The Perpetual NBA Thread

**theveed** · February 23rd, 2008 08:54 AM

Melo unhappy....

http://www.denverpost.com/sports/ci_8329754

**mazdamazda** · February 27th, 2008 07:48 AM

Yao Ming out for the season! :shocked2:

BB, welcome to League B. :rofl:

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**theveed** · February 27th, 2008 09:23 AM

kawawang houston hehe another first round knock-out or not even make the playoffs...

yao won't last 10 years sa league with his Rockets and China schedule 11-months a year. His only rest days are injury days... and medyo obvious na China commitments has guaranteed him no more than 60 games a year.

Trade Yao to Boston please... hahaha

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Updated: Yao Ming to have season-ending surgery

By J.E. Skeets
Tuesday, Feb 26, 2008 2:21 pm EST

Dear Lord, it’s a dark day in Houston. Rockets center Yao Ming is out for the rest of the season (and post-season) with a stress fracture in his sore left foot.

UPDATE: OK, I just finished watching the Rockets' 20-minute press conference. A few notes -- including a conspiracy theory that Yao could be shuttin' it down on purpose to save himself for the Beijing Olympics -- after the jump.

* Apparently, Yao's had increasing soreness in his left ankle since the All-Star game. It was originally believed to be a sprain, but they did an MRI and scan and found the fracture.

* It's unknown when or how Yao specifically injured the ankle. Dr. Tom Clanton believes it was an accumulation of stresses on the bone that exceed its ability to heal. These, of course, then developed into microscopic cracks. I guess 300-plus pounds will do that.

* The stress fracture is of the tarsal navicular bone. According to American Family Physician, the navicular bone of the foot is a flattened, concave, boat-shaped bone wedged between the head of the talus (ankle joint) and the three cuneiforms (mid-foot). Sounds important.

* Some good news: the Rockets seemed to have caught Yao’s fracture early. Most tarsal navicular stress are only discovered when the fractures develop into a non-union -- where the bone doesn’t grow together. Luckily, that’s not the case here.

* Dr. Clanton cited former Houston Texans wide receiver Jerome Mathis as an example of an athlete who returned from a similar stress fracture caught early. Gulp! Let’s hope Yao doesn’t follow in Mathis' footsteps completely.

* The fracture can be treated non-operatively (with rest and crutches), or surgically (by placing screws across the bone to hold the bone together where the crack is). The average healing time for both is about four months. It’s been recommended Yao take the surgery route, but he and his agents will explore which method to take.

* Dikembe Mutombo wants to renegotiate his deal. Seriously! That's what he said ... jokingly.

* And finally, Brooks starts up one Beijing conspiracy theory: "Is there a chance that Yao could’ve continued to play with the injury but shut it down with the Beijing Olympics in mind? He played in 55 of the Rockets’ 56 games this season and three days ago scored 28 points in a huge win over New Orleans.” ...

While Shoals' flips it with another: "... what if -- and admittedly, this is a longshot -- Yao is trying to get out of the Olympics? The gesture could be personal in nature, or political, or both. Hard to speculate exactly what his motivations might be, but if he were looking for chance to make a statement against China, this would be it."

**empy** · February 27th, 2008 10:14 AM

diba may feature sa National Geographic (or was it Discovery Channel?) about the world's tallest men? mga 7'8" plus yung height nila. they were all miserable because they had all these back, leg and foot problems...and they weren't even pro athletes...

i wonder if this is the reason why Yao is so injury prone?

**shadow** · February 27th, 2008 10:52 AM

^^^empy, hinde siguro, 'coz those tall guys you've mentioned are more on genetics abnormalities...si yao ming naman is nasa lahi talagang matangkad....his parents are both 6 ft + yata...and makikita mo naman sa itsura hinde odd compare to the other giants, like george moresan...obvious na meron off sa itsura....and another thing is yun movement nila, yun mga giants is hinde agile hirap talaga gumalaw even just to walk, hirap talaga....

I wonder kung ano masasabi ng mga chinese basketball officials, paano na ang olympic hope nila...?

**theveed** · February 27th, 2008 07:52 PM

Rockets don’t expect Yao to rest this summer

By Adrian Wojnarowski, Yahoo! Sports 4 hours, 41 minutes ago

Houston Rockets general manger Daryl Morey let out a long, exasperated sigh over the telephone Tuesday, as though to say: Are you kidding? Asking Yao Ming to ease back on his Chinese basketball commitments – never mind sit out the Beijing Olympics in August – is a request that’ll go unasked to his franchise star.

