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Wizards guard Gilbert Arenas, who is going to miss about three months following knee surgery, plays and talks a great game. (Haraz N. Ghanbari/Associated Press) |
Basketball nOtes
The blogosphere took a big hit last week with the news that Wizards All-Star guard Gilbert Arenas is going to miss about three months following knee surgery. The blogs will recover. Can the same be said for the Washington Wizards, who will be without their best player and team motormouth until March 1?
Well, the Dixville Notch returns were encouraging. Arenas hurt his knee Nov. 16 in a 16-point win over the Timberwolves. That would be his final game of 2007. Five days later, after an MRI showed more damage in the same knee that was surgically repaired last spring, Arenas was back under the knife.
The Wizards, meanwhile, went out and beat Portland, Philadelphia, and Charlotte - OK, we're not talking the Texas triangle there - before losing to Golden State Friday night, ending an overall six-game winning streak. That came after opening the season with five straight losses. The Wizards were at Memphis last night.
"It's too bad because he was starting to play well in the last three or four games," Wizards president Ernie Grunfeld said. "But injuries hit every team, and that is why you have a team. You have to regroup and move forward, and if we can do that, I think we'll win a lot of games.
"We have veterans on this team. We've been to the playoffs the last three years. We've got two solid All-Stars in Caron [Butler] and Antawn [Jamison]. We're going to hold down the fort until Gilbert comes back."
The Wizards have not had the best of luck with injuries the last year. Arenas and Butler both were hurt last spring, before the playoffs, and they might well have led the Wiz past the Cavs had both been able to play. This fall, Etan Thomas was found to have a heart condition and he is out indefinitely. Promising rookie Oleksiy Pecherov has yet to play because of a hairline ankle fracture.
Grunfeld says the injuries have allowed younger players like Andray Blatche and Nick Young to get playing time and develop their games. Antonio Daniels stepped up in the first three games that Arenas missed. Brendan Haywood has played well all season.
In their recent winning streak, Grunfeld said the team was passing better, defending better, and rebounding better. That usually helps.
But Arenas was more than just a scorer who delighted in taking the last shot in close games. He averaged almost five assists a game, which, as he points out, adds another 10 points a game to his résumé. He created faux rivals and promised revenge. He was funny, friendly, and never hesitated to remind anyone who asked that he was, first and foremost, an entertainer.
But he also is a heck of a player. Celtics fans will miss the chance to serenade Arenas with chants of "Gilbert, Gilbert," when Washington makes its final appearance here Jan. 14. Who can forget the first? Opening night. A guaranteed win by Arenas. A resounding defeat for Arenas.
"We're going to have to get through this, it's as simple as that," Grunfeld said. "Our players have confidence. These things happen. It's the hand we've been dealt and it's the hand we're going to have to play."
On defense, Kobe won't rest
With the exception of the 2004-05 season, Kobe Bryant has been a member of the NBA's All-Defensive teams going back to the 1999-2000 season. He's been a first-teamer five times, including the last two.
"I've always wanted to play defense," he said. "I've always prided myself on that."
Now, he's hoping to take the next step at the defensive end.
"This year, I made it a top priority of mine to win Defensive Player of the Year more than anything," he said, "because I understand that being able to lead my team by example, by playing that kind of defense, that that will inspire my teammates to do the same."
Bryant was the undisputed stopper on the US National Team last summer (Leandro Barbosa still hasn't figured out what happened to him in the US-Brazil game) but, in that case, he didn't have to worry about scoring. LeBron James, Carmelo Anthony, and the fellas took care of that.
With the Lakers, that clearly is not the case. Bryant said the ultra-intensive effort on defense does take away something from the other end.
"But you try and be smart about it," he said. "You watch the way we play this year. You rarely see me in isolations. There's more coming off screens and catching and shooting. There's more ball movement.
"I try to put a lot of responsibility on my teammates to make more decisions, make more plays at the offensive end, so I don't have to do that. In the long run, I think that's going to make us a better team."
Winning the Defensive Player of the Year award is tough for a non-big man; the last was Gary Payton in 1996. But five of the first six winners were guards or swingmen, including Michael Jordan in 1988.
Asked about Kobe's defense this year, Los Angeles coach Phil Jackson said, "He's working real hard at it. Kobe is giving a real good effort this year, and last year, at times, I thought he was putting more effort into the offense than in the defense."
Azubuike developed into inspiring story
With the opening of another D-League season, there's one name and face that should be on the cover of every D-League team's media guide: Kelenna Azubuike of the Warriors.
"Of the contemporary minor league call-ups, over the last two seasons, he has been, by far, the one who has made the most significant impact," said Leo Papile, the Celtics' assistant executive director of basketball operations. "It's been a while since we had [an Adrian ] Griffin in this league, or a minor league guy that ended up being a rotation guy. But from the first night out in Golden State, he was. He benefited from [Don Nelson's] small ball."
Azubuike grew up in London, went to high school in Tulsa, and played three years at Kentucky. He left school after his junior year in 2005 and was undrafted. Mistake?
"He got bad advice," Papile said.
