an NBA court...
But wait, there&rsquo;s more.&nbsp;
James is the only player in NBA history to score 30,000 points, grab 9,000 rebounds and have 9,000 assists; AND the only player in NBA history to score at least 25 points per game in 16 consecutive seasons; AND the only player in NBA history to lead the team he played for and the team he played against in points, rebounds, assists, blocks and steals in a playoff series (which he did in the 2016 NBA Finals against the Golden State Warriors).&nbsp;
To paraphrase Jay Z, when it&rsquo;s all said and done, &ldquo;Pound for pound, LeBron may be the best to ever come around here. Excludin&rsquo; nobody.&rdquo;
But back to Pierce, who has also said that James isn&rsquo;t in his all-time top-five. When discussing how LeBron's legacy would be impacted if the Lakers fail to hoist the Larry O'Brien trophy this year, Pierce's exact words were: &ldquo;If the Lakers don&rsquo;t win a championship, let alone lose in the first round, I don&rsquo;t want to hear none of this GOAT talk no more.&rdquo;&nbsp;
It&rsquo;s important to note that Michael Jordan lost in the first round of the playoffs three times, but that certainly didn&rsquo;t disqualify him from being in the GOAT conversation. (Also, after losing Game 1 to the Blazers, James and the Lakers won the next four games and advanced to the second round.)
Now, for the record, I believe that Kareem is the GOAT and Jordan is No. 2; then, the conversation starts. But to say that James isn&rsquo;t even a part of that conversation is borderline disrespectful.
It was interesting to hear all of the LeBron haters shift their stance from, &ldquo;If LeBron James wins the title this season in the bubble, it should have an asterisk by it,&rdquo; to, &ldquo;If LeBron James doesn&rsquo;t win the championship this season, he should no longer be in the GOAT conversation.&rdquo;&nbsp;
It&rsquo;s almost as if he can&rsquo;t win either way...&nbsp;
But back to Pierce. This isn&rsquo;t the first time he has used his air time to disparage James, which lends credence to the idea that this could be a case of pure, unadulterated LeBron hate. They faced off in the postseason quite a bit, and they nearly fought at a Ohio State preseason game back in 2004, according to <a href="https://twitter.com/WindhorstESPN/status/1086814205234180097">ESPN&rsquo;s&nbsp;Brian Windhorst</a>.&nbsp;
Mark Jackson, who ranks fourth all-time in assists (just four spots ahead of James), shared his thoughts on Pierce&rsquo;s take and James&rsquo; place in history.&nbsp;
&ldquo;Paul Pierce is a heck of a basketball player, who&rsquo;s had an incredible career, who&rsquo;s a Hall of Famer and whose number is hanging up in the Boston rafters deservedly, but he&rsquo;s wrong,&rdquo; Jackson told me <a href="https://www.fli.tv/mark-jackson-interview">on my show, The Rematch</a>. &ldquo;When you look at LeBron James and his body of work, he is clearly one of the five greatest players of all-time and he is definitely in the discussion for the best to ever do it. When you talk about a guy who will leave the game as the all-time leading scorer (health permitted) and top-five in assists in the history of the game, there is no debate.
&ldquo;He won a championship in Cleveland! You can put that on his resume alone, for those of us who are familiar with the Cleveland Cavs and Cleveland sports&hellip; Give this man his credit!&rdquo;
