Duke Basketball: Who Will Step Up and Be Blue Devils’ Leader Next Season?
The 2013-14 Duke Blue Devils appear to be a team with an incredible amount of potential.
Andre Dawkins returns to the team after a redshirt year and could be an extremely explosive offensive player.
Rodney Hood will be eligible after transferring from Mississippi State. He’s a slashing wing player who brings tremendous versatility to Duke.
To go along with those two, the Blue Devils will also receive the services of three incoming freshman, including Jabari Parker, one of the best high school recruits in the country.
Still, with all this new talent, Mike Krzyzewski must find a player who can emerge as this team’s leader. This is especially important considering that last season’s team had three senior starters who all had a great deal of experience.
However, the player ready to take on the role of leading next season’s team doesn’t even figure to be one of the starters.
The starting spot won’t matter—Tyler Thornton is ready to lead the Blue Devils.
Thornton is a rising senior who has only averaged 3.1 points through his first three season at Duke. Clearly, scoring doesn’t tell much of the story of what Thornton means to the team.
The 6’1″ guard from Washington, D.C., is the ultimate “glue guy” for a basketball program. He is a physical defender who is willing to do whatever his team needs from him and makes plays that don’t always show up in the box score.
As Mike Kline of DukeReport.com noted:
He is clearly respected by the coaching staff who believe in his abilities. He isn’t the most talented player, not by a long shot, but he is a guy that can make the guys around him better.
Thornton needs to take on a vocal leadership role with next season’s team and he’s shown the ability to make his voice heard in the past. With the experience of winning an ACC tournament championship and playing in numerous hostile environments, he will be a player who can help mentor Duke’s new faces.
There is no doubt that next season’s team will have plenty of talent. What Mike Krzyzewski needs is for his players to learn their roles and put the pieces together so the team will become a championship contender.
And Tyler Thornton’s role will be to lead this talented group.
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Rodman plans to vacation with North Korean leader (Yahoo! Sports)
FARGO, N.D. (AP) — Former professional basketball star Dennis Rodman says he plans to return to North Korea to vacation with Kim Jong Un.
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5 Examples That Prove Indiana Pacers’ True Leader Is David West
The Indiana Pacers have a lot of talented players on their roster, but none have been as much of a leader as David West.
The team is thrilled to be sitting near the top of the Eastern conference with a 39-24 record. They are just half of a game back from the New York Knicks for the No. 2 seed in the conference.
A lot of the success this year has come from having a real leader on the floor. Since joining the Pacers last season, West has begun to establish his role as the veteran on the team, and the rest of the roster is benefiting from this.
There are plenty of things to look at to prove that West is a true leader, but there are a few that really stand out.
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Dennis Rodman: NKorea leader wants Obama to call (Yahoo! Sports)
WASHINGTON (AP) — Call me? Maybe?
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Ivy leader Harvard handles Brown 65-47 (Yahoo! Sports)
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — Wesley Saunders scored 19 points and grabbed nine rebounds as Ivy League leader Harvard defeated Brown 65-47 Friday night.
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UCLA Basketball: Is Shabazz Muhammad the Leader the Bruins Need in March?
There’s no doubt about who is the most talented player on this year’s UCLA Bruins: Shabazz Muhammad.
The fabulous freshman wing from Vegas is a prolific scorer, putting up 18.5 PPG, and a skilled rebounder (5.2 RPG).
Muhammad is the kind of player who can absolutely go off and take over a game. He can hit shot after shot and score points in bunches.
But as much as the Bruins need Muhammad’s skillfulness, they also need someone to step up and take over the leadership role on this squad.
Coming into the last month of the season, a good question to consider is—can Muhammad be both the best player and the team’s leader?
The top scorer on any team “leads” his squad. But there is a big difference between being the statistical leader, and the player who takes charge of what happens on the floor.
Every squad needs a “top dog,” a guy who is going to kick some butts, get in some faces, or pull the team out of a hole when it is down.
A lot of times, that person is the point guard. Because he has the ball in his hands more than anyone else on the court, he becomes the default floor leader.
ESPN.com’s Luke Lapinski throws out that these Bruins may be “the nation’s most enigmatic team.”
ESPN’s Dana O’Neil was asked to predict how UCLA might do in this year’s post-season play. She said:
They could be out in the first round—and out badly—or they could make the Sweet 16. Wildly unpredictable, which really shouldn’t be the case anymore.
Both comments suggest that the Bruins still haven’t found that team leader yet.
Four of UCLA’s five starters are newcomers. Three of them (Muhammad, Kyle Anderson and Jordan Adams) are freshmen. And PG Larry Drew II is a senior transfer (from North Carolina).
Because of this, the team’s leadership is wide open.
