SH Blog: Lakers may look to acquire LeBron in 2014, Love broke hand doing knuckle pushups

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News has been floating around on Thursday about the possibility of the Lakers looking to acquire the talents of LeBron James when the best basketball player on the planet becomes eligible to hit the market again in 2014. As ridiculous as that sounds right now, it apparently is in the realm of possibility if James chose to test free agency again. Having won a championship with the Heat in just two seasons, though, the chances of him leaving Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh appears to be unlikely. Still, anything can happen in the span of two seasons, and it’s interesting to know that such plans are already taking shape behind closed doors for the Lakers.

See why going after James makes sense for the Lakers, how Kevin Love broke his hand and much more from Thursday below:

  • Are the Lakers aiming to acquire LeBron James in 2014 when he can become a free agent? That’s what many executives appear to believe, according to Brian Windhorst of ESPN: “In the wake of the Howard trade, much as been made of the massive luxury-tax bill the Lakers are facing next season if they’re able to re-sign the big man. ESPN.com salary cap expert Larry Coon has estimated the Lakers could be on the hook for as much as $85 million just in taxes in 2013-14. But look a little further, to that 2014-15 season, and you’ll see something else: The Lakers’ projected payroll is almost completely clear. Only Nash is signed for that season, at $9.7 million, though the Lakers will also be paying about $20 million to Howard if they can re-sign him this coming summer… Opposing teams that are making their own long-range free agency plans think they see the Lakers’ plan coming into focus. As it stands, L.A. will have enough cap space to add a superstar like James. ”It’s not a mistake that all those deals end the same year Kobe’s does. They have probably been planning for their next phase for a while,” said one general manager. “The Busses and [Lakers GM] Mitch [Kupchak] are always thinking about the next big deal.”
Spoelstra says LeBron continues to expand his post game and "it’ll be nice to go after that Defensive Player of the Year too."
October 18, 2012 4:13 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite
@tomhaberstroh
Tom Haberstroh
  • Learn about the impact of mission court grip from OptoSource here. Brandon Jennings explained his personal experience with court grip here: “After 3 months of testing over 24 subjects, the OptoSource™ study showed an average of 24% increase in quickness when going in and out of cuts for players at all levels when using Court Grip™ – and in some cases higher. It also showed quantifiable improvements in balance and stability on change of direction movements on players who used the traction enhancing technology. Side-by-side analysis of Brandon Jennings’s signature move, the step back jump shot, with and without Court Grip™, also revealed a significant decrease in average court contact time when using the product. “I used Court Grip all of last year, and I could feel the difference in my game, but actually seeing the data from the study, the visible improvements that Court Grip made to my form, stability and performance was really amazing,” said Milwaukee Bucks star, Brandon Jennings.”

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Diminished expectations for Love and Lin; Not so for Knicks

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At the top of our 2012-13 NBA wish list is the cessation of the overuse of the word “Linsanity.”

We had enough of that last year, IMHO, and Lin should drop off the national radar once the fallout from his GQ cover article begins to subside. He had a nice game last night against the Grizzlies with 12 assists and five steals, but he also missed three of four free throw attempts.

He is playing on a team that has one proven NBA go-to guy, Kevin Martin, who is on an expiring contract and has been in Houston so long that he was supposed to be a part of the renaissance when Yao Ming returned from his foot injury — which never happened.

So we won’t be hearing much more about the Harvard alum once he season starts, because his team is going to stink. Nothing personal, but good riddance to Linsanity.

Wednesday brought the news that Kevin Love is going to miss 6-8 weeks with a fractured hand, and that is obviously not a good thing for the Timberwolves. When they had Ricky Rubio healthy last year they were in the playoff hunt and were one of the most exciting teams in the NBA to watch. After Rubio got hurt, they plummeted.

So the question now is what kind of a team can the Timberwolves be until they get their two best players back? And I think it is entirely possible they can be a .500 team through Christmas, when they should have Rubio back.

Why?