I couldn&rsquo;t agree more. I respect what Pierce accomplished on the court; there&rsquo;s a reason why Shaquille O&rsquo;Neal gave him the nickname &ldquo;The Truth.&rdquo; Pierce is one of only three players to score 20,000 points with the Celtics. He is Boston royalty, so this isn&rsquo;t personal. I just respectfully disagree with him when it comes to LeBron.
<img src="https://basketballnews-media.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/images/story/body/Brno_lg.jpg" alt="" width="700" height="AUTO" />
Not only is James in the GOAT conversation on the court, one could argue that he also deserves consideration as the GOAT off the court too.&nbsp;
In my book <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/1617755915/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_YGrrFbP2GG5AT">&ldquo;We Matter: Athletes And Activism,&rdquo;</a> I had the honor of interviewing pioneers of athlete activism such as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Bill Russell, John Carlos, Oscar Robertson, Laila Ali (Muhammad Ali&rsquo;s daughter), Craig Hodges, Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf and many others.
These athlete-activist legends discussed how, oftentimes, they felt completely alone and didn&rsquo;t receive any support from their fellow players. Hodges and Abdul-Rauf, in particular, were on an island and felt the wrath of then-Commissioner David Stern. In fact, they were whiteballed from the league once the country turned on them, and most of the top players remained silent.&nbsp;
Well, those days are over.
Today's players are inspired by LeBron&rsquo;s voice, as John Wall explained to me in &ldquo;We Matter.&rdquo;
&ldquo;You can go back to the ESPY&rsquo;s when LeBron and D-Wade and &lsquo;Melo and Chris Paul went up there and spoke,&rdquo; Wall told me. &ldquo;They were on that big of a stage talking about police brutality, talking about Black Lives Matter, telling the world that there was something wrong with the system, and then challenging everyone to do something about it. They had a call to action right in front of the entire world. And they organized that themselves... That right there showed the whole world that not only do our top guys - the faces of the league - care, but they want to do something about it.&rdquo;
James didn&rsquo;t birth athlete-activism, but he definitely nurtured and created a safe space for his peers to continue the rich tradition of athlete-activists who came before him. His peers have seen him, the top player in the league, confidently and fearlessly speak about Trayvon Martin in 2012, about Eric Garner in 2014, about police brutality at the ESPYs in 2016 and other issues. They've watched him consistently stand up to the current occupant of the White House over the last four years. Most recently, he's discussed Jacob Blake, who was shot in the back seven times by police in front of his children.&nbsp;
LeBron&rsquo;s words reverberate throughout the league and players realize that they can speak out too. They don&rsquo;t have to be afraid or censor themselves. LeBron has helped usher in a new wave of athlete-activism that we haven&rsquo;t seen since the 1960s.
&ldquo;People are worried about the wrong thing; what LeBron is doing off the court far outweighs what he is doing on the court,&rdquo; Kareem Abdul-Jabbar told me <a href="https://www.fli.tv/kareem-abdul-jabbar">on my show, The Rematch</a>. &ldquo;LeBron is standing on all of our shoulders. He&rsquo;s standing on Jackie Robinson&rsquo;s shoulders. He&rsquo;s standing on Jesse Owens&rsquo; shoulders. He has a conscience and a heart, and he is setting the example for generations to come.&rdquo;

