Hawks make playoffs again despite injuries
Five consecutive seasons the Hawks have made the playoffs.
Five more seasons than anyone predicted for this bunch the day they made the postseason back in 2008, when they backed in, to so speak, on their way to that epic first-round series with the eventual champion Boston Celtics.
But here they are after Monday’s 109-87 win over the Raptors in Toronto, the clincher the Hawks needed to secure their spot for this postseason.
This might be the Hawks’ most remarkable season during this five-year stretch, given the injury issues they’ve had to deal with during this abbreviated and condensed NBA season. All-Star center Al Horford missed all but 11 games with a torn pectoral muscle that might or might not prevent him from returning for the postseason.
All-Star guard Joe Johnson has had an up and down season, struggling with injuries and bouts of flat play throughout a season that has seen Josh Smith surpass them both for the top spot on the Hawks’ food chain this season.
Jeff Teague finally asserted himself as the team’s starting point guard. Plus an unheralded and generally over-the-hill cast of reserves have proved to be better and more reliable than anyone might have imagined they’d be when they were busy signing one-year deals to join the Hawks.
Hawks coach Larry Drew is in his second season, but doesn’t have a contract beyond the last day of this season, whenever that comes, adding another dose of subtle pressure to the Hawks’ situation.
“It’s old hat for us now,” Smith said. “We just go out there and grind and play up to our own expectations every night. We expect to make the playoffs, not that it’s something to take lightly or anything, but this is what we expect to do.”
NOTES, QUOTES
-Not all of the news today was good for the Hawks.
The foot injury that sidelined Zaza Pachulia for the back-to-back set with the Raptors could wind up costing the Hawks’ fill-in for Horford the remainder of the (regular) season. Pachulia’s injury turned out to be worse than diagnosed, though the Hawks declined comment.
Pachulia, however, took to Twitter.
“Staying confident and hoping to return ASAP,” he tweeted during the game. “We will wait and see how it goes. I’m still hoping to be back this season.”
-He’s a bit on the short side, but if the Hawks need anyone to replace Pachulia’s energy and effort in the coming days, they have reserve big man Ivan Johnson.
The resident wild man scored a career-high and team-high 21 points to go with his 8 rebounds. Johnson made 9 of his 13 shots from the floor and silenced his critics who were busy trashing him after he was sent home from Orlando last week for conduct detrimental to the team.
The fact is, Johnson is the Hawks’ most valuable big-man commodity off the bench, he has been all season and will be in the postseason.
So whatever issues he has or had, the Hawks need to put it all in rearview and make sure he’s mentally and physically ready for whatever comes next.
QUOTE TO NOTE
“It’s good to have that playoff bid locked up and taken care of now. I remember when we had to go into the final week, the final days really, of the season to find out if we made it or not. This is much better.” — Drew on clinching the playoff bid now as opposed to sometime next week.
View full post on Yardbarker: NBA
Key injuries as compressed NBA season winds down
It has been a balancing act trying to gauge rest management for NBA teams concerned about keeping players fresh for the playoffs.
View full post on USATODAY.com Feed
Will Injuries to Derrick Rose, Kobe Bryant and Dwight Howard Change Postseason?
Injuries happen to every team in every sport at any time.
With the NBA regular season winding down and the playoffs rapidly approaching, the league is staring down the possibility that three of its most recognizable and irreplaceable stars could be on the sidelines.
It’s a worst-case scenario for the players, their teams and the league as a whole.
No professional team sport in America relies more heavily on “star power” to generate interest and revenue than the NBA. With only five starters per team and rotations that usually run under 10 players, every individual player has a fair amount of impact.
That impact is magnified by stars and superstars.
So when three of the NBA’s superstars are felled by injuries, which may keep those players off the court into the postseason, the impact is dramatic and quite possibly NBA Title altering.
How will the injuries to Dwight Howard, Kobe Bryant and Derrick Rose impact the final weeks of the regular season? Will those injuries continue to have impacts in the postseason?
View full post on Bleacher Report – NBA
Ridnour is added to the Wolves’ list of injuries
It was one injury too many.
