Gameday Dish: Charlotte Bobcats at New Jersey Nets

November 3 by Leave a Comment

Prokhorov’s Nets will host Jordan’s Bobcats in Newark this evening. It should be a competitive contest. Both the Bobcats and Nets are trying to establish winning habits early and carry them through the remainder of the season in order to have a shot at the playoffs.

This is a big game for the Nets as Coach Avery Johnson needs to convince his team that they are good enough to challenge for a playoff spot. The Nets stand at 2 and 1 after three games – a drastic improvement over last year’s 18 straight L’s to begin the season.

The Charlotte Bobcats on the other hand are 0 and 3, so Coach Larry Brown will be anxious to get a win under his belt. Last season the 2004 expansion team kept the Bulls and Raptors at bay to clinch the seventh spot in the East and their first playoff berth. Now that they’ve tasted the postseason, the Bobcats will be hungry to return for seconds and hopefully better their playoff record with some wins.

The Bobcats were only 13-28 away from home last year, and that included a loss at New Jersey on December 4th, 2009, to break the Nets’ 18-game-season-opening losing streak. However, the Bobcats later defeated the Nets on a return trip to the Garden State on their way to the postseason.

This is New Jersey’s fourth consecutive home game to begin the season, a true scheduling rarity and something the Nets must capitalize on because after tonight they begin a brutal stretch wherein they’ll play 7 of their next 9 games on the road. Last season they were a pitiable 4-37 road team.

Center Brook Lopez leads the Nets in scoring this season at close to 25 points per game. PG Devin Harris, now in his seventh year, has averaged almost 19 points and 8 assists over the first three contests. And third overall draft pick Derrick Favors continues to show signs of improvement as he gains NBA experience, averaging 10.0 rebounds and 10.3 points per game so far in his rookie career.

Coach Brown leads the Bobcats and is counting on top scorer F Gerald Wallace (league leader in minutes played) and 11th year veteran G Stephen Jackson (a 1997 second-round draft pick) to help the team gel early this campaign after the departure of long-time starting point guard Raymond Felton to the Knicks in the off-season. It remains to be seen whether the Bobcats will have as much of an impact without Felton and Tyson Chandler, who were both key pieces to last year’s success.

Third-year PG D.J. Augustin, out of the University of Texas, has replaced Felton in the lead guard role. In last game’s loss at Milwaukee he had 26 points and shot 5 of 6 from 3-point land.

Ian and I will cover the action tonight at 7:00 PM EST on YES.

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Czar Asks You

November 3 by 1 Comment

Barcelona born brothers Pau and Marc Gasol faced off in Los Angeles tonight. Western Conference Player of the Week Pau outscored and outrebounded Marc in the Lakers’ decisive 124-105 win over Memphis.

Younger brother Marc moved to Tennessee with his parents when Pau signed with the Memphis Grizzlies in 2001. And again he followed Pau’s lead when he joined the Grizzlies after the Lakers traded the rights to Marc in a multi-player deal to acquire Pau in February 2008.

Now entering his third year in the NBA, Marc Gasol is an up-and-coming star who, in Phil Jackson’s words, is a “tougher, more powerful player than (Pau).” But 2× NBA Champion and 3× NBA All-Star Pau Gasol has set the bar high.

Will Marc Gasol continue to follow in Pau’s footsteps and lead his team to an NBA Championship some day?

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Fratello Fundamentals

November 2 by Leave a Comment

In order to set an effective screen, you must establish the proper angle so that you screen the majority of the defender’s body and not just a piece of him.

During last week’s Kings-Nets broadcast I told Ian that my gripe of the night was that nobody screens anybody anymore. I watched Sacramento try to set screens, but they missed the bodies and weren’t paying attention to their positions.

Don’t screen air. Go headhunt the defender’s body. Whether you set a tight screen right up against him or stop short of the defender so that the dribbler can run him into you, the important thing is to angle your body so that the defender can’t go over your screen or under it without leaving your teammate clear for a wide-open jump shot.

You must set a screen at the proper angle in order to successfully block your opponent and free up your teammate.

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Ask the Czar

October 30 by Leave a Comment

Bongo from Boston wants to know:

What similarities and differences, if any, do you see between Michael Jordan and LeBron James after their first seven years in the league?