Regardless of what Paul Pierce says, LeBron James is absolutely in the GOAT conversation (on and off the court), writes Etan Thomas.

LeBron James' greatness extends beyond the court

James Posey talks to T.J. Ford about his upbringing, the 2003 NBA Draft, getting traded, how a tough season Indiana strengthened their bond and more.

James Posey interviews T.J. Ford about upbringing, career

Carmelo Anthony, a future Hall Of Famer who currently ranks 15th on the NBA&rsquo;s all-time scorers list, was out of the league for a full year. It seemed as though the entire basketball world was convinced that he could no longer contribute to an NBA roster. Some wondered if Anthony had played in his final NBA game, bringing an end to an outstanding career.
Then, opportunity presented itself. A series of injuries plagued the Portland Trail Blazers and &lsquo;Melo got his chance to prove all of the naysayers wrong. He could silence the multitudes campaigning for him to retire, the commentators who suggested he was done and should bow out gracefully. He was given a chance at redemption and he has taken full advantage of it.
This season, Anthony has continually knocked down game-clinching shots in the final minutes of one-possession, must-win games. He's shooting 42.6 percent from three-point range in the bubble (including the postseason). He&rsquo;s been a vital piece of the puzzle for the Blazers, averaging 15.1 points per game in Orlando. Anthony has received high praise from everyone in the Portland organization, including Damian Lilard.
&ldquo;He should have been here three years ago,&rdquo; Lillard <a style="color: #d8d8d8;" href="https://bleacherreport.com/articles/2903604-damian-lillard-blazers-wouldve-made-2019-finals-if-they-had-carmelo-anthony" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said after the Blazers&rsquo; play-in victory</a> over the Memphis Grizzlies. &ldquo;I feel like we could have been in the Finals last year if we had him.&rdquo;
In Game 3 against the Los Angeles Lakers, Anthony exploded for 13 points in the third quarter, showing an array of offensive moves (including post-ups against LeBron James, short jumpers, three-pointers, fast-break dunks and pick-and-pops). He finished the night with 20 points, six rebounds and four steals. Even his defense received praise, as ABC and ESPN announcer Mark Jackson stated live on air, &ldquo;People who killed Carmelo Anthony for his defense were wrong.&rdquo;
&ldquo;Carmelo not having a job never made any sense to me," former head coach Stan Van Gundy told me <a href="https://www.fli.tv/stan-van-gundy-interview" target="_blank" rel="noopener">on my show The Rematch</a>. "People are dying for scoring in this league and he is one of the best scorers in our game, and he couldn&rsquo;t get a job? And he couldn&rsquo;t at least be that bench scorer that all the contending teams need?&rdquo;
So, how did everyone get it so wrong about Carmelo? What exactly happened? 
Were people too quick to accept a series of misconceptions about his attitude and willingness to take on a lesser role? Were Anthony&rsquo;s failed stints with the Oklahoma City Thunder and Houston Rockets misinterpreted? Were teams scared off because his former coaches slandered him? Was there too much of a reliance on analytics? 
The answer may very well be all of the above. 
Let&rsquo;s start with the widely accepted notion that &lsquo;Melo was stuck in the netherworld of a once-dominant superstar &ndash; past his prime, unable (or unwilling) to adjust his role for the good of the team and against the unfamiliar idea of coming off the bench. Although this was the prevailing narrative, his public statements and actions didn&rsquo;t support this theory. Remember, he came off the bench during his time with the Rockets. 
While &lsquo;Melo did voice his disapproval about being a sixth man with the Oklahoma City Thunder and stated that he was still capable of being a starter, he accepted the role that was given to him. I don&rsquo;t know a player who ever existed that didn&rsquo;t believe he was capable of a bigger role than the one given to them by their coach. What did the media expect Carmelo to say? &ldquo;Yeah, I&rsquo;m washed up. I simply don&rsquo;t have it anymore. I&rsquo;m not the player that I once was.&rdquo;
When discussing his season in OKC, Anthony <a style="color: #d8d8d8;" href="https://es.pn/2HX7Rwl" target="_blank" rel="noopener">told ESPN</a>: &ldquo;I was willing to accept that challenge in that role (coming off the bench), but I think I bring a little bit more to the game as far as being more knowledgeable and what I still can do as a basketball player.&rdquo;
Nowhere in there did &lsquo;Melo express that he wasn&rsquo;t willing to accept a reserve role if that&rsquo;s what was given to him. But of course he is going to feel that he still can contribute as a starter. He&rsquo;s Carmelo Anthony! A future Hall of Famer. A top-15 scorer in NBA history.
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This brings us to the disastrous Houston stint that resulted in the Rockets waiving Anthony after 10 games. Make no mistake, the Rockets were struggling as a team. But, for some reason, the majority of the blame was directed at Anthony &ndash; someone who was coming off of the bench and playing a reduced amount of minutes.
This really shouldn&rsquo;t have been surprising after what happened in New York, when head coach Mike D&rsquo;Antoni blamed the Knicks&rsquo; struggles on Carmelo. In fact, many people around the Knicks organization have confirmed that D&rsquo;Antoni was the one who gave the ultimatum: &ldquo;Either &lsquo;Melo goes or I go.&rdquo; The Knicks chose &lsquo;Melo. Now, did Anthony happily accept D&rsquo;Antoni&rsquo;s plan to move him to power forward? No. But it was D&rsquo;Antoni who quit on the team, not Anthony. (How D&rsquo;Antoni got another job after that, I will never know, but I digress).