Blink, and you missed it. But count the players on the court in the final minutes of the third quarter of Monday’s 116-108 loss to Sacramento, and there was something off. Instead of following the pack of players down the hardwood, point guard Luke Ridnour lay writhing on the sideline, clutching his right ankle, which just moments later the team confirmed he’d sprained.
This is a player who’s been teetering on the brink of injury in recent weeks, who’s shouldered an average of 39.3 minutes in the six games before Monday. His 175-pound frame has been battered, no stranger to ice packs and bruises. But until Monday, it was always okay. No matter how questionable Ridnour’s status had been recently, he was always ready to play, suited up and on every trip.That all may have changed in the third quarter in Sacramento, and it was yet another blow the Timberwolves didn’t need. They were in the game, down by just a point going into the fourth quarter. Center Nikola Pekovic was back after missing seven games with bone spurs in his right ankle, and it seemed that the strain of injuries might be lifting, however slowly. For three quarters, just three of the team’s top six scorers were out, but when Ridnour fell, that number shot back up to four.”I didn’t see him go down,” Timberwolves’ coach Rick Adelman said. “Someone told me that he was laying at the other end, and I can’t remember what I said. Probably wasn’t anything nice. I just seems like it’s happening all the way around.”There’s no saying right now how much time Ridnour will miss, but in the immediate aftermath of his injury, things went to pieces. The Timberwolves scored just two points in the first five minutes of the fourth quarter after letting the Kings go on an 11-0 run, and they let the game slip out of reach, too far for their late-game comeback to be effective.The last time Minnesota played in Sacramento, it suffered what was then its worst loss of the year, falling 115-99. With the possibility of Pekovic returning, the team seemed to have a shot at redeeming itself, but for the second game in a row, Sacramento knew how to keep the Timberwolves at bay. Minnesota finished the night shooting 48.1 percent, but Kevin Love was the only starter to finish with more than 13 points. Love failed to be the game’s highest scorer, as Tyreke Evans’s 24 points edged his 23, and the Timberwolves’ power forward was also three rebounds short of a double-double.”We were just trying to stay close to Kevin Love,” Evans said. “He’s been playing great. He’s been killing the league right now in points and rebounds. We’re just trying to crowd him and make him take tough shots.”Evans was one of four Sacramento players who finished with more than 15 points. The Kings shot 50.6 percent from the field, but only 40.9 percent in the fourth quarter, which was encouraging in the absence of Ridnour’s defense. Another bright spot was Pekovic, who had 17 points in 19 minutes and didn’t complain about pain postgame, Adelman said.”He says the only thing he really felt was his conditioning,” Adelman said. “We tried to give him short minutes. He’s a real factor for us around the basket so if we can get him back and gradually build up his conditioning, that’ll help us a lot.”J.J. Barea, who’s been suffering from a thigh contusion, did not make the trip to the West Coast. His health may be the biggest question going forward, as Malcolm Lee and Wayne Ellington will struggle to carry the burden in Ridnour’s absence. Neither is a true point guard, and both have seen extremely limited action this season. “We just have to have somebody else step up,” Adelman said. “I have no other answers, other than other people have to play.”With each game that passes, each loss and injury, there are fewer and fewer answers and options for the coach to ponder. Injuries have made the team almost powerless in righting its late-season skid. Adelman said that right now, Lee is really his best option, and he doesn’t know the specifics of Barea’s return timetable. But if the veteran point guard can get healthy and Pekovic can continue to play through the bone spurs Ridnour’s injury may not be the crippling blow that it might seem in the minutes and hours after his fall.Follow Joan Niesen on Twitter.
View full post on Yardbarker: NBA
Wolves losing offensive punch amid injuries
MINNEAPOLIS Anthony Tolliver has seen this before, the scrambling and renegotiating, the rehab and health updates. Injuries were his ticket to an NBA career in Golden State, and they’ve allowed him more minutes recently with the Minnesota Timberwolves.
The Warriors acquired Tolliver, a backup center, in 2010, when they played for about half their season with only six or seven truly healthy players. Although injuries haven’t hit the Timberwolves as hard this season, they’ve redefined the team’s performance in March, and in the month’s final game, three key players — in addition to Ricky Rubio — are still out for Minnesota.