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SH Blog: Love breaks hand at condo, Carmelo couldn’t accept Jeremy Lin as an alpha dog

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After playing a vital role in the Olympics for Team USA, gold medalist Kevin Love had high expectations for the Timberwolves and their revamped roster for the upcoming season. Unfortunately for him and the team, those expectations took a major hit on Wednesday afternoon when Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo Sports tweeted and broke the news that Love has suffered a broken hand. Chris Bernucca has the details of the situation.

This really is a tough break for a franchise finally hoping to get out of a  funk that has lasted far too long – the team last made the playoffs in the 2003-2004 campaign. With point guard Ricky Rubio already out with a torn ACL, the team will now have to begin the season without the two cornerstones of the franchise for several weeks.

This marks the second time that Love will miss time in the NBA due to a broken hand. He broke his hand almost exactly three years ago in a preseason game during the 2009-2010 season on Oct. 16, forcing him to miss the first 18 games of that season.

This is not to say that Minnesota’s season is already ruined: they still have formidable pieces in Nikola Pekovic, Andrei Kirilenko, a hopefully-resurgent Brandon Roy and more. It also gives 2nd overall pick of last season in Derrick Williams a chance to better establish himself – provided Rick Adelman is willing to commit to the second-year forward. But certainly, it puts the team more in a position to have to fight for a playoff spot than to establish themselves as one of the better teams in the Western Conference.

Bad news aside, there were plenty of other items of note around the league from Wednesday, as you will see below:

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Five reasons to feel positive about the Houston Rockets

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(This is another in a series of 30 guest columns that will run in October, when optimism reigns supreme across the NBA. The theme will be “Five Reasons to Feel Positive About … ” We encourage you to follow the authors on Twitter and visit their sites. – CS)

rockets small logoBasketball analytics in their current state have become quite hypocritical, and while that’s a bit of a random statement off the top, it works hand-in-hand with the present perception of the Houston Rockets.

The goal of analytics — numbers, stats, or anything beyond the “eye test” — is to collect all of basketball’s crazy, mind-numbing variables and narrow them down to a single, solitary value: a correct answer.

What makes analytics hypocritical is that they have in fact complicated things for everyone who isn’t 100 percent onboard, making for one of basketball’s biggest present-day debates: When it comes down to making a single decision, do I stick to the stats, or do I stick to my gut?

Despite being perhaps the most pro-analytics team in the business — the team that was supposed to find thhe easier avenues to a championship — the Houston Rockets have only further complicated themselves in recent years, and thus have complicated the opinions surrounding the team’s direction.

Many people criticized GM Daryl Morey for gutting an above-.500 roster in a failed pursuit of Dwight Howard. Others figured it was the right call. And that’s just one debate among many others. My guess is that if the team has any direction right now, it’s the wait-and-see kind. If this team surprises everyone, great. If not, the Rockets will try to reload this offseason and see where that takes them.

Trustworthy approach for a fanbase, huh?

In the meantime, in trying to figure out what exactly the Rockets have going for them, we can start by predictably turning to the numbers for some positives:

One: The number of seasons left on shooting guard Kevin Martin’s contract

That’s it? An expiring contract is Houston’s first positive?

When Morey acquired Martin three years ago in a deal that sent Carl Landry to Sacramento and heaved Tracy McGrady’s expiring contract to New York, many people considered it a steal for the Rockets. And at the time - when Yao Ming was considered a few months of healing away from returning to form – that opinion made sense.

But this team is no longer competing for a championship. If he realistically could say it, Martin would be the first to tell you he’s out of place on this roster. (Heck, he was nearly traded last season, something that didn’t sit well with him at all). He’s suddenly the old guy in a town of rookies whose veteran leader has become standout sophomore Chandler Parsons.

The deal-breaker is that the Rockets are in the market for cap space, enough to give Morey as many options as possible moving forward into next year, when the team will once again try to quickly return to championship-caliber form without having to suffer through a long rebuild. The sooner Martin’s contract is gone, the sooner Morey can get to work maneuvering parts. For both parties, Martin’s exit should be a good thing.