Another damaging factor for Anthony was George Karl&rsquo;s tell-all book, which supported the notion that Carmelo was a selfish teammate and introduced a new caveat as he questioned his overall character. 
&ldquo;Carmelo was a true conundrum for me in the six years I had him," Karl <a href="https://www.si.com/nba/2017/01/10/george-karl-book-excerpt-furious-george-carmelo-anthony-jr-smith" target="_blank" rel="noopener">wrote in his book</a>. "He was the best offensive player I ever coached. He was also a user of people, addicted to the spotlight and very unhappy when he had to share it.
&ldquo;He really lit my fuse with his low demand of himself on defense. He had no commitment to the hard, dirty work of stopping the other guy. My ideal &mdash; probably every coach&rsquo;s ideal &mdash; is when your best player is also your leader. But since Carmelo only played hard on one side of the ball, he made it plain he couldn&rsquo;t lead the Nuggets, even though he said he wanted to. Coaching him meant working around his defense and compensating for his attitude.&rdquo;
Karl basically described Anthony as lazy and a bad teammate, which are some of the worst accusations that you can make against an NBA player. And once those accusations are floated around the league, especially from a head coach, they begin to spread like wildfire. There&rsquo;s no question that this was damaging to Carmelo&rsquo;s overall reputation. 
Why would Karl stoop to such a low level, criticizing his former player just to sell a book? Very good question.
It&rsquo;s also important to note that Karl has had major issues with just about every star player he has coached, including Kenyon Martin, J.R. Smith, the late Robert "Tractor" Traylor, Todd Day, DeMarcus Cousins, Andre Iguodala and Ray Allen (just to name a few). Whoever heard of a coach actually having issues with Ray Allen? It seems as though once Karl&rsquo;s coaching days ended, he resorted to slandering his former players for profit. Unfortunately, this character assassination further contributed to Anthony&rsquo;s tarnished reputation among NBA circles.
Anthony&rsquo;s reputation took yet another hit after the overall condemnation from the Zen Master himself, Phil Jackson, who won 11 rings as an NBA head coach and led two of the greatest dynasties the sport has ever seen. Jackson repeatedly showered Anthony with criticism after he took the reins in the Knicks&rsquo; front office. Jackson, one of the most successful coaches in NBA history, lambasted Melo in private and in public.
Jackson <a style="color: #d8d8d8;" href="https://nypost.com/2017/04/14/phil-jackson-tells-the-world-its-time-for-carmelo-to-go/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">told the press</a>, &ldquo;We&rsquo;ve not been able to win with him on the court at this time. I think the direction with our team is that he is a player that would be better off somewhere else and using his talents somewhere where he can win or chase that championship."
The reality was, Jackson simply wanted to blow up the Knicks and create his own roster, so he could say that he rebuilt the entire organization himself. He wanted to unload Carmelo&rsquo;s contract and started leaking things to the media, while &lsquo;Melo stayed above it all and remained professional. For a long time, Jackson&rsquo;s apparent strategy was to antagonize &lsquo;Melo into lashing out through the media and losing his cool, which would then cast &lsquo;Melo as a &ldquo;problem&rdquo; - thus justifying his desire to trade him. But &lsquo;Melo never took the bait. While Jackson&rsquo;s stint in New York resulted in nothing but more frustration for an already disgusted Knicks fan base, the situation was also damaging to &lsquo;Melo&rsquo;s reputation. 
But with all of this behind him, the entire basketball world is now praising and appreciating &lsquo;Melo. Here&rsquo;s what fellow Syracuse royalty Lawrence Moten and John Wallace had to say about Carmelo&rsquo;s comeback story:
&ldquo;I always had faith in him, it was just about him getting on the right team,&rdquo; Moten told me. &ldquo;The other teams tried to change his game instead of letting him do what he does best. Portland is allowing &lsquo;Melo to be &lsquo;Melo, and that&rsquo;s why it&rsquo;s working.&rdquo;
&ldquo;So happy for our &lsquo;Cuse brother,&rdquo; Wallace added. &ldquo;He&rsquo;s always been clutch, just look at his career. He always wants the big shot, and he has the best shooting percentage in NBA history with at least 10 made FGs [in clutch time]. [It&rsquo;s] good to see him block out the haters and focus on himself. Now, he&rsquo;s better because of it.&rdquo;
Sure, Moten and Wallace possess a bit of Syracuse bias, but everyone knows what &lsquo;Melo has been through, which makes his success even sweeter. This is his redemption story, and it&rsquo;s been a joy to watch him knock down big shot after big shot for the eighth-seeded Blazers.&nbsp;
As Chiney Ogwumike <a style="color: #d8d8d8;" href="https://twitter.com/chiney321/status/1294743185806114816?s=21" target="_blank" rel="noopener">tweeted</a> after Anthony&rsquo;s game-sealing shot in the play-in game versus Memphis: &ldquo;We can learn a LOT from Carmelo Anthony&hellip; Stay ready. Keep grinding. Know your value. Find your tribe. Understand your role. Never give up.&rdquo;

Carmelo Anthony was written off and his name was dragged through the mud, but now he's a key contributor for the Blazers. Etan Thomas breaks down his comeback.

Queens University of Charlotte Royals