Yao’s body takes a terrible toll at 7-foot-6, something needs to change and still the Rockets are at the mercy of a Chinese basketball federation that never truly let the NBA have the most popular and beloved of its 1.3 billion people. He’s forever on loan, forever on the way to getting his career run into the ground.

“Asking him to not play for China is like, well, asking him not to play basketball,” Morey said. “We understood that when we drafted him and it’s still the case. We know that he belongs to the fans of the NBA and those of China. It isn’t a consideration to discourage him.”

Yao has gone down again. This time, it’s a stress fracture in his left foot. The threshold of chronic injury to his legs and feet creeps closer. There’s a disturbing, depressing pattern. He has broken his foot twice in the past two years. He’s broken a leg. He’s had an infected toe. Four surgeries in two years and the truth is increasingly inescapable: With the way he moves, with 7 feet, 6 inches of unprecedented polish and power, Yao has asked his lower body to support a style, a frame, that no basketball player his size has ever maintained.

What complicates everything is the demands, the pressure, the loyalty that Yao has to his national team. NBA commissioner David Stern had to undergo years of glacial negotiations to crack the Chinese market, to get Yao and Milwaukee’s Yi Jianlian into the league. Yao is such an earnest and loyal son, honorable and decent to the core.
“The national team is a part of who he is,” his old coach, Jeff Van Gundy, said.

Yao has trouble saying no to anyone, Van Gundy said – never mind the government that manipulated his development from birth to the No. 1 pick in the NBA Draft. Van Gundy calls Yao the hardest-working and best teammate in the NBA. He loved coaching him, loves counting him as a friend. And truth be told, he’s desperately worried about Yao’s future.

As it turned out, Van Gundy walked into a Houston health club Tuesday afternoon and still hadn’t heard the news about Yao’s injury. He was on the telephone with a Miami radio station when someone finally informed him. Just then, guess who walked through the doors?

Yao.

Yao’s personal trainer, the Rockets former strength-and-conditioning coach, keeps his office in the site. So, Van Gundy and Yao talked for a half hour, and what Yao insisted in his news conference – that missing the Olympics would be “the biggest loss of my career until right now” – was repeated with emotion in private. Yao had to get back to represent China, he insisted to Van Gundy.

As Van Gundy said, “The Olympics means so much to him, but after that, he’s turning 28 and it doesn’t do anybody any good if his body is going to be chronically injured. Either he has to develop more of a ‘no’ personality – which isn’t his way – or someone around him needs to be the bad guy for him and say ‘No’ for him.”

It isn’t just the physical toll that the summers with Chinese basketball have taken, but the mental, too. For Yao, he never gets a break when he plays for his country in the summer. It isn’t the Chinese way to make allowances for Yao when he’s playing for the national team. They run long and relentless training camps and Yao sits out nothing. He would never be inclined to ask for a drill off – never mind a day – and they’d never be inclined to offer it.

The Rockets doctor insisted on Tuesday that Yao should be recovered for Beijing. Here’s the scariest question for Houston management: Will that even matter to the Chinese basketball federation? This isn’t just any Olympics for China, but its ultimate stage. Publicly, they insist that they can medal in these Games. That’s doubtful, but it will still be their best team ever. And do you think China would hesitate to play Yao at 70 percent, or 80, or anything below complete recovery?

Whatever the circumstances, Yao will play in Beijing and beyond. As always, the Rockets will have little to no say in it.
When reached Tuesday, a high-ranking international basketball official sounded unoptimistic about Yao’s chances of ever catching a break with the Chinese basketball federation.

“They will continue to pressure him,” the official said. “The one thing they do with all of their athletes is drive them into the ground with training. The strongest survive. If you don’t, they’ll find another to come and do it.

“I mean, they don’t do little things like block out good airline seats for them when they travel. They can all be in middle seats in coach for all they care, and that’s how Yao travels with them. Whatever happens with his injuries, they’re going to insist that he keeps playing for them.”

Morey, the Rockets GM, was respectful and realistic Tuesday. He knows the drill: Yao Ming is his franchise player, but he belongs to China. And always will. This was the deal when they drafted him and that’ll be the way it goes without negotiation.

That’s Yao Ming. That’s his identity, his life, his burden. Until he can no longer run on the floor, he’s China’s basketball star. For his own good, his own survival, this has to end with the Beijing Olympics. For once in his dutiful life, Yao Ming has to be the bad guy.

