Storyline: Rondae Hollis-Jefferson Free Agency

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December 5, 2019 | 8:30 pm UTC Update
December 5, 2019 | 7:20 pm UTC Update
โ€œHeโ€™s not about the numbers,โ€ Heat guard Goran Dragic said, with the Heat (15-6) starting a four-game homestand Friday against the Wizards. โ€œHeโ€™s a superstar in this league, but he wants to win. Sometimes he would rather pass than score. Thatโ€™s a quality that not everybody has. You can see it. He tries to get everybody involved first, then when he needs to close the game, he does it.โ€
โ€œHeโ€™s just willing to do whatever it takes to win,โ€ forward Justise Winslow said of Butler. โ€œThatโ€™s the biggest thing. Heโ€™s super competitive. Heโ€™s good if not great at pretty much everything out there on the basketball court. Heโ€™s super easy to play with. Heโ€™s super unselfish. But just that winning nature, that competitive nature, itโ€™s stronger than I thought.โ€
โ€œSpo always says, โ€˜Playoff Jimmy, weโ€™re going to need him,โ€™โ€ Heat rookie guard Tyler Herro said. โ€œThere are two different Jimmys. Thereโ€™s Jimmy and thereโ€™s playoff Jimmy. I think [in Boston] we saw playoff Jimmy. Shoot, the last three games, I think weโ€™ve seen playoff Jimmy, for sure. Heโ€™s a great player. I just keep learning from him. Heโ€™s solid.โ€
December 5, 2019 | 6:02 pm UTC Update
Walton, who now coaches the Sacramento Kings, had adamantly denied wrongdoing — claiming Tennant, was the person who initiated their meet-up, insists it was “platonic” and nothing sexual ever occurred. Now, Tennant has filed new court docs calling off the suit — asking a judge to dismiss with prejudice, which means she can’t refile it. Unclear if Walton and Tennant struck a settlement — but it’s not uncommon in situations like this.
The Boston Celticsโ€™ disastrous 2018-19 season came to an end on a Wednesday in May. The dejected squad dressed quietly in a Milwaukee locker room, then flew back to Boston the next morning. A few players talked to the media, but they didnโ€™t have any answers. Nobody really did. The next morning, Celtics assistant coach Tony Dobbins got a text: Could he get to the practice facility? Jaylen Brown wanted to get in the gym.
Dobbins was a little incredulous at first. Immediately after the season, players are encouraged to let their bodies heal from the day-to-day grind of an 82-game-plus-playoffs season. โ€œWe just finished the other day,โ€ Dobbins told Brown. โ€œYou sure you donโ€™t want to take a step away, take some time?โ€ Brownโ€™s answer: โ€œNah. Letโ€™s get it. Letโ€™s get after it.โ€
Part of Brownโ€™s urgency was due to his schedule. He had a trip to Egypt planned, and he wanted to make sure he got in the gym before he left in case finding a gym overseas proved difficult (ultimately, a basketball star doesnโ€™t have much trouble finding a place to workout, even in a foreign country). But one thing was clear: After enduring one of the strangest seasons in recent NBA memory, Brown didnโ€™t want to waste time.
December 5, 2019 | 4:37 pm UTC Update
December 5, 2019 | 2:18 pm UTC Update
Welcome to the opening weeks of the NBA’s coach’s challenge. ESPN asked head coaches from almost half the league’s 30 teams for their input on the challenge system. The views ranged from hostile to constructive, but there wasn’t an endorsement to be found. But for all the frustration and bewilderment the new rule has created across the league, don’t expect it to go the way of the NBA’s synthetic basketball.