Center Nikola Pekovic, guard J.J. Barea and forward Michael Beasley will all sit out Friday night’s game against the Boston Celtics. Pekovic has missed the past five games with bone spurs in his right ankle, and though he’d hoped to play against the Celtics, the center hasn’t progressed to the point where that’s possible. The team has not updated the time frame on Pekovic’s recovery, and he said on Sunday that he’s hoping to return this season before possibly having offseason surgery.
Barea was injured in the fourth quarter of last Friday’s double-overtime loss in Oklahoma City. He’s suffering from a thigh contusion and hasn’t played since. With Rubio out for the remainder of the season, Barea’s injury has been all the more devastating for the Timberwolves.
In the two games before his injury, Barea averaged 21.5 points, and he had a season-high 10 assists as part of a triple-double in Oklahoma City. After battling injuries for most of the season, Barea was finally becoming an offensive weapon before the latest setback.
“I was feeling great. I was playing good,” he said. “This one was just a hit. I got hit in my quad. There’s nothing I can do about it. It’s frustrating. It’s disappointing, but I’ve got to fight through it.”
Beasley’s sprained left big toe has sidelined him for two of the team’s past four games, and he’s played more than 20 minutes just twice in March. Without his scoring and the offensive spark Pekovic and Barea add, the Timberwolves have been forced to redefine their offense, adding Tolliver and guard Wayne Ellington into the mix. Both have risen to the occasion, and Kevin Love said that the injuries have also contributed to the incredible numbers he’s posted in March.
“I think with Pek out, J.J. out, Mike out, there’s less firepower,” Love said. “So I’m having to take a little more of the reins on the offensive end.”
The Timberwolves are fortunate that they have Love, who’s averaging 31.3 points and 14.1 rebounds this month, to pick up some of the slack. And though Tolliver emphasized how powerless a team can be in the face of injuries, the Timberwolves don’t have to feel so impotent with Love in the lineup. Right now, they can rely on their All-Star to carry them, but how much and for how long remain to be seen.
Until Rubio’s injury on March 9, the Timberwolves were fortunate they hadn’t faced nearly the number of injuries they might have expected with this season’s compact schedule. But with those expectations now becoming a grim reality, Tolliver said every player on the team needs to feel like he’s ready to be called on at any time.
Against Boston on Friday, it will be a fight to win without a starter and two key bench players they thought might be playing earlier in the week. But the Timberwolves have done it before, in Charlotte most recently. More important, they played without both Pekovic and Barea in a big win against Denver on Sunday, and though that guarantees nothing, it at least gives them hope that a win is within reach Friday night.
Follow Joan Niesen on Twitter.
View full post on Yardbarker: NBA
New Jersey Nets vs. Indiana Pacers: Deron Williams Leads After More Injuries
Deron Williams and the hospital-bound New Jersey Nets finally snapped their horrid skid by beating a very good Indiana Pacers team, 100-86. It was the biggest margin of victory for New Jersey this season.
Williams was sensational in the win on Wednesday night with 30 points and nine assists against Indiana. D-Will came up with 13 huge points in the fourth quarter to help seal the deal.
The Nets enjoyed an even distribution of scoring after four starters and five players in total scored in double figures.
MarShon Brooks shot over 50 percent from the floor and contributed 17 points on the evening.
It was an impressive win in itself because of the Nets’ record and the quality of opponent they beat, but to add to all that, New Jersey only dressed 10 players for the game and finished with eight.
Shelden Williams, the starting center by default, suffered an eye injury in the second quarter against the Pacers. And the second victim came in the third quarter when backup center by default, Jordan Williams, left the game with concussion-like symptoms.
Head coach Avery Johnson has enough problems as it is with his team, and injuries certainly haven’t helped that cause.
The Nets are feeling it big time in what otherwise could have been a more competitive season. If they had the same depth at full strength plus their two new additions in Gerald Green and Gerald Wallace, they could be chasing the New York Knicks right now.
Every team has to play through injuries, and the Nets simply haven’t gotten it done in 2012.
