News From Around The World: October 8

10/08/12

Written by: DHawes22

October 8

Trail Blazers TV: Training Camp: Day Three

Trail Blazers TV: Sportlandia: JJ Hickson Interview

Trail Blazers TV: Sportlandia: Victor Claver Interview

Trail Blazers: Lillard Or Davis: Who's The ROY Front-Runner?
"While Mannix envisions Davis as being the best player out of this draft, he uses the argument that the Rookie of the Year winner tends to put up the best stats. And it's no secret that Portland will be looking to push the tempo this year and improve upon their 97.2 points per game scored in 2011-12, which ranked them just 16 out of 30 teams. With Lillard having the ball in his hands on nearly every possession, especially for an uptempo team, not only could he put up monster numbers scoring the rock, but double-digit assists could be a regular ordeal when feeding fast-break finishers like LaMarcus Aldridge, JJ Hickson, and Nicolas Batum."

Trail Blazers: Trail Blazers Training Camp: Notes And Quotes From Days Five And Six
"Batum on releasing the ball higher into his shot: “A little bit yeah. I not work with a shooting coach, but with coach me in my last three year in France, my coach national team. I work a lot with him this past summer again. Try to get a better arc on my shot, it was too flat. I start working with Coop, coach Coop last year, and same this summer, so I try to get a better arc. I got long arms, so if I release higher they can’t really block my shot. A guy like Kevin Durant, LeBron James, all those guy like Dirk Nowitski who can shoot, they finish really high so I try to do the same."

Sports Illustrated: Rookie Roundtable: Assessing The Rookies
"Fiction. It's much harder for big men to assert themselves early than guards. Davis is with a young team, in a brutal conference, and he spent only one year in college. I'll go with Portland point guard Damian Lillard because he is older, he'll have the ball in his hands and he's the rare rookie with a lot of experience running the pick-and-roll. The Blazers will bounce back this season and Lillard stands to receive much of the credit."

Trail Blazers: Trail Blazers Training Camp: Day Four Notes And Quotes
"Ronnie Price on how he’s teaching teammates: “My job is to try to get Dame prepared, get Nolan prepared, Wes and some of these other guys prepared for the season. If I guard them hard and maybe get away with some fouls then they’ll be used to me defending them in practice so when they get in the regular season those guys won’t be as tough.”

Trail Blazers: Video: Meyers Leonard And His Brother On 'CBS This Morning'
"On Saturday morning, Meyers Leonard and his brother Bailey went on CBS This Morning discussed their relationship and the video of their reunion that has gone viral on Youtube."

Oregon Live: Blazers practice report: Team continues to work; Luke Babbitt's position; Terry Stotts' ring; injury update
“I think that’s an aspect of the NBA game, having the ability to have a four man that can stretch the floor, not only to make shots, but it makes penetration for our guards better, it makes postups better,” Stotts said. “There’s just more space on the floor.”

Oregon Live: Trail Blazers get defensive in week one under coach Terry Stotts
“It’s more aggressive,” Matthews said. “It’s taking the ball out of people’s hands. It’s not letting them dictate. We are dictating where the ball will go. If you are going to go pick and roll against us, your first three steps are going to be back the other direction, rather than, OK, we are going to absorb you coming at us. You are going to go away from the basket.”

Oregon Live: NBA High-5: Nate McMillan still jobless, but ex-Blazers who didn't perform for him doing just fine
"Felton says he has lost 20 pounds, admitting he was out of shape in Portland. He also said the criticism he got here -- "just because I came into camp out of shape the one year out of the seven I had before, everyone wanted to talk about that," he said -- has driven him to get in shape. That's some interesting psychology."

Columbian: Double duty for Blazers at training camp
"This is definitely the hardest camp I've ever been in since I've been in the NBA," said Matthews, a veteran entering his fourth NBA season. "They're grueling."

CSNNW: Kim Hughes keeps it real about the development of Meyers Leonard
“He's got a big body, but he has to use it,” Hughes said. “Just because you're big, doesn't mean you're going to be a stud on the defensive end. With his body and his wing span and his jumping ability, he's very athletic, he should be a very good defensive rebounder which he's not right now. And he should be a very good help defender, which he needs to learn and grow into that situation.”

CSNNW: Practice Report: Barton to play point?, plays inserted, and pedicures
“I wasn't mad, I was kind of disappointed,” Lillard said. “I don't see how you can miss them, though. I've had these tatts since I was in college, I thought they would at least be in the game. But I'm just glad to be on there. It's a privilege." Lillard later goes on to say that he spends the majority of his off time with teammate Nolan Smith and you wouldn't believe how the two spend their time together. “Nolan is my guy. We workout together, we got our feet done together. Man, you got to take care of the dogs. We tearing our feet up (in practice)."