Storyline: Officiating Complaints
Even still, Ellis is fine with all that. Those who remember and appreciate how good he was, what he meant to the organization, they remember. Those who donโ€™t, thatโ€™s fine, too. Peace wonโ€™t let that bother him. Because he remembers. โ€œEverything, even through my bad times, I still enjoyed it,โ€ Ellis said in a phone interview this week of his time with the Warriors. โ€œBecause at the end of the day, they gave me my shot. They took a chance on drafting a high schooler, 152 pounds of out Jackson, Mississippi. โ€ฆ So I was always grateful and thankful for that. It went down the way it went down. I guess thatโ€™s part of the business. And it just happened the way it happened. But my whole experience, the time that I was there for seven and a half years, I loved every bit of it.โ€
When the Warriors drafted Curry, a player just as slight as him, Ellis didnโ€™t think it could work. And he said so, which created controversy. He laughs about it now, that character trait of his that stirred that pot. Ellis doesnโ€™t talk much. But when he does, he says what he believes. And the straight-talking young man from the Dirty South only knew one way to tell it. โ€œI ainโ€™t gonโ€™ lie,โ€ he said over the phone. โ€œIโ€™ve done some things when I was young that bite me in my butt. But it is what it is, a part of life. โ€œJust some people didnโ€™t take, when they ask me an opinion, they didnโ€™t really want to accept the reality of it, the truth. Because, you know, I donโ€™t know how to be fake with nobody.โ€
He was getting dressed in the visiting locker room at Arco Arena, ready to take on the Kings, when Dominic McGuire broke the news to him. He saw it on the ESPN ticker on the locker room TV. Ellis was traded to Milwaukee. Just like that, he was no longer a Warrior. He was pissed. โ€œNot only so much that they traded me,โ€ Ellis remembered, โ€œjust how they went about trading me. If they wouldโ€™ve traded me and let me know the process of everything that was going down, it wouldโ€™ve been a whole lot better. I mean, that was a career-changing experience right there. โ€˜Cause when I went to Milwaukee, it was totally different.โ€
Matt Babcock, owner of Babcock Hoops and a former NBA agent, told The Commercial Appeal that Wiseman having to sit out one-third of Memphis’ regular season isn’t all that significant from an NBA draft standpoint. “It’s not like he’s a guy that just has a lot of upside with a lot of polishing to do. He’s ready to play in the NBA right now,” Babcock said. “Not that he doesn’t have room for growth. He does. (But) I think it’s more of just he’s being robbed of the experience.” Babcock believes Wiseman (who is tied with North Carolina’s Cole Anthony as FanDuel Sportsbook’s odds-on favorite to be picked first) is worthy of No. 1-pick status. But the games he will miss could also cost him the opportunity to cement himself as such.
Storyline: No. 1 pick
December 5, 2019 | 10:43 am UTC Update
Two specialists told The Post that Irving is likely to be out a few more weeks. One medical source not affiliated with the team intimated thereโ€™s more under the surface and that this injury could be even more long term. โ€œThatโ€™s a very, very broad term,โ€ said Dr. Andrew S. Rokito, chief of shoulder surgery at NYU Langone Orthopedic Hospital. โ€œImpingement typically does not refer to an acute injury. [It] refers to more of a long-standing, chronic issue with the rotator cuff.
This will be the sixth consecutive season with fewer post-ups than the last, and 2019-20 is on pace for the largest post-up drop-off in more than a decade. The reasons for the playโ€™s excision are all tied together, a result of both rule and strategic changes that have encouraged the rise of Moreyball. (Another fun excerpt from that 2015 Lowe column: He wrote that the post-up death โ€œevokes both wistfulness for the past and a fear that the NBA is heading toward a homogeneity in which every team drives for corner 3s, layups, and free throws. What happens if we all play Rocketball?โ€ Welcome to the NBA in 2019!)
USA Basketball named former NBA head coach Mike Fratello as USAโ€™s head coach for the 2021 FIBA AmeriCup Qualifiers. Andy Greer and Othella Harrington will be his assistants. Fratello holds previous experience at the international level with Ukraine between 2011 and 2014. From 1984 to 2006 made it to the playoffs 11 times in 15 full-season attempts with various NBA teams.
But a year from now, things could drastically change and that has the rest of the NBA in a panic according to NBC Sports NBA Insider Tom Haberstroh. “The people I talk to around the league are really worried they are going to trade that first-round pick, the 2020 pick, because if they load up with an All-Star-type player with that pick, they are terrified,” Haberstroh said during the Warriors-Hornets telecast on NBC Sports Bay Area on Wednesday. “Or if they land a Luka Doncic in the draft, they’re terrified. So that 2020 pick, adding to the group they have established here with [Eric] Paschall stepping in right away, man, I think every team is going to try to do a gap year.”
Sitting alongside Sandler at a Manhattan hotel this week was a cackling Kevin Garnett, who plays himself in a new movie, โ€œUncut Gems,โ€ co-directed by the Safdie brothers, Josh and Benny, New Yorkers who also count themselves among the legion of long-tortured Knicks die-hards. Garnett was known as the Big Ticket during his playing days, mostly in Minnesota and Boston, where in 2008 he helped secure championship banner No. 17. But Sandler is the box office star in the film โ€” which opens this month โ€” as Howard Ratner, a wheeler, dealer and degenerate gambler in midtown Manhattanโ€™s diamond district who is increasingly desperate to settle his debts with one massive score.
December 5, 2019 | 3:14 am UTC Update
NBA rules require a protest to be filed within 48 hours after a game. Sources said the NBA office has started conducting an investigation that could take longer than the 48-hour window. The Rockets contend that they should either be awarded the win — because they actually outscored the Spurs in regulation — or that the final seven minutes, 50 seconds of the game be replayed at a later date. League sources, however, scoffed at the suggestion that the Rockets would be awarded the victory.
December 5, 2019 | 12:57 am UTC Update
December 5, 2019 | 12:11 am UTC Update