Read more NBA news on BleacherReport.com
View full post on Bleacher Report – NBA
How Rash of Injuries to Jeremy Lin and Top Stars Will Affect Knicks’ Playoff Run
The New York Knicks managed to extend their lead in the race for eighth place in the Eastern Conference playoff picture with an 89-80 win over the Milwaukee Bucks on Monday night, despite the absences of Jeremy Lin and Amar’e Stoudemire and a groin tweak to Carmelo Anthony.
Should all three be forced to miss significant time, the Knicks could very well lose their grip on the last postseason spot and slip disappointingly back into a less-than-cushy pile of lottery Ping-Pong balls.
Ones that the Houston Rockets would stand to benefit from.
‘Melo might not be available for Wednesday’s game against the Orlando Magic after reaggravating a previous groin injury during a 28-point outburst—his best total in two months. Linsanity, meanwhile, may be on hold for a bit after injuring his right knee against the Detroit Pistons on Saturday.
The worst blow, though, belongs to STAT, who came down with a bulging disk in his back during that same game against the Pistons—a malady that could keep him out through the end of the regular season.
All of which added up to Mike Woodson calling off Tuesday’s practice, according to Marc Berman of the New York Post:
Woodson calls off practice tomorrow. That’s how beat up they are.
— Marc Berman (@NYPost_Berman) March 27, 2012
No team can realistically withstand the long-term loss of its three best players, especially with a schedule as brutal as the one with which the Knickerbockers will be faced in the coming weeks. Of their final 16 games, 10 are against teams with winning records, and half of those 10 are against the Magic, Chicago Bulls and Miami Heat.
Gulp is right, folks. The Knicks have had enough trouble handling those teams with a healthier roster. Throw in a few extra injuries and, well…
On the flip side, injuries to Gotham’s Big Three will allow the likes of Baron Davis, Landry Fields, Tyson Chandler, Iman Shumpert and J.R. Smith to get in additional work and build confidence heading into the final month of the season.
And, luckily for the Knicks, Milwaukee’s remaining slate isn’t all that much easier, with eight games against teams that are currently playoff-bound.
The Bucks, of course, are the Knicks’ chief competition for the eighth spot in the East.
All things considered, Monday shaped up to be a bittersweet day for the Knicks, one on which a hard-fought, defensive-minded victory at Madison Square Garden was washed out by concerns that injuries to the team’s stars may be too much for this already-sinking ship to bear.
Read more NBA news on BleacherReport.com
View full post on Bleacher Report – NBA
Injuries lead Wolves to find hidden depth
MINNEAPOLIS He was perfect at the half, with 17 points, running down the court as if he owned it. Not one miss, not one whiff, barely a misstep.
Luke Ridnour was playing like the game depended on him, and in many ways, it did. He’s not the biggest name on the Timberwolves, and he’s often the smallest guy on the court. He blends in, a quiet weapon, and just minutes before that nearly flawless half, Ridnour was debating whether he’d even be able to play against Denver.
Were you questionable before the game, Luke?
“Um…” he paused, smiling in a way that hinted he might be lying. “Nah.”
“Not without J.J.,” Brad Miller interjected. “They were debating which one.”
That’s what it’s come to for the Timberwolves. The question is no longer whether someone is injured; it’s now a matter of who’s hurting worse, and on Sunday afternoon, Barea was it, suffering from a hip contusion. Ridnour had no choice but to play after getting banged up at the end of Friday’s game in Oklahoma City, and his 25-point night was the epitome of what the Timberwolves are facing at the end of March. Backed into a corner by injuries and time and a 2-5 road trip, they’ve finally discovered their depth, and recent games have proven that this team is more than just Kevin Love.
Sure, Love finished Minnesota’s 117-100 win with 30 points and 21 rebounds, but within the skewed expectations the forward has built for himself, that’s become normal. The real story on Sunday was the bench — and the former bench players now forced into a starting role — which carried the team that’s missing its starting point guard and center.
In early March, it was a season of feel-good stories, of a 21-year-old phenom living up to unimaginable hype and a hulking center becoming a household name in a matter of days. But that’s now become a different tale altogether for the Timberwolves. Feel-good has faded to disappointing, with Ricky Rubio sidelined for the rest of the year with a torn ACL and Nikola Pekovic out indefinitely with bone spurs in his right ankle. It all really was too good to be true, and as the Timberwolves neared the end of their two-week road trip, they had a choice. They could feel sorry for themselves, or they could rise above it all.
