‘Tis the season.
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From the monthly archives:
December 2010
Nice little gesture from the Legend. (h/t ProBasketballTalk)
Dirk Nowitzki was on the Mavericks’ bus to the Orlando airport when his phone vibrated and he saw the text from Larry Legend.
It was a congratulatory message from Larry Bird, the man Nowitzki passed on Tuesday night for 25th place on the NBA’s all-time scoring list.
“That’s pretty cool,” Nowitzki said.
Pretty cool, indeed. Bird has been a fan of Nowitzki’s throughout his career and Nowitzki said he feels privileged and humbled by passing Bird.
I love, love, love Dirk so don’t get me wrong here, but more than anything, this just makes me sad since it reminds me how injury-shortened the end of Bird’s career was. He was the guy smacking his dome on the parquet while diving headfirst after loose balls and stubbornly refusing to take time off even as back started to fail, so it wasn’t a Yao Ming situation of bad-luck genetics. Still, had his body held out a little longer, Dirk’s name wouldn’t be ahead of his on the leaderboard. Not yet anyway.
Mostly, however, congrats to Mr. Nowitzki.
And don’t worry, Paul Pierce. You should be getting a similar text around this time next year.
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The Pacers don’t play again until next Sunday. This is very weird. The only time teams get this many days off without a game is at the All-Star break. Since Josh McRoberts has missed the past two games, Darren Collison tweaked an ankle last night and Jeff Foster could probably use some Ben Gay after starting back-to-back games, this is a good thing.
The Pacers started the season playing really well then hit a really rough patch. Last night, they had their most emotional victory of the year and have now won two of their last three. Their spirits should be up and I’m sure they will all appreciate the time to catch up with some family and friends.
It won’t be all eggnog and mistletoe, however.
O’Brien plans to make good use of the time. The Pacers will practice Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday, so they’ll have two days off.
“This is a good time for us to get better at certain things, polish some things, maybe tweak some sets, put in a couple of new sets,” he said. “It gives you a chance to rest up some bruises you have but also get better as a basketball team. We’ll be a better basketball team as a result of this period of time.”
Might it be characterized as a mini-training camp?
“I hate to be a Scrooge, but I’d love to go double sessions,” O’Brien said with a smile. “But I’m not allowed.”
Jimmy will also be buying you all coal for your stockings. Merry Christmas.
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Huge and much-need win for the Pacers last night. While the elation of the final tip-in was wonderful, it’s hard not to think that it shouldn’t have come to that. Indiana played fantastic defense in the first quarter in particular and held New Orleans to 39.8% shooting for the game. They led by as much as 13 points in the first half and caught (or helped force … probably both) an off-night for all-world point guard Chris Paul.
Then things got increasingly sloppy and the increasingly bad play of Roy Hibbert (2 points on 1-for-10 shooting and 0-for-0 from the line, 3 rebounds and 3 turnovers in 24 minutes) started to make it look like the Pacers would lose. It just started to feel like Indy had blown too many opportunities to put away a team that wasn’t playing well. Someone was going to have to win this one, and the Pacers looked just as uninterested in doing so as the Hornets.
As it so often does, it came down to the end.
Neither team executed beautifully throughout the final two minutes, but each team made some big plays. In the video below, I’ve done a breakdown of the final six possessions, highlighting both the good and the bad points for the Pacers.
Here’s a complementary written breakdown from Tim Donahue on the pick-and-pop from CP3 and David West that put New Orleans up by 1 with 3 seconds to play.
The Hornets run that play better than anyone else in the league, and Paul and West are the best pick-and-roll/pick-and-pop combination in the game. They executed it perfectly.
Foster was staying in the lane, and West came all the way out the three-point line to set the pick. Ford tried to go under, but West actually hopped a little to his right and caught Ford — hanging him up for a second. It was an illegal screen, but the type that never gets called. (Watch a replay of Foster sliding to his right to try to set a screen for Danny on the following play.)
Paul, meanwhile slides at an angle towards the elbow, creating enough space so to make it hard to cover both players. After Ford gets disengaged from West, he frantically tries to recover, and then — and this makes the play — Paul pump fakes a shot. The pump fake does two crucial things.
First, it gets Ford in the air and moving between Paul and the basket, which opens up a pristine passing lane to get the ball back to West. Second, it gets Foster to take one step up to challenge the shot — a half-jump that delays his recovery to West just enough to make sure West doesn’t have to rush it.
Beautiful work by the best in the business at it.
The other big thing was what New Orleans did with the other three guys. They got them completely out of the play. The wings — Jarrett Jack and Marco Belinelli both stood on the the sideline outside of the three-point arc, and Okafor actually set up out of bounds on the baseline. Jack and Belinelli drifted waiting for the pass, and Okafor came in bounds directly under the basket and started pushing Posey out to get rebounding position.
It was set up so that any help besides from any of the three defenders not involved in the pick-and-roll defense would have opened up a guy for a good look at the basket — leaving Ford and Foster on an island of sorts.
I criticize the Pacers for this play a little bit in the video, but Tim’s take is definitely more nuanced. Ultimately, this play is a lot like the Andrew Bogut tip-in game-winner: really good execution. Sometimes you just have to tip your cap. (Still, TJ letting himself get man-handled that badly can’t be considered good work.)
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