Brooklyn Nets Blog – Page 94 – NBA Blog

Carmelo Anthony has huge exhibition basketball game plans for the NYC area

Carmelo Anthony’s plans for his barnstorming all-star game in the New York area keeps getting bigger.

During an appearance in Greenwich Village on Thursday, the Knicks forward said he’d like to house the all-star charity event at an 18,000-seat arena, with Izod Center in the Meadowlands being considered.

Anthony said the event, which he hopes will include at least nine All-Stars, will take place around Thanksgiving, unless the NBA lockout is settled.

Fellow Knicks star Amar’e Stoudemire, LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Paul are all committed. Even if Anthony has to go across the Hudson River, he’ll do it. The Garden, as an NBA tenant, is off limits, as is the Nets’ Prudential Center because of the lockout.

— Reported by Marc Berman of the New York Post Blog

Deron Williams catches heat in Turkey for wearing wrong backpack colors

Deron Williams, from Turkey: “Rivalries are big over here. If you know anything about European soccer, you know that fans take their rivalries very seriously. It’s the same in basketball. I had no clue, and my backpack almost got me in trouble. I have this backpack that I made on Nike ID a while back and it’s black, red and yellow. Black and red are my favorite colors, and yellow is in there for the black and gold to represent the Steelers. But apparently black, red and yellow are the colors of one of our biggest rivals, Galatasaray. I’ve been hearing about it since the day I got over here; as soon as I got to the airport. Right then, like five people told me I had on the wrong color.”

More D-Will: “I still wear the backpack because it’s my backpack. I like it and I haven’t had a chance to get a new one. Every day they tell me to take it off; that I have to get a new one. Our other big rival in the Turkish League is Fenerbahce and we play them coming up in a few weeks here. They’re the two-time defending Turkish Cup champions and last year they beat Besiktas in the finals, so that’s a big game. I’m told the fans always get amped up for those games. We don’t play Galatasaray until December. If I’m still here, I might have to bring a new backpack that day.”

— Reported by Jared Zwerling of ESPN New York

Kim Kardashian and Kris Humphries marriage rumor: Not going so great?

Rumors are swirling that Kim Kardashian and Kris Humphries are on the brink of splitting, just two months into their marriage.

Star reports that Kardashian may have already consulted a “top divorce lawyer,” as she was spotted on said lawyer’s floor in a New York office building. The magazine claims that Kardashian is fed up with Humphries’ partying while he is out of a job thanks to the NBA lockout. It reported that Humphries has been spotted partying in both Miami and New York without Kim, getting flirty with multiple women and “acting like a single man.”

“Kris takes other girls’ cell phone numbers all the time,” a source said. “To be honest, I don’t think Kris truly loves Kim. And I don’t think he ever really did.”

— Reported by Page Six of the New York Post.

NBA talks resume Wednesday morning after 16-hour session

NBA owners and players are meeting for a second straight day, shortly after finishing a 16-hour marathon with a federal mediator.

The sides resumed talks about 10 a.m. Wednesday, about eight hours after they broke for the night.

No bargaining had been expected Wednesday or Thursday, since the owners have board meetings. But instead their labor relations committee came back for further discussions with the players’ association executive committee.

— Reported by Brian Mahoney of the Associated Press

Stephon Marbury about to begin new season playing basketball in China

China’s most beloved New Yorker, Stephon Marbury, arrived for his third season in the Chinese Basketball Association at Beijing Capital Airport on October 6th with a bunch of bags, a lot of smiles and two big band-aids on his head. (And as always, a lot of people with cameras taking his photos.) After playing one and a half seasons Taiyuan, Shanxi province, and Foshan, Guangdong, two Chinese cities not exactly known as foreign hotspots, Marbury has finally made it to his Chinese professional basketball mecca, Beijing.

This season, Steph will play for the Beijing Shougang Ducks. Last season, led by former New York Knicks and Atlanta Hawks center, Randolph Morris, the Ducks finished in eighth place, which gave them the right to be swept out of the first round of the playoffs by eventual league runners-up, Xinjiang Guanghui. Aiming to build off that success, the Ducks brought back Morris for another year and signed Marbury, who interestingly enough was close to signing with the team last year before team management ultimately decided to go with Steve Francis instead. (We don’t need to remind you how that ended up.) Although the team will be weakened with the departure of Jordanian national teammer, Zaid Abbas, who moved on to Fujian SBS this season to act as their Asian import, teaming up with Morris and Taiwanese national team point guard/CBA heartthrob, Lee Hsueh-lin, will give Marbury by far his best chance to make it to the post-season for the first time in his Chinese career.