In the past two games, they’ve chosen the second option.
“We keep on having all these injuries, and guys keep going down,” Anthony Tolliver said. “(We) kind of come everyday and somebody new is down… Everybody that’s over on the bench is just taking pride in it and knowing that they’re going to get an opportunity and take advantage of it.”
Tolliver finished Sunday’s game with 10 points and six rebounds, and he’s averaged 16.3 points over his past three games. That’s a substantial improvement for a guy who’s averaging just 4.2 points this season, and he’s the perfect example of a player who faces each day like his team will need him, even when it didn’t for most of the season.
There has to be an adjustment period for players like Tolliver and Wayne Ellington, who saw little to no action for much of February and early March. It’s tough to stay sharp when you’re not playing consistently, Ellington said, but he credited his performance to professionalism, which paid off in a 17-point game Sunday. It might have taken these players who aren’t accustomed to significant minutes a few games to hit their stride, but the rhythm is finally there.
“A lot of guys get down on themselves, but you’ve got to stay positive,” Ellington said. “You’ve got to understand that, keep that confidence in yourself, and when you get out there you’ve got to be able to show what you can do.”
No doubt being part of a system that’s working and having a coach the team can trust and respect goes a long way toward fostering that morale, and it seems that Rick Adelman’s bench is finally heeding his calls to step up. Depth is always necessary, of course, but just a month ago, with Rubio and Pekovic healthy and Love playing like he always does, it didn’t seem imperative. Now, the coach’s demands matter in the utmost, and it may have taken those injuries for the players to fully hear and understand.
“Early on, it was like, man, we’ve got too many guys,” Ellington said. “But now it’s starting to pay off for us when guys are going down. Other guys are stepping up and getting that opportunity to play strong.”
And somehow, despite the new combinations of players on the court, the offense is clicking better than ever in recent games. With 117 points on Sunday and 140 on Friday, the Timberwolves set a franchise record for most points scored in two consecutive games. They’ve scored 100 or more points in three of their last four games and in five of the nine games since Rubio’s injury, pushing their average points per game to 99.4 (fifth-best in the league).
Adelman said that he’s not surprised at the team’s recent offensive resurgence, even with all the injuries. This team has always been able to score, even in its 17-win season last year. Players are finally learning what they need to do to be successful scorers, the coach said.
Each of those 117 points, every basket from a player who’s had to earn his minutes — they all contribute to the statement this team wants to make coming off its disappointing road trip. Don’t count them out yet, because even without Rubio, Pekovic and Barea — and whoever is missing in Tuesday’s game, and Wednesday’s — the Timberwolves have a shot. These players want people to know that their double-overtime loss to the Thunder on Friday was anything but a fluke, and they can compete with the best in the league.
“After the game, we didn’t hang our heads,” Ellington said of the loss in Oklahoma City. “That’s one of the best teams in the league. We felt like we played a really great game against them. We showed the type of team that we can be. We wanted to keep it rolling, keep it going and get better and better.”
It was the best way to lose, if such a thing exists, and that feeling stuck with the team when it returned to Minneapolis. Players remembered how they felt before the last game, how coming out of pregame warmups they sensed that they had a shot. Love said he experienced the same thing on Sunday; before the game there was some intangible sense that he and his team were going to play well.
It may not have made sense, not with the injuries and the recent struggles. But these things don’t have to make sense, and on Sunday, the Timberwolves proved that being pushed to the brink of a failure might not have been the worst thing to happen to this team.
Follow Joan Niesen on Twitter.
View full post on Yardbarker: NBA
BYU Basketball: Inconsistency and Injuries Leave NCAA Bid in Peril
As their first season in the West Coast Conference came to a screeching halt on Saturday night at the hands of the Gonzaga Bulldogs, the BYU Cougars hoops squad find themselves sitting squarely on bubble for a NCAA tournament invite.
It was no secret the Cougars weren’t going to be able to replace last year’s Naismith Award winner Jimmer Fredette with anyone on the 2011-2012 squad. It’s hard at any level to replace 28 ppg, and the Cougars knew this was going to be a challenge heading into the season.
