HOOP January/February 2014

Kobe Bryant

Carmelo Anthony Paul George Kevin Love

JAN/FEB 2014

Call Him

Uncle

or just call him the next great point guard

WARM UPS

Even as an elite protector of the rim playing in the League’s top defense, Roy Hibbert knows that sometimes the only way to contain a thunderstorm like Russell Westbrook is to just wrap him up and take a foul. And even then…

LAYNE MURDOCH JR./NBAE/GETTY IMAGES

WARM UPS

Clearly the best point guard in the game, Chris Paul isn’t above floor burns to secure a loose ball.

ANDREW D. BERNSTEIN/NBAE/GETTY IMAGES

WARM UPS

Whether foe (Mike Dunleavy) or friendly (Kyle Singler)—or maybe it’s a Duke thing (good thing then, Luol Deng wasn’t around)—it’s best to get out of Josh Smith’s way when he’s in flight to the basket.

RAY AMATI/NBAE/GETTY IMAGES

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KEMBA WALKER FACEBOOK.COM/UABASKETBALL The NBA identifications are the intellectual property of NBA Properties, Inc. And the NBA member teams. ©2013 NBA Entertainment. Photo by Scott Cunningham/NBAE/Getty Images. All rights reserved.

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WARM UPS

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Whether through obvious signage from fans or more subtle hosiery worn by the Hawks Cheerleaders, Philips Arena celebrated Kyle Korver setting a new NBA record of a three-pointer made in 90 consecutive games.

THE GAMEPLAN

JAN/FEB 2014

FEATURES

72 The Heart of the Matter When a rare heart condition took him away from the one thing that has defned most of his adult life—basketball—Channing Frye learned so more about life that existed outside of the game.

Now that he’s back on the foor, Frye has newfound insight and appreciation for both the game on and off the court.

41 HOOP A-Z of the NBA The 26 things that sum up the current state of the League presented in the 26 letters of the alphabet.

46 Rock The Baby From a technical standpoint, it probably wasn’t even one of his best dunks—Dr. J had probably unfurled a few during practice or while messing around in an empty gym, and let’s not forget the still-copied-to-this-day free-throw line takeoff at the 1976 ABA dunk contest—but the stunner he dropped on Jan. 5, 1983, was so epic that even more than 30 years later, it’s still recalled in vivid detail.

58 Ready for His Solo Kyrie Irving has always been thrust into roles that belie his experience. As a kid, he would play in is dad’s games. As he got older, it would be against older kids that towered over him. As Duke’s top recruit he was given the keys to the Blue Devils basketball machine. As a pro, he would be drafted to save the franchise still reeling from the void of LeBron James. Kyrie would conquer each challenge.

His latest: To become the leader of the Cavaliers as they strive for a championship. As he’s learning, it’s a lonely road he has to traverse.

Cover image photographed by Matt Sullivan.

012

84 Doo’in It The points came easy for Bob McAdoo as soon as he stepped foot onto an NBA court, but winning was another thing entirely. It wasn’t until McAdoo lost his way on the court that he would fnd himself on the path to championships.

Poster Paul George has exploded onto the NBA scene, much like how Shawn Kemp did 20 years ago.

THE GAME PLAN JAN/FEB 2014 DEPARTMENTS

2 Warmups 16 The Point 21 Jumpball

Starting 5: Caron Butler scrutinizes over his ďŹ ve best teammates from his long career; Dance Life: Andrea of the Milwaukee Bucks Dancers; First Ride: Nate Robinson on how he loved and hated his ďŹ rst car; First Five: Patrick Beverley, Andre Drummond, Anthony Davis, Reggie Jackson and Markieff Morris; Celeb Row: Jason Derulo talks about going to Miami Heat games as a kid and pretending how he was Tim Hardaway; Numerology: the 123s of the NBA; Peripheral Vision: Behind the lens of NBA photographer Nathaniel Butler; Brack-It: Breaking down the best NBA player son; Head2Head: Jeremy Lin one-on-one against Damian Lillard.

38 24 Seconds: Kenneth Faried

The Manimal reverts back to human form to answer our questions.

102 Call-Out

Where good deeds go noticed.

104 Stepback

The time machine takes us back to the 2004 All-Star Game.

014

93 Check-It

Spin Moves: Chill dude Joakim Noah reveals what he likes to mellow out to; The Goods: Be it analog and outdoors or digital and indoors, we suggest some things to help pass the winter season; Gear: Reviews of the Jordan Melo M10, adidas adiPure CrazyGhost and Reebok Pumpspective, and Kickin It with Derrick Williams; Wear: some choice wardrobe additions.

REIGN

IN STORES NOW © 2005-2013 Take-Two Interactive Software and its subsidiaries. All rights reserved. 2K, the 2K logo, and Take-Two Interactive Software are all trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc. The NBA and individual NBA member team identifications used on or in this product are trademarks, copyrights designs and other forms of intellectual property of NBA Properties, Inc. and the respective NBA member teams and may not be used, in whole or in part, without the prior written consent of NBA Properties, Inc. © 2013 NBA Properties, Inc. All rights reserved. The “PS” Family logo and “PS3” are registered trademarks and the PlayStation Network logo is a trademark of Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. “PS4” is a trademark of the same company. The ratings icon is a trademark of the Entertainment Software Association. All other trademarks are property of their respective owners.

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THE POINT Volume 42, No. 2

Editor-in-Chief Ming Wong #2 Design Director Kengyong Shao #31 Assistant Editor Phil D’Apolito #14 Online Editor Darryl Howerton #21 Editor-at-Large Jeramie McPeek #4 Copy Editor Trevor Kearney #8 WNBA Editor Lois Elfman #40 Senior Writer Michael Bradley #53 Contributing Writers Russ Bengtson #43, Alex Bracetti #44, Jon Cooper #10, Brandon Edler #36, Jim Eichenhofer #12, , Anthony Gilbert #1, Brian A. Giuffra #17, Vincent Goodwill #5, Melody Hoffman #34, Steve Hunt #29, Andy Jasner #27, Holly MacKenzie #32, Brett Mauser #25, McG #93, Jacques Slade #22, Earl K. Sneed #23, Duane Watson #7 Illustrator Matt Candela #52 Retired Numbers #6, #11, #13, #30, #99

Professional Sports Publications The most amazing part of a comeback from a horrifc1 injury isn’t when the player returns to the court or even when he hits a game-winning basket.2 It’s everything that we don’t see. Going through a battery of examinations and tests. The period of uncertainty while waiting for the results. Sitting across from a doctor who tells you the diagnosis, prognosis and recovery time. Putting yourself in the hands of a doctor to perform surgery—no matter how routine—that can cause complications. Then comes the toughest and loneliest part of the process: navigating that road to recovery within yourself.

After being one of the world’s best athletes, a player is soon reduced to a mortal who would lose to a kindergartener in a foot race. Forget dunking a ball, the daily task of a shower becomes a challenging exercise.

After years of fast-paced games on and off the court that changes from city to city, everything slows to a crawl as the monotony of physical therapy and rehabilitation becomes the new grind. The days of measuring yourself in points, assists or rebounds turns to how many feet you can walk without the aid of a crutch or a brace.

Battling against an opponent gives way a mental game of fghting your own will BONUS POINTS and self-doubt. The camaraderie and kinship of the locker room and daily attention 1. No torn ACL or Achilles tendon can compare with from the media and fans dissolves to isolation from teammates and watching the a heart condition. If you’re action passively through the media, all the time wondering if you’d ever complete reading this, please stop and the journey. The inevitable setbacks that literally and fguratively knock you down.3 turn to page 72 and read about Channing Frye’s ordeal that Breaking through the mental roadblock of re-injury while taking on initial full-speed kept him away from basketball drills or scrimmage is akin to defeating a long-running enemy. Getting knocked down for a year.

2. Although that Derrick Rose and getting up was never met with such enthusiasm. Rejoining your team feels like game-winner over the Knicks newfound freedom. Running through the tunnel and getting introduced in the starting to win the game on 10/31/13 was amazing. lineup4 brings on nervousness of the frst day in a new school, college and frst date 3. Get better, Derrick. all rolled into one. The feeling of conquering a limitation of your body matches the 4. Kobe getting introduced to euphoria of knocking down a buzzer-beating shot in a Game 7.

Star Wars’ “Imperial March” was a nice touch.

The actual return game? Who cares—the win was secured long before stepping foot on the court.

519 8th Avenue, New York, NY 10018 Tel: (212) 697-1460 Fax: (646) 753-9480 Executive VP Operations Jeff Botwinick Executive VP, Business Development Martin Lewis Executive VP, Sales Steve Farkas Executive VP, Sales Mitch Gibbs Executive VP, Team Relations Dave Gerschwer Executive Administrative Director Julie Wong Manager, Marketing Services Aron Sawyer Production Manager Jaime Ziegler

NBA Publishing/NBA Photos Executive VP, and Executive Producer, Production, Programming, and Broadcasting Danny Meiseles Senior VP, Multimedia Production Paul Hirschheimer Senior VP, Entertainment & Player Marketing Charlie Rosenzweig Senior VP, Marketing Communications Mike Bass Senior Director, NBAE Production John Hareas Executive Vice President, Global Merchandising Group Sal LaRocca Associate Director, Global Merchandising Group Matt Holt Senior Coordinator, Global Merchandising Group Brandon Eddy Coordinator, Global Merchandising Group Greg Brownstein Manager, Global Media Programs Felecia Groomster Senior Directors & Senior Offcial NBAE Photographers Andrew D. Bernstein, Nathaniel S. Butler Vice President, NBA Photos Joe Amati Director, Photos Imaging David Bonilla Offcial NBAE Photographer Jesse Garrabrant Senior Photo Editor Brian Choi Photo Coordinator Kevin Wright All NBA photos appearing in this magazine, unless otherwise indicated, are copyright of NBA Entertainment. All WNBA photos appearing in this magazine, unless otherwise indicated, are copyright of WNBA Enterprises. All NBDL photos appearing in this magazine, unless otherwise indicated, are copyright of NBDL Enterprises. HOOP is published monthly, December through June, by PSP. © 2013 Professional Sports Publications. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or part without permission of publisher is prohibited. To subscribe to HOOP, call (800) 829-3347.

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Ming Wong #2

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AS TOLD TO JON COOPER #10 STARTING 5

CARON BUTLER MILWAUKEE BUCKS

Playing in his 11th NBA season, Caron Butler has pretty much seen, done and lived through it all. He’s a two-time All-Star (2007 and ’08). He won a championship in Dallas— although a ruptured right patellar tendon kept him off the court for all but 29 games and all of the postseason that year. Then, he came back from that injury to show he’s still an elite scorer.

The 10th overall pick in the 2002 NBA Draft by the Miami Heat, Butler is playing the 2013-14 season with the Milwaukee Bucks, his sixth NBA team.

But regardless of which team has put him in its starting lineup over the years, Butler’s always been a reliable scorer, reaching the 10,000-point plateau last season.

While leaving the Clippers after last season was hard—he was traded to Phoenix, which then traded him to Milwaukee—his current stop may be Butler’s most satisfying, as he’s playing with his hometown team, having grown up in Racine, about 40 minutes from Milwaukee.

Choosing a starting fve (plus one wild card) from all of the teammates with whom he’s played also was hard, considering the vast array of talent from which to choose.

Butler has played on six teams: both Los Angeles franchises, Dallas, Miami, Washington and now Milwaukee.

JUMPBALL POINT GUARD: Jason Kidd TEAMMATES IN DALLAS FROM 2009 THROUGH 2011 “I’ve had Jason Kidd, Chris Paul and also Gilbert Arenas, who could play at the 1 or the 2, but I’ll go with Jason Kidd just because we won a championship together. He’s already headed to Springfeld and CP3 is defnitely on his way. He saw things before they happened. Once he got a little older, his mind was still sharp enough to stay ahead of everyone else. He was just unbelievable. Just the way he thought the game, the way he saw it, the way he addressed his players. Everyone just had this comfort and belief when Jason was on the court, ‘We can win this game. Jason was not going to let us lose. He’s going to make the adjustments. He’s going to put us in position to be successful.’”

WILD CARD: Dwyane Wade TEAMMATES IN MIAMI DURING THE 2003-04 SEASON “He would have easily been in my top fve but you have to pay homage to Kobe for winning fve titles and what he’s done in the game. He’s godfather to my second-youngest child, Ava. He’s an unbelievable player, a three-time champion, a guy that changed the whole franchise in Miami. He won and he’s still winning and he’s doing it at a high level. Then there’s all the stuff that he does in the community. We’ve been close since 1999, 2000 somewhere in there, playing against him in AAU and then watching him get drafted and grow in Miami as a man and the human being that he is off the court, he’s always trying to lend a helping hand and doing so much community service in Chicago AND in Miami. Building an empire on top of that and still having the heart and the will to give back to the community is second to none. That’s a special person and I’m glad to have him as part of my life.”

SMALL FORWARD: Grant Hill TEAMMATES WITH THE LOS ANGELES CLIPPERS DURING THE 2012-13 SEASON “What couldn’t he do before he was snake-bitten by injuries? He’s still one of the best players of all-time.

I think you can’t write the story of basketball without talking about him and guys like Allen Iverson, Tracy McGrady, Kobe.

He was a guy that I idolized as a player and watched a lot of flm on. He’s probably where I got it from, getting on with the injuries and stuff that I had. You can’t feel sorry for yourself. You just have to continue to move forward. It was a pleasure to play alongside of him.”

SHOOTING GUARD: Kobe Bryant TEAMMATES WITH THE LOS ANGELES LAKERS DURING THE 2004-05 SEASON “This is where it gets tricky. I’ve played with Kobe, played with D-Wade, played with Gilbert Arenas. It’s really tough but I have to go with Kobe because he’s the best player of our generation but D-Wade is right there. Kobe is just wired differently.

He’s very competitive and he pushes his teammates and everyone around him to be the best that they possibly can be. He’s also a fun guy to be around. He’s very talkative. You can communicate with him. He was a great big brother to me. From the time that I got traded I’d come to work out with him and learned a lot, which led me to be a multiple-time All-Star, just from being under his wing.”

CENTER: Alonzo Mourning TEAMMATES IN MIAMI DURING THE 200203 SEASON “His professionalism and consistency on a night-to-night basis, bringing a big defensive presence, the energy. It was unbelievable. He was a solid brother. He was a great role model.”

POWER FORWARD: Dirk Nowitzki TEAMMATES IN DALLAS FROM 2009 THROUGH 2011 “ Dirk does it all. The Finals MVP, regular season MVP, franchise player, one of the sweetest strokes the game has ever seen. I think he’s an unbelievable talent and he’s a killer on the court.

He’s one of the best forwards that we’ve probably seen in this game, one of the best-shooting fours.”

GARY DINEEN (2); FERNANDO MEDINA (2); ANDREW D. BERNSTEIN; GLENN JAMES/NBAE/GETTY IMAGES; DOUG PENSINGER/GETTY IMAGES SPORT

021

JUMP BALL DANCE LIFE

ANDREA

MILWAUKEE BUCKS DANCER How would you explain the joy you get from dancing to someone who says they have “two left feet?”

It’s something that’s so natural to me, it’s something I’ve been doing my entire life. It’s the same thing as someone who has been singing all their life, I’m so used to it. When I get out on the court, it’s like a feeling that I’ve never felt before, over and over again. Every time I step out on that court, it’s like the frst time doing it. Anybody who has a passion for anything, it would be that same type of feeling.

What would people be surprised to know is the toughest thing about your job?

The fact that it’s live entertainment and things can change at the snap of a fnger. You may think going into the game that it’s going to go one way and it changes immediately, and you have to just be ready for anything to happen. With the fans, the timeouts and games, so you just have to be ready for anything.

It can be high stress, but that’s also why I love it because it gets your adrenaline going.

Playing for the Bucks is different from being a Bucks Dancer, but what do you think you share in common?

Sharing similarities in the fact that all of us are part of a team, and team cohesiveness is imperative for success. Just as the players need to work together to win games, we need to work together as dancers in

our team to put out a good performance for the fans and entertain them. But I would say that the whole team aspect and working together is huge.

What do you do when you’re not captain of the Bucks Dancers?

I obviously like to spend time with my family and my friends. I’m also a full-time student at University WisconsinMilwaukee, so I am fnishing up my last year there. So between that and dancing that takes up pretty much all of my time.

What’s it like dancing in front of 19,000 people when the Bradley Center is going crazy during the playoffs?

That is probably the most exciting thing about this job, because when the fans are that excited, it just makes our job easier. We feed off their energy and they feed off our energy and it’s something hard to explain unless you experience it.

What do you fnd is the biggest difference from your frst year to your third with the Bucks Dancers?

I think I’m just more aware of everything that goes into this job.

My frst year I was really wrapped up in just doing everything

right. It was almost like an out of body experience, because you’re performing in front of all of these people and you’re kind of just trying to understand all of it. It’s really overwhelming. I think where I am now, I have a better understanding of the inner workings of the team and the games, and everything that goes into it outside of the games; the practices, the appearances. I think I have gained a better understating of the whole job in general.

