Boston Celics Get Much Needed Rest Before Defending Champion Mavs Come to Town
The Celtics snapped their four-game winning streak and lost their first game at home this season, 87-74 to the Pacers. There certainly is cause for concern because so far this season the Celtics, like the Patriots, have failed to beat a team over .500. If the Celtics want to have a chance to win a championship this season, they will likely have to play the Heat, Knicks or Pacers in the playoffs.
Although this last loss to the Pacers was bad, their is a chance to breathe a sigh of relief now that it is over. The Celtics now have four days off until the defending champion Dallas Mavericks come to Beantown.
Even though the Mavericks have also struggled so far this season, they are still the defending champions and a much better test for the Celtics than a team like the Nets or Pistons.
In these four days off, the Celtics will not only get healthier (Wilcox, Pierce and Allen will be able to get back to full health and Mikael Pietrus will hopefully be ready to make his debut against the Mavs), but they will also get much-needed practice time.
The Celtics have been unable to practice much since training camp, which has hurt them so far this season. New players like Keyon Dooling, Brandon Bass and Chris Wilcox need all the practice time they can get to get a better feel for the Celtics system, both on the offensive and defensive side. Pietrus, who has been cleared to participate in certain parts of practice, will now get a chance to become more acquainted with his new team.
I expect the Celtics to come out firing against the Mavs after all of this rest and practice time. At least they should, because this is the longest break the Celtics will get all season.
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NBA’s Southwest chasing defending champs
Over the course of his often-brilliant 14 NBA seasons, Vince Carter has learned to move. As one of the legendary skywalkers in the game’s history, he knows how to move up, of course. But as a star-in-twilight preparing to perform for his fifth NBA team, one of the newest Dallas Mavericks also knows how to move out.
“I travel light,” Vince tells FOX Sports Southwest, noting that he’s moved to Dallas by himself and is excitedly waiting for the holiday visit from his mom and daughter but is otherwise unencumbered.
“I’m just driving a rental car,” Vince says. “I just go from (the condo) to practice so there’s not much need to do much driving.”
Mobility seems to be a requirement of membership in the Southwest Division these days, the changes in the rules and the competitiveness of the teams pushing the defending champion Mavs toward frenetic transactions and causing the Spurs, Hornets, Grizzlies and Rockets to dash about in order to catch up.
A scoot around what last year was the NBA’s deepest division and what this year is the most transient:
Dallas Mavericks (57-25 last season, second in the division, NBA champs):
Mavs bosses Mark Cuban and Donnie Nelson were quick to absorb the ramifications of the new CBA, which meant scrapping a plan to bring back center Tyson Chandler and the handful of other free-agent heroes from last year’s title squad.
“That was the four or five craziest days I’ve ever been involved in,” GM Nelson says of this year’s end of the lockout, opening of deal-making and start of training camp. “I’ve been guzzling a lot of coffee.”
As a result of the craziness, Chandler, Caron Butler, JJ Barea and DeShawn Stevenson are out. Their newcomer replacements include Carter, Delonte West and Lamar Odom, who unlike Vince does arrive in Big D with considerable baggage.
The Kardashian family is coming to town. That means the “Khloe & Lamar” TV show on E! is moving from Hollywood to North Texas. It means the couple (and their huge entourage) plans to rent an 11,000-square-foot residence at the W Hotel across the street from American Airlines Center. It means the sisters will open up a boutique in town called “D-A-S-H,” part of an empire that earned the Kardashian family 65 million last year.
Is any of this a problem for the Mavs?
“Khloe’s my favorite Kardashian,” says a playful coach Rick Carlisle. “She’s the coolest.”
Actually, the coolest personality in town is Dirk Nowitzki, the NBA Finals MVP and the centerpiece of everything the franchise accomplishes. On the first day of media availability at the AAC, “The UberMan” marched around the boundaries of the practice court to shake hands and greet every member of the attending media. In his conversations that day and since, he’s talked very openly about how “they can never take away” the Larry O’Brien Trophy captured by the Mavs.
What he talks about in more private moments is how much he wants another one.
San Antonio Spurs (division winners a year ago at 61-21, first-round losers to Memphis):
Gregg Popovich has something that’s worked for the better part of a decade-and-a-half. So maybe it’s foolish to questioning whether gaining nothing but Kawhi Leonard and T.J. Ford (and age on Tim Duncan and Manu Ginobili) will leave the Spurs in the dust of teams like Dallas or Memphis. But this much is true: The Mavs no longer shudder at the thought at San Antonio is their wicked big brother, and the young Grizzlies must feel like they can run circles around those old fellas.