'What's past is past," said Azubuike, who, because of his British passport, could have had some flexibility playing overseas. He surfaced with Cleveland in Summer League, played well, but got cut just before the season. He then went to the D-League, playing for Fort Worth, and, on Jan. 2, 2006, while leading the league in scoring, he got called up by Golden State.
He ended up starting nine of the 41 games in which he appeared and is back again for another season with Nellie after signing a two-year deal, with the second year being his option. Azubuike said his story should be more about perseverance than anything else.
"The lesson should be that if you don't give up and keep working hard, anything can happen," he said. "That's what happened to me. I never lost faith."
Etc.
Bulls whipped
The No. 1 story in the East (other than the Celtics) has to be the early demise of the Bulls. Picked by many to be among the top three teams in the conference, Chicago is 2-9 after yesterday's 85-78 loss to the Knicks. The Bulls just went 1-3 on a Western swing that ended with back-to-back blowout losses to the Lakers and Nuggets. "As odd as it seems, I don't think we're that far away," coach Scott Skiles told reporters after the trip. "It's not like we've fallen off a cliff. We look around the conference now and there are a lot of teams struggling to find their identity. We're in that boat now." The Bulls may be back from the West, but they are still on the road. After a pit stop in Chicago (where the team made one player, Thabo Sefolosha, available to reporters after practice), the Bulls embarked on an old-fashioned weekend trip, with yesterday's game in New York and another matinee today in Toronto. Wonder if they'll take the train.
Star treatment
So how does one deal with a newly arrived star? Doc Rivers is learning by the day with Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen. Don Nelson had his moment many, many moons ago when a big guy named Bob Lanier arrived in Milwaukee, ostensibly to give Nellie the final piece of his ever-changing puzzle. Celtics assistant general manager Dave Wohl was on Nellie's staff back then (in 1980) and remembers an incident that gave him valuable insight into how a coach deals with players. "Nellie came into the room and said, 'OK, guys, let's have a good one today,' " Wohl recalled. "And Lanier looked up and said, 'I ain't practicing.' We were taken aback because we had heard all these things about him, like he was a coach killer, bad stuff like that. But he had been an angel since we got him - until now. Well, after he said that, we all wondered what Nellie would do. Most coaches would pull a power play, remind the player who the boss is, that sort of stuff. You could hear a pin drop as we waited for Nellie. Finally, he said, 'OK.' And as everyone else went out, Lanier got up and said, 'I was just kidding, Coach. I was just kidding.' And they never had a problem after that. It was great lesson to learn."
Give him Liberty
If you're not happy with the Southeastern Conference representative in this year's Liberty Bowl, well, you can address your concerns to Chris Wallace, the general manager of the Grizzlies. He got himself named to the bowl's selection committee soon after setting up shop in Memphis, a longtime dream for the self-described college football junkie. "I was hoping I'd get to wear one of those jackets that all those guys wear," Wallace said. "But all we get is a lapel pin. It's a bit of a letdown, certainly not the same visual effect." Wallace is merely there for consultation purposes; the Liberty Bowl invitations will go out in the beginning of December, one to the champion of Conference USA and the other to the SEC team that travels best and has, most likely, a 7-5 or 6-6 record. Wallace is a diehard West Virginia football fan and counts among his favorite experiences being on the sideline of an LSU game when Nick Saban was the coach there.
Hot and cold
Maybe the Miami Heat will turn it around. Or, well, who can say for sure? Buoyed by the return of Dwyane Wade, the Heat appeared to be on the way back after narrowly losing to the Celtics in Boston and then beating the Nets in Jersey. But they returned home and laid your basic Brontosaurus egg, falling to the Hawks, who had not won a road game since Feb. 14, 2007, when they beat the Clippers, 96-93. They then lost 17 straight roadies before their win at American Airlines Arena. The Heat did another 180 Friday and beat struggling Houston - Miami's first home win of the season and the Rockets' sixth straight defeat. Among the other losses this season for Miami at home: Charlotte and Seattle, the latter representing the Sonics' first win of the season. The Celtics are at Miami Friday night.
Over there
News From Across The Pond: Old friend Allan Ray is second on his Italian team in scoring (Lottomatica Roma) and the team is in second place in the Italian A1 Division behind Montepasche, which won its first 10 games. (Lottomatica was 7-3 in its first 10). Boston-bred Will Blalock has left Hapoel Jerusalem after only two games; he nonetheless averaged 10 points in 27.5 minutes while he was there. Esteban "We Barely Knew Ye" Batista is playing nearly 11 minutes a game for Maccabi-Tel Aviv and ex-Vermont Catamount Taylor Coppenrath is averaging 10 points and 5 rebounds in 21 minutes a game for Alicante in Spain. Finally, the lesser-known but never forgotten Josip Sesar, the Celtics' second-round pick in 2000 who never played for Boston, was dismissed from his team in Zagreb. According to a statement from the team, "Sesar is no longer a member of the first team since he is not able to help his teammates as expected. At the same time, the club has neither time nor space to help him gain his ex-good shape through competitions. Therefore, he was offered a consenting breach of contract."
Peter May can be reached at p_may@globe.com; material from personal interviews, wire services, other beat writers, and league and team sources was used in this report.
© Copyright 2007 Globe Newspaper Company.
