NBA Teams – Page 1995 – NBA Blog

Marko Jaric signs in Spain

The Hoop reports:

Real Madrid have reached a deal with the Memphis Grizzlies’ Marko Jaric, who will join the club for the remainder of the season pending a physical.

Marko Jaric was born on 12 October 1978 in Belgrade, Serbia and is the son of Yugoslav basketball legend Srecko Jaric. He began his career in 1996 with Greece’s Peristeri and two years later withdrew his name from the NBA draft to move to Italy.

Euroleague.net reports:

Real Madrid gave its fans an early holiday present on Tuesday when it announced the signing of former Euroleague champion Marko Jaric for the remainder of the season, pending medical tests. Jaric will be reunited with head coach Ettore Messina at the end of a decade that they started by winning the 2001 Euroleague title together with Kinder Bologna. Jaric (201, 31) arrives from Memphis of the NBA, where he had not played this season. Last season, he took part in a total of 53 games for Memphis, averaging 2.5 points per night. Jaric started his career in Peristeri of the Greek League in 1996.

Luol Deng playing with broken left thumb

The Chicago Sun-Times reports:

Before the game Monday against the Sacramento Kings, the Bulls revealed that forward Luol Deng has played with a fractured left thumb for about a week.

”He hurt it in practice, I think right before the Lakers game [on Dec. 15],” Bulls coach Vinny Del Negro said. ”It’s been bothering him a little bit, but he’s been able to fight through it.”

The injury is on Deng’s off hand, allowing him to play through it.

”It’s something that will heal on its own,” Del Negro said. ”It’s his left hand, so we just have to be cautious with it.”

Bulls lose to Kings despite 35-point lead

Monday night the Chicago Bulls had a 35-point lead over the visiting Sacramento Kings, but wound up losing the game 102-98.

John Jackson of the Chicago Sun-Times reports:

The Bulls were up 79-44 early in the third quarter and scored only 19 points the rest of the way, including 10 in the fourth quarter.

Just when it seemed the Bulls (10-16) were getting things turned around — and Del Negro was safe for the time being — they managed a new low this season.

Some of the grim numbers:

– Besides scoring only 10 points, the Bulls were 2-for-10 from the field with nine turnovers in the fourth quarter.

– They scored their last field goal with 10:15 left on an 18-footer by Kirk Hinrich for a 92-74 lead.

– During one stretch in the middle of the fourth quarter, the Bulls committed turnovers on six of seven possessions.

– By contrast, the Kings (13-14) scored 33 points in the fourth, including 17 in the final 3:08.

K.C. Johnson of the Chicago Tribune reports:

Vying for their second three-game winning streak this season, the Bulls instead suffered a complete collapse, losing all of a 35-point third-quarter lead in a stunning 102-98 loss to the Kings.

After a torrid start that featured season highs for points in a quarter and a half, the Bulls made just two fourth-quarter field goals and got outscored 33-10. Rarely has a laugher turned so serious so suddenly.

“We’re not good enough to take a minute off, let alone a half,” coach Vinny Del Negro said.

Derrick Rose’s driving attempt to tie with 7.9 seconds left fell woefully short, and Noah failed to exit a scrum with the rebound. Beno Udrih grabbed the loose ball and was fouled, making two free throws for the final margin.

Mike McGraw of the Arlington Heights Daily Herald reports:

The Bulls (10-16) took control of this game right from the start and scored a season-high 67 points in the first half. They opened the third quarter with a 12-1 run to open the fateful 79-44 advantage.

At that point, the Bulls seemed to shut down and start thinking how many points they were going to score instead of doing the same things that built the lead.

The Bulls on Tuesday visit the Knicks in New York.

T.J. Ford coming off bench

Mike Wells of the Indianapolis Star reports:

This was supposed to be the year Indiana Pacers point guard T.J. Ford didn’t need to worry about losing his starting job. Ford was supposed to be the playmaker who could get into the teeth of the defense to either get a layup or pass to an open teammate on the perimeter.

Instead, Ford is back to where he ended last season: on the bench serving as the backup.
Advertisement

Ford will continue to back up starter Earl Watson for the foreseeable future.

“It’s tough,” Ford said. “The season definitely hasn’t gone the way I thought it would.”

Ford is on pace to average a career low in assists this season.

Allen Iverson has arthritis in left knee

In his five games since returning to the Philadelphia 76ers, guard Allen Iverson is averaging 15.6 points, 3.6 rebounds and 4.2 assists in 34.4 minutes per game. He’s shooting 41.0% on the Sixers, a bit under his career 42.5% FG average.

But he’s getting up there in age and recently missed some games.

Tom Moore of Philly Burbs reports:

Allen Iverson is 34 years old.

While he doesn’t think that’s too old to still be a factor, he admits he really felt his age when an MRI last week showed that he has arthritis in his left knee. The injury forced him to miss the 7-20 Sixers’ last two games, including Friday’s victory in Boston, and will keep him out tonight in Washington and Saturday in Utah. He’s expected to return next Monday in Portland.

