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Marc Stein in basketball
In this week’s newsletter, Marc Stein discusses Luka Doncic’s performances in the playoffs, popular training applicants and Kobe’s first N.B.A. Game.
By Marc Stein
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LAKE BUENA VISTA, Florida – Before the N.B.A. The playoffs began, Luka Doncic stopped for a brief discussion about the Dallas Mavericks’ first circular with the Los Angeles Clippers. He struggled with a particular factor.
When was the last time you remembered being nervous before a game?
“I don’t know, ” said Doncic. “It’s probably my first NBA game, so I’m a little nervous, obviously. But I just like to play.
Indifference, even at the time N.B.A. season and first postseason, no frontage. Tuesday night’s fifth game against the Clippers was disastrous for the Mavericks, however, Doncic responded to a 1five4-111 loss with as much balance as he might prefer to combine, especially after a game at the start of the third quarter that raised many questions about whether Clippers’ Marcus Morris deliberately walked over Doncic’s injured left ankle. Morris said no.
“Recover!” Doncic said on Twitter after the game, betraying little fear even after the Clippers, taking an emphatically a 3-2 lead in the series, even though everything seems to be exploiting its abundant potential.
A mavericks rebound is unlikely, given how much the cast around Doncic was overtaken in Game 5, and with Kristaps Porzingis out of play for knee pain at the moment in a consecutive game. Still, it’s also true that the point Doncic discovered in the first four games of the series won’t be forgotten soon.
On Sunday, when Dallas surpassed Porzingis’ absence and a 21-point deficit to tie the series at 2-2, Doncic, 21, had already had as many 40-point games in his playoff career (two) as luminaries as Moses Malone. Elvin Hayes and Patrick Ewing, as the current star of the Portland Trail Blazers, Damian Lillard.
Doncic’s performance on Sunday in such a special left ankle injury (43 points, 17 rebounds, thirteen assists and finished through a triple at the extra time bell) that he temporarily made his former national team coach look like a sensible man.
Igor Kokoskov, the former head coach of the Phoenix Suns, has coached Doncic and Goran Dragic in a completely unforeseen name at EuroBasket with Slovenia in 2017. He confided to me last week that Doncic will “play even better in the playoffs” than in the normal season because he “loves the big stage”.
Other bad days like Tuesday night and playoff messes are actually in Doncic’s long run, not in N.B.A. the star can avoid them. However, it is appropriate to faint at what he did in an opening act, even though Dallas is much more likely to lose this series that wins it.
Reduce the damage Doncic has caused if you wish, because it is undeniably true that there are no in-house game sites for enthusiasts that pass on tension to players, and that no team has to deal with a regime as the league operates on a singles site in between. pandemic.
Remember that Doncic was not even allowed to play in Game Four until a time before diagnosis because his left ankle twisted heavily in Game 3. Remember, moreover, that Doncic does not seem to lose his ability to bounce or dodge. The Clippers’ diversity of physical defenders boasted (Kawhi Leonard, Paul George, Morris) despite being injured in the game.
As Spencer Dinwiddie of the Nets said on Twitter, Doncic’s ability to so deftly combine acceleration and deceleration, combined with the wisdom of the box beyond his years, makes it difficult even for Clippers.
“Speed replacement has been more effective than speed in general,” Dinwiddie said. “If I see something every single time, chances are I can avoid it. If the speed/speed is constantly adjusted, what do you intend to dance about?
Not N.B.A. Bubbles. Restart:
Jamal Crawford scored 51 problems in his last game with the Phoenix Suns in April 2019, waiting more than a year for his next N.B.A. The opportunity, after turning 40 in March, gave the impression in a single match in the N.B.A. bubble with the Nets due to an injury to the hamstring.
“I don’t regret it at all,” Crawford said Monday after returning home to the Seattle area.
Five problems in six minutes of game time in an unexpected August Fourth win over Milwaukee is all Crawford has to show, statistically, for his stint at the Nets in very small numbers. However, he expressed gratitude for being “living a historic moment in a genuine time.”
“We’ve drawn a lot of attention to the social injustices that are happening,” Crawford said, “and we’ve given other people some convenience when turning on TV and watching games.”
Crawford made it clear that “he would love to play again next season.” Kevin Durant strongly recommended in a recent interview that he would like to see Crawford return to the Nets in 2020-21.
“With a complete and healthy list,” Crawford said, “everyone would love this opportunity.”
David Griffin, executive vice president of basketball operations for the New Orleans Pelicans, was seen before the Pelicans departed with Clippers’ assistant in-demand coach, Tyronn Lue.
Griffin and Lue have a story, as former general manager and coach of the Cleveland Cavaliers, winner of the name in 2016, so the view of former co-workers spending time together on a campus that housed 22 N.B.A. the groups are remarkable in themselves.