Muhammad seems to be more of a “lets-his-game-do-the-talking” kind of player. While he is not reserved or isolated, he does not gravitate to the role of a vocal leader.
Also, Muhammad’s recent post-game reaction to a teammate’s hitting a game-winning buzzer-beater didn’t earn him any respect either.
Rather than joining in on the team celebration, Muhammad walked right past the courtside dogpile of teammates.
B/R’s Brian Mazique gives this perspective about Muhammad’s reaction:
“As the leading scorer for the team (averaging 18.6 points per game), he rightfully expected to get the ball in that situation. He had every right to be upset about not having the ball in his hands. Sometimes things work out even when the best player isn’t making the decisive play.
His outward reaction was where he ran afoul. He lost self-control, and as a leader—or at least a guy with the potential to become a leader—you can’t allow yourself to have that type of outburst.”
Self-absorbed? Immature? Maybe not either one of these, but he didn’t score any points with his stoic disposition when his teammates were going crazy in the moments following an important, last-second victory.
Though we haven’t seen anything else as blatant as this, Muhammad will never carry the label of the rah-rah, cheerleader-type.
Because of the combination of his understated personality and less-than-mature behavior, someone else on the team may be better suited to lead the Bruins than Muhammad.
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Rondo still Celtics leader while injured
Boston Celtics guard Rajon Rondo may be out for the season with a torn ACL, but that doesn’t mean he’s gonna just sit at home.
Rondo has stay involved with the Celtics,
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Kobe: Metta needs to be a leader
Los Angeles Lakers guard Kobe Bryant believes the team will have to lean on the players who have helped raise the banners in the Staples Center to turn the season around. “A lot of responsibility is going to fall on me and Pau [Gasol], but we need Metta [World Peace],” Bryant told Yahoo! Sports. “Metta has a big presence on this team. I really encourage him to take that role head on – and to be an enforcer with it. But Metta, he’s done it before. We’ve won before together.” “It has to be the guys who have done it before.” Bryant said he and Metta play off each other’s intensity like Magic Johnson did with Michael Cooper back in the 80s. “Metta’s just as intense as I am, and he’s got a lot of that psychopath attitude that I do. “That’s something Magic and me talked about, about how [Michael] Cooper and him did that a lot, how they played off each other.” Bryant is optimistic he and the rest of the Lakers (9-14) star…
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Lakers News: Kobe Bryant’s Rant Proves He’s Emotional Leader in LA
If the Los Angeles Lakers weren’t listening before, they sure are now.
According to Mike Bresnahan of the Los Angeles Times, Kobe Bryant chewed out his teammates during Thursday’s practice for their lack of toughness. Bresnahan writes:
It wasn’t a long rant, maybe half a minute, but he left practice in a hurry, stalking off the court toward the end of it, irritated that the first team had lost to the reserves several times. He knocked some items off a table at midcourt on his way to the locker room and did not talk to reporters who were let in after his outburst.
Following his outburst, Los Angeles responded on Friday night in the form of a 122-103 win over the Denver Nuggets, as the Lakers improved to .500.
It was a different type game for the Lakers, who hardly required the services of their best offensive scorer and emotional leader. Bryant netted 14 points, but the star of the game was Antawn Jamison.
The 14-year veteran scored 33 points off the bench in 33 minutes, connecting on 5-of-10 threes and grabbing 12 rebounds.
Dwight Howard was also dominant—scoring 28 points and snatching 20 boards—as he hit a three-pointer with time winding down—only the second of his career.
Bryant also saw his backup light it up, as Jodie Meeks went 7-of-8 from three-point range to finish with 21 points. All in all, the Lakers’ bench outscored Denver’s 61-47 as L.A. easily cruised to the 19-point victory.
Even after the Lakers’ impressive win Friday night, Kobe wasn’t about to let it get into his guys’ heads (h/t LA Times):
“If guys are too happy, I need to bring them back down to Earth tomorrow.”
It’s clear to see that Bryant is the emotional leader of the Lakers, but what’s more inspiring is that his teammates listened to him and were able to dominate without much help from the sure-fire Hall of Famer.
It’s almost sad to think that grown men need a pep talk from their aging superstar just to win a basketball game—especially a team that features studs like Bryant and Howard—but it’s remarkable nonetheless what kind of impact Kobe’s speech had on his teammates.
Now if only Rex Ryan could get Kobe on a plane to New York.
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Predicting the Top 3 Threats to Each NBA Statistical Leader
I put LeBron James in the above photo because he actually doesn’t lead in any major statistical category.
Funny, huh?
That’s because James is accomplishing so much across multiple statistical categories, some of them mutually exclusive.
For example, leading the league in points and assists is difficult when one kind of play renders the other impossible. So when we analyze the leaders in these categories, it is with the knowledge that specialists win the day.
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