Anyone looking in from the outside would see a 25-win team and think they had a great season. Don’t me wrong, 25 wins is not an easy feat at the Division-I level, but the Cougars just plain lost games they should have won this year.
It started with a loss to a Utah State team that finished their regular season 17-14. Granted, the game was in Logan, but the Cougars were trying to figure out who the point guard was going to be, and all-around sloppy play led to a 20-turnover game and a 69-62 loss.
That loss will hurt the Cougars as the selection committee is making their date reservations for the big dance.
The Cougars had their chances to make an impression in the non-conference schedule with games against ranked Wisconsin and Baylor teams. The Cougars were in the Wisconsin game until about midway through the second half, and then they forgot how to defend the perimeter, giving up 13 three-point shots in the game.
If you can ever consider a loss a good loss, the Baylor game would be that. The Bears from Baylor came in ranked in the top 10, and the Cougars played them very well most of the game. The game was close all night, but the Cougars came up just short with Brandon Davies’ game-tying three-point attempt being blocked as the last play of the game.
One of the things that hurt BYU the most this season was the wild inconsistency on the offensive side of the floor, particularly their three-point shooting. The Cougars were one of the top three-point shooting teams in the nation until the Loyola Marymount game in Provo in January. The Cougars shot 2-of-25 from behind the arc in that game, and the wheels fell off for the next five games.
Including the Loyola game and the following five games, the Cougars were 14-of-101, or a 14 percent clip, from behind the arc. It’s hard to draw back in recent memory such a poor shooting streak.
If you add to the wildly inconsistent shooting to the injuries the Cougars have endured, it is a darn near miracle they won 25 games. The Cougars have been without the services of Chris Collinsworth, a 6’9″ sophomore, basically the entire season. The Cougars could have used his strength and size on the lower block this year.
In addition to the loss of Collinsworth, junior Stephen Rogers tore his meniscus in December and was basically lost for the season. He has played in a few games lately, but after starting the season extremely well, has basically been ineffective since his recent return. Rogers is a 6’8″ swingman whom the Cougars could have desperately used an another weapon in the offense.
Then there is Matt Carlino. The guy is only a freshman and has show signs of amazing talent during his rookie year. His first game college game ever against No. 6 Baylor where he dropped 18 points on 7-of-14 shooting probably gave the Cougar fan base too much expectation too soon. There were many games where Carlino struggled in his shooting and decision making. But again, the guy is a freshman and has shown flashes of brilliance. As Carlino continues to develop, the Cougars will be set at point guard for at least the next two years.
The one guy who has seemed to be Mr. Consistent all year is senior Noah Hartsock. It almost seemed routine to look at the box score and see 17 points and 10 boards every night. He assumed the role of leadership that the Cougars desperately needed post-Jimmer. Plain and simple, the guy is just a rock. Hopefully his knee holds up for whatever postseason tournament the Cougars find themselves in.
All in all, the Cougars have had a pretty good season. Again, 25 wins and a 12-4 conference record is nothing to sneeze at. But there will always be the what-ifs you find from fan bases. What if they beat Baylor, what if the injury bug wouldn’t have bitten so hard, what if they could have beaten St. Mary’s at home and so on and so on.
Unfortunately for BYU, after Saturday’s beatdown from Gonzaga the Cougars are going to have to leave their fate to a bunch of box score readers at a conference table in New York and hope for the best.
Read more College Basketball news on BleacherReport.com
View full post on Bleacher Report – College Basketball
Thunder backups Harden, Collison out with injuries
The Oklahoma City Thunder will be without reserves James Harden and Nick Collison for Monday night’s game against the New Orleans Hornets.
Coach Scott Brooks says Harden is being held out with a sprained left ankle and Collison has a left quad contusion. Their absences will leave the Thunder with only 10 healthy players.
Starting shooting guard Thabo Sefolosha is out with a sore right foot, backup point guard Eric Maynor suffered a season-ending knee injury and reserve Lazar Hayward has a fractured orbital floor on his left eye.
Brooks says he expects all 10 of Oklahoma City’s remaining players to get into the game.
View full post on Yardbarker: NBA