— Reported by NIUBBall.com

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Lockout affects NBA front office access to college players

Saturday is when college practices begin, and when NBA types would have been in attendance. With the players locked out and the first two weeks of the season canceled — and more games threatened — all routines are in turmoil.

“The next big thing we’ll miss are the college practices. That is something you always do,” said one NBA general manager who speculated there would be “some sort of season, but I have no idea [in terms of] length.”

Since the lockout took effect July 1, teams have not been allowed contact with their players “so you don’t know what they’re doing,” a different GM said, noting, “Young players will be hurt by this because they won’t have the normal break-in time. Teams with veteran guys should have an advantage when — if — we get back.”

Execs and scouts obviously still can attend college games — as long as they pay their own way.

“Not going to practices hurts,” another team executive said. “Sometimes, you can get more out of a practice than a game. From solely the basketball side, I would say we’re out of 80 percent of what we would normally be doing.”

— Reported by Fred Kerber of the New York Post

Nets forward Travis Outlaw knows he can play better than he did last season

“I know I’m way better than what I showed last season,” he said. “I just have to come in there to prove a point and make my team better.”

So what does that mean for Outlaw? He’s working with a conditioning coach and said he’s in better shape than he was at this point last year, when coach Avery Johnson felt compelled to enlist the small forward in his Breakfast Club.

He also is playing in local tournaments, under the radar compared to his teammates competing in New York and overseas.

“A lot of running,” Outlaw said of his offseason training. “I’m putting myself in the best position possible.”

— Reported by Stefan Bondy of the New York Daily News

Two stars from Psych on USA network give InsideHoops shoutouts

The show Psych on USA Network is an InsideHoops.com favorite. I watch it, and tons of our message board members love it as well. Several pro-Psych forum discussions exist and it’s almost all positive. The general consensus is that it’s an extremely fun show.

So it was cool when InsideHoops.com was recently invited to cover a USA network event called “Psych Fan Appreciation Day,” celebrating the upcoming new Psych season with dedicated fans of the show. We were treated to an advance preview of the season premiere, and met virtually the entire cast.

We’ll post some interview quotes in the next day or two, but right now we’ll jump right to the extra good stuff and present video clips of two Psych stars welcoming you to InsideHoops.com:

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Deron Williams not playing well overseas yet

As N.B.A. players and owners struggled to prevent a labor dispute from disrupting the regular season, one star player did something novel: he played in a basketball game that mattered.

Deron Williams, the Nets’ point guard, was here Tuesday night with his teammates on Besiktas Milangaz, a professional team from Istanbul playing a game in the Eurocup, a second-tier intercontinental competition.

Perhaps Williams wished he had been back at the negotiating table. In a 74-63 loss to host Dexia Mons-Hainaut, he finished with 7 points, 7 assists and 6 turnovers. He shot 3 of 13 from the floor. The loss eliminated Besiktas from the tournament.

“Didn’t give my team much of a chance,” he said…

Asked if he was still adjusting to the European game, Williams said: “I mean, I’ve played in a lot of European basketball. I’ve played in the Olympics. But this is definitely different. The way the reffing has been going has been different for me, but I’ve got to adjust.”

— Reported by Jake Appleman, contributing to the New York Times

Steve Lavin to have cancer surgery Thursday

St. John’s men’s basketball coach Steve Lavin will undergo surgery Thursday to treat his prostate cancer, the school announced Wednesday.

Lavin, 47, was diagnosed with the disease in fall 2010, right before his first season at St. John’s. Until last month, he and his doctors had chosen to closely monitor his condition without undergoing further treatment. But in late September, Lavin revealed that he would begin more aggressive treatment, either via surgery or radiation treatments.

“The advantage of early detection is that we were afforded the time to research all options,” Lavin said in a statement released by the school.

— Reported by Kieran Darcy of ESPN New York