What’s harder, a new routine or learning how to say Giannis Antetokounmpo’s name?

Learning how to say his name! Learning a routine is like second nature to me. [Ed note: Andrea says “Giannis Antetokounmpo” fawlessly].

What’s been your fondest memory as a Bucks Dancer?

It’s a hard question cause it’s a loaded one. I would defnitely say that the China trip was a really amazing opportunity and experience for me. It was such a huge thing that it was probably the most memorable.

Something really great about this team and being a part of it is, you gain 20 new best friends, cause you spend almost every day of the week with these girls, so I think being able to build friendships is defnitely something very cool.

DUANE WATSON #7

FIRST RIDE

NATE ROBINSON’S FIRST RIDE I had a 1993 Jeep Grand Cherokee with no transmission. It was black and the conveyor belt squeaked; so when I’m driving it’s squeaking. I used to have this spray—this is no lie—I would have my friend get out and pop [the trunk] and spray like every few miles or every time we stopped at a light. Then I saved up when I was in college and I bought some rims—some spinners, some “Sprewells.” I used to tell my friends, “They’re not spinning fast enough,” so when we used to stop at red lights, we used to get out and spin them real fast and then get back in the car and act like we were looking real fresh and cool. It’s probably the cheesiest thing I ever did in my life. I didn’t have no beats, just a regular radio. To me, those moments are priceless.

I remember the frst car I drove, me and one of my best friends were driving, we went to the store and came back and I’m driving towards my house—I can literally see my house like four houses down—and my car caught on fre! I’m thinking, just my luck. I got my license the day of. I think I’m going out to drive, I come back thinking I’m the man, [my stepdad] let me use his car, it was a little Pinto and the engine burnt up. I had to get the little fre extinguisher, I was sad. But then I worked hard, got my Jeep and that was the frst car I bought with my own money. I went to the auction and got it for like $900. I gave it away to one of my family members. That was my baby, though.

NATE ROBINSON AS TOLD TO MCG #93

022

COURTESY MILWAUKEE BUCKS; GARRETT ELLWOOD/NBAE/GETTY IMAGES

BY STEVE HUNT #29

FIRST FIVE

2 PATRICK

BEVERLEY GUARD - HOUSTON ROCKETS

Patrick Beverley’s road to the NBA has been winding.

The Chicago native left Arkansas1 as a sophomore and played in the Ukraine before being drafted by the Lakers in 2009.

In 2010, he was with the Heat during preseason but played in Greece and Russia2 before the Rockets signed him last January. He was immediately sent to the NBA Development League,3 where he played for about a week.

“The D-League was a great experience. It helped me get accustomed to the NBA game with the physical play, being able to play fast, being able to play off the catch. I was only down there for a week, but I took a lot from it,” Beverley said.

He returned in mid-January and made his NBA debut.4 In 41 games as a rookie, he averaged 5.6 rebounds and 2.9 assists. Beverley also appeared in six playoff games, including five starts, and averaged 11.8 points and 5.5 rebounds.

One of his new teammates is fellow Arkansas product Ronnie Brewer,5 someone he knows from his time in Fayetteville. “He works really hard defensively, doesn’t take a play off and has improved in all areas. I’m very proud of where he’s at right now,” Brewer said.

BONUS POINTS 1.Beverley led the Razorbacks in scoring and steals as a freshman.

He then led them in rebounds and steals as a sophomore.

2.He has nothing bad to say about his time overseas, calling a trip to Dubai with his family one Christmas one of the more memorable moments of his time abroad.

3.Beverley averaged 13.7 points, seven assists, 6.7 rebounds and two steals in his three games with the Rio Grande Valley Vipers of the D-League in January 2013.

4.His NBA debut came on 1/15/13 when he played the final 1:45 of a 117-109 loss to the Clippers. Beverley had three points, one steal and one assist in his debut.

5.Brewer was actually Beverley’s recruiting host when he first visited Arkansas and he calls Brewer, still a close friend, a big reason why he became a Razorback in the first place.

023 NED DISHMAN/NBAE/GETTY IMAGES

JUMP BALL What was it like to sit courtside for the first time after you hit in music?

It was really cool. I like courtside—being really close to the action. It’s almost like you’re actually playing the game with them. I like sitting in the boxes as well— getting that good food.

You’re a solo artist, but no musical artist works alone. There is always a team of people around you—from producers to musicians to road crew. How does the team mentality you learned in basketball help you be the best musical artist you can be?

A lot of people that are behind the scenes don’t get the credit they really deserve.

I have a wonderful team behind me. My mentor and good friend and my manager Frank Harris is my biggest teammate. He’s been my manager since I was like 14 years old. Played a huge part in helping me become who I am as an artist and as a man as well. He deserves a lot of credit for the things we built together.

He’s the coach and since you’re a point guard, you’re the coach on the floor.

One hundred percent. He’s the coach and I’m the player on the floor. I’m following the plays. When I’m in the field I’ve got to use my brain and figure out which way to turn when the defense comes this way.

What were you like as a high school basketball player?

I wasn’t the best athlete, but I was the hardest worker. If you needed, I was there before practice, I was there after practice. I’d be shooting 500 jump shots a day.

When I decided to leave basketball [for music] my coach he was like, “I thought you were going to be the one who would make it to the NBA.” With all things, work ethic will always push you to the front of the line. You may not start with the same tools, but the work ethic is what gets you to that next level.

CELEB ROW

JASON DERULO Basketball isn’t only Jason Derulo’s passion—it’s the root of his music career. The R&B singer was discovered on the neighborhood basketball court in Miramar, Fla., working on his game. His manager to this day, Frank Harris, helped him hone the shots that helped Derulo win state high school titles and then worked contacts in music to get Derulo into the recording industry. Derulo’s worlds melded last spring when an alternate version of his single “The Other Side” played during the 2013 Finals between the Miami Heat and the San Antonio Spurs. His latest album, Tattoos, includes his biggest hit to date, “Talk Dirty,” featuring 2 Chainz, and has already had more than 15 million views on YouTube. Although Miami is his hometown, these days Derulo, 24, finds his greatest pleasure attending Los Angeles Lakers games.

You’re a huge Lakers fan, but did you grow up loving the Miami Heat?

I did. My uncle was a police officer at the Heat games, so sometimes he would get free tickets. I would get to go to games.

Are there any memorable games from your childhood?

I can’t recall one specific game. I was a big fan of Tim Hardaway. I was a big fan of Dirk Nowitzki. Dirk is a tall guy (7-feet) and he was not the average player. He has this crazy height, but still can shoot like the best shooting guard in the game. It was fun to watch him. He was powerful. His finesse was like a guard’s finesse.

Did you and your friends ever play pick-up games where you were each members of the Heat? If yes, who were you?

I used to call myself Tim Hardaway. My jumper was pretty nice. Tim’s jumper was crazy. He was always there in the clutch. I played point guard.

024

You still play and are kind of fearless even after sustaining a serious neck injury during rehearsal in 2012. What does getting on the court give you in terms of energy and enjoyment?

Basketball is one of those passions. When I get on floor, I’m happy. I smile all the way to the court. I’m really competitive. Any time I step on the court, I’m making it my business to leave undefeated. I really, really hate losing. I bring that into my everyday life as well. I try to always be a winner, no matter what happens. If I’m at my lowest, low, I always try to leave a winner. When I was at my lowest, low when I had my neck injury, I knew that I didn’t have to stay down. I worked really hard.

Just went with the goals. I’m back to 100 percent now.

What was the first Lakers game you went to at Staples Center?

It was against Dallas. That was exciting for me because Dirk was in the game. Just to be on that floor was crazy. To be amongst friends and have that experience, it will be remembered definitely.

How is the energy special at a Lakers game?

It’s almost like a family. The fans there are all a part of the team. Everybody plays a role. That fan base, I feel, is unlike any other fan base in basketball because they are seriously diehard—not fans, but family members and teammates.

Who are your favorite NBA players and what do you love about their games?

Derrick Rose, I feel like he’s fearless. He’s somebody who will take it to the hole any which way. Sometimes his body may be mangled, but he’ll still go for it and put it up.

Kevin Durant is amazing because some of the shots he puts up you would never in a million years think someone could make. I’m shocked at some of the shots he takes.

He’s always there in the clutch. Durant is a player that is never afraid. He is never afraid to have the pressure on him, and I admire him for that.

Is there an ultimate game you want to see—maybe a Lakers championship game?

Hopefully, I’ll get to do it this year. LOIS ELFMAN #40

PASSION

CHANGES THE WORLD

For more information visit NBACares.com

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12/16/13 8:58 AM

JUMP BALL

BY VINCENT GOODWILL #5

ANDRE

DRUMMOND CENTER - DETROIT PISTONS

FIRST FIVE

There’s only two NBA players aside from Andre Drummond with more 18-rebound games (fve so far) before the age of 21.

Andre, do you know who they are?

“Shaq, Kareem, Russell?1 Gotta be some combo.”

Yes to Shaq,2 no to the other two. (Abdul-Jabbar and Russell both entered the NBA at age 22.)

“Dwight?”

Correct.

“It’s just the beginning. I have to continue to push and play hard, I don’t worry about the stats. I go after every rebound, I try to be great,” says Drummond.

He wasn’t surprised that he was included in the statistical company of Shaq and Dwight, but doesn’t feel he belongs in their strata3 quite yet, despite his rapid improvement.

“It’s other guys talking about me being the next great big man and doing what Shaq and Dwight did, I don’t want to put that pressure on myself to make myself do things I’m not used to doing,” Drummond said. “I just want to help my team win basketball games.”

A candidate to make the Eastern Conference All-Star team for the resurgent Pistons, Drummond is earning more respect around the League from its biggest stars—and a four-time MVP. “He’s a huge, huge guy and every game he continues to build that confdence,” says LeBron James. “He rebounds4 at a high level. The more and more basketball you play, the more situations you see and the more you’re growing. He’s defnitely doing that.”

Big men in the NBA have a quiet fraternity, as older guys try to bring the younger ones along. Drummond is at the head of the class when it comes to tips from opponents.

“I don’t think they want to do that [laughs]. They’ll let me fgure it out on my own. Joakim [Noah]5 talks to me all the time. He tells me to try to trick him, do things to keep him off balance. Kevin Garnett, too. It’s not always positive but I get the message.”

0

BONUS POINTS 1. Drummond said he watches flm of Bill Russell and Wilt Chamberlain on the art of offensive rebounding, watching their positioning as shots go up.

2. Along with Shaq, Drummond is the only center under the age of 20 to have a Player Effciency Rating over 20 (21.6 in 2012-13, 23.9 so far this season) 3. Drummond is a candidate for the next U.S. Olympic team, having played in the summer camp in Las Vegas where he was able to observe his peers. “It made me look at other guys in a different light. We’re playing for one main goal, playing for the colors. That’s when everybody really turns it up. I was able to see guys play really well. The camp really helped me out.”

4. Averaging 13 rebounds so far in the 2013-14 season, he says 15 rebounds by the third quarter “is a solid night.” So far, he only trails Kevin Love, Blake Griffn and Chris Paul in double-doubles. He’s also the only center in the top 10 in steals (ninth).

5. Noah on Drummond: “He’s playing really well. He’s running the foor hard, rebounding and he’s a freak physically.

He’s putting up big boy numbers. In your second year it’s pretty impressive what’s he’s doing.”

026 GARY DINEEN/NBAE/GETTY IMAGES

BY JIM EICHENHOFER #12

23 ANTHONY

FIRST FIVE

Anthony Davis may not have captured the Rookie of the Year trophy last season, as many expected from 2012’s much-hyped1 No. 1 overall NBA draft pick. The ROY award instead ended up in the hands of Portland’s Damian Lillard.2 Still, if the early portion of Davis’ second pro season is any indication, the 6-10 power forward may soon need to clear space for other coveted pieces of hardware.

While displaying the once-a-generation ability that made NBA franchises drool over his immense potential, the 20-year-old put his name at the forefront of early discussion for 2013-14 Defensive Player of the Year3 and Most Improved Player.4 The Chicago native’s sophomore-year start was so impressive that a 32-point, 12-rebound, six-block domination vs. the Lakers may not have even been his top performance. The Kentucky product and ’12 NCAA champion racked up 25 points, eight boards, six blocks, six steals and four assists a week earlier on the Bobcats, in a fantasy basketball owner’s bonanza.

Add up all of the gaudy numbers and it explains how Davis also ranked No. 1 among all players in PER, with a rating comparable to those only produced by the likes of Michael Jordan and LeBron James.5 If Davis continues on that staggering pace after recovering from a broken hand that will sideline him until January, it shouldn’t be long before he’s in the conversation for two other prestigious NBA distinctions: perennial All-Star and MVP candidate.

DAVIS

CENTER/FORWARD - NEW ORLEANS PELICANS

BONUS POINTS 1. Former NBA head coach Larry Brown was widely quoted as saying that whichever NBA team drafted Davis would immediately win at least 50 games.

2. Lillard had a fantastic rookie season, but it helped that he played a total of 3,167 minutes. Davis logged 1,846.

3. One of the greatest shotblockers in NCAA history, Davis rejected 17 shots over a two-game mid-November span vs. Philadelphia and Utah, the first time a player had eight-plus blocks in consecutive games since Dikembe Mutombo in ’01.

4. Davis added more than seven points per game to his scoring average and more than doubled his blocks per game compared to his rookie season.

5. Told by an international reporter of the statistical comparisons to MJ and LeBron, Davis responded, “That sounds nice to put me in that category, but I’m not in that category if I haven’t won [a championship]. Those guys won already.”

LAYNE MURDOCH/NBAE/GETTY IMAGES

027

JUMP BALL HEAD 2 HEAD

Jeremy Lin vs. Damian Lillard

Point guard is such a loaded position in the game now that standouts like Damian Lillard and Jeremy Lin still have rungs to climb on the NBA PG hierarchy— and this from a Rookie of the Year and a guy who captured the attention of hundreds of millions. Who’s further up the ladder right now? We settle it.

01

03

Scoring: At frst glance you might think Lillard has this in a runaway. The Trail Blazer holds a fve-point advantage as a 20-ppg scorer and is the superior free-throw shooter (90 percent to Lin’s 80). But look a little deeper and you’ll notice that Lillard is more a volume scorer, and his 39 feld-goal percentage (Lin is shooting 50) shows that he has more opportunities to shoot than Lin. A look at their per-36 minute scoring production and you’ll see that Lin narrows the scoring gap, going up to 18.3 while Lillard’s drops a bit to 19.9. While the two are equally strong at the deep ball (both are shooting close to 40 percent) and getting to the line (both average about 5 trips to the line per game) a peek into their shotcharts shows that Lin is much more effective around the basket. Lin is good on 50 percent of his shots inside 10 feet while Lillard is effective about 30 percent of the time. Numbers aside, Lillard poses a bigger threat to defenses since he can penetrate the basket and get into the paint better despite fnishing with less frequency. Lin has improved his left hand, but is still much stronger going right. In this age of advanced stats, we’re going with the effcient scorer.

Advantage: Lin

Defense: If this was based on last year’s version of Lillard, it might be a push between the two. Let’s just say that his Rookie of the Year hardware wasn’t earned on the defensive end. Lillard would look lost at times as offenses took advantage of the green-eared youngster to exploit, especially at the end of games. This year, his head coach Terry Stotts has praised Lillard on the strides he’s made on the defensive end— knowing where to be, taking advantage of his lateral quickness, maintaining aggressiveness at the end of games or when he has foul trouble and fghting through on pick ‘n rolls.

As for Lin, well let’s say he’s been blessed to have had defensive-minded centers like Tyson Chandler, Omer Asik and Dwight Howard to back him up after he gets beat by his man. For all his offensive shimmer, his defense has not caught up. Lin does get his hands on the ball, leading to steals, but many times it can also leave his team reeling in rotation as a result.

Advantage: Lillard

Jeremy Lin

Guard, 6-3, 200 pounds Houston Rockets 02 Floor Game: Like other points guards on the come-up, Lillard and Lin are the scoring variety, calling their own number as often, if not more, than teammates. Neither is the type to rack up high assists for different reasons. With Lillard, teammate LaMarcus Aldridge’s deliberate high-post face-up game lessens the likelihood of a scorer giving him a dime and with Lin, the ball is primarily in the hands of James Harden to create. That said, both are able enablers with the ball. What separates the two is how they take care of the ball. Lillard keeps the turnovers to a minimal 2.3 per game. Although much improved from his haphazard days with the Knicks (he averaged a Linsane 4.8 per 36 minutes). Both need the ball in their hands to thrive, but Lin has had to learn how to play off the ball more since being paired with Harden, and both are good on the break, whether it be leading or flling in the wings.