As for similarities, both LeBron James and Michael Jordan proved to be resilient athletes who were able to withstand the physical demands of the league. They took a pounding night in and night out and still performed at an extraordinary level. LeBron missed just under four games per season on average. And outside of the year Michael broke his foot, he missed only one regular season game during the first seven years of his career.

Both Jordan and James got to the foul line a lot because of their fearless driving abilities. And both high flyers took flight wearing Nike. Neither was afraid to be a vocal leader. And both were voted NBA Most Valuable Player twice in seven years.

Though Jordan and James entered the league with reputations of not being the greatest of shooters, they got better each year and became capable of leading the league in scoring. However Jordan held the title for a whopping ten years. With sharp shooters like Kevin Durant in the mix, it will be tough for LeBron to touch that record, especially now that he’ll be giving up shots to help teammates Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh get shots.

There are some other differences: Jordan won the NBA Slam Dunk competition twice and even entered the NBA Three-Point Shootout though people said he didn’t have any range on his shot; LeBron has yet to participate in these All-Star Weekend events. Jordan was still with the Bulls after seven years while LeBron is no longer with the Cavs. Jordan won an NBA Championship in his seventh year and LeBron is still seeking his first. Then again, Jordan had Steve Kerr as a teammate and LeBron does not.

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Gameday Dish: Kings at Nets

October 29 by Leave a Comment

While the old adage “everything happens for a reason” applies to all walks of life, it may resonate more loudly with sports fans. For example, baseball fans in Philadelphia and New York have no choice right now but to believe that the failure of the Phillies and the Yankees to reach the World Series simply means that the Eagles and Giants are going to have better years than expected. How quickly fans adopt this mode of thinking merely reflects how quickly they experience the four stages of denial. Similarly, fans of the World Series participants might well be thinking that their success is well-deserved given the miserable starts of the Cowboys and the 49ers.

This brings us to the start of the basketball season. Bitter baseball fans throughout the country can now turn their attention to the NBA, thinking something along the lines of, “Thank God baseball is over just in time for the start of the hoops season.” An outside observer may view this as an obvious rationalization, but others might say it further supports the notion that everything happens for a reason. Perhaps more than either the NFL or MLB, the NBA does not need to rely on fantasy teams to maintain fan interest in the broader league.

This is not to say that fans of a particular NBA team are not as fanatical as other sports fans; it is more an observation that the various story lines around the league (this year arguably more than any other) and the individual star-power pervading the league make the NBA Finals interesting to its viewers even if the home team is not playing (it’s hard to make that same argument for this year’s World Series).

Right now the biggest star of the revitalized Nets franchise may be their new majority owner Mikhail Prokhorov, a Russian billionaire who has been the central character in one of the NBA storylines generating headlines over the past year. Prokhorov has voiced his ambitious intentions to make the playoffs this season and win an NBA championship within five.

While it remains to be seen if the Nets season will have a fairytale ending, they have already improved upon last year’s start. Prokhorov made it to Wednesday’s season opener along with part-owner Jay-Z, his wife Beyoncé, NBA Commissioner David Stern, Newark Mayor Cory A. Booker, New Jersey Devils owner Jeff Vanderbeek and over 15,000 fans who were treated to an exciting come-from-behind 101-98 win over the Pistons. The Nets made shots, came up with defensive plays and showed determination.

The Nets will need to keep winning games in order to sustain our interest and keep fans returning to the spiffy Prudential Center. Tonight Proky’s footmen will battle the Kings, another team hungry for a turnaround. We’ll see the NBA’s 2010 Rookie of the Year Tyreke Evans make his first regular season appearance, having missed Sacramento’s opening night win due to a one-game suspension. Samuel Dalembert might also be reactivated tonight if the medical staff determines that his strained left adductor has healed. The Kings have added some new faces to their roster, including the fifth overall draft pick DeMarcus Cousins out of Kentucky and Carl Landry who returns from the Rockets. I’m anxious to see how far this young, talented team has come since Summer League.

Prokhorov is staying in town until Sunday afternoon so he’ll get to see the Nets in action against the Kings followed by LeBron and the Heat on Halloween. Ian Eagle and I have the call tonight at 7:30 PM EST on YES Network. I’m sure Marv will tune into tonight’s game from home to critique our performances and that I’ll hear all about it on Sunday when we’re back together for the Heat at Nets at 1:00 PM EST on YES.

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