And Tony Parker himself seems to have admitted to the same thoughts.
“At the start of (last) season, I said this was our last chance,” Parker told “L’Equipe” last May. “Tim and Gino are getting old. It’s going to be tough to regenerate ourselves. We will always have a good team, but we can no longer say that we’re playing for a championship.”
Yes, maybe that’s foolish of us to say that about a Popovich team. But we didn’t say it; Tony Parker did.
New Orleans Hornets (third place at 46-36, lost in first round of the playoffs to the Lakers):
The Hornets will not finish third in the division this year. In fact, the struggling franchise overseen by commissioner David Stern and the other 29 league owners is without a buyer and without a superstar now that Chris Paul has been moved to the Clippers.
Front-line stalwarts David West and Carl Landry are also gone, leaving the Hornets looking every bit like a franchise that will most benefit from being a lottery team.
Ex-Clippers Eric Gordon and Chris Kaman are enough to keep New Orleans looking like its completely tanking. But the Paul trade sets up this team to have two real goals: Make cap-space-minded moves (who knows how long Kaman and his 12.7 million expiring contract will last here?) and enter next summer’s draft with the hopefully high pick acquired from the Clippers (which is Minnesota’s unprotected) and the hopefully high pick they earn themselves by being lousy.
Memphis Grizzlies, (fourth place at 46-36, lost in second round of the playoffs to Oklahoma City):
Was their thrilling work in ousting the heavily-favored Spurs the start of something big? Or are the Grizzlies about to realize that it’s much easier to make the bad-to-good leap than it is to go from good to great?
The leadership of Miami-bound Shane Battier will be missed, but maybe the maturation of Zach Randolph now a legit star in some quarters can make up for that. Surely the healthy return of Rudy Gay will help, too; Memphis accomplished impressive things late last year when Gay, yet another budding star, was unavailable due to a shoulder injury.
Memphis doesn’t need new people. The Grizzlies just need their present personnel to keep improving. That goes for Randolph and Gay, and for center Marc Gasol, too, who re-upped after flirting with restricted free agency.
Those three guys allow the Grizzlies a variety of ways to win. maybe enough to contend for the top spot in the division.
We feel like we have a team to make a run for the championship,” point guard Mike Conley says. “The sky is the limit.”
Houston Rockets (43-39, out of the playoffs):
The Rockets are all-time finalists for that “Best-Worst Team” competition. The Rockets’ 43 wins a year ago would’ve been good enough to allow them to finish sixth in the East. But misfortune seems to plague Houston, which has attempted to transition from the injury retirement of Yao Ming but cannot quite get over the big-man-acquisition hump. Last summer GM Daryl Morey chased ‘em all, from Chris Bosh on down, with no success. This year he was the third team in the quashed Paul-to-the-Lakers swap and was going to be giving up good pros Luis Scola and Kevin Martin but getting Pau Gasol (and as the plan was to go, Nene from Denver, too).
Instead the Rockets will mostly hope a coaching change, from Rick Adelman to Kevin McHale, will be the difference-maker.
“Who gives a (bleep) how hard it is?” Morey tells the Houston Chronicle. “No one cares, nor should they. We don’t have any excuses. We don’t care; we’re going to keep fighting and winning. We’re going to keep trying to make this team a team the city can be proud of and get it back to being a championship-caliber team.”
To be a championship-caliber team, all the clubs in the Southwest must chase and catch the Mavs. And take it from the upwardly mobile Carter, this is the time of year when everybody is 0-0 when there’s reason to be optimistic about that chase.
“(The Mavs) just made it happen,” said Carter, who observed Dallas’ first world title in its 31 years of existence while a member of the Suns. “It takes a lot of luck and opportunity, and they seized the moment. Could people honestly say they were going to win it at the beginning of the year? No, not really. (But) when you put a team like this together that’s committed and when you get a bunch of veteran guys, anything can happen.”
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Terry ready for Mavs to start defending NBA title
Jason Terry has returned to the Dallas Mavericks’ practice court for the first time since the team’s championship parade in June.
Players were barred from team facilities during the NBA lockout. A tentative resolution allowed teams to open their doors Thursday, and Terry was the first to walk through it.
Terry joked that he wasn’t sure whether his ID card would still work. It did, and he was looking forward to getting in a workout.