Advantage: Lillard 028

BY MING WONG #2

04

05

Leadership: Lillard has the advantage of being put into a relatively young team and handed the reins, going a long way in establishing a natural chain of command below you. While the Blazers are led by Aldridge with sage vets like Mo Williams and Earl Watson ready to offer guidance, the ball is frmly in his hands, literally and fguratively. Lillard’s time at small-time Weber State also helped groom him to be in charge, and soon enough, he’ll do the same for Portland. Despite having all the attention heaped at him seemingly overnight, Lin was never comfortable with the spotlight on him. Even he admitted as much at the start of the season when he was glad to no longer be a focal point with Harden and Howard commanding eyeballs.

Advantage: Lillard

Intangibles: Based on the ability to deal with pressure, media frenzy and attention, Lin has gone through more during his Cinderella run in New York than most players have had to contend with in a lifetime—and it’s important to note how he thrived in that microscope, however brief. In his lifetime, Lillard has yet to face that type of scrutiny, having played at a small D-1 school and now in Portland. Lin carried the Knicks during a rough stretch and won, all the while dropping big scoring nights and buzzerbeaters. But don’t sell Lillard short. He might be “small town” but he’s always had something to prove, and his Oakland roots give him a tough shell ready to take on the world. Still, Lin is continually proving that a Chinese baller from Harvard can make it in the NBA—two big feats that can’t be discounted.

Advantage: Lin

Damian Lillard

Guard, 6-3, 195 pounds Lin

Lillard

PPG

15.3

20.2

APG

4.5

5.7

RPG

2.6

3.9

BPG

0.5

0.3

SPG

1.3

0.7

FG%

.503

.391

3PT%

.390

.397

FT%

.805

.902

PER

18.8

18.5

Portland Trail Blazers

Stats as of Dec. 6

The Verdict It’s tough to have to pick between two budding players, both who have overcame great odds to just be in the League and are now on the verge of bigger things. An advanced stats guy might have this tilted toward Lin, but we still think the Houston guard has some shortcomings that make Lillard the more logical pick for now.

BILL BAPTIST (2); SAM FORENCICH; CAMERON BROWNE/NBAE/GETTY IMAGES

029

JUMP BALL NUMEROLOGY

1995: 1996: 1997: 1998: 1999: Both the Indiana Pacers and the Golden State Warriors were well represented on the 2014 NBA All-Star ballot, each having 6 players to select from.

The Pacers have Paul George, George Hill, Lance Stephenson, Danny Granger, Roy Hibbert and David West. The Warriors have Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson, Andre Iguodala, Harrison Barnes, David Lee and Andrew Bogut.

1 5 3 7 7

The players remaining from the NBA Drafts of the ’90s. The oldest player of the bunch is Steve Nash (’96 draft) at 39 and the youngest is Andrei Kirilenko (’99) at 32.

26/10/10

27/12/10 The points, rebounds and assists of, respectively, Philadelphia’s Michael Carter-Williams and Orlando’s Victor Oladipo in a 126-125 double-OT win for the Sixers. It was the frst time in NBA history that two rookies captured trip-doubles in the same game.

7

If LeBron James fnishes this season shooting better than 56.5 percent, he will have improved his shooting for 7 consecutive seasons. It began in 2007-08 when he improved to 48.4, then continued to better the mark each subsequent season: 48.9, 50.3, 51.0, 53.1 and 56.5. At the time of this writing, LeBron was shooting 59.5.

4

In a 5-day period from 11/29-12/3, 4 NBA players suffered fractures to their hands. Clippers’ J.J. Redick broke a bone in his right hand; Nets’ Paul Pierce fractured his right hand; Pelicans’ Anthony Davis fractured his left hand; and Bobcats’ Michael Kidd-Gilchrist suffered a broken hand in the time span.

030

JESSE D. GARRABRANT/NBAE/GETTY IMAGES; MIKE EHRMANN/GETTY IMAGES SPORT

BY STEVE HUNT #29 FIRST FIVE

15

REGGIE

JACKSON

GUARD - OKLAHOMA CITY THUNDER

The Thunder’s Reggie Jackson got the chance to create an identity for himself on a youthful, talented squad during last season’s playoffs when Russell Westbrook went down with a knee injury. The 23-year-old Jackson fearlessly stepped right up and became an offensive weapon, making up for the huge void of Westbrook by upping his contributions to 13.9 points on 47 percent shooting in the Thunder’s playoff run.1 “I think my best trait is being able to attack and getting into the lane and trying to cause havoc,” said Jackson, playing in his third NBA season.

“Whether it’s me finishing at the basket or finding an open teammate for a shot or keeping the defensive team off balance, that’s where I feel like I contribute the most.”

This season the dynamite option has been playing with major confidence2 off of the bench.3 At the end of November, the 6-3 point guard matched his career-high 23 points, lighting up the Spurs with 6-of-7 shooting in the fourth quarter.4 As the Boston College alum5 continues to polish his sixth-man role, he says he’ll keep taking advice about improving his game from teammate and NBA vet Derek Fisher. “[Fisher] has been one of my biggest mentors, almost like a coach to me,” Jackson says. “Almost every game, people don’t notice, but while the game is going on he’ll call me down by his seat and tell me something he sees on the court— how to contain a player or whether it be when to attack in certain sets. He can see things happen before it happening. He’s really helped with my maturation and just figuring out the game.”

BONUS POINTS 1. Jackson also averaged 4.9 rebounds and 3.6 assists in last year’s playoffs. He started 9 of the 11 postseason games and almost doubled all of his stats from the regular season.

2. Jackson also got a shot of confidence in the offseason after scoring an Orlando Pro Summer League record 35 points in the Thunder’s 79-78 win over Detroit.

3. The youngster is averaging 11.1 points, 3.9 rebounds and 3.7 assists in 23.6 minutes this season as the team’s main sub. One of his goals this year is to “just be mentioned” in the Sixth Man Award category.

4. The guard finished 10-of-14 from the field with 4 rebounds in 26 minutes to snap San Antonio’s 11-game win streak.

5. Jackson was drafted by Oklahoma City in the 1st round, 24th overall in the 2011 Draft after making the All-ACC First Team for the 2010-11 season and scoring 18 points per game.

EZRA SHAW/GETTY IMAGES SPORT

031

JUMP BALL PERIPHERAL VISION

NATHANIEL BUTLER NBA PHOTOGRAPHER

Almost every NBA fan is familiar with Nathaniel Butler’s work (including several HOOP covers). As an NBA photographer, his keen eye has captured many iconic images of regular season, All-Star, Finals or Olympic action over the past 25 years. Butler has snapped more photos than Jordan has taken shots, documenting the twilight of legends and the beginnings of future superstars while outlasting many in between.

How long have you been shooting NBA games?

As crazy as it sounds, this is my 30th year—I started in ’84.

How did you get into shooting for the NBA? I used to work at Sports Illustrated as an apprentice and just started bumping into NBA people at things and the NBA at that time didn’t even have a photo department. I was doing games on the East Coast and Andy Bernstein was doing games on the West Coast, we said, “You know what? We should really put this together.” So with the help of some senior NBA management people we created a photo department.

Originally, it wasn’t as service-orientated; it was sort of like just creating and documenting the history of the NBA at that time. Over the years, it has steadily grown from there.

Do you recall what shooting your frst NBA game or Finals was like?

I’m bad with my dates, but it had to be ’85, the one I vividly remember is a Knicks game and Lonnie Shelton fell on top of me. It was the tail end of his tenure and he was about 265 pounds and I was like, “Wow.” My frst Finals was in 1986 and I remember sitting there, it was Boston vs. Houston and just saying “Wow, this is pretty cool.” In the 1987 Finals I vividly remember Lakers vs. Boston, and I was lucky enough to be in a good position when Magic did his little junior-junior skyhook over McHale, Parish and Bird to win Game 4. That was the frst time I really felt that I had an iconic type of photo; even years later, Magic put that shot in his book and called it his favorite shot of his career. You see that replay a hundred times on TV, obviously game-winners are always cool to get, but when it’s in the Finals and fash forward 25 years later and it’s Magic Johnson, stuff like that is cool for me.

Are there times when you know when you take it that you have that shot?

You do, but things are obviously different now, with digital you shoot it and you press a review button 032

on the camera and you confrm it. Back then, that particular shot, I was shooting black and white and it’s literally racing back to the hotel and developing black and white flm in my hotel room. Which again, seems like such an archaic thing to do now, but you’re keeping your fngers crossed. You never know, the composition could be off, a ref’s hand or something may be impeding your view while you shoot it, obviously everything happens so quickly. But I vividly remember racing back to the hotel and processing black and white flm and looking for that frame and thankfully, I did get it.

How has technology changed how you do your work?

I think it’s all good. There are some old time people that are like, “People taking pictures with iPhones, it’s terrible, it’s ruining the business!” I think all that stuff is awesome and I am intrigued, it literally keeps me pumped up to stay abreast of these technologies.

When I started shooting black and white, then we shot flm with Hasselblad cameras that I loved, but it was extremely diffcult. There weren’t even too many people that were able to master that. It’s a big camera you’re focusing, guys running around, but when you get those images even to this day, a nice strobed image of Michael Jordan on a Hasselblad camera is one of the most beautiful things you’ve ever seen. Initially I was somewhat reluctant with the digital technology, just because the quality was not what I was accustomed to. But two or three years into the digital revolution, the digital fles are beautiful and you embrace that because of what that has to offer. At the end of the day it’s about the quality of the images, but at the same time

you’re incorporating all of these other social media needs into the photography. We’re taking photos and having them sent electronically to someone’s iPad or phone and then someone on the phone can tweet it out or Instagram it out. We send it to NBA. com and the lag or time delay is literally seconds before the picture can be seen. NBA.com whatever their audience is, 3 or 4 million people, they can see an image from the game probably 90 seconds after it’s taken. Which is never going to be live TV, but it is a different animal and a whole new market.

What’s your most memorable All-Star game moment?

There’s a couple going way back, it was the JordanDominique dunk contests, which were insane. Even now you sort of get goose bumps looking at those highlights on NBA TV, of the skinny Jordan doing this and Dominique doing that was amazing. One of the other really memorable times was the year that Magic came back for the All-Star game in Orlando. At the end of the day I’m a huge basketball fan, and while you’re working you can’t obviously be a fan. Years later you look back on different moments in time, and that All-Star Game was incredibly emotional for so many different reasons. Then not lost in the shuffe because he won MVP, but somewhat as a secondary note was how good he played and how special a player and how special a person he is. Doing what he did at an All-Star game without having played all year.

There’s a story where Michael Jordan gave signals to a photographer on which way he would be approaching during a Dunk Contest, so they could get the best shots.

Do you set up your shots at all with your subjects?

shot on the East Coast, but he was just great because he literally had that magic charisma and style.

Jordan for all the obvious reasons, Bird was fun just because people underestimated his toughness.

He wasn’t the prettiest or most graceful fying through the air, which didn’t lend itself to the most picturesque shots, but at the end of the day, that’s Larry Bird.

The guys that handle the ball are just fun, like what Chris Paul is doing this year, like Kyrie Irving is one of my favorite guys to shoot.

I still can’t fgure out, he’s not left handed, but he fnishes with his left incredibly well. Things like that I pride myself on getting to know the player’s tendencies and characteristics. Kyrie obviously has got a sick handle and you literally don’t know if he’s fnishing with a left or a right. Like LeBron, people have this vision of him soaring dunking, he really doesn’t do that as much as people think, he’s such an all-around player, he does whatever it takes to win. He will be one of the best of all time when it’s all said and done.

I’m sort of so respectful of their space, and I like to be the fy on the wall and don’t have a whole lot of dialogue.

I don’t want to be a part of the story; I just want to document the story. I don’t go out drinking with them, but I have really good relationships with a lot of these guys. I think they have respected what I have done over the years and I have enjoyed watching them, and it has made my job fun. There’s a mutual respect there.

In no particular order, who are the fve players you’ve most enjoyed shooting?

It’s hard because you have favorites for different periods of time. You cant pick your favorite kids, but obviously, I didn’t do a lot with Magic because I REID KELLEY; JESSE D. GARRABRANT; ANDREW D. BERNSTEIN/NBAE/GETTY IMAGES

What’s your favorite shot?

Again, I love shots for a period of time, and then you move on trying to get another favorite. Defnitely one of my frst favorites was that Magic junior hook. Then I had a Dr. J and it was against the Nets, my career was just starting, his was on the tail end. But I was lucky to get one frame of the doctor soaring through the air. A portrait of Bill Russell as he posed with his 11 championship rings on his 10 fngers, that was awesome. Knicks games, like the John Starks dunk over Jordan, there’s been a number of different Jordan shots. Last year at the Finals, I was in the right place at the right time to get a shot of LeBron and DWade with the championship trophy. They were screaming they’ve won, the confetti is coming down, there was a ticker in the back of the arena saying “LeBron MVP,” “Champ,” moments like that. So that sort of is my current favorite, in that regard. There was a shot of Drazen Petrovic where he hit three after three and he had his hands up, it’s nice to see it used, because it was also his personality.

Can you share any great anecdotes or funny stories?

I’m still enjoying things and every day is different.

One thing that was funny years ago with Jordan, they were playing in Orlando and someone stole his jersey out of the locker. It was before they had all these jerseys and things for sale, there was a mad scramble and he wore #12 for the game. I’m like, “this is going to be terrible, those shots are going to be useless.” Then I come to fnd out those shots are kind of cool cause fans know that he wore #45 for a few weeks when he came back, but very few people realize that he wore #12 for one game.

There was one time when I was with LeBron and he had to get a haircut. We were in Cleveland doing something and I decided to tag along. So we went to his old barbershop and he was getting a haircut. Just like you and I would go to the barber, we pick up a magazine, except he picks a magazine that he’s on the cover of. I think it was Vogue magazine or something and there’s a shot of him in the barber chair reading a magazine that he’s on the cover of. It wasn’t staged, it wasn’t anything, but it was kinda cool.

One really cool thing for me was, again with LeBron was when his frst MVP in Cleveland and they do the press conference and he wanted to do it at St. VincentSt. Mary at his high school. I think at the time there was a little pushback maybe from the League or the team that it was going to be a hassle of doing it out of Akron, but that’s what he wanted to do. I got there early and I met up with him and some of his guys, it was an NBA video crew and me, and it was the craziest thing with how genuine LeBron was and it really impressed me tremendously. We were walking up and down the halls of the school, while they were setting up the press conference in the gymnasium, and he knew every teacher by name, he knew every custodian by name, was unbelievably cordial to everyone. For someone who was 22 years old at the time, but for him to be that savvy and that genuine about things, it really impressed me as to what kind of person he was.

We were in the locker room afterwards and he had an MVP trophy and was like a little kid in a locker room saying, “That was my locker!” Five years ago that was his locker in high school, there was a wall that all the team had autographed, and after it was all over he just sat down on the bench and was in a refective moment. I snapped a quick shot of him sitting on the bench in the St. Vincent-St. Mary locker room with the MVP trophy, and it was just one of those moments he sat down and realized that things were going pretty well for him and he was on a pretty good path. That always impressed me with him. He’s so involved in that community there and I think that speaks to his character and priorities. DUANE WATSON #7 Follow Nat Butler on Instagram at @Natlyphoto to see more of his photographs.

033

11

JUMP BALL

MARKIEFF

MORRIS

FORWARD - PHOENIX SUNS

BY JERAMIE MCPEEK #4

FIRST FIVE

A lot of big names have played in Phoenix in recent years. We’re talking guys1 with All-Star credentials, All-NBA resumes and even a couple of MVPs. Yet the Suns went nearly five seasons without receiving a single Player-of-the-Week honor.2 That dry spell came to an end in mid-November when third-year forward Markieff Morris was recognized as the Western Conference Player of the Week, after averaging 23 points, 8 boards and 2 steals in the most impressive stretch of his young career. Oh, and did we mention that he also shot better than 75 percent3 from the floor in three straight games that week?

“I’m faster than a lot of guys at the four position, so I just take what the defense gives me,” says the 24-year-old. “I’m working on my game every day to try and improve at all aspects, and making shots.”

At press time, the slightly taller of the Morris twins4 was averaging career-highs in points (12.2 ppg), boards (5.8 rpg), steals (1.0) and shooting percentages from everywhere.5 “He’s good offensively, he’s good defensively, he’s getting rebounds, he’s helping out,” assesses Suns head coach Jeff Hornacek. “Except for a few plays here and there defensively, I think he’s been much better than he was in the past.”

BONUS POINTS 1. In case you’re wondering who we are referring to: Steve Nash, Grant Hill, Amar’e Stoudemire, Shawn Marion and Shaq.

2. Prior to Morris, Stoudemire was the last Suns player to earn the honor on 11/10/08.

3. Dwight Howard and Charles Barkley are the only two other players to have done that, while taking at least 12 shots, in Morris’ lifetime.

4. Markieff was drafted 13th in the 2011 NBA Draft, while Marcus was selected at 14 by Houston, who traded him to Phoenix last season.