But Lue is about to reach peak popularity in the N.B.A. Carousel coach at the end of the Clippers season, and the Pelicans now have a chance. New Orleans fired Alvin Gentry with one year and nearly $6 million remaining on his contract on August 15, with Lue and Los Angeles Lakers assistant coach Jason Kidd at the top without delay appearing as two leading candidates for the position.
Lue, of course, has also been discussed for months as one of the most sensible candidates in the Nets’ close training search. The latest rumors in N.B.A. Coach circles recommend that the Nets or Philadelphia 76ers be more likely to land for Lue than New Orleans despite their ties to Griffin.
The Sixers, as expected, fired Brett Brown on Monday after seven seasons, insensitive to the fact that Ben Simmons, one of Brown’s two most sensitive players, suffered what turned out to be a knee injury that ended the season on August 5.
Brown’s disappearance is due not only to the sweep of four Philadelphia games in his first-round series with Boston without Simmons, but also to his forte behind the scenes last summer for a lineup review that didn’t work at all.
With Jimmy Butler playing a leading role, Philadelphia came here with a shot from Kawhi Leonard attended across the edge of a place in last season’s Eastern Conference finals. The Sixers then abandoned their initial goal of pointing back to Butler, driven at least one component by Brown’s considerations of the practice of the damn Butler, to spend a lot to signal Al Horford to stay away from Boston and point to Tobias Harris again.
Since then, the franchise has faced widespread complaints about the lack of gunfire and roster play. Butler joined the Miami Heat as part of a signing and industry deal and only took the Heat to a first-round sweep over Indiana.
Arresting his eler is also a challenge for Los Angeles Clippers coach Doc Rivers.
Dallas’ Seth Curry averaged 16.5 problems in 65% of shots from the area and 56.3% pulled from 3 problems in the first four games of the series, until Curry, like all Mavericks, fought powerfully in game five opposite the maximum sustained intensity. at both ends that the Clippers have delivered throughout the season.
Curry, who married Rivers’ daughter Callie, in September 2019, entered Tuesday’s game with an average of more than 4 issues above his 12.4 problems consistent with the Mavericks game in the normal season. Curry had insisted on entering the series that the circle of family ties would make a Mavericks-Clip game consistent with his games “not a stranger”.
“It could only be betting against Steph last year,” Curry said of his showdown in the Western Conference finals with Portland last season opposite his older brother, Stephen Curry of the Golden State Warriors.
“I need to revel in that so I can beat him once,” Seth Curry said.
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A new series of highlights and reflections from my sixth full week at N.B.A. Bubble.
The component of the collaboration with The Daily in Friday’s episode detailing the inner life of the bubble is that it gave me a lasting time capsule of this trip.
We taped a lot of material for the episode over a week, including a first for me: Some press-row narration using my iPhone before Game 1 of the Clippers-Mavericks series.
Marc J. Spears of The Undefeated and Gary Washburn of the Boston Globe, two longtime colleagues and former colleagues from the Los Angeles Daily News, looked at me with a mixture of bewilderment and anger as I dictated aloud the main points about the scene around me. just as the game started.
The Daily’s production team is amazing, so fortunately they made everything sound so much better than it was at the time. All the Disney memory for yours for real.
My wife only gave me a bubble mission, but I lost it. I couldn’t organize an assembly with Shake Milton of Philadelphia to talk about Bear High School in Bear, Oklahoma, which Milton and Ms. Stein attended.
In my defense: I covered the Sixers once in their 8 rating games, which culminated in Joel Embiid’s interview that headlined my article on Friday about the series of injuries that affected so many first-round series.
The retirement plan to reach Milton in the playoffs didn’t work out as well when Philadelphia, without the injured Ben Simmons, came out of the bubble through Boston in four games.
The ice cream station in the media dining room on Sunday is officially one thing. It worked over the weekend for the time of the consecutive Sunday and, to meet transparency standards, I again had a ball of chocolate ice cream ornaments for singles.
I have a flight to Dallas closed now.
My New York Times colleague Scott Cacciola arrives on Sunday to begin his seven-day quarantine. My release of the bubble, after almost 55 days, will be positioned next weekend, allowing Cacciola to assume as a representative of the bubble.
So soon he’ll inherit my microwave and my kettle, and they’ll let me know what it’s like to cover the rest of the N.B.A. long-distance playoffs, for the first time since my first season in 1993-94 when the Clippers (my beat for the Los Angeles Daily News) and the Lakers missed the playoffs.
You ask. I’m answering. Each week, I’ll answer 3 questions sent to [email protected]. Come with your first call and call, as well as your city, and make sure “Corner Three” is on the theme line.
(Answers can be condensed and changed for clarity).)
