Item #1: Grizz-Hornets-76ers trade
This one’s pretty straightforward. The 76ers send unused big man Marreese Speights to Memphis, the Grizzlies send injured and unused second-year wing Xavier Henry to New Orleans, and both the Grizz and the Hornets send second-round picks to Philly.
Memphis is hoping that Speights can be Z-Bo Lite for about 8 weeks while Randolph is out. This hope has been somewhat pooh-poohed in the media, but Speights has put up decent numbers in the past, yet never broken out and gotten big minutes. I’m not quite sure why.
Henry has a ton of potential but looks to be firmly stuck behind Trevor Ariza in New Orleans, possibly stuck behind Eric Gordon if they think he can be a 2-guard. With newcomer Al-Farouq Aminu also on board at the 3 and Marco Belinelli currently backing up the 2, it looks like a 3-year dice roll for the Hornets (hoping that either Aminu or Henry breaks out) rather than a move for backup minutes now.
The 76ers get two relatively worthless picks. Hey guys? The draft is supposed to be deep, but not that deep.
Item #2: Someone Left A Cake Out In The Heat
The Hotel hosting LeBron James’ birthday/NYE party calls up a local cake business and asks for a free cake in exchange for publicity. Cake business delivers free $3000 five-tier cake, which is rejected by LeBron’s “people”. Cakemaker gets her own publicity by going to the media, unintentionally gets reputation as cakemaker whose $3000 cakes aren’t worth free.
Item #3: No Wonder Baron Davis Got Through Waivers
Just click on that one, no further comment.
Item #4: Delonte West Will Miss The White House NBA Championship Tour
You know, because he’s a felon. Of course, he wasn’t actually on the championship Mavericks team, so it’s kind of karma.
Item #5: My First NBA Free Throw – The Jan Vesely edition
Item #6: Back-To-Back-To-Back Woes
The lockout-induced short schedule has resulted in some quirks, including the fact that each team plays at least one back-to-back-to-back during the season. Pundits everywhere expected this to be a bit difficult for teams – three games in three nights should make them downright exhausted – but nobody would have predicted the results so far. In the third game of back-to-back-to-backs this season, teams have compiled a record of 6-0 up to this point. That’s right, the Hawks, Nuggets, Rockets, Lakers, Kings, and Thunder have all won the last game of their triple-header (and the Thunder swept theirs).
This week we’ve got three more chances to keep this record going: Minnesota hosts Chicago on Tuesday, and on Wednesday Philadelphia visits the Knicks while Toronto hosts Sacramento. If all three teams hold serve, that’s bound to turn some heads.
Item #7: I Left My Pun In San Francisco
So, two weeks into the season and we’ve had a spate of players with actual or potential heart problems: Jeff Green, LaMarcus Aldridge, Aaron Gray, Chuck Hayes…am I missing anybody?
Item #8: Our American Cousin(s)
But aside from that, Mrs. Westphal, how did you like the play?
In case you missed it, things got kind of messy in Sacramento over the past week or so. Last Saturday, after a dismal Kings loss to the Knicks, DeMarcus Cousins moped in front of the media and then called for a private meeting with hot-seated Head Coach Paul Westphal, with whom he has rarely gotten along. Apparently things didn’t go particularly smoothly, and the next day Westphal sent a letter to the media claiming that Cousins had requested a trade and that he had been asked to stay home form the game for disciplinary purposes. In further interviews Westphal referred to the “trade request” as “the tip of the iceberg” and claimed that it was the second such request, the first coming 2 days before the start of the season.
The Kings beat the depleted Hornets on Sunday without Cousins while DeMarcus made the case (over Twitter and through his agent) that he had never requested a trade. Team President of Basketball Operations Geoff Petrie traveled to Cousins’ home Monday morning and while the meeting was not reported to be a rousing success, it was apparently good enough for Cousins to be reinstated to the team, and he made the Kings’ charter flight that afternoon for their trip to Memphis. Reports suggested that the “trade request” was apparently of the temper-tantrum “if you don’t like the way I’m playing then trade me” type, which most observers agreed didn’t really count as a “trade request”. Cousins affirmed his desire to play in Sacramento while Westphal chided reporters for “splitting hairs” when they attempted to determine the exact nature of the “trade request”.
On Tuesday and Wednesday, with Cousins coming off of the bench both days, the Kings were slaughtered by the Grizzlies and the Nuggets, respectively. The team had no offensive focus or defensive effort whatsoever, and vulture fans throughout the internet could talk of nothing but how the team had quit on Westphal and that he had to be fired immediately.
Amazingly to me, in the midst of the Kings’ only back-to-back-to-back of the season, Westphal was in fact fired and replaced in incredibly short order by assistant Keith Smart, only 7 games removed from being the head coach of the Golden State Warriors, leading them to a +10 in the wins column last year before being replaced by new ownership trying to put their own Mark Jackson-shaped stamp on the franchise. The Kings denied that budding star DeMarcus Cousins’ repeated tiffs with Westphal were the reason for the firing, citing instead team performance, but the Maloofs did express extreme disapproval with Westphal taking in-house problems to the media.
Playing that Thursday night without any offensive scheme whatsoever, the Kings overcame a 21-point halftime deficit at home to the Bucks to win their third game of the season based on effort and some really animated sideline coaching from Smart. Three days later, the Kings played the Orlando Magic close until the 3 minute mark of the fourth quarter, with Cousins getting Dwight Howard into serious foul trouble – Howard had no points and no rebounds until midway through the fourth quarter. Meanwhile Keith Smart’s press conferences are rich in detail of how he plans to fix the team, in marked contrast to Westphal’s constant vaguenesses.
Smart promises to make the Kings an up-tempo team, but one that can defend in the halfcourt due to the presence of a decent frontline. He plans to use the Kings’ youth, energy, and natural strengths as he develops his own offensive system, which emphasizes proper spacing, ball movement, and hard cuts, three things that were rarely seen in a Paul Westphal offense.
Meanwhile, Keith Smart goes over the Demarcus Cousins’ house for dinner and has “a mean gumbo” and a confidential discussion which he says went very well.
Keith Smart seems to have the players on his side, and he can talk the talk. The remainder of the season will determine if he can walk the walk.
(By the way, if you didn’t laugh at the title and quote with this item, you whiffed on one of the best jokes I’ve ever made.)