5. That is 47 percent from the floor, 82 percent from the freethrow line and 38 percent from the arch.

034

ROCKY WIDNER/NBAE/GETTY IMAGES

EAST TO WEST AND EVERY TEAM IN BETWEEN

WATCH LIVE GAMES, ANYWHERE! CALL 1-855-NBA LP-LP OR GO TO NBA.COM/LEAGUEPASS TM & © 2013 Turner Entertainment Networks, Inc. A Time Warner Company. All Rights Reserved. ©2013 NBA Entertainment. Photo by Getty Images. All Rights Reserved.

League Pass.indd 1

10/9/13 11:07 AM

JUMP BALL BRACK-IT

EIGHT THINGS. ONE UNDISPUTED CHAMP.

BEST CURRENT NBA SON

MIKE DUNLEAVY VS. STEPHEN CURRY Despite being a journeyman over 438 NBA games, Big Dun parlayed his time into a coaching career that spanned 1,329 games. Lil Dun was much more the blue-chipper, taken with the third pick in 2002 (dad was the 99th overall selection in ’76), and has been a versatile player who can score, grab a board, find the open man and knock down the three.

Even though he’s technically a junior, Steph goes by the middle name that he shares with his dad, Dell. The one thing that’s a carbon copy is the outside stroke. Dell was one of the first players to really harness the three-point shot as a weapon, making them at a 40 percent career clip. Steph has just picked up where his dad left off and let loose from beyond 23 feet since being the seventh pick in 2009. He’s already past the halfway mark of dad’s 1,245 career triples and at his rate of 45 percent, it won’t be long until he catches up to the current all-time three-point king, Ray Allen.

Curry’s long range and long-term outlook gives him the nod.

KEVIN LOVE VS. GERALD HENDERSON Kevin’s dad, Stan, played with Wes Unseld in Baltimore and although it was only for two seasons, it certainly rubbed off on Kevin. Kevin’s middle name aside (Wesley, an homage to Unseld), a little of Unseld’s game, namely the rebounding and outlet passing, rubbed off on him, as Kevin is now possibly the best in both departments in the game.

Gerald Henderson Sr. was a steady combo guard who earned three rings (two with the Celtics and one with Detroit) with career averages of 8.9 ppg and 3.6 apg, and spawned junior, who has already shown to be a better scorer than his old man with a 15 ppg average over the last three seasons including this one. Now all he has to do is catch dad in rings.

Easy box-out and rebound for Love to the next round.

WESLEY MATTHEWS VS. KOBE BRYANT Though they might share the same name, the younger Matthews did not follow in his father’s footsteps, but his mom Pam Moore, who was a pretty good player in her own right (she once scored 50 and pulled down 50 boards in high school). But there’s no denying half the NBA DNA that dad Wes imparted to Wesley. An 11-year pro, Matthews was a serviceable point guard who played with Dominique Wilkins, Michael Jordan and backed up Magic Johnson on two Lakers title teams in 1987 and ’88. Wesley has worked hard to go from undrafted rookie to starting guard for the Trail Blazers, showing an ability to score the ball as he’s averaging a career-high 16.6 ppg this season.

Kobe’s dad, Joe, had a decent NBA run, but his time in Italy won him more adoration and it was really there that Kobe saw his dad play basketball the most. Little did anyone know that being raised in soccer-loving Italy would turn Kobe into the basketball juggernaut.

It’s pretty clear who moves on.

KLAY THOMPSON VS. AL HORFORD Al Horford’s dad, Tito, wasn’t a fit in the NBA, but found a successful career overseas after a short 63-game run in the Association, while Al has flourished as one of the most overlooked bigs in the NBA, notching two All-Star berths as a steady scoring and rebounding pivot.

The other Splash Brother also had an NBA upbringing via dad Mychal Thompson, a former No. 1 pick (1978) who went on to be a valuable contributor to two back-to-back Showtime championships (1987 and ’88) as a very skilled understudy to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Klay learned a lot from pops, but we’re sure the long-range shooting was something he forged on his own (Mychal was 1-of-12 in his career from deep).

Thompson is coming on strong, but Horford still has a leg up on the upstart.

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BY MING WONG #2

CURRY VS. LOVE It’s old NBA adage that you always take big over small, but what if the small was a guard who almost can’t miss if given a bit of daylight to shoot? Even if he could grab every long-range miss, Love would still only be able to inhale about 55 percent of them since the other 45 percent of the time he’d just be inbounding the ball as it comes off the wet net. But Love has proven to be a potent scorer (and at the time of this writing, leading Curry in scoring 23.7 to 22.6) and a great triggerman to a fastbreak. Curry can himself lead a nifty break, as he’s on a clip to set a career high in dimes, and don’t forget the ever-deadly pull-up three in transition. That said, Love is known to be a pretty sharpshooter from deep, making a few deep ones in the waning seconds to steal a few wins, including this one.

LOVE VS. BRYANT Before we announce the obvious choice, we’d like to say that Love is carving out a nice NBA career for himself. When healthy, Love has shown to be a lock as a 20-10 monster, a place few big men reach these days as a result of the game moving away from the paint. Comparing career stats between a budding 25year old and an 18-year career is fruitless, but if you looked at the PER between the two, it shows how Love and Bryant are similar. Bryant’s 23.4 PER is impressive, but Love isn’t far behind at 22.4. Love has to prove that he can maintain his productivity for as long as Bryant, but it does show that Love is a close equal in terms of raw production. But as NBA sons go, unless Bill Russell, Michael Jordan, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Wilt Chamberlain, Magic Johnson, Larry Bird or Tim Duncan can lay claim to an NBA dad, Bryant stands alone.

GREATEST NBA SON:

KOBE BRYANT

BRYANT VS. HORFORD This might be the first time ever that these two players have been compared but alas, Horford—even if combined with his dad’s accomplishments—will be dwarfed by Kobe. It’s less a statement of Horford and more a statement of how lofty a perch Kobe has established. If the two were to team together, it would seem like a good fit: Horford’s no-nonsense inside game giving way to Kobe’s brilliance. But a comparison between the two is just ludicrous.

NATHANIEL S. BUTLER; EVAN GOLE; ANDREW D. BERNSTEIN (4); SAM FORENCICH; ROCKY WIDNER (4); SCOTT CUNNINGHAM; DAN LIPPITT; NOAH GRAHAM; ALLEN EINSTEIN; OTTO GREULE; DICK RAPHAEL; ROBERT LEWIS; NBA PHOTOS (2)/NBAE/GETTY IMAGES; KEVIN C. COX; STREETER LECKA; SCOTT HALLERAN/GETTY IMAGES SPORT

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JUMP BALL 24 SECONDS

with KENNETH FARIED

HOOP: Have you always played with those animal instincts?

FARIED: Yeah, that’s something that’s just been embedded in me my whole life. Play hard every single game and don’t take any possessions off.

HOOP: You ranked third for the toughest player in NBA.com’s preseason GM survey this year. Were you proud of that, or did you think you should have been ranked higher?

FARIED: I’m very disappointed [laughs]. I thought I would be ranked No. 2 at least.

HOOP: How does the Manimal on the court compare to Kenneth Faried off of it?

FARIED: They don’t add up. When I’m on the court, I’m mean, nasty, aggressive, just a downright rugged guy. When I’m off the court, I’m a nice, kind-hearted, helpful, all-around good guy.

HOOP: You can’t be too aggressive off the court considering you get pedicures, right?

FARIED: And mani-pedis [laughs]. I like to be well groomed, feet and hands.4 I’ve got to keep my claws nice and sharp. But I love them.

They’re comfortable. It’s a relaxing state of mind.

HOOP: You’ve got to have some nice feet for all those crazy socks you wear.

FARIED: Oh my. I’ve got a lot of crazy socks. I can’t even tell you which are my favorites. I wear purple, green, blue, the colors of the rainbow—all sorts of things.

HOOP: We also liked the photo of your onesies5 pajamas. Did you have those custom made for you? There can’t be too many stores that make onesies for 6-8 men.

FARIED: No, my ex-girlfriend actually got that for me for a birthday gift so that me and my daughter could wear onesies together. I still wear it when I’m playing Call of Duty.

HOOP: Did they have the built-in footies?

FARIED: Yeah, it had the built-in footies—that’s what made it dope!

HOOP: Happy birthday!1 What should we get you for a present?

FARIED: The cover of HOOP would be a great present [laughs].

HOOP: Do you have any New York Giants pajamas or socks?

FARIED: Yeah, I’ve got pajamas, socks, a blanket, a hat, a pillow and a Michael Strahan jersey from back in the day. I’m a Giants fan for life!

HOOP: We’ve noticed you tweet your horoscope regularly. What characteristics of a Scorpio do you have most?

FARIED: I am competitive, determined, passionate. Extremely competitive. I have a never-quit attitude.

HOOP: Who are some of your all-time favorite G-Men? FARIED: I love Michael Strahan. Eli Manning is one of my favorites. I used to like Tiki Barber. I’m friends with Ahmad Bradshaw. And I used to be teammates playing AAU with Victor Cruz.

HOOP: What happens when the Manimal2 is unleashed?

FARIED: A lot! I mean, I go out there and get a double-double pretty much. That’s unleashing the Manimal. Oh, and also, I did the ESPN Body Issue,3 so that was kind of really unleashing, unchaining and unclothing the Manimal.

HOOP: Can Victor hoop?

FARIED: Victor did the right thing by staying in football. He could play basketball, but he was just too aggressive.

HOOP: If you are part man, part animal, what type of animal do you have in you?

FARIED: I’m a lion! I’m similar because of the roar. Every time I dunk or score, you hear the Manimal roar. And my hair is nice and feathered and puffy at times. So I’ve got a nice coat like a lion.

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HOOP: Did you play football growing up?

FARIED: Yeah, I played football. I got hit across the middle when I was in high school in practice, so I quit. [I was] hit me too hard and I was mad, because I couldn’t do anything about it.

BY JERAMIE MCPEEK #4

HOOP: If you were still playing today, what position would you play?

FARIED: I would be a wide receiver, playing slot more than anything. I would run a lot of deep routes. You could call me the next Megatron.

HOOP: We saw a #tbt photo you posted of yourself behind the counter at Krispy Kreme. Did you really work there?

FARIED: No, I didn’t work at Krispy Kreme [laughs]. That was just a joke. Me and my best friends were going around Kentucky saying hi to some of our sponsors that support us. At the time, we went to Krispy Kreme and were just being silly.

HOOP: We were going to ask you what your favorite donut was.

FARIED: Well, my favorite Krispy Kreme donut is the glazed, of course, especially when it’s a hot glazed, right out of the oven.

BONUS POINTS 1. Faried celebrated his 24th birthday on 11/19.

2. NBC once boasted a TV series called Manimal, about a crime-fighting shape-shifter, who could turn into any animal he needed. Never heard of it? Well, that’s because it lasted less than two months.

3. The Nuggets’ forward asked to be in ESPN Magazine’s annual Body Issue.

4. According to TeenVogue.com, you should never apply dark nail polish without applying a base coat first. #NowYouKnow 5. On World Diabetes Day, some employers in the UK reportedly allowed their staffs to wear onesies to raise awareness of type 1 diabetes. If only that had caught on here in the States.

6. At press time, Faried was averaging 10.3 points and 9.0 rebounds a game.

HOOP: You posted an Instagram of Ron Burgandy a few months back and said that Anchorman is your favorite comedy. What is your favorite Anchorman line?

FARIED: “I don’t know how to put this, but I’m kind of a big deal.” That move is hilarious. My favorite part is when the sports guy sprayed the Black Panther cologne and had the whole office smelling bad.

HOOP: We saw you invited fans to play Diablo III with you recently online. How often do you play with fans?

FARIED: I invite a lot of fans to play with me, so they realize I’m just a normal guy like them. I play online games just like them. I go to the mall, hang out, go to public restaurants, just try to live everyday life like anybody else.

HOOP: Do you ever play NBA videogames? If so, do you play as yourself?

FARIED: Yeah, I play NBA 2K. And of course I play as the Nuggets.

I’ve got to see how I play and how my game6 translates to the videogames.

HOOP: How do your digital dreads look?

FARIED: My dreads at first were kind of shabby. I didn’t like them. But now they’ve got the ponytail down pat. The next-gen consoles really helped me look like me.

HOOP: Your sister was the one who first suggested you go with dreads, right?

FARIED: Yes, she suggested that I try it, because I was growing my hair out at the time. I had a little fro and I didn’t know what to do with it.

HOOP: What do your dreads say about you?

FARIED: It says that I’m different and I’m the Manimal.

GARRETT ELLWOOD (2)/NBAE/GETTY IMAGES

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THE SEASON IS HERE. LIVE IT.

enebea.com

EneBeA.indd 1

12/16/13 9:02 AM

HOOP

A-Z OF THE NBA

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A ABDICATE

verb; to relinquish (power or responsibility) formally

W

hen David Stern took over as NBA commissioner in 1984, the League was just beginning to rise out of the malaise that had characterized the 1970s. TV exposure was growing, and the continued development of Magic Johnson and Larry Bird had created a rivalry that would join Chamberlain-Russell as the most famous in professional basketball history.

Stern’s ascension coincided with the arrivals of Michael Jordan, Hakeem Olajuwon, Charles Barkley and John Stockton, stalwarts who entered the League the same year he did. Under Stern’s steady hand and visionary approach, the NBA moved away from a team-centric concept of promoting itself to one that emphasized its stars. Instead of the Lakers’ tangling with the Bulls, it was Magic against Michael. Or Sir Charles against Hakeem.

The NBA gave its fans players it could root for, and the game’s popularity soared as a result.

TV money began to pour in. In the late 1980s, the League was receiving just under $70 million annually from broadcast and cable outlets. By the mid-90s, that number had swelled to about $325 million/season. The sport that had once been derided as not worth watching until the last two minutes of each game was now thrilling fans with a deep collection of stars and high-fying action.

U.S. fans were enthralled by the product, but Stern saw the opportunity for much more attention and revenue. So, in 1992, he turned loose the Dream Team on the Olympic Games, and an international sensation ensued. Fans from all around the world clamored for merchandise and 042

broadcasts of their favorite players. The Dream Team crushed all comers but endeared itself to a global audience. NBA basketball ran second only to soccer around the world, and it wasn’t long before other countries started supplying players to teams, perhaps the most visible evidence that the sport was growing exponentially.

Stern didn’t let up on the international front, sending NBA teams to foreign lands to play and reaping the benefts as new markets grew, as fans focked to the U.S. professional version of the sport. Even China became a partner, and when Houston made Yao Ming the frst overall pick in the 2002 Draft, the NBA began its assault on the planet’s most populous country. Yao made eight All-Star Game appearances, thanks to heavy voting from Chinese fans.

Stern’s steady hand continued into the new millennium, as TV partnerships grew stronger and more lucrative, and international marketing efforts yielded high dividends and supported a farm system of leagues throughout Europe and Asia that provided talent for NBA teams.

As Adam Silver takes over the reins in February, the NBA is a sturdy brand with a sound promotional strategy and global popularity.

But Silver faces some interesting challenges. The possibility of European expansion must be examined, and the issue of when players should be allowed to enter the League continues to require attention. Labor peace prevails, but it is vital to maintain a solid working relationship with the Players Association, the better to avoid any missed games in the future.

There is a lot to do, but thanks to Stern, a lot has already been accomplished. —Michael Bradley #53 DAVID DOW/NBAE/GETTY IMAGES

B BRAVADO noun; defant or swaggering behavior

B

rooklyn Nets point guard Shaun Livingston has the unfortunate distinction of suffering one of the NBA’s most graphic injuries. Projected as a point guard prospect in the mode of Magic Johnson, Livingston, in an awkward fall during a 2007 game damaged his meniscus, all three major ligaments in his knee, and dislocated his left kneecap, patella and tibia femoral joint.

Livingston was limited to 48 games over the next four seasons with three different teams, going from can’t-miss fourth overall pick to NBA journeyman. He was 21 years old at the time.

Livingston worked and rehabbed himself from every setback, gutting it out and modifying his game to make up for his lack of explosiveness. Even though he played three seasons with the Clippers, he’s made nine stops in nine seasons, fnally fnding a meaningful role this season in Brooklyn, playing in every game backing up Deron Williams. Livingston is now 28.

The NBA pantheon of centers had reserved a spot for Greg Oden.

An All-American after his freshman season at Ohio State University and the frst overall pick of the Portland Trail Blazers in 2007, Oden stood 7 feet tall and athletic. Championships are built around that combination. Before it even started, it went awry. Microfracture surgery on his right knee before playing an NBA game. In his frst two seasons he suffered two injuries to his left knee, only allowing him to pay a total of 82 games between them and ending with another microfracture surgery. Oden suffered a setback during his rehab and had arthiscopic surgery on his right knee and a second microfracture surgery on his left knee. Oden endured more microfracture surgeries (three) than seasons (two) in the League. This past December marked four years since Oden last played in an NBA regular season game.