Q: I think he forgot about Bill Russell when he said last week that “Wilt Chamberlain’s shot block numbers probably would have been the most prolific in league history” if the statistic had been recorded in his playing days. I think we can all agree that Russell was the greatest productive defender and the ultimate productive gunblock. – Ben Krinsky (Teaneck, New Jersey).
Stein: In fact, I haven’t forgotten about Bill Russell. He is on the short list to be identified as the greatest defender this game has ever seen, while living at the helm to be declared the biggest winner in league history.
He’s also left-handed. You deserve to know now what this means here: Russell will be aware of this newsletter.
But Chamberlain was the undisputed king of squeaky statistics, and various media outlets report from that time the concept that Chamberlain would have on average more game-consistent blockages if statistics had been followed when he and Russell were playing.
That way before my time, however, Chamberlain had a reputation for finding to categorically block any shots he might approach. Russell more calculated.
Consider this quote from Russell on the topic: “The concept is not to block all plans. The concept is to have your opponent simply block each and every shot.
“The prolific maxim,” he recalls, is synonymous with “the best.”
Q: Since there is no merit in the field, is this playoff the most productive chance of seeing an N.B.A. team coming from 3-0 in a series? – roadrunnerz45 on Twitter
As much as the absence of hostile travel and crowds theoretically assistance groups that are falling behind, 2-0, 3-1 or (oh!) 3-0, in a series here, I think it will be more complicated than the old ones to gather. The motivation to fight returns in these cases because of the tiredness of the bubbles.
The groups were here for more than 40 days before the playoffs began. As fun as situations are for players on many levels, it’s undeniable intellectual work. It is infinitely longer than any path they have faced.
So I’m very curious, and frankly skeptical, about how the groups will react to a large serial deficit. I hope there’s a team that needs me to regret my cynicism, but the appeal of going home and coming back to something closer to an unrestricted life will surely be strong for any team that’s falling, at least until the final.
The life of the bubble did not actually get resounding approval last week from LeBron James of the Lakers, who asked how he filled his downtime between the end of the playoffs and the start of the playoffs.
“What I did was probably nothing,” James says. “There’s nothing to do here playing basketball.”
The N.B.A. the finals, remember, should start on September 30th, which is still 36 days away.
Q: The bubble registration segment of the newsletter is great. I don’t feel so bad about texting and walking after reading that you’re posting articles on your BlackBerry while walking. But what is a French dip? How do I charge a $21 bathroom? – Tom Sheldrick (Adelaide, Australia)
Stein: Australia is a country I think I knew well, as a tennis fan for a long time that has been following the Australian Open since the early 1980s, and has followed the Australian basketball scene since the mid-1990s. I even covered the Sydney Olympics in 2000.
But me here, Tom. Your practice would recommend that the French Dip sandwich, also known as the world’s most productive sandwich, does not exist in Australia.
Is that what you’re looking to tell me? Or is it just a joke that cheated on me?
Some forgotten anecdotes from Kobe Bryant to commemorate what would have been his 42nd birthday on Sunday: a crowd of 15407 people at the former Forum lost more than 2000 talents (17505) when Bryant made his N.B.A. he made his debut for the Los Angeles Lakers on November 3, 1996, in a win over the Minnesota Timberwolves. That’s right: the Lakers were not an automatic sale at the beginning of the Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe era.
The Lakers acquired the rights to Bryant’s draft and signed O’Neal out of Orlando as a 22-day loose agent in the summer of 1996. From December 2006 to November 2013, after O’Neal and Bryant won three consecutive titles together, Bryant’s presence led to a seven-year streak of 320 consecutive seasons and playoff sales at Staples Center.
Philadelphia coach Brett Brown has become the third user of the league to lose his task after his team’s poor functionality at the N.B.A. Restart. The 76ers fired Brown on Monday after being swept in a first-round series by Boston. The measure preceded new Orleans’ dismissal as Alvin Gentry’s coach and Vlade Divac’s resignation as general manager of the Sacramento Kings.
A coaching replacement can’t solve much in Philadelphia, as the Sixers have four players on an imperfect roster who are owed at least $27.5 million next season. It’s Al Horford ($27.5 million), Ben Simmons ($28.8 million), Joel Embiid ($29.5 million) and Tobias Harris ($34.4 million). After Horford and Harris signed mass contracts last summer and had minimal effect on the Boston series, they are increasingly noticed as two of the league’s hardest-to-trade players.
Interesting trend detected once via Justin Kubatko (@jkubatko on Twitter): At the beginning of this playoff series, the NBA single-day playoff record for 3,94th in 4 games on April 21, 2019. The groups have combined to do more. 3rd in each of the first 8 days of the 2020 playoffs.
Contact me at any time on Twitter (@TheSteinLine) or Facebook (@MarcSteinNBA) or Instagram (@thesteinline). Send your feedback to [email protected].
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