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NBA Blog: The NBA basketball news blog section of Inside Hoops
Vince Ellis of the Detroit Free Press reports:
Matt Dobek, 51, died unexpectedly at his Rochester Hills home on Saturday.
Dobek spent 29 years with the Pistons organization before he was fired in May as the team’s vice president of public relations.
Hired by former Pistons executive Tom Wilson, Dobek was a confidant to many of the players during the Bad Boys era of Pistons basketball, including Isiah Thomas, Rick Mahorn and Joe Dumars.
Charles F. Gardner of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports:
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“My role is to be ready when I’m needed,” Boykins said. “I’ve had this role my entire NBA career so it’s nothing new. Throughout the course of the year, everybody is going to have an opportunity to play and produce and help the team win. It’s how you approach it.
“If you remain professional, when your opportunity comes, you’ll take advantage of it.”
Boykins has encountered plenty of doubters due to his size, but he never was one of them.
“When I think back, 12 years in the NBA is very humbling,” he said. “I’ve been blessed with a unique skill to play the game of basketball.
“It’s hard to explain, but even at this level, the game has never been hard for me.”
Boykins said his height actually is “a huge advantage.”
“Everyone who plays against me, they have to make an adjustment,” he said. “When you’re 5-5, you don’t change the way you play. Most guys either don’t know how to do it (adjust) or they just don’t want to do it.”
Chris Dempsey of the Denver Post reports (via blog):
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Billups wants to finish his career in Denver, his hometown. But if the team deteriorates around him, he’ll think about ending it somewhere where the wins will potentially be more plentiful.
“I have hopefully four years left of playing,” Billups said, “and I’m not the kind of person to just ride it out. I want to win. I want to go out on top; I want to go out winning. …I want to get out there, get after it and play. And I want to win as a Nugget the rest of my years. In a perfect world that’s what I would want, that’s what I would hope for.”
InsideHoops.com editor says:
Tough to say how what Billups does affects the Carmelo Anthony situation. On the one hand, Melo knows he needs a guy like Billups next to him to win, but on the other, if Melo is thinking about his future a few years down the road, he’d rather be next to a young Chris Paul (or young anybody) than an elderly Billups.