Many felt the young (Oden turns just 26 on Jan. 22) big man’s career was over due to his ravaged knees. The two-time champion Heat took a chance, signing Oden in the offseason in hopes of one day developing him into a reliable reserve. Oden has yet to play a minute as of this writing, but he’s been doing what’s he’s done most of his professional basketball career: Working his way back to the court.

The greatness that was destined for him has been stripped away, but Oden refuses to let his career be taken away.

Livingston and Oden aren’t two of the NBA’s sad tragedies; it’s two of its greatest triumphs.—Duane Watson #7

LAYNE MURDOCH; ROCKY WIDNER/NBAE/GETTY IMAGES

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CRESCENDO

noun; a gradual increase in loudness in a piece of music

Y

ou could feel the moment building at Frank Vogel’s early press conferences in February 2011, after the Indiana Pacers announced their former assistant was being promoted to replace Jim O’Brien. Said Vogel at one of those pressers: “We’re changing the identity of our basketball team dramatically. We are a power-post team.

A blood-and-guts, old-school, smashmouth team that plays with size, strength, speed, athleticism. We attack the basket.” You could feel the goosebumps appearing on your arms, the chills running throughout the room. “This is going to be a special-end-of-the-year. Jump on board. Come see us.” You almost expected half the media members to run through a wall right there for Vogel. He was that inspiring. Vogel took over that 17-27 team, righted the ship to make the playoffs with a 20-18 finish and never looked back after that. His Pacers reached the Eastern Semis, going 42-24 in lockout-shortened 2011-12; reached the Eastern Conference Finals, going 49-32 in 2012-13; came out the gate strong this 2013-14 season with a 15-1 start. Indeed, Vogel has gotten the most out of 23-year-old 044

Paul George every season, transforming the relatively anonymous 10th pick in 2010 into an All-Rookie wing, Most Improved Player award winner, NBA All-Star, All-NBA Defensive player and All-NBA performer as well. Vogel has helped transform 27-year-old Roy Hibbert from a defensive-rebounding center into an All-Star center who this season very well may win his first of many more Defensive Player of the Year honors to come. Then you’ve got 23-year-old Lance Stephenson, who was a bench-warming secondrounder who appeared to be another all-hype/no substance player destined to fade into obscurity before Vogel took over. He has since become Indiana’s do-everything shooting guard who is just now garnering talk as a leading candidate for the 2013-14 Most Improved Player award. That’s the thing with Vogel’s Pacers. They all get better individually and you truly see the effects of that when the team gets together at playoff time to create such beautiful music that builds into the crescendo during the playoffs (2011), winning the first round (2012), winning the second round (2013) … and having Finals aspirations in the years to come.—Darryl Howerton #21 RON HOSKINS/NBAE/GETTY IMAGES

D

DEUS EX MACHINA noun; an unexpected, artifcial, or improbable character, device, or event introduced suddenly in a work of fction or drama to resolve a situation or untangle a plot

L

esser men would have limped away and called it a career after an injury as devastating as an Achilles tendon tear (even the demigod that the tendon was named after was felled after an arrow pierced the integral body part). With a storied career that has totaled fve titles, an MVP trophy, 31,617 points, numerous game-winning shots and undying loyalty from a basketball-centric city with a deep championship tradition, there was every reason to put a period at the end.

Any sane man—with one exception...OK, maybe two, but the owner of the Charlotte Bobcats doesn’t count—would consider it a pretty complete 17-year run. But only Kobe Bryant would throw himself to the rigors and pain of surgery and rehab to get himself back on the court. Not since Arnold Schwarzenegger uttered, “I’ll be back” have we all been so confdent in someone keeping true to the statement.

Surgery, followed by intense rehab, a familiar fight to Germany for some experimental blood treatment, a questionable and daring dive off a 40-foot platform (a bold move, even with two healthy Achilles tendons) in a span of six months and Bryant is back practicing and maybe even playing as you read this.

Doubts? Those are for the Smush Parkers of Kobe’s world.

Lakers ownership certainly had none, inking Vino to a two-year CAMERON BROWNE/NBAE/GETTY IMAGES

extension, to an age where most shooting guards begin tasting a bit vinegary.

Whatever his motivation—the MJ-matching sixth title, the 6,770 points that he trails Kareem Abdul-Jabbar by or just the unmatched thrill of proving the doubters wrong—you can’t shortchange the doggedness of Kobe. Kobe may or may not tie MJ or surpass Kareem (both are longshots), and he is as likely to come back, drop 50 and then walk away as he is to remain elite for another two years and seek another contract at 37. No one knows, not even himself.

The other mystery is what will post-injury Kobe be like? Will he be like Jordan’s NBA return as a Wizard? Or will he be like Bernard King and pour another 6,739 points on NBA teams during his six-year vindication tour after being written off for dead following a knee injury?

His game might change. The blow-bys and poster dunks might very well be something left in the Kobe archives, but the mental game, impeccable knowledge, excellence of execution and unquenchable thirst remain. That will keep him competitive against the best players—though many of which have passed Kobe by in terms of skill and production (in our minds, but certainly not his, it’s important to clarify)—and keep him atop as a player we are most compelled to watch.—Ming Wong #2 045

EPIC

adjective; surpassing the usual or ordinary, particularly in scope or size

046

BY ANDY JASNER #27

ROCK THE BABY

An oral history of the time Dr. J left every mouth agape—and one man running for cover—at the Spectrum.

O

n Jan. 5, 1983, Julius Erving threw down one of the most legendary dunks in NBA history. Erving stole a pass from James Worthy, dribbled down the court and “rocked the baby to sleep” with a windmill dunk that sent Michael Cooper ducking from the detonation. The dunk occurred at the Spectrum and remains as popular as ever more than 30 years later. It came with 1:27 remaining and the Sixers went on to win 122-120. The following is a history of that famous dunk.

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JULIUS ERVING (Sixers guard-forward, 1976-87): I really didn’t think about it too much at the time. I just reacted off the steal and the play just developed. On the court, in the heat of the moment, you just react. That’s what I did. I never thought too much about it. I just went in and dunked. I think it’s a neat thing to be seeing it all these years later. Every time the dunk is on TV, it makes me smile.

MOSES MALONE (Sixers center, 1982-86, 1993-94): It was incredible. That was the thing about Doc. I played with him for a long time and saw great dunks in every practice and every game. But what stood out to me was how that dunk was even more special. When he dunked that ball, I was like, ‘Wow.’ Whenever you thought that you had seen everything there was to see from Doc, he would come up with a play like that.

JAMES WORTHY

(Lakers forward, 1982-94): There’s no shame in giving up a steal to Doc. He was such a great player and he had a knack for making plays on the defensive end.

He had such a long reach and he got his arms out and made a great play in just making the steal.

Once he got the ball, it was lights out. Hey, he did that to a lot of people. This time, he happened to do it to me and the rest was history with that incredible dunk.

HARVEY POLLACK (76ers director of statistical information and the only man still working for a team since the League’s inaugural 1946-47 season): Doc had so many dunks that it was hard to remember them all. The one you’re talking about came at a big moment in the game. Doc did everything with fair and he came up with the dunks at big moments. I’ve been lucky to have witnessed all those, from Wilt [Chamberlain] to Doc.

JACK McCAFFERY (reporter for the Trenton Times that season and is now a columnist for the Delaware County Daily Times): The thing I remember is that the game was so tight and Doc made a huge play at a huge moment. He did that the entire season. This was the same. It 048

was a close game and he found a way to come up with a key steal and two points to help the Sixers get a big regular season win over the Lakers.

The fact that it became a dunk for the ages made things bigger. But that was Doc. He just had a way of making huge plays at key stretches for that Sixers team. This was one of the biggest ones that I can remember.

MICHAEL COOPER (Lakers guard, 1978-90): I ducked. That was about it. I really don’t have much more to say. Doc got me on that one and I just got out of the way.

EARL CURETON

(Sixers forward-center, 198083): We were up two at the time. Don’t ask me how I remember that but I do. Doc’s dunk put us up four with a little more than a minute remaining.

Big-time play by a big-time player. Doc did that the whole season. He saved his best for last. He always did. He was amazing that way. When we needed a play at the end of the game, Doc was there to make it happen.

He did it the whole season. It became so common for us to see that we were never surprised. We almost expected it. I don’t think we expected that type of dunk. That was something special to see. He left no doubt.

I think that dunk kind of catapulted us, believe it or not. Yes, it was a regular season game, but it was so motivating. We talked about it all the time. The funny thing was that Doc didn’t. To him, it was a key two points when we needed it.

ERVING: I remember that there were so many big plays, lead changes and emotional swings in that particular game against the Lakers. They had guys all game doing amazing things and so did we. If you go back and watch the flm, you’ll see one of the greatest regular season

games ever between the Sixers and the Lakers. In this era now, you have a way of remembering and recalling something that happened at the end of a game. It was a small sequence within a fantastic game. I understand it and I am proud to this day to have been a part of it.

CURETON: To have the presence of mind to make the steal, dribble down the court, cup the ball and dunk it like he did? I don’t know if there was another player in the League who could have done all that in such a short amount of time, especially with the game in doubt. Doc made the hardest plays ever look so natural. He wasn’t showing off at all. He just acted and reacted. It looked so natural, which is what separated him from the pack. It was two points, but it was two of the most spectacular points ever scored for so many reasons.

McCAFFERY: Doc captivated the fans in Philadelphia and gave them something to cheer for every night. It was something else to see something different every night. Covering Doc, we saw something different and special every night. At the time, I think we all knew that dunk was going to stand out. I’m not sure if we knew to this extent. But we knew something special had just happened.

BOBBY JONES

(Sixers forward, 1978-86): A few memories come to mind. That was one of most spectacular dunks I’ve ever seen. Doc could mesmerize you and that was one of those times. After he dunked it, I remember thinking, ‘Did I just see that?’ That was vintage Doc. Not only that, but Doc played such a great all-around game. He rebounded.

He made great passes. He made nearly ever shot he took. He stepped up to another level and continued to lead our team. He was such an unselfsh

049

player. People remember the dunks and I understand that. He made everyone better. He came to play every night. He made a lot of big plays at the end of games that season. This one stood out clearly and people still oooh and aaah when they see the highlight. I do the same thing.

POLLACK: Doc made plays every game. The thing is, he did that all the time. He dunked so much. Even in his fnal season with the Sixers he did it, right up until his retirement when it was my job to announce it to the press.

ERVING: Whenever we played the Lakers, the spotlight

WORTHY: Doc was one of a kind. And that was a

came with it and guys stepped up. Guys made plays on both sides. I had a big game. Moses had a big game. Andrew Toney and Mo Cheeks were huge. Magic was Magic for the Lakers. Jamaal Wilkes couldn’t miss. I remember Norm Nixon coming in and shooting lights out. In that type of game, it was going to come down to who was going to make the big play or plays down the stretch. That game could have gone either way like most of the Lakers-Sixers games. That particular day, I happened to make a big play. Truthfully, I don’t make that play if Mo doesn’t defect the pass.

Mo did that all season. He had some of the best hands I’ve ever seen. He would get his hands on so many passes and defect the ball or change the course of a pass. Mo got his hands on the pass and I just happened to be in position to pick it up. I took it from there and went down for the dunk. My team needed a play and I was fortunate enough to make it.

one-of-a-kind dunk.

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MALONE: When you’re talking about something that happened more than 30 years ago, it’s something to be remembered. Doc could do that. He had an under the basket layup which is remembered and his dunk from the free throw line is remembered. There are others, too. To have so many plays remembered all these years later? Doc was a special basketball player.

CURETON:I remember being in a timeout after that dunk and Doc was raising his voice and saying we had to lock down on defense. He had just put down one of the most memorable dunks ever, though we were

in the moment at the time, but winning the game was most important in his mind. If the Lakers had won, it would have taken some of the spotlight away. Doc was so focused on playing well game in and game out. He wanted a championship so badly and he had been so close so often. While it was a regular season game, he treated it like Game Seven of the NBA Finals. Guys respected Doc for that. He was the ultimate team player and the ultimate competitor. He was raising his voice and pushing us to play defense and fnish the game out. We were able to do that and I think that meant more to Doc: the win against the Lakers.

FRANKLIN EDWARDS (Sixers guard, 1981-84): I was a very young player and only got off the bench for a few minutes that game. Seeing that dunk live was one of the most amazing plays I’ve ever seen on a basketball court. I only played briefy as Doc’s teammate and I feel honored to this day to have seen it. Doc made a superhuman play. He did that all the time. That rock the cradle dunk is a 10 on any scale. Only a select few could execute it like Doc did. To Doc, it was a big basket. To us, it was more. It got the crowd going. It pumped us up. It helped push us to a win we might not have gotten at that time. When that dunk is shown on TV, I still get chills down my spine.

ERVING:When young players ask my advice about how to improve, I always tell them to be well-rounded. These kids have seen the videos of this dunk and other dunks and they want to dunk. That’s natural for kids. I’ll tell them to watch the video of that game because I had a very good shooting game.

I was patient in the offense and the guys set me up for good, clean looks. I knocked them down. On that one play, however, the ball was just popped loose and I was free in the open court. I thought that game was one of my better games up to that point in that season in terms of everything – passing, rebounding, defense. I had it all going and it just so happened to end on a special note. I never planned it that way.

JONES:

When a play is still discussed in intimate details three decades later, it has to be special. That was a special play made by a special player. I was so proud we were fnally able to get that championship with the Sixers. It was for us and for the great, great fans in Philadelphia. Doc set the tone with that play. He never stopped hustling. None of us did. We had a very, very talented and confdent team. It all started with Doc. When you see your leader do something like that, you know you’re on to something. No matter what I’m doing, if I see that dunk, I stop momentarily and watch. I always smile.

What a memory. Whew.

051

M

FULCRUM noun; the point or support on which a lever pivots 052

ade in NY. Made for NY. The Brooklyn-born (Red Hook, to be exact) Carmelo Anthony was destined to play in New York.

And after much posturing, demanding and cajoling by his camp—and equal reciprocation on the part of the Cablevisionowned New York Knicks—the stars were forced into alignment and destiny fulflled, putting Melo in the Garden.

And it couldn’t be a better ft.

While it may be true that New York loves a winner, Gothamites love a big name performing on its grand stage.

Carmelo fts the bill, at least while LeBron, Kevin and Chris are committed to other teams. Anthony can, with ease, do the one thing basketball players will be revered and handsomely compensated for: score. Possibly even better than the aforementioned frst-name-basis stars.

So where’s the ticker-tape parade down Broadway, the key to the city, an at-a-moment’s-notice table at Le Bernardin for Anthony? For starters, while the Knicks have the fulcrum in place with Carmelo, they traded away the counterweights to acquire him. If it was Monopoly, the Knicks got Park Place at the cost of Pennsylvania Ave., Marvin Gardens, a pair of railroads and a nice stack. In the wise words of Snoop Dogg: Melo “Paid tha Cost to Be da Boss.”

Watching Carmelo the frst month of the season and you could feel the price of New York trappings. The ritzy apartment in an envious zip code, the glamorous wife, a signature shoe with Jordan Brand and the oyster of New York at his fngertips, Melo seemingly has it all—except wins. The better he plays—a 45-point eruption and a trio of 30-plus point games have all resulted in losses—and you begin to wonder if Melo can ever christen the newly gilded Garden with a championship banner.

Before we chide Carmelo as a second-rate star or a fawed offensive-only player, don’t forget he’s won, in New York, while wearing orange. OK, it was about four hours north on I-81 in Syracuse on the NCAA’s largest stage, but it’s still nothing to scoff at. It was also Carmelo and not LeBron who took his team to the playoffs in his frst two seasons (and has yet to ever miss the postseason as a pro). Say what you will, but Anthony has proven he can carry a team and win. Now if the Knicks brass can fgure out the right cast.

As for those silly notions of Carmelo leaving New York?

As many lifelong New Yorkers can attest: The city becomes part of you—the crowded and helter-skelter life, the higher cost of everything, the unshakeable smells and grime of the subway—its energy is irreplaceable. If New York doesn’t break you, it makes you. Any firtations with sunny star-laden locales are just that. Tupac might’ve trumpeted “To Live and Die in L.A.,” but don’t forget like Melo, ‘Pac was also born in NYC. Melo is riding with the Shake Shack burger, animalstyle be damned.

The only thing that remains is where Melo goes down in New York lore. Will he wind up Patrick Ewing or Clyde Frazier? The lifetime adulation and love anywhere in the city has already been cemented as New York loves its own sons unconditionally, but the forever respect of being the greatest in the greatest city in the world, to be Made in New York?

That’s on you, Melo.—Ming Wong #2 NATHANIEL S. BUTLER/NBAE/GETTY IMAGES

H

G GRAVITAS noun; substance; weightiness

ANDREW D. BERNSTEIN/NBAE/GETTY IMAGES

is hair may perpetually look as if he just rolled out of bed, but Steve Nash is prepared for ball 24:7:365. As we enter the twilight of his Hall of Fame career, many question if Nash has anything left in the tank. It’s not the first time. Even his former employer and friend Mark Cuban wrote him off, choosing to not re-sign him based on the hunch that Nash would soon be done.