“That was the worst part about the whole thing,” he said with a laugh after Monday’s practice. “Y’all could’ve said anything but arthritis. That sounds so old, but it’s something I’ve got to deal with. At least the fans and everybody else concerned about me will know exactly what it is.”

Iverson said the reason he got arthritis in the knee, which had to be drained three times in a five-day span, was because he overcompensated for his sore right shin.

No word if Iverson will be walking with a cane and getting into playing bingo in his old age just yet.

Dwyane Wade shooting is off

Israel Gutierrez of the Miami Herald reports:

Everyone who has seen [Dwyane] Wade play more than once is trying to figure out why, exactly, a player in his prime with an improving team around him is having the worst shooting season of his life.

The scientists are coming from his own front office (that would be Riley) and national and local experts alike, all of them attempting to devise the perfect theory for the most unusual development in what has been an otherwise predictable season.

Everyone seemed to have settled on the conditioning theory, because it seems to make the most sense.

This season, Wade is not coming off an Olympic run, and he is not coming off a summer where he built his legs back up from scratch, and he is not playing with as much to prove as he did last season, when he led the league in scoring and was third in MVP voting.

Chase Budinger out 2-3 weeks with sprained ankle

The Houston Chronicle reports:

Rockets guard Chase Budinger on Sunday was ruled out for two to three weeks with a sprained right ankle, following an MRI. Budinger turned the ankle on a drive in the second quarter on Saturday.

Budinger is averaging 8.2 points and three rebounds, making 40.9 percent of his shots.

The Rockets are not expected to add a player to their open roster spot with Budinger out.

Lakers beat writers stranded in New York

A huge snowstorm struck the Northeast United States on Saturday, and as a result beat writers covering the Los Angeles Lakers were all unable to make it to Detroit for Sunday’s Lakers at Pistons game (6 p.m. ET start time).

Kevin Ding of the Orange County Register reports (via blog):

Phil Jackson has cited the drain of travel distance to road cities being one reason why it’d be harder for the Lakers ever to go 72-10 the way the center-of-the-country Chicago Bulls did.

Well, here’s a reminder that cold-weather teams such as Chicago (and everyone else in the Eastern Conference who has to go more regularly to cold-weather cities) have travel issues brought on by snow and ice that the warm-weather Lakers rarely encounter.

The Lakers made it from Newark, N.J., to Detroit (or more accurately, they flew into Pontiac, Mich., to be closer to the arena in Auburn Hills) in the wee hours of Sunday morning despite an incredible snowstorm that began Saturday and grounded pretty much all commercial planes in the Northeast. It wasn’t an easy feat, and the club had booked hotel rooms in Newark for the night with the expectation that their plane might not be able to get in the air amid the still-descending snow.

None of the writers who travel separately from the team plane will make it to cover the Lakers-Detroit game, which is pretty much a historic development. Personally, I’ve never not been able to get to the next city because of weather.

I assume the reporters will still write game articles today, but from hotel rooms for a change.

Jonathan Bender looks good in return to NBA

The New York Knicks recently signed forward Jonathan Bender, who had fallen out of the NBA due to injury problems and was not expected to be heard from again.

But in Bender’s first game as a Knick he looked like a perfectly solid backup, playing 14 minutes and finishing with nine points, two rebounds and an assist.

Marc Berman of the New York Post reports:

On his first possession, with the Clippers on a 16-0 run, Bender snaked in from the perimeter on a drive and made a nifty layup over Marcus Camby.

“I didn’t know what to expect,” said Walsh who, while with the Pacers, made a trade for Bender soon after he was drafted with the fifth overall pick by the Raptors out of high school as an 18-year-old. “After that I said, ‘OK, that’s what I remember.’ “On his next touch, Bender drilled a left-corner 3-pointer. He also made an emphatic block of a Baron Davis’ floater — the cleanest block by a Knick this season. And he committed a flagrant foul on Eric Gordon, battering him to the floor as Gordon drove for a layup. The tough display was a rarity for a Knicks big man.

Bender said that would not have been a flagrant foul four years ago.

“Definitely not,” Bender said. “When Gordon goes to the rack, he bumps into you. I just put my arm out.”

One game doesn’t mean much, but Bender does look like an NBA player again, and that’s a success story all by itself.

Nets struggles continues

Fred Kerber of the New York Post reports:

All the tortures of a season of misery returned for the Nets. There was the mandatory lousy shooting (.378), a requisite injury as Chris Douglas-Roberts sprained his right ankle with 4:47 left, and the near-obligatory loss, though one far easier to accept with the effort but a loss all the same, the Nets’ seventh straight.

“We have to try to find a way to bring it every night. It’s as simple as that. For whatever reason, we aren’t,” said Douglas-Roberts, (20 points), who went for X-rays (negative) and was able to walk afterwards, which he found encouraging. “We don’t have the luxury to turn it on and off.”

Especially against the likes of the Lakers, who got a big night from Kobe Bryant, celebrating his waiting-to-be-signed extension with 29 points, 10 rebounds and five assists amid chants of “MVP” from a storm-thwarted announced crowd of 17,190. Pau Gasol (whose own three-year deal should be done before Bryant’s) had a 14-point, 14-rebound double-double.