He expected other players to join him later in the day – but not NBA finals MVP Dirk Nowitzki, because he’s in Germany.
The Mavericks are expected to begin the defense of their first title on Christmas at home against the team they beat in the finals, the Miami Heat.
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Columbia Lions Open Second Season Under Kyle Smith at Defending Champions UConn
The Columbia Lions will board up the bus and head up to Connecticut trying to pull off the upset of the century as they take on the defending national champions in their first game on Friday. Although the Lions return the Ivy League’s leading scorer Noruwa Agho, they are still considered 24-point underdogs against the Huskies, who will raise the banner at Gampel Pavillion tonight.
Maybe the one thing keeping the Lions optimistic tonight is the fact that NBA lottery draft pick Kemba Walker won’t be suiting up. Walker left after his junior year at the university to play in the NBA, but the lockout has kept the Connecticut hero, who led the Huskies on a magical March run to become Big East and National champions, in Storrs. It is likely he will be at the game tonight.
Another man who will not be a factor at the game tonight is UConn head coach Jim Calhoun, who is beginning his NCAA-sanctioned three-game suspension tonight for recruiting violations. Associate head coach George Blaney will take the helm.
On the other bench, Columbia head coach Kyle Smith his second year as head coach of the Lions after leading them to a 15-13 record last season. Smith believes that they have “one of the best backcourts in the league with [Brian] Barbour and Agho.”
Barbour returns for his junior season after a breakout season last year. He averaged more than 13 points a game and was one of the best in the country from the charity stripe.
Columbia did lose a lot of size in the front court, however. They do return juniors Mark Cisco and John Daniels, who will have increased roles this year. John Daniels is a defensive specialist, one of the few on a Columbia team that has been offensively focused since having Smith take over. Last year the team averaged more than 70 points for the first time in 18 seasons.
Both teams tonight are very young, but it can’t be overstated just how much experience some of the Connecticut sophomores have. Jeremy Lamb was a hero during the NCAA tournament run, averaging more than 11 points.
Point guard Shabazz Napier will also have an increased role. The Huskies were also able to pick up the nations No. 1 recruit, Andre Drummond, to add to a team that was ranked No. 4 coming into the season.
Just as with last year, the Lions were picked to finish seventh out of eight teams in conference play, and just like last year they hope to surprise a lot of people.
They may not win tonight, but they will be able to get a sense of where they stand this year against Connecticut, and Kyle Smith and his team are certainly up for the challenge.
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UConn Basketball: 5 Burning Questions for Defending National Champs
Kemba Walker’s performance in leading UConn to the national title will go down in NCAA tournament history, but Walker won’t be back in Storrs this season. For the Huskies team that remains, defending the championship without their best player will be no easy task.
Erstwhile freshman stars Jeremy Lamb and Shabazz Napier will be thrown into the spotlight with Walker no longer grabbing attention in the backcourt. Up front, uber recruit Andre Drummond has become the most talked-about forward on the roster, but is he ready to make an immediate impact?
Herein, a look at the five most important questions that will determine the Huskies’ chances of cutting down the nets again next March.
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Defending champ UConn opens practice (AP)
Connecticut’s basketball teams showed off their skills in front of their fans for the first time since the men brought home the program’s third national championship and the women returned from their 12th Final Four. Men’s coach Jim Calhoun has said he believes his team may be more talented than the one that beat Butler in April.
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Defending champion UConn opens practice
Connecticut practiced in front of their fans for the first time since bringing home the program’s third national championship.
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Dallas Mavericks: 5 Offseason Moves for the Defending NBA Champs to Consider
Following the first championship in franchise history, the Dallas Mavericks face several issues regarding free agency. Tyson Chandler, JJ Barea, Caron Butler, DeShawn Stevenson, Brian Cardinal and Peja Stojakovic, all contributing pieces of this year’s team, are set to hit the free-agency market.
With the second-highest payroll in the NBA last year, the Mavs certainly have a few hard decisions to make, whether it be re-tooling around their championship core or lusting after a high-profile free agents in 2012. The decisions Donnie Nelson, Mark Cuban and the front office make will ultimately determine the Mavericks’ fate throughout the course of the Dirk era.
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Dwyane Wade: What’s the Gameplan for Mavs in Defending Miami’s Wade?
Dwyane Wade Presents Extremely Difficult Matchup For the Dallas Mavericks in the 2011 NBA Finals
Dwyane Wade still haunts the dreams of Dallas Mavericks fans with glimpses of him drawing endless fouls in the 2006 NBA Finals and making free throw after free throw.