Cuban might be right, albeit 10 years prematurely.

Nash only proved him wrong by playing another eight seasons with the Suns as he racked up another 9,808 points and 6,597 assists with backto-back MVPs in 2005 and ’06. Furthermore, Nash earned another two-year extension beyond the “ridiculous” six-year deal he signed in 2004 to leave the Mavericks. Nash continued to defy Father Time with a three-year sign-and-trade deal to go to the Lakers—at 37.

Now approaching 40 and having missed much of the early part of the season, we may no longer see those routine behind-the-back dimes or nothing-butnet treys, but one thing is for sure—Nash will bust his behind to get back on the floor and help his team.

Last year, when the Lakers became the NBA’s version of Jersey Shore, Nash was Alex Trebek in the shore house. As drama engulfed the locker room, coaches got fired and stars clashed, it sometimes seemed as if the only voice of reason came from #10.

We could chalk it up to him being Canadian—where cockiness is as common as sunny beaches—but for the past two decades, that’s just how Steve has rolled. Ask any of his teammates in Phoenix or Dallas to make a list of guys they’d go into battle with and Nash would be at the top of every one. He’s been known to joke around when the time is right (an all-time fave remains his “Step Brothers” video with Baron Davis), but when the opening buzzer sounds, Nash is game.

Not afraid to take a Robert Horry hip check, get bloodied by a Tony Parker headbutt or take the pressure of manning the reins, he’s basically everything you’d want in a point guard. It’s a shame Nash hasn’t been at 100 percent the last year and a half in L.A.—he’s the perfect calming force to right the ship. So as he gets prepared for one more run (along with a certain mate from the 1996 draft), perhaps Nash’s last great trick will be turning these Lakers back on the upswing. Oh, and if you’re counting, Nash is signed on for at least one more season beyond this current one.

Young point guards of the League, take note when Nash returns to the floor. Nash might be as old as Gandalf, but don’t forget how much of an eternal bad-ass he is.—McG #93

053

H HEADTURNER

noun; an attractive person who catches someone’s eye

054

E

van Turner has been breaking necks this year, turning in the most effcient season in his four-year NBA career. The turnaround of an NBA small forward who was starting to be perceived as a bust after being drafted No. 2 in 2010— should not really be all that surprising in retrospect. Once the 76ers hired former Rockets analytics guru Sam Hinkie to be the team’s GM and signed Gregg Popovich disciple Brett Brown to be the Sixers’ head coach, we all should have expected Turner fnally to maximize his potential.

By following the basic tenets of NBA Moneyball, Turner is shooting way more threes (2.7 per game as opposed to 1.2 last season), more twos at the rim (7.1 per game as opposed to 3.7) and more free-throw attempts (5.4 per game as opposed to 2.5). The result in more effcient 3-2-1 shots has paid off for Turner with a careerhigh 16.0 Player Effciency Rating and .536 true shooting percentage, through December 1. The surge even helped propel the 76ers— predicted to be the League doormat by most pundits—to come out the gates strong this season with a 3-0 start. Will Turner and teammates continue their slashing-and-dashing ways and maybe win 30 games this season?

Who knows. But at the very least, the Sixer now knows the way to achieve success in today’s NBA. Because fnally, at age 25, Turner is averaging a career-best 21 points and 7 rebounds in 37 minutes per game (through December 1) and playing the game effciently enough not to be a liability anymore (Turner’s previous best was 13 points in 35 minutes per game on .478 true shooting percentage). And the timing of it all couldn’t be better.

As a potential free agent at season’s end, Turner is capturing the attention of Hinkie and the other 29 NBA decision-makers.—#21 GLENN JAMES/NBAE/GETTY IMAGES

I

INCOGNITO noun; a person who is in a state of disguise

I

n a league where stardom comes often from the spectacular, Kawhi Leonard is something of a curiosity. He neither scintillates with an avalanche of rim-rattling dunks nor piles up 20-plus points a night. He is a variable of the San Antonio equation, but as the team seeks future solutions, Leonard is certain to become a constant.

For more than a decade, the Spurs have been defned by Tim Duncan, Tony Parker and Manu Ginobili, three standouts who thrived within coach Gregg Popovich’s system. Since nobody lasts in the NBA forever—not even Juwan Howard— the sun will eventually set on the Big Three, and if San Antonio is to remain among the best teams in the League, it must cultivate new stalwarts. The best of them is Leonard.

Leonard remains a second, third and even fourth option at times on the court, but it’s clear his skill set is perfectly constructed for a larger role. Leonard, like Duncan before him, is content to learn the game, support the effort and make the plays that come to him organically, rather than forcing things.

He really has no choice, since Popovich doesn’t tolerate people who won’t embrace the team concept.

But don’t be fooled by Leonard’s occasional reticence.

He has the capability to become a big producer when it’s necessary. He proved that during last year’s postseason, when he bumped his averages up to 13.5 ppg and 9.0 rpg.

On a team that spreads its scoring around so much, Leonard’s points per game were almost out of control. More importantly, he demonstrated a diversity of skill, particularly the ability to stop LeBron James—and by “stop,” we mean do it relatively better than most mortals—that alerted the League that big things are coming.

Popovich knows that, and he has said that Leonard is the future of the San Antonio franchise. For some franchises, that would trigger a marketing campaign and 50-foot high paintings on the sides of buildings declaring Leonard to be “Next!” Instead, Popovich’s declaration means the third-year pro had better continue to learn while his elders get the publicity. Leonard seems fne with that. From the moment the Spurs acquired him from Indiana in a draft-day deal, the forward has learned quietly, produced when necessary and willingly become a cog in the Spurs’ machine. He makes the extra pass, helps out on defense, hits the boards at the expense of getting out on the break and generally does what it takes to win ballgames.

It isn’t terribly sexy, and most times, you won’t see Leonard’s mark on the game. That is, until you see the fnal score.—#53

D. CLARKE EVANS; JOE MURPHY; FERNANDO MEDINA; NATHANIEL S. BUTLER/NBAE/GETTY IMAGES; KEVIN C. COX/GETTY IMAGES SPORT

055

J

JOIE DE VIVRE

noun; a cheerful enjoyment of life

I

f you thought comedy duos died with Martin and Lewis, Abbott and Costello or Laurel & Hardy, then you obviously haven’t taken in the comedic stylings of Griffn & Jordan in the city that birthed funny tandems. The same oohs and ahhs Blake Griffn and DeAndre Jordan bring to Clippers fans can be found outside Staples Center as well, in everyday life, as the gigantic duo entertain themselves daily with inside jokes, pranks and sketches, enough to fll out a Saturday Night Live skit list (something Griffn hopes to do sometime in his lifetime). Very few NBA starting frontlines can outplay this dynamic duo, and nooobody in the League matches up with the 6-10 power forward and 6-11 center when it comes to providing their fans with comedy and content from Griffn’s Kia commercials to his Funny or Die videos to Jordan’s man-on-the-street prank videos or the duo’s behind-the-scenes takes found all over Internet. Perhaps the only thing that can top the 056

LOLs of Griffn & Jordan are the OMGs their dunks conjure. Some of their past hits: Jordan’s annihilating alley-oop fyover on Brandon Knight last season, Blake Griffn’s and-one slam on Kendrick Perkins in 2011-12 and Griffn’s two-for-one Knicks special over Timofey Mozgov and Danilo Gallinari in 2010-11. Yet what is even more telling is that when you run a YouTube search with both their names, the frst fve videos that come up for Griffn and Jordan are all comedy bits. There, you can take your pick of seeing Griffn & Jordan on Jimmy Kimmel Live; as Best Friends Forever on a vid called “Do You Think You Know Me?”; a homemade trick shots video; a skit with Norm McDonald, Griffn and Jordan; or a pranks video

by Jordan. You get the picture. If you cannot see the joy of life they display on the court, you surely can see how much joy these Clippers BFFs bring to others off the court as well.—#21

EVAN GOLE/NBAE/GETTY IMAGES

TM & Š2013 FX Networks, LLC. All rights reserved.

K KEDGE noun; a light anchor used for warping a vessel

READY FOR 058

BY BRIAN A. GIUFFRA #17 PORTRAIT BY MATT SULLIVAN

T

hree days before the Cleveland Cavaliers opened training camp, Kyrie Irving sat behind an oval desk in a glass-walled room and detailed his plan to assume command of the Cavs franchise and return it to the prominence it once enjoyed under another budding superstar.

“I want to lead this team,” he says. “We have the talent and the coaching staff to do something special this year.”

Irving, wearing a grey long sleeve shirt, dark blue jeans, sneakers and big diamonds in each ear, was exuberant as he explained his plan, emphasizing the word “lead” and flashing that GQ smile he uses in commercials.

He went on to explain why he thought he was ready for the challenge, how he spoke with Kobe Bryant, Chris Paul and newly-hired Cavs coach Mike Brown about what it takes to become not only the face, but the leader of a winning franchise.

Gifted talent. Leadership. Desire. Willpower. Work ethic. Resiliency. Respect. Humility. All things on the superstar list was checked off.

It seemed in that moment everything was aligning for Irving to take the reins in Cleveland and lead it back into contention. His overall excitement spoke to his internal belief he could.

But less than two months later, inside the Cavs warehouse-sized practice facility, Irving spoke in a more reserved tone about being the leader of a NBA franchise. He still wanted the responsibility and all the pressure that came with it. Only now he also talked about how hard the adjustment has been for him and how much more he still has to learn.

One thing he’d already realized, however, is it can be lonely at the top.

HIS SOLO He might wear #2, but Kyrie knows that being the One is the loneliest number.

059

“Everything starts and ends with him.”

When Irving initially discussed his desire to lead the Cavs franchise in the executive suite of the Toys “R” Us in midtown Manhattan,1 he had every reason to be excited about the upcoming season.

He was coming off a monster second year in the League: 22.5 points, 5.9 assists, 1.5 steals, 45 feld-goal percent, 39 three-point percentage. He was also one of the biggest standouts during All-Star, winning the three-point shooting competition and scoring 15 points in the All-Star game and 32 in the Rising Stars Challenge.

“His confdence is crazy high,” says Cavs swingman Alonzo Gee, one of Irving’s closest friends on the team. “Some of the stuff that he does on the foor is unbelievable. I’m sure you’ve seen Kyrie on a highlight doing something that you can only dream about doing.”

Equally important to his ultimate goal of leading a winning franchise, the Cavs had seemingly put together a roster with the kind of talent needed to make the playoffs for the frst time since 2010,2 when LeBron James added more heartbreak to a city known for it when he left for South Beach.

Forward Tristan Thompson, 22, emerged as a solid two-way player last year. Guard Dion Waiters, 21, was the top scoring rookie. Then they won the draft lottery and picked Anthony Bennett, 20, No. 1 overall,3 adding yet another possible piece to the picture.

Cleveland also made a splash in free agency, signing oft-injured but still talented center Andrew Bynum4 and the cool hand of veteran guard Jarrett Jack. With dependable big man Anderson Varejao5 returning from injury and sharpshooter C.J. Miles entering his second year in Cleveland, things appeared to be looking up for the young Cavs.

But talent, belief and new leadership does not guarantee anything in the NBA, even if all signs point to Irving taking that next step into a point guard tier that currently sits just Chris Paul. The Cavs were seven games below .500 going into December and chemistry issues reportedly bubbled over between Irving, Thompson and Waiters during

a players-only locker room meeting in November, though Thompson says, “Everyone took it as a positive.”

“We got off to a little bit of a bumpy start,” Irving says. “Last year I probably would have been a little worried. But we have so many great pieces on this team. When we fgure it out we’re going to be a hell of a team.”

And Irving’s teammates believe he will be the centerpiece of that turnaround.

“We still have a fairly new team so it’s going to take time,” Thompson says. “Things can turn around at the snap of a fnger. The sooner we pick up things and rally the troops the better and it’s going to start with him. He’s the head of the snake. Everything starts and ends with him.”

That’s one of the changes Irving had to make. Team leaders need to set the tone not only in games, but in practice and shootaround and Fan Appreciation Night, too.

Irving skipped the last item on that list following the Cavs fnal home game 060

of last season. He later apologized and admitted he needed to mature.

“I had to make some changes, starting with my attitude,” Irving says. “Guys are going to have different things going on in their lives. But I have to bring it at a higher level every single night and leave it out on the foor not only for myself, but for my teammates.”

During practice in late November, he was still trying. His encouraging claps echoed across the court. Afterward he shared a quick laugh with Bynum as Bynum walked to the training room. He also chatted with Jack and Thompson.

Before Irving played a one-on-one low-post game with assistant coach/director of player development Phil Handy, JARED WICKERHAM/GETTY IMAGES SPORT; JESSE D. GARRABRANT; DAVID LIAM KYLE/NBAE/GETTY IMAGES

“It’s a lonely role having all eyes on you no matter what. You have one guy, who’s still learning everything, still learning about this game, and I’m leading a bunch of guys who have been in this game longer than I have—that’s pretty lonely.”

they had an engaged discussion. Afterward he sat down and spoke with Brown for about 20 minutes in the Cavs weight room.

He didn’t leave the court for more than two hours after practice ended.

“The patience he’s shown and the continued determination that he’s shown, even through adverse times, is something I applaud him for,” Brown says. “It’s a tough position for a young guy to be in, to try and continue to fgure out how he can have individual success while putting the team frst. That’s a tough balance to try and fnd.”

“Leading his team.”

Irving started to learn about that balance in the offseason.

He sought advice from Bryant and Paul, two of his biggest role models and favorite players to watch in the NBA, on how to be a franchise leader. After speaking with them and Brown,6 he organized offseason workouts for him and his teammates in Los Angeles and Miami.

Along with a few coaches, the Cavs played basketball together, lifted weights, had a pick-up football game, went out to dinner and even rode bikes on the beach.

It was like an extended, high-end high school pasta party,7 which makes sense because Irving is still only four years removed from St. Patrick’s8 in Elizabeth, N.J. “When you get to the NBA, it’s totally different than college and high school,” Irving says. “In high school you see your teammates every day in school, college you see each other everyday in school. In the NBA it’s hard to build that camaraderie and that friendship off the court because there’s so much down time and most guys have families and all these other responsibilities.

“But the point of emphasis is, in order to be special you’re going to have to do things that you wouldn’t normally do; take somebody out to dinner that you wouldn’t normally take out and get to know that person. I feel like that’s what makes the great teams great, that friendship that goes beyond the court so when you come on the court it’s easy. You’re making the game simpler for each other and you want to play for each other and you want to play for that next man.”

The fact that he even took on such a big responsibility at such a young age is what impresses his coach.

“A lot of times when you have young guys, they don’t understand exactly what this league is about or what true success in this league means,” Brown says. “For young guys who are just starting out, they’re thinking frst-team this, frst-team that or they’re thinking about the next contract. It’s hard to quantify that with having team success in the win-loss column, too.

“Special players at a young or early age can accomplish both. I think Kyrie is a special player. I think he’s a guy who can go out and play at that All-Star level while also leading his team to victories and leading his team to the playoffs.”

Irving craves team success for the Cavaliers, wants it more than MVP awards or AllStar selections. He’s been on successful, winning teams his whole life. In the preseason, he believed this team was one of them.

“We’re not just trying to get to the frst round,” Irving says. “Everybody is saying how we’re going to be an up-and-coming team, just the eighth seed in the East. That’s not where we’re looking.”

“Growing Pains.”

It’s important to remind ourselves that Irving is just 21 years old and won’t be 22 until late in March.9 That fact can be easily forgotten because he speaks and acts with maturity and wisdom beyond the date on his driver’s license. Some of that is a byproduct of being raised by a single dad10 who always envisioned this life for him and started preparing11 him for it in grade school.

But Irving is still a kid; the kind who likes playing FIFA12 on Xbox,12 singing around his teammates and dressing up like an old man named “Uncle Drew,” who schools young streetballers in commercials.13 Yet as funny as those TV spots are, they speak to the uphill battle Irving is waging trying to become the Cavs leader. He’s an old-school soul trapped in a young man’s DAVID LIAM KYLE/NBAE/GETTY IMAGES

061

THIRST FOR FIRST

It’s not much a secret that draft picks in the NBA have been more valuable than ever. It’s a fact that hasn’t gone ignored by the Cavaliers. Since the departure of LeBron James in 2010, Cleveland has turned to the formula that transformed the Oklahoma City Thunder into relatively quick contenders: stock high draft picks, and nurture the talent.

Beginning with the lucky ping-pong ball that brought them top pick Irving in the 2011 draft, as well as Tristan Thompson three picks later, the Cavs have been plucking blue-chippers in the NBA’s annual debutant ball in June.

The following year Cleveland took Syracuse’s Dion Waiters with the fourth overall pick, hoping he’d form the basis of their future backcourt with Irving.