**theveed** · February 28th, 2008 12:00 AM

Andrea Bargnani, please report to the NBA

By Kelly Dwyer
Tuesday, Feb 26, 2008 4:10 pm EST

So this is where Andrea Bargnani came to hide.
Restless, but apparently far from unnerved at the idea of going from Toronto's second-to-fifth option on offense, all within the span of a quarter. Seeing his minutes stay about the same while his shot attempts fluctuate wildly, noting how play after play might be called for the ball to come his way during one stretch, mitigated by his role as a taller Jason Kapono during most other stretches. This can't be what Bargnani; and, more importantly, Raptors GM Bryan Colangelo had in mind.
On the other hand, things are working in Toronto. The ball is moving, players are happy, wins are piling up, the team is on pace for 47 wins, and the Raps are comfortably ensconced in the East's fifth seed.
Left for dead upon Colangelo's hiring as GM this time two years ago, coach Sam Mitchell has Toronto playing some of the league's most efficient offensive basketball, and he's created an above-average (11th) defensive team in spite of a roster that suggests otherwise. Mitchell's pass-happy half-court offense (the Raptors average only 88 possessions per game, 27th in the NBA) consistently leaves opposing defenses a half-step short as they race out to try to cover the dead-eye shooter that is spotting up some 25 feet from the hoop.
But why, way more than we're seeing right now, can't that shooter be Bargnani? Or, more specifically, why can't Bargnani consistently find a way to offer steady production within Mitchell's (working) offense? Bargs is averaging 9.1 shots per game (down from 9.6 last season), but he only hit double-figure shot attempts eight times during December and January. February's been his best month (about 14 points and four rebounds in 29 minutes), but he only managed to make one shot last night in five attempts.

And it's the "five" that is more troubling than the "one in five."

This isn't an "I told you so"-post. First off, I didn't tell anyone, so, there's that. And there's no point in hemming and hawing over who Colangelo should have taken with the first pick in the 2006 Draft. The way I see it, Bargs still has a chance (a great chance, actually) to be the best player from that lot when all is said and shot. If you have a chance to grab the next Dirk Nowitzki, you take advantage.

But this is troubling:

Dirk Nowitzki, age 22, per 36 minutes: 20.6 points on 47.4 percent shooting, 8.7 boards, 1.8 turnovers, 1.2 blocks.
Andrea Bargnani, age 22, per 36 minutes: 15.2 points on 39.1 percent shooting, 5.5 boards, 1.9 turnovers, .7 blocks.
(I don't want to hear any tripe about Dirk having Steve Nash help him toward those stats. Dirk's a one-on-one player, and it's no coincidence that the best years of his career came in the seasons following Nash's departure. And on a per-minute basis, Jose Calderon is actually having a better year than Nash did in 2000-01.)
So where does the issue lie? Is Bargnani just a victim of Toronto's rapid ascension? Drafted to be a savior, but surprisingly pressed into duty as just another good part of a pretty good team? Is it Bargs' fault for not working his way toward the ball more often, or should Sam Mitchell try to involve his starting centre more often?
Andrea's play, even when he gets the ball, can be disturbing at times. He has good footwork in the post, but doesn't square his body well enough when trying to get off a jump hook in the lane or a turnaround jumper on the baseline. The man is still trying to use his arms and arms alone to aim the ball into the hoop. That's not how it works in the NBA, where the defenders are long and active and know exactly where you're going.

Worse, he seems way too content to fire those uncontested, [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxA_cGUnt-A"]way-the-hell-out-there[/ame] jumpers. Bargs, there's a reason why you're open: teams want you to take that shot. If you make 35 percent of those looks, great; that's just enough to make you feel like you can hit the next one, while the opposing team's coach tries not to giggle with glee. It's called a rocker-step, mate. Show the ball and take it to the rim. Or, at least, the free throw line.

A lot of these issues can be argued away after looking at Toronto's roster, the team's record, and the fact that Bargs is just one piece among many. But so was Dirk: he had Nash and Mike Finley scoring alongside him, and the 2001 Mavs made the second round of the playoffs, so it isn't as if the 22 year-old Nowitzki was allowed to chuck all night for a team that needed him to develop. He was one part among many, as well.
I feel like we're missing out on what could be a ten-time All-Star, mainly because Bargs is given every excuse to float because of Toronto's record and the team's awesome offense. It shouldn't have to be this way. He shouldn't be molded into this role, this early, because these things stick. Sometimes a Tim Thomas results. That's unacceptable. I grimaced just writing it.

So let's pay more attention, and let's drive the pressure up. The win is what matters, make no mistake, but that doesn't excuse ambivalence. Andrea Bargnani's got to pick it up.