The Mavs better hope they have a much more concrete gameplan in the 2011 Finals. ESPN.com writers Kevin Arnovitz and Tom Haberstroh talk about one of the likely options:
Wade, meanwhile, presents a more interesting series of choices for Dallas. DeShawn Stevenson is the Mavericks’ designated defender on the wing and he’ll open each game on Wade. The NBA’s Stats Cube tells us that Wade scored only a single field goal during the 30 minutes he shared the floor with Stevenson this season. When Stevenson took a seat, Wade exploded for 42 points in 50 minutes.
MUST READ: Power Ranking The Last 18 Winners of The 2011 Finals MVP
Problem is, Stevenson is an offensive liability and they can’t have him out there in critical junctures of the game. Jason Kidd is a crunch time option, but will he be too worn out to effectively run the point?
Jason Terry and JJ Barea are out of the question, so what will Dallas do?
They will need Tyson Chandler to patrol the middle and keep Wade off-balance on his drives to the hole. They need Stevenson to bring the “heat” for awhile, but it will be Kidd’s D down the stretch that will dictate how much of a factor Wade is for the Heat.
It’s not going to be easy for the Mavs, and it may ultimately spell their demise.
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LA Lakers: Where Did the 2-Time Defending Champion Lakers Go?
The Los Angeles Lakers are a foreign entity right now. As the series is firmly in the grasp of the Dallas Mavericks at 3-0, “The Lake Show” is about to go on hiatus.
Each player wearing purple and gold appears indistinct. Even Phil Jackson doesn’t look the part.
Who would think that the Mavericks would be so affective with the likes of J.J. Barea, Peja Stojakovic, and Jason Terry?
Certainly, most Laker fans would expect Kobe Bryant to outscore that trio on any given night.
However, in a crucial game three to save the series, Bryant scores 17 points on 16 attempts. A performance that screams impersonator!
The Lakers do not look like themselves. It was clear after the game two debacle in Los Angeles.
The media went searching for the problem. Lakers center, Andrew Bynum, believed the losses were “trust issues”. He was right.
During the game two loss at home, the fans at Staples Center were in disbelief. The crowd had no trust in their beloved Lakers.
The confidence left the building, along with the Lakers’ game.
Dallas was supposed to be the city where they regained their form, but it was not meant to be.
Even with Bynum’s 21-point and 10 rebound performance, it was not enough. The Lakers needed something special.
Instead, Pau Gasol continued to struggle through referee complaints, fumbled rebounds and another elementary shooting performance.
It certainly doesn’t help that Gasol’s shooting woes have harmed his defensive skills, too. After time, a coach can only take so much.
And Phil Jackson even tapped into his gritty, former-player mentality for inspiration with Gasol. Yet that failed to hit home with Gasol and the Lakers.
None of these descriptions are fit for a two-time defending champion. However, no one pictured the Lakers losing the first three games of this series, or any series.
But the Mavericks Dirk Nowitzki has been a perennial threat for years. This just happens to be the Lakers and Mavericks first meeting during the Kobe-Dirk era.
Right now, Nowitzki and the Mavericks are hungry for a championship, and their play exudes that sentiment. Dallas wants what the Lakers have.
At this point, Kobe, Phil and the Lakers are allowing the Mavericks to take their crown with little resistance.
Perhaps the three-year stretch of reaching the championship series has added miles to the Lakers’ aging ride. An excuse like that would fit, but not for a player like Kobe Bryant.
Bryant said, “Call me crazy, but I still think we can win.” Maybe he is right, but it’s tough to believe him, not only because no team has ever comeback from a three-game hole, but because Kobe has not shown that typical “Black Mamba magic”.
J.J. Barea should never outscore Kobe in the final quarter of any game, unless Bryant did not play. However, Kobe left fans in shock, only to play out that scenario.
Laker fans were shocked, and are still in disbelief.
This could be the end of the Lakers run.
Everyone across the media outlets has said, “The series is over.”
Most would tend to agree, even in Los Angeles. With minimal enthusiasm and fight from the Lakers, the argument for the contrary falls on deaf ears.
Even with Kobe, Phil, the lackluster Gasol, the ejected and suspended Ron Artest, as well as the cast of others cannot complete this Hollywood scripted, fairy tale comeback.
It might be time to read the Lakers last rights, but with games still to be played, anything can happen. It is only four straight victories, right?
Are you willing to put your trust into the Lakers?
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