They also swung a draft night swap of three of their draft picks (24th pick Jared Cunningham and second-rounders Bernard James and Jae Crowder) for Dallas’ 17th pick, Tyler Zeller.

And in a stroke of (Orlando) magic (the Orlando Magic won the NBA Lottery in 1992 and ’93, netting them Shaquille O’Neal and Chris Webber, who was then traded for Penny Hardaway), the Cavaliers won the top pick again in 2013 which became Anthony Bennett. And for good measure the Cavs got to pick again at the 19th slot, tabbing Russian prospect Sergey Karasev.

Whether the Cavaliers follow the Thunder’s three-year path into contention remains to be seen, but there’s no questioning the pieces the franchise has simmering in its stew. Of course the trick is to come up before the talent begins to price itself out of the roster (once again look at the Thunder as exhibit A) when they hit free agency.

This season, the Cavs’ frst-rounders through the years have not progressed as their record has refected. Despite averaging a double-double after 18 games, Thompson has struggled with his shot. Waiters is still working on stringing consistency into his game. Zeller has seemed to have lost his confdence. As for Bennett, he has yet to adapt to the NBA game. Even the star of the ship Irving has slipped this season.

The good thing about young players is that they can volatile. As bad as things may look one day, these youngsters can quickly turn things around. A 20-point drubbing is just as easily followed up with a 25-point win over an elite team.

Some of that responsibility to right the ship will fall on head coach Mike Brown and some of it to Irving. Even the best teams don’t get to the top without starting from the bottom. And if the Cavs do bottom out this season, they’ll have another shiny draft pick come June.

body trying to lead a group of men who are mostly older and more experienced than him.

“It’s defnitely diffcult,” Irving says. “I’m the third youngest on the team.

I’ve been the youngest for the last two years. To be a younger guy, one of the better players on a good team, it’s diffcult for myself to lead and getting other guys to follow. But that’s part of the growing pains.”

This season has been flled with them for Irving. As the Cavs got off to a rocky start, so did he.

All of Irving’s shooting statistics were down early in the season (his three-point, feld goal and free-throw percentages had dropped to the lowest in his career) and his scoring average dipped14 with them.

He shouldered the blame for the Cavs poor start, saying “I’m taking full responsibility of all this,” when they fell to 4-12 on Nov. 29. Of course it wasn’t his fault alone. But in order for a great leader to reap the rewards, he must learn to take the fall when things go awry.

“He’s the foor general,” Thompson says. “You have to look at him frst because he’s the coach on the foor. Just like when coaches do wrong they get fack, when you’re the point guard out there he has to make sure everything is run correctly. We’re looking to him to get us going and he’s more than capable of that.”

Irving would never admit the added responsibly of being a team leader 062

JENNIFER POTTHEISER (3); JESSE D. GARRABRANT; DAVID LIAM KYLE; KENT SMITH/NBAE/GETTY IMAGES

BONUS POINTS 1. Irving was promoting Skull Candy headphones there on Sept. 27.

2. James led Cleveland to the playoffs fve straight times before leaving for Miami.

3. Bennett was the frst Canadian taken No. 1 overall.

4. Bynum has been a crapshoot thus far, playing limited minutes, but producing when he does play.

5. Don’t forget that Varejao was averaging 14 points and 14 rebounds over 25 games before getting injured for the season.

6. Brown and Irving met several times over the summer. Their frst meeting was in Miami two weeks after Brown was hired.

7. On Friday nights before a big game, many high school teams organize a night of team bonding over carbohydrate consumption.

8. St. Patrick’s, which also produced NBA players such as Derrick Caracter, Al Harrington, Samuel Dalembert and Michael Kidd-Gilchrist, is now closed, but looking to re-open in a new location.

9. Irving’s DOB reads 3/23/92.

10. Irving’s mother Elizabeth passed away when Kyrie was 4, leaving him and his older sister Asia to the care of his dad, Drederick.

11. Drederick played professional basketball in Australia, where Kyrie was born.

12. When the writer saw Irving play FIFA, he chose the German club team Bayern Munich.

13. Those hilarious Pepsi commercials became a trilogy this year with Nate Robinson and Maya Moore joining Kyrie on the makeup chair before hitting the court.

14. At the start of December, Irving was shooting 40 percent from the feld, 30 percent from three-point range and 79 percent from the free-throw line, but was still averaging 20.6 points.

15. OK, it’s still a few years away.

was impacting his on-court game. But, leaning forward in a plastic chair in the Cavs’ practice facility with his elbows resting on his knees and his shoulders slumped, it appeared the bad start and negative reaction were, at minimum, frustrating.

“It’s been a diffcult transition,” Irving says. “There are good days and bad days. It’s a lonely role, I’ll tell you. Guys probably won’t admit it, but it’s a lonely role having all eyes on you no matter what. But I’ve earned this role [as the leader of the team] and I want it and I’m showing it every single day. Twenty-one years old, leading a team, I’m blessed to be here.

But I’m still learning.”

Irving was then asked what makes being the leader of a franchise so lonely.

“Well, what’s your defnition of a leader?” he responds.

“I would say it’s someone that other people look up to for guidance.”

“Ok, so you have one guy, who’s still learning everything, still learning about this game, and I’m leading a bunch of guys who have been in this game longer than I have,” Irving says. “That’s pretty lonely.”

“He’s a competitor.”

he raised his voice during the conversation.

“There’s lot of pressure on myself,” Irving says. “But nobody puts as much pressure on me as I do on myself. I expect a lot of great things. That’s how I’ve been my whole entire life, holding myself to a high standard.”

On this afternoon after practice, that meant getting the best of Handy in their game of one-on-one. Handy, a middle-aged man with a graying goatee and a quick-shot release, had the equalizer of the game being waged only on the low-post, and was throwing a bunch of elbows on defense and using every trick he had on offense. Irving seemed more focused on defense.

“Oh come on that was a foul,” Irving says after Handy hooked him with his left hand, pushed him aside and made a right-handed layup.

“He’s a competitor,” Gee says. “He’s always trying to win every game we play in here. It’s tough shooting with him and C.J. [Miles]. When they get going, they can go the whole day. I just sit there and watch.”

Which is why Irving won’t stop chasing his goals. All the great ones have that—that almost-obsessive streak.

He wants to be the best point guard.

He wants to be a perennial All Star. He wants to be in the MVP discussion. He wants to be the leader of a winning franchise. He doesn’t say all those things outwardly, but it’s true.

Why else would he watch NBA League Pass at night after a day of basketball, then talk to his teammates about Paul and Russell Westbrook the next day, as Thompson describes. He wants to reach that elite status.

But getting to that level of respect and earning your stripes as a team takes time and patience. Just ask the Clippers, Grizzlies and Thunder, teams that have been on the cusp, who have taken the gradual steps inching them closer to the Larry O’Brien Trophy.

Even as players, it takes time to morph into a star. LeBron James didn’t make his frst playoff appearance until year three. Michael Jordan didn’t win his frst playoff series until year four. Jason Kidd didn’t win his frst ring until year 17.

This thing doesn’t happen overnight, even for the all-time greats.

In the Internet age where tweets happen in a blink of an eye and packages are delivered via a drone,15 Irving naturally wants to fip the switch and speed up the process. He knows he has what it takes. But as fast as Irving can be on the court, he can never be faster than time.

“The hardest part for me is coming every single day and expecting to get the best from someone else, from the whole team,” Irving says. “It’s defnitely a process and a learning experience.

“It’s a lonely role just dealing with all the pressures and everything that comes with it. But that’s something I’m not worried about. I’m worried about my teammates having my back and me having theirs and that’s me every single day leading this team. I’m one of the better players and these guys are helping me with the mental aspects every single day, just the mental grind of being that guy.”

The guy Irving has always envisioned himself to be. Now he just has to keep working. It’s just a matter of time.

Irving became animated when he made the last statement, much like the frst time he discussed being the Cavs leader. It was one of the few times 063 NED DISHMAN; DAVID LIAM KYLE/NBAE/GETTY IMAGES

LUGUBRIOUS

adjective; mournful, dismal or gloomy, especially to an exaggerated or ludicrous degree

F

irst off, the word doesn’t describe the San Antonio Spurs. You won’t find a more harmonious team, an eclectic mix of youth and veterans from all over the world who have grown together as men through the years. That’s the truth. However, the outside perception of these Spurs fits the word, with most so-called experts writing the Spurs obituary—year after year—because of their aging veterans, who surely must be in their final season of contributing anything to the game of basketball. The national media sees these giants as dinosaurs facing the ice age, watching the sun fade away as the proverbial window closes on their championship chances. This same gloomy outlook—from outside forecasts—has faced the Spurs throughout the past decade, starting when a 37-year-old David Robinson retired after San Antonio won the 2003 NBA championship. No way Tim Duncan could lead them to another title by himself. Then along came Manu Ginobili and 064

Tony Parker. When those three hit their 30s, again the gloom-and-doom forecasters predicted demise. The Big Three is too old. In 2012, they heard it. In 2013, they heard it. And now in 2014, they still hear it, especially with Duncan now 37 years old, Ginobili 36, Parker 31 and head coach Gregg Popovich running the show for as long as Steve Nash has been in the NBA. What the stormwatchers failed to see through the clouds is that there can be new stars on the horizon, this time in the form of talented 20-somethings Kawhi Leonard, Tiago Splitter and Danny Green, among others. So lo and behold, the team that had 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014 etched onto its headstones has once again risen to the challenge, making the NBA final four in 2012, Finals in 2013 and playing strong as ever this season in hopes of seeking some revenge in the 2014 Finals. Perhaps the San Antonio Spurs can show there really is a thin line between life and death.—#21 ANDREW D. BERNSTEIN/NBAE/GETTY IMAGES

M MAGNANIMOUS adjective; courageously noble in mind and heart

Y

ou will not fnd a more generous soul in the NBA than Pau Gasol of the Los Angeles Lakers. He is an international superstar, leading Spain to various medals at Olympic and World Cup competitions.

He is an All-NBA and All-Star center who helped lead the Lakers to titles #15 and #16 in 2009 and 2010. There are few stars less appreciated than Gasol, who has had to deal with his team trading him away (in a deal that was later called off in 2011), being benched a year later when new coach Mike D’Antoni took over the squad, and labeled a scapegoat to any troubles in Lakersland. Through it all, the Lakers catered to the younger All-Star center Dwight Howard and made the converted power forward Gasol into a star with less shine. Nonetheless, the proud Spaniard held his head up high and never lashed out at individuals or the organization. He was a team player throughout. And through his magnanimity, Gasol truly won the hearts of the Laker faithful who fnally have taken a slow, lasting embrace with the giant from Spain. In Gasol’s new book Life/Vida (available at PauGasol.com), Kobe Bryant writes of Gasol in the book’s preface, saying, “If I could choose my brother, he would have the highest basketball IQ in the League. You’d JEFF GROSS/GETTY IMAGES SPORT

have to search and search and you still would not fnd another player in the history of the game with his skill set.” Bryant also writes in the foreword, “If his organization ever let him down, Pau would hold his head up high” and “would not lash out or let himself become entangled in the drama.” Gasol’s former coach Phil Jackson calls Pau a Renaissance man in the book and adds, “He is a son whom I could adopt very easily and embrace.” Us NBA fans see the basketball player, but the world sees his humanitarian side up close and personal. It is a part of Gasol no doubt developed in his early years when he wanted to become a doctor and went to medical school as a teen, thanks in part to the infuence of his mom (a doctor) and dad (a nurse administrator). Today—whether Gasol is leading fundraising efforts recently for Typhoon Haiyan relief (he is a UNICEF ambassador), visiting refugee camps (as he did last summer in Syria) or sitting in on spinal surgeries to educate himself (as he did three years ago)—the Lakers’ 33-year-old center shows his infuence far extends beyond the game of basketball and perhaps best illustrates why he is able to overlook whatever slights may come his way from daily life in the NBA. —#21 065

N

NEBULOUS adjective; cloudy, misty, or hazy

O

h Boogie.

Boogie. Boogie. Boogie.

We’ll admit to being stat geeks here, so that’s why our eyes are permanently fixated on DeMarcus Cousins. Aside from being a double-double machine, there’s the three turnovers per game, the low shooting percentage (for a center) and the reputation as Rasheed Wallace reincarnated. Fans—even Kings fans—have a bit of a love-hate relationship with the guy. At times he looks like the best center in the League; at other times, they fire up the message boards looking for trade scenarios.

When he came into the League, the knock on Cousins was his maturity,

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his demeanor. Four years in, he’s yet to shed those labels. But that upside, oh that upside. Heck, we even love the attitude he occasionally shows. Not giving pregame dap to the Clippers? Why not? Nothing wrong with building team camaraderie while showing your rivals from SoCal you mean business in the heat of battle. That’s what his new mentor and part boss Shaquille O’Neal would’ve done. And just like Shaq, Cousins has the game to be the most dominant center in the game. Yes, he’s that good.

The Kings are a rebuilding team but are collecting the kind of young pieces that could bring back the glory days of the early aughts. If anyone is to be at the center of such a renaissance, it will be Boogie. Can the Kings count on him? We’re not sure yet.—#93

ROCKY WIDNER; NOAH GRAHAM/NBAE/GETTY IMAGES

Comfort is confidence for the day ahead.

Hanes underwear and t-shirts for men at Macy’s and Macys.com

AVAILABLE AT

O

OSTENTATIOUS adjective; intended to attract notice

S

ometimes, it looks like Russell Westbrook cut up grandma’s old sheets or curtains and decided to get all artsy on us and design a shirt out of the leftover fabric. Other times, we think he just went straight to grandpa’s closet and stole his slacks, ftting three sizes too small. When he visits New York or L.A. and teammates are shopping for goodies along Rodeo Drive or Madison Avenue, we wouldn’t be surprised to catch Russ at the local goodwill shop or Buffalo Exchange. Purples and greens? Not a problem. Polka dots and little sailboats? Only if there’s purple and green. How about these leather pants and a plaid sweater?

Two sizes smaller please. Empty frames and argyles? Like Westbrook’s nickname: Why Not? When the NBA instituted a dress code eight years ago, players groused, but it has since settled with sensible suits and dapper sport jackets. The subsequent “problem” has been a homogenized look throughout the League, born of unimaginative stylists dressing the same players. Everyone stepped up their sartorial game, but all marching to the same beat. Even Westbrook’s draft suit was a ho-hum, three-button—the horror!—light blue ensemble paired with a gold tie.

068

Until Westbrook decided to show up one day to the prom (and if the NBA did have one, Westbrook would be wearing a powder blue number with a ruffed shirt), aka the NBA postgame press conference, in a polo shirt with fsh lures. Or was it a graffti print? Or nautical fags? Maybe it was a tactical move on his part to draw attention away from a bad game.

Perhaps it was just #YOLO. But now we all anticipate watching Westbrook postgame as much as we do him slicing through the defense on one of his trademark violent slams. Even his fellow peers are copying his style, perhaps in a ridiculous trolling effort (we’re looking at you D-Wade).

Westbrook’s stylistic musings are no fad. While rehabbing his knee injury, Westbrook took time out to sit next to Anna Wintour during New York Fashion Week, absorbing his hobby from the top of the fashion food chain.

The irony is that on the court, Westbrook is forced to conform to antifashion: a uniform. However, whatever personal fair is lost with it, he makes up for with his expressive and animated game that has produced, like any great runway show, many awe-inspiring moments, breathless displays and standing ovations.—#93 ANDREW D. BERNSTEIN (7); LAYNE MURDOCH; LAYNE MURDOCH JR.; GARY DINEEN; D. CLARKE EVANS/NBAE/GETTY IMAGES; RONALD MARTINEZ/GETTY IMAGES SPORT

P PASTIME

noun; an activity that occupies one’s spare time pleasantly

I

t’s safe to say the NBA has become America’s new national pastime, replacing baseball. Yes, baseball has long laid claim to that honor, and no doubt football, with its event-like schedule of once-a-week games and the Super Bowl phenomena, captures our country’s attention on any given Sunday. But on a day-by-day basis for more than half the calendar year, nothing compares to the NBA on national television. Since 2008, the NBA has outscored MLB in regular season TV ratings every year, capped by a 3.3 to 1.7 average rating margin in 2012.

In the last four years, the NBA has outdrawn MLB in postseason games, excluding the championship round. And in championship round TV competition, the Finals has bested the World Series in fve of the last six years, capped by the 2013 NBA Finals beating the 2013 World Series (10.4 to 8.9). With 20 percent of the NBA’s players coming from countries outside the United States (92 players from 39 countries), it is not surprising to see the NBA’s television ratings outperforming the American competition all RANDY BELICE/NBAE/GETTY IMAGES

around the world. But the numbers we’re talking here are strictly stateside ratings. In the 21st century, we are witnessing basketball not only capturing attention abroad, but at home as well. And that is not even including in-roads made from social media (where the NBA has footholds on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc.), not to mention a continually developing source of online viewership via the NBA GameTime app on tablets and smartphones. By also enabling fans to consume the game in a variety of ways—NBA League Pass TV, NBA League Pass Broadband, NBA League Pass Mobile, NBA League Pass International—a whole new legion of next-generation fans are being born.