Rip City Project: Are We Low-Balling Expectations for the Blazer Rookies?
“Joel is not like a normal rookie, he’s had a big career already in Europe at a very high level, so he knows the game. He’s not like a normal rookie. People say maybe he’s like a soft European shooter, like forward shooter, but no, he’s got some big moves inside, he plays hard. I like it.”

All Ball: NBA Rooks: Diaries … Meyers Leonard
"Training camp was last week, and it was great. I learned a lot and really tried to show the coaches everything I can do and prove myself out there. It was really tough, but that’s the way it’s supposed to be. The physical grind of it is the hardest part. We are doing two-a-days right now, and it’s very grueling to constantly be on the court. On top of that, we are learning a lot of new things, especially us rookies. There’s that stress of doing anything for the first time – first training camp, first practice, first game. But, I have been picking up on all the new concepts, the different plays and calls."

Blazersedge: Blazers Training Camp: Week 1 Digest & Best Quotes
"I think I ran a marathon here. You lose, you run two up and downs. You come in second place, you run. You run to start practice. A lot of running. It's good for us though. I think I weighed in at like 249 [Tuesday]. That's my lowest in two years. I was 258 [on Media Day]. I have to eat more [and] I've been eating a lot... I can run anywhere now, it's crazy. Any time we do anything, it's running. That's good for us... I might go run [the Portland Marathon this weekend]."

Ball Don't Lie: Real Madrid defenders high five to celebrate getting dunked on by Rudy Gay (VIDEO)
"Obviously, it stinks to get dunked on, but that must have still been a pretty satisfying high-five. Jumping as high as you can and slapping your dude's hand in mid-air at maximum velocity is the kind of thing most often attempted at weddings, and here these guys did it during a basketball game in front of what appears to be dozens of interested onlookers. A classic moment about which they'll be telling their bros for a lifetime. (They might leave out that whole "dunk" part, though.)"

Ball Don't Lie: Kobe Bryant’s left and right shoes are purposely two different colors, and named ‘Snake Pools,’ because why not?
"Kobe Bryant appeared to wear one purple shoe and one gold shoe in his team's exhibition opener on Sunday night. Purple laces for the purple shoe, gold laces for the gold one, all sorts of "preseason" fun during what is typically a boring October for NBA fans. It turns out, of course, that all of this was planned weeks in advance by your bored friends at Nike, who recently supplied the two-time NBA Finals MVP with shoes named "Snake Pools."

Ball Don't Lie via Oklahoman: Kevin Durant wishes all of you would stop talking about his one offseason workout with LeBron James
"I'm a competitive guy," Durant said. "I'm sure you guys have seen that in me. I just wanted to work out. That's what it was all about. I'll work out with anybody. I would have worked out with Kobe Bryant. I would have worked out with Carmelo (Anthony). I just wanted to work out and get better."

Ball Don't Lie: Does Phil Jackson want to coach the Los Angeles Lakers? Who knows? Wouldn’t you want to?
"It's because Phil's a competitor. YOU'D love a chance, dearest basketball fan, to coach the Lakers this season. It doesn't mean you're on the team's radar, or that Mike Brown's job is in jeopardy, but it would be damn fun to work with four Hall of Famers for around 100 games this year. To say nothing of living in Los Angeles and making millions of dollars a season. Phil's not angling for anything, he's just having fun; though it bears repeating that Lazenby also mentioned that Jackson would covet a ring from the Buss family to coach these Lakers as much as he would an eventual 12th championship ring."

Ball Don't Lie: Even Vlade Divac is sick of NBA players flopping
"The idea of flopping had been around for decades at the NBA level, but before Divac started throwing his arms back and diving to the floor midway through his career flopping wasn't really all that prevalent. Dubious charges were common, as the Chicago Bulls of the late 1990s often set up camp under their opponents in order to allow their aging bodies to earn the call, but it wasn't until Divac gained prominence after moving to Sacramento in 1999 that he and others started embellishing contact. Those Bulls, Knicks and Pistons teams took the contact. Vlade took some of it, and acted as if he took all of it."

The Basketball Jones: The Fantasy Jump Off: Top 100 fantasy players, tiers 1-5
"Do you take LeBron or Durant with the first overall pick? This comes down to preference. LeBron has the superior numbers in assists (6.2 to 3.5), steals (1.9 to 1.3), and field goal percentage (53.1 to 49.6), while Durant is better in free throw percentage (86.0 to 77.1), three-pointers per game (2.0 to 0.9) and blocks (1.2 to 0.8). Of course, despite lesser comparative numbers from either player, you’ll take it within a non-comparative context. Them boys good."