Two: The number of seasons point guard Jeremy Lin has spent in the NBA

The Rockets brought Lin back to Houston after a terrific season in New York (fine, that’s a huge understatement) and they didn’t exactly get him for cheap – $25 million over three years for a second-year starter.

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SH Blog: Deron Wiliams calls out A.J. Price, Lin wanted to be a Knick for life

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When Deron Williams was first traded to the New Jersey Nets two seasons ago, he really didn’t have a whole lot of nice things to say about the situation. The team had no direction and Williams had no interest in being part of a rebuilding project, but fast forward to this preseason and the tone has completely changed. He is more than content with the teammates he now has, and seems to carry a certain level of pride about being the leader of the Brooklyn Nets.

Playing a preseason game in front of the home crowd for the first time in a brand new arena, Williams uttered the words “it’s my home now” during an altercation with A.J. Price towards the end of the game. See what other messed up things Williams said, along with other news around the league from Tuesday:

  • Deron Williams took a personal jab against seldom used guard A.J. Price after the Nets’ win on Monday. Tim Bontemps of New York Post has the story: “Price, who is from Amityville, LI., and gave out 20 tickets for last night’s game, said the whole thing was a miscommunication on both sides. “In the heat of the moment,” he said, “guys say things all the time and one thing led to another, but all in all, it’s part of the game.” Williams, on the other hand, saw things a bit differently. “He started talking for no reason,” Williams said. “I didn’t do anything. He said, ‘I’m home.’ I don’t know what that means. “I guess he had some boys in the crowd that he wanted to impress or something like that while he can with the little minutes he’s going to get this year. “[I told him] it’s my home now.”
  • Here is a clip of the altercation between Williams and Price:

  • Avery Johnson inserted Williams back into the game against the Wizards, which was an invite for trouble, according to Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo Sports: “And so here it was, opening night of the preseason and Avery Johnson had gone the unnecessary step of reinserting Williams into the game’s late minutes to ensure the Nets coach wouldn’t be burdened with the blame of losing a lousy exhibition to the Washington Wizards. Between Williams checking back into the game and the final buzzer, Johnson had invited the trouble of Washington guard A.J. Price, a native son of New York’s Long Island who bumped Williams on a breakaway drive to the basket and pushed into Williams’ mug declaring, “I’M HOME… I’M HOME…” Williams rolled his eyes, laughed and blurted back to Price something that Nets general manager Billy King had worked so relentlessly to hear Williams declare within Barclays: “This is my home now.”
  • Despite the fact that it was just a preseason game, Johnson felt the importance of winning the team’s first game in Barclays Center. Stefan Bondy of Daily News described the chaos of Monday night: “NBA basketball in the outer borough debuted with the combination of pomp and logistical growing pains, with a large crowd that grew louder as the game progressed, and a mad scramble from the arena staff to get Barclays Center ready for tipoff. In the end, though, it was a night devoid of any major snafus, and a victory Avery Johnson wanted so badly, the coach played his All-Star backcourt of Williams and Joe Johnson for a combined 69 minutes – including as the Nets closed the victory in the fourth quarter. “I thought it was important,” Avery Johnson said. “Our fans were terrific. So we just thought it was nice that our fans would go home with a good feeling about our team.”

 

  • Delonte West was suspended for his outburst in the locker room, from Dwain Price of Star-Telegram: “Dallas Mavericks coach Rick Carlisle said he suspended guard Delonte West after Monday night’s home game against the Houston Rockets for “conduct detrimental to the team.” West apparently was involved in an ugly outburst in the locker room after the Mavs’ 123-104 win over Houston. West played 17 minutes and scored two points in the game.”
  • Jeremy Lin explained to Will Leitch of GQ why he wanted to be Knick for life and never expected to play the way he did: “He misses New York, its people, its fans. “You can’t ask for a city or a fan base to embrace somebody more than they embraced me,” he says. “I know it’s kind of silly to talk about it with only two years under my belt in the league, but going in before free agency, I was like, ‘I want to play in front of these fans for the rest of my career.’ I really did.

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