Tell most coaches their perennial all-star is out for the season, and they’d get Ponzied-by-Madoff mad, but tell most coaches that the Rockets lost Tracy McGrady for the season, and they might very well have the same reaction. See, Houston is a sizzling 16-5 since McGrady was shelved with a knee injury, with the team embodying teamwork and hustle and all the good stuff that McGrady seemingly didn’t provide.
The whole thing is fascinating. Every year McGrady puts up big numbers, and every year he’s on the beach by May. Now, watching the Rockets rock, it illuminates the undesirable under-the-rug facets to his game. Basically, the guy’s defense is just OK, and with him on offense, he’ll get his 25, but it might not be the most effective 25.
“They’ve got a lot of good players on this team,” Dallas coach Rick Carlisle said of his division rival. “Sometimes losing a top player can energize the rest of the group to play better and try to prove they can do it without him.”
There’s no question that in the NBA, the only way a team can compete is with talent. Five heart-on-sleeve defenders won’t win you games if none of them can score like, well, a Tracy McGrady. But once teams have enough talent to be a playoff squad, the difference between good and great is the difference between McGrady on the Rockets and McGrady not on the Rockets. Without McGrady, the Rockets’ defense has been stingier, and their overall effort has been effervescent.
“Talent sometimes can confuse teams,” said Nuggets coach George Karl, who won 50 games last season, but couldn’t get past the first round with Allen Iverson and Carmelo Anthony on the roster. “Too much talent can tie coaches in knots sometimes. Playing hard and playing as a team — yes, every team has to have talent, you have to have size and passing — but you also have to have a chemistry of play-hard and togetherness. I don’t think many people talk about that or write about that. This ingredient is unique to basketball more than any other sport except soccer.”
The Rockets are now flirting with a division lead and home-court advantage. True, there are a lot of talented teams in the Western Conference, and it’s possible they could, once again, find themselves ousted in the first round. But this is a new-look Rockets team heading into the postseason. The Rockets beat the Spurs last week, a statement performance. And they have Shane Battier and Ron Artest, two of the better defenders on the planet, as well as energy guys such as Luis Scola, Aaron Brooks and Von Wafer; Nuggets fans who scream for Renaldo Balkman and caw for Chris “The Birdman” Andersen know the importance of these intangibles. Oh, and they also have the best center in the Western Conference, Yao Ming. He’s tall.
And without McGrady, “The only thing I see is when they have one less player, there’s a flow and simplicity to it,” Karl said. “And when they have one more player, there seems to be a struggle. . . . Sometimes when you put another player out there, there is a confusion on who’s going to dictate the rhythm, who’s going to initiate the rhythm. And one player can affect three or four players.”
Who’s No. 1?
You’ve probably watched the NCAA Tournament and been wowed by some future pros, but the fact is, NBA folks agree that one has a bigger upside than the rest — Blake Griffin of Oklahoma. The Sooner is believed to be the top player in the upcoming draft, and one NBA type compared Griffin to Utah legend Karl Malone.
Griffin scored 30 points with 14 rebounds in the Elite Eight win against Syracuse, and he will play today to reach the Final Four.
Only team to fear . . .
Asked which teams in the West, the Lakers notwithstanding, could create fear in opponents, Karl picked two division opponents: “I’m a Utah guy, always have been. They’re not going to beat themselves, so it’s always going to be a hard matchup. The other team would be Portland. I think Portland’s a lot like us. You don’t know what we’re going to be. I think we’re the best we’ve been since I’ve been here, and now we have a leader (in Chauncey Billups). But Portland’s talent level scares everybody. Someone’s going to grow up in the playoffs. Orlando? Portland? Denver? Atlanta?”
Say it ain’t so.
Wizards star Gilbert Arenas told reporters this weeks that he has “retired” from blogging on . His blog was widely read and wildly entertaining.
“It’s just like the double-edged sword thing: Eventually your words (are) going to kill you,” Arenas told reporters with a smile. “I started looking at it as, before, it was fun, and everybody has fun reading it. And then it’s like everything I said, everybody started using it as firepower, instead of saying it’s just entertainment.”
Spotlight on …
David West, Hornets forward
Perhaps the best compliment to a player is that he’s an opponent’s defensive priority, and such was the case when the Nuggets locked down West this past week. Kenyon Martin and company smothered the all-star, who shot just 6-for-19 from the field in the Hornets’ loss.
Most nights, though, West is a weapon. The 6-9 forward averages 20.0 points and 8.3 rebounds, a season after he earned his first-all star bid at 20.6 and 8.9. His 20 this year is good for 20th in the NBA.
“He’s one of those guys who can quarterback, shoot from 18, 20 feet, post up and run a pick-and-roll game with (point guard) Chris Paul,” Nuggets coach George Karl said. “So you have four different ways you have to zone in on how to stop him. Usually, throughout a game, he finds one of those ways where he has an advantage, finds it, and they have a great problem for you to defend. Most teams have a two-man game, but this team might have one of the best two-man games in basketball.”
West has exploded on occasion in the month of March, notably his 32-point and 11-rebound night at New Jersey, 16 and 20 at Atlanta and 23 points and six assists (yes, assists) against the Warriors last week.
And the guy has endurance, averaging 38.7 minutes per game — only four players average more minutes.
Benjamin Hochman, The Denver Post