DIME: Why The NBA’s New Flopping Rule Missed The Mark
"The logic of the new initiative, then, is twofold. First, referees have a hard time judging whether or not a player has taken a dive in real-time, and thus, video review post hoc is a way to correct the calls they miss. Ostensibly, instant replay technology enables the league to consider flopping incidents more thoroughly, more accurately and more consistently than a referee. For instance, a flopping ruling might consider multiple angles, and compare similar events. Second, fines directed at individual offenders operate as a potential deterrent for players who wish to keep their wallets thick. As a comparison, the $5,000 fine attached to a second flopping violation is equivalent to what players pay after accruing sixteen technical fouls."

DIME: Report: Tyreke Evans Will Go To The Pull-Up Jumper This Year
"All of the signs point toward a breakout, or in this instance, a rebirth. For his part, Evans told the Sacramento Bee, “People just started looking at film and started trying to keep me from going to the basket. This year, I’m going to have to go to the pull-up (jump shot). I’m still going to go in there, no matter what, but I want to go to the pull-up too."

SLAM via Newsday: Tyson Chandler Says Jeremy Lin Wasn’t Able to Run Knicks’ Offense
"Asked about Davis and Lin, who hadn’t started an NBA game before last season, Chandler said one was too banged up and the other too inexperienced. ‘Baron was hurt and Jeremy was a young point guard who was just learning, trying to learn and figure out an offense,’ Chandler said. ‘It was nothing against them and it was definitely nothing against Baron. Baron was hurt the whole year and giving us everything he had. Jeremy was a young point guard who was inexperienced, who brought a great light to the organization. But as far as being able to run the offense and putting players in the right position he just wasn’t there. We got some veteran point guards that are capable of doing that.’"

SLAM: Top 50: Monta Ellis, no. 37
"This will be a chance for a fresh start for Monta. True, Milwaukee’s backcourt will be small, but there are many reasons to think this experiment will be a success. The Bucks are still led by head coach Scott Skiles, who implements a very guard-friendly offense that will allow Ellis to create. An overlooked statistic of Ellis is his assist per game totals. Throughout the years Monta has become a more willing passer, distributing close to 6 per game in the past three seasons. I expect Monta and Brandon Jennings to find a way to feed off of each other, and with the speed that backcourt possesses, it could make them one of the most productive ones in the NBA."

ESPN Dallas: D-Will: Mark Cuban could've helped
"I think (Cuban) would have been able to answer a lot of the questions me and my agent have for him that really didn't get answered that day pertaining to the future," Williams told reporters. "And I think if he was there he would have been able to answer those questions a little bit better. It maybe would have helped me. (I wanted to hear about) the direction of the future of the team, other than Dirk. Players they were thinking about. Everything was basically just their track record, trust their track record, which is, you know, I can honor that, because they do have a good track record but it's not enough for me, especially when [Nets general manager Billy King] was updating me daily."

Sports Illustrated: A relaxed Howard finally coming out of his shell in Laker Land
"Now I'm here, and now I can just relax and have fun and be who I am," Howard told SI.com shortly after the reporter roundtable ended. "I guess last year I really just sheltered, or kept myself away, because it was like, I say this, and then it's going to be turned into something else, or somebody is going to take it the wrong way and make it seem like I'm a certain type of person. So I really just tried to stay to myself. But now I'm basically free. It's a lot of fun. This is who I am."

Trail Blazers: Weekend Plan: Specially Designed For Families And The Busy Nine-To-Fiver
"Built for the family-oriented fan with a busy work-week, the 12-game Weekend Pack maximizes the thrill-factor while keeping the competitions to Friday, Saturday and Sunday. A smattering of Western Conference rivals and Eastern Conference visitors during one-offs and key home stands, you can get your hands on this schedule-friendly pack for as low as $11/game and $52/game in the lower bowl."

Trail Blazers: The Rivals Plan: Two LAs, Oklahoma City And The Return Of Roy
"The smallest of the four big ticket plans, the eight game Rivals Pack packs a big punch. You’ll be in the building and eating a corndog while others are wondering how to get their hands on a way to see the return of Brandon Roy and the sure to sell out L.A. Lakers and Oklahoma City Thunder."

Trail Blazers: Why The Value Plan Makes 'Cents' For You
"The Value Pack starts at just $5 a game. That’s 12 games for as low as $60! Talk about some serious bang for your buck. But that’s not even the best part about this ticket plan. Four of the 12 games take place in the month of January. And there is absolutely no better place to be during an Oregon winter’s night than inside the raucous Rose Garden. Not to mention this pack gets you into the arena to see some of the league’s biggest names and brightest young stars such as Dwight Howard, Dirk Nowitzki, Kyrie Irving, John Wall, and Rudy Gay."

Trail Blazers: Big Games Plan: 12 Of The Biggest Games
"This game has it all. Season opener, at home, against the loathe-inducing Lakers, in Steve Nash's first game in purple and gold and it's on Halloween night! Any game against the Lakers at the Rose Garden is going to be a lively one, but the confluence of circumstances in this particular game sets the stage for one of the all-time season openers in Trail Blazers history."