And games aside, NBA players are more recognized, celebrated and marketed compared to other sports. Whether it’s the fact that the rosters are smaller, the simple and universal rules of the game, the hair and faces of players aren’t obscured by a hat or helmet or the game that showcases their raw athletic wonderment, it’s become the global game.—#21 069

Q QUAERE noun; a query or question

W

hen he was asked before the season about the preferred methods of building a winner in the NBA, Houston GM Daryl Morey offered two options. The first was to remain as flexible as possible under the salary cap, and when players like James Harden and Dwight Howard became available, jump in where others couldn’t. The other was to strip the roster of its most valuable assets and start all over again. As the Rockets prepared to soar through their exciting 2013-14 season, Morey wasn’t sure his team had taken the right path.

“There’s more evidence out there that getting really terrible is the better direction,” he says.

The confluence of a 2014 NBA Draft that is expected to be deep and bountiful with a collection of teams trying to replicate Morey’s model has created an interesting scenario in the NBA this year. For instance, it was just two seasons ago that Philadelphia and Boston waged a seven-game battle in the Eastern Conference semifinals. Now, the teams are in full rebuild mode and would love to “battle” it out for the No. 1 pick.

Several other teams have put themselves in position for a shot at the top of the lineup, as well, including Charlotte, Orlando, Phoenix and Utah. It’s 070

a reasoned approach to building that features short-term pain for longterm advancement.

You can’t blame them for thinking better things are on the horizon.

There is a bumper crop of young players in the college basketball ranks this year, many of whom are expected to leave campus after the season.

Among the more coveted targets are Kansas forward Andrew Wiggins, Kentucky power player Julius Randle, Duke frontcourter Jabari Parker and Oklahoma State point guard Marcus Smart. The second tier of prospects is pretty good, too. Australian wing Dante Exum, Duke forward Rodney Hood and Michigan State guard Gary Harris are all expected to make impacts quickly.

The teams vying for good slots are all fighting hard. If you have watched the Sixers play this year, it’s impossible to think they are trying to do anything but win every night. And even if the results don’t turn out so well, the fans can count on aggressive hustling basketball. But the view is definitely a long one in Philadelphia and several other NBA cities— and for good reason. Next year’s draft bumper crop promises a robust harvest, and it would be silly not to want to be part of that.—#53 LAYNE MURDOCH; GARY DINEEN/NBAE/GETTY IMAGES; EZRA SHAW; KEVIN C. COX; MADDIE MEYER; STREETER LECKA; RONALD MARTINEZ/GETTY IMAGES SPORT

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TM & © 2013 Turner Entertainment Networks, Inc. A Time Warner Company. All Rights Reserved. © 2013 NBA Entertainment. All Rights Reserved.

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12/16/13 9:05 AM

R REJOINDER noun; a reply or response to a question or remark, especially a witty one; retort

HEART

072

By CHANNING FRYE as told to JERAMIE McPEEK #4

OF THE

MATTER

A year away from basketball showed Channing Frye how much he missed the game, but more importantly, it taught him how to enjoy life. is just days before tip-off of the 2013-14 NBA season and Channing I tFrye is sitting in the backyard patio of the Windsor, a chic and popular pub in a historic neighborhood of north central Phoenix. The 6-11 forward center orders a Fattoush Salad with grilled chicken, as he relaxes under the cooling misters above, following a hard morning practice at US Airways Center.

With Michael Jackson’s “Gonna Be Startin’ Something” playing in the background, he tells us his story of the last year, or 14 months to be exact.

An inspirational story of how he fought through the fears and frustrations of a heart condition that nearly ended his NBA career.

ROCKY WIDNER/NBAE.GETTY IMAGES

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Sept. 2012 Basically it went down like this.

I had busted my butt all summer to come back from my shoulder injury1 late in the 2011-12 season. I was going hard and I thought I was in the best shape of my life. I was down to 245 pounds, but I noticed my recovery time was a little off. I just thought maybe I was pushing myself too hard or wasn’t eating right.

After working out at the arena one morning, the Suns tell me that I needed to take a routine test later that day. It was just a normal screening required by the NBA each year.

When I start running on the treadmill, they say, “Man, your heart rate jumped up really high.” They bring in some more doctors and nurses, and start marking up the print-out with red ink. They start doing all these other tests on my chest and heart, and are like, “It's not normal, but let's not freak out. We'll get back to you tomorrow.”

It’s about 2 p.m. now, so I go home and start packing. I was leaving the next day to go back to Portland for Labor Day, before coming back to get ready for the regular season. Aaron Nelson, the Suns' head athletic trainer, calls me at 5:30 and tells me they need me to come back the next morning for more tests.

I get there at 7:30 a.m. and they take blood, but the guy misses and I go vagal, and my blood pressure falls. So it takes them like two hours to get blood and then I have to go through another test, which takes another hour. So I’m thinking I won't even bring my bags. I'll go straight to the airport. But they say, "Channing, you're not going to make that fight. We need to get you an emergency MRI." So now it's 1 p.m. and I'm driving to the hospital. I haven't eaten anything, I don't know what's going on with my heart and I'm thinking I'm going to die.

The emergency MRI is supposed to take an hour and a half, but it ends taking up two and a half hours, because they can’t fnd my veins. They fnally get it all done and tell me I could go for home for the weekend.

So I fy to Portland and my wife is freaking out. We have no clue what’s going on.

When I get back, they bring me in and tell me that my heart is enlarged and they are going to have to do a cardiac ablation, which is a procedure where they knock you out, put a tube up this vein in your groin, all the way up to your heart, and they burn off a microscopic piece.2 Your chest hurts. Your groin hurts. It sucks.

They send the test to the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota and I fy out there that night with our strength coach Mike Elliott. I get there at like 6:30 and meet with a doctor, who has determined that I have a virus. He says, "You have a 30 percent chance of it getting worse, a 30 percent chance of it staying the same and 30 percent chance of it getting better." He also says that we just needed to monitor it and wait.

The reaction to the news was pretty overwhelming. I remember I was outside with my son, Hendrix, who was hitting a wiffeball, when my wife said that my phone was blowing up. I'm thinking the Suns probably told some people, but when I come inside, I have like 50 texts and messages from old teammates, coaches and high school friends.

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It was extremely humbling to have so many people wanting to pray for you. When you run a marathon, it helps to have people there cheering you on and giving you a cup of water when you get thirsty.

Oct. 2012 It was hard not going to training camp with my team, but I really wasn't too stressed about my situation, because they said it was not deadly. I just kept asking, “How can I beat this? What do I need to do to come back and play?” In my mind and my family's mind, we were thinking I was going to have to sit out a few months, take some medicine and then I'd make this miraculous comeback.

The doctors put a heart monitor on me for fve weeks. I had to wear electrodes all across my chest, and if any of them came off, there was this alarm that would scream until you put it back on. It was annoying.

The season opener was pretty bad. It was on Halloween night, and I remember sitting out there on the bench with my teammates, but I didn't even want to be there. I just felt like I was missing something.

Nov. 2012 It was around November that I started thinking, "Man, this is freaking serious."

They told me that the results of the heart monitor were not looking good.

I had "too many of this" and "not enough of that." And they had put me on this medicine called metoprolol, but I absolutely hated it. I just didn't

fve surgeries since then and they've all gone above and beyond better than they should. She is continuing to get healthier every day and, with her contacts, she sees like a perfectly normal girl. So being able to spend this whole year with her and my son and my wife, and enjoy the holidays together as a family was amazing.

Jan. 2013 We did a lot of traveling during the year, since I had so much time off.

I've got a friend who has a birthday on December 31, and another friend who has a birthday on January 1st, so we spent New Year's with them in Portland. We also went to L.A. to see some friends and went to San Diego.

We just did things we usually don't get to do, because of my schedule during the NBA season.

I went to the X-Games in Aspen, Colo. in late January and ESPN showed me around. I hate the cold, but it was an awesome experience! I would recommend it to anybody. It's incredible what those athletes do, putting their lives on the line for 15 seconds of glory. I have a lot more respect for them now after seeing how high that half pipe is.

Feb. 2013 like how it made me feel. I was on it for like fve weeks, before I said, "I can't do this."

I wasn't allowed to have any physical activity during this time either, so now I'm starting to get like 258...260...262 pounds. I'm gaining weight because I'm not doing anything and I'm on this medicine that makes me feel drowsy.

That was defnitely one of the rock bottom points for me, when it really clicked that this was not something I could rehab. “This is going to take time.� I was bored out of my cranium, too. The transition was really hard.

I had never taken that much time off from basketball. I felt like I was going crazy.

Dec. 2012 December came around and based on an echocardiogram [a test that uses sound waves to create a moving picture of the heart], the doctors said it was better, but it was still bad. Thankfully, I had my family and they really kept me sane.

In fact, I think the whole situation turned out to be a real blessing in disguise. It gave me a rare opportunity to spend a lot time with my family when I would normally be busy with the NBA season. So I just tried to look at it like that and enjoy every day I had with them.

When our daughter Margaux was born in April 2012, she had cataracts and was basically blind for the frst three months of her life. Just the thought of my daughter not being able to see her own dad was crushing.

I prayed a lot. "God, let me switch places with her. She doesn't deserve this." It was a time for me to be a real man and a real father. It was an emotional time, but I think it has also helped put things in perspective.

My heart issue came second to my daughter. But thankfully, she's had ALL PHOTOS COURTESY OF CHANNING FRYE

I'm taking echocardiograms every month and a half now. The doctors wanted me to have one every three months, but I said I would pay for another one in between, so I can make sure I am doing the right thing and making progress.

So I get an echo at the end of February and they say things are going well. "Now we want you to do cardio rehab, just to see how your heart reacts." So I went to Scottsdale Health Cardiac Rehab, where I would do an hour of elliptical, treadmill and bike three days a week.

I also started seeing my naturopath [a person who practices alternative medicine based on vitalism and holistic approaches] a little bit more seriously around that time. He said that most of the time people with heart issues have an imbalance or defciency, either chemically or in minerals.

So he gave me these super expensive tests, taking six vials of blood.

He said, "Channing, you have high mercury." You have high this, low that. "Your neurotransmitters are moving too fast." It took me three hours to go through this report. So he gives me 30 pills to take every day, 15 in the morning and 15 at night, and tells me to give it three months and I will start to see results. At frst I was like, "This is terrible!" But now I'm just used to it.

March 2013 I played a lot of golf during my year off the court. I even took a couple of lessons in Scottsdale. I had a great coach, who really helped my short game and started helping with my drive.

Golf is really one of those things where I could be competitive without getting my heart rate up. I was playing against all types of people, playing maybe three or four times a week. I got my score down into the low 90s. Of course, golf is a very weird game. You can get low 90s and then get 125 the next game. But that really helped calm me down, getting rid of all that built-up aggression.

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days. It really lifted me up and I just appreciated everyone coming out and celebrating with me.

June 2013 I fy from Portland to Baltimore in mid-June with a buddy and I'm there for two days. I go through like seven or eight tests at John Hopkins Hospital. They look at my big folder of all my previous tests and reports, and they say, "We think things are okay, because you are progressively getting better. But let's give it another month."

So I fy back home and I start to kind of jog around the block, just to see how I feel. I jog a mile and it takes me 15 minutes. Imagine how slow that is!

July 2013

April 2013 I hit another low point in April. Typically, after having my mind and body challenged all season, there is that transition when I go from Phoenix back to Portland for the offseason, and I feel like I have accomplished something. This year, though, I was like, "What have I accomplished?" As a man, as a player, as a person of society, I felt like I hadn't done anything and that really bothered me.

I realized I had to be doing something to challenge myself. "How am I going to get better today?" I started looking for things I could change and ways I could improve. I got healthier in my diet. Now I still eat hamburgers and stuff like that, but just not as frequently as I used to. I cut out a lot of caffeine. Instead of having like a venti coffee with three shots of espresso, I'll have a medium green tea. So I've really taken steps to get healthier and am thinking more about nutrition.

At this point, the doctors are saying that things still don’t look right and that my heart3 is reacting badly to cardiac rehab. "In our opinion, you're pretty much done" was their diagnosis. So I thank them and decide to get other opinions. I had to do my due diligence. I always said that no matter what any doctor said, I would go get another opinion.

After the Fourth of July, I go back to Baltimore, but this time I'm not only seeing the head of cardiology but other doctors, including a geneticist. I'm going through all of the same tests again, only they're adding even more, just to check everything.

They said things are looking good and they were comfortable with me trying cardiac rehab again. They told me I had to keep my heart rate between 147 and 156, so that's why I wear this heart monitor all the time, just out of habit.

Literally all I did was stretching and lunges, just getting my body to move good again. I did that for two or three weeks and then went back to Baltimore to get re-tested one more time, and they said, “You've actually gotten better doing this.”

August 2013 I spent all summer working out with my yoga instructor, Angie Fie, who is the sister of Julie Fie, the Suns’ VP of communications. Julie had

May 2013 I go back to Portland to see a doctor there, who sees all of the Nike athletes—a lot of marathon runners, a lot of cyclists, cross-country guys— and he gives me another MRI. When the results come back, he says, "They don't look as bad as they say, but they don't look as good as I would like."

He tells me to go see some more doctors in Baltimore. "They are the best of the best." So I schedule an appointment with them for June.

For my 30th birthday, we rented a house in Mexico with about 25 of our closest friends. We all chipped in on this humongous house in Cabo,4 easily the nicest house I've ever seen in my life, and just had a blast. It was an experience I'll never forget, just lounging around for fve to seven 076

COURTESY OF CHANNING FRYE

BONUS POINTS 1. Frye underwent surgery on his right shoulder on 5/2/12.

2. As bad as the procedure sounds, it’s less invasive than open heart surgery.

3. Channing partnered with an Arizona-based apparel line, Sportiqe, to produce “One Heart” t-shirts to bring awareness to heart health. Players from around the NBA, including Steph Curry and James Harden, wore the shirts in support of the Suns’ veteran.

4. According to Wikipedia, Cabo San Lucas is considered the “Fort Lauderdale of Mexico.”

5. Frye scored 14 points on 5-of-6 feld goals in his preseason debut at Portland.

6. At press time, the eight-year veteran had started every game for the Suns, averaging 6.9 points and 4.8 boards in 24.8 minutes a night.

recommended that I take up yoga back in October. She thought it would help me with my anxiety.

I wasn’t too sure at frst. I thought yoga was kind of silly. I guess to me there’s a stigma to it. But I just consider Angie family now. When I frst met her last year, I walked up the stairs at the Montelucia Resort to work out with her and I was gasping for breath. She was like, “Wow, there really is something wrong with you.” She really helped me with my fexibility, but she also helped make me a better person. Just learning to slow down, be present in the moment and really appreciate things, helped me heal myself from the inside.

Sept. 2013 The doctors in Baltimore cleared me to return to basketball in mid-September, but the League wanted me to see one more doctor just to be absolutely certain. So the Wednesday before training camp, I few to New York to see the “best in the world.”

He looked over this thick fle of my test results and reports from all of the previous doctors, and we had about an hour-long

conversation. He said he was confdent that I was safe to return. “Your heart’s not normal, but we don’t know that it was ever normal because we haven’t done these sorts of tests before. At the same time, it is without a doubt good enough to play.”

He wished me luck and congratulated me, and I gave him a huge hug.

For me it was like, “Man, it's over!” When he said that, it just felt like this weight was off my back. Like I had been trucking through the snow, step after step, and fnally was home.

That Sunday I took my pre-camp physical with the Suns and by Monday I was in my new uniform for media day, welcomed back to the team!

Oct. 2013 I didn't know how far I was from being in game shape. I kind of lowered the bar for myself going into training camp up in Flagstaff, and [head coach] Jeff [Hornacek] was great with me. He was like, “You tell me what you can and can't do.” But my competitiveness kicked in real quick.

I sat out the frst preseason game. I didn’t want to go out there in the frst game back, in our arena, and embarrass myself. But I had a really good practice the day we few to Portland, so I said, “Coach, put me out there.”

I went from having six people coming to the game to 30 in a matter of hours, because everyone heard that I was going to play. Having played together for a couple of years, Goran [Dragic] knows to give me one or two looks early and I’ll be all right, so he was looking for me. After my frst shot went in, I’m surprised I didn’t shoot every time I touched it!5 It means the world to me to be back. Don't get me wrong, it's been tough. But there is a huge sense of accomplishment. I just kept trucking and trucking and trucking, and when I got tired my friends and family picked me up.

My wife, Lauren, was my rock. She's been through a lot with me; all of my ups and downs, and emotional rants and raves. “Am I going to play?”

“Am I not going to play?” She was right there by my side. She was always like, “Channing, whatever your decision is, I'm totally down with it. Just know in your heart that whatever decision you make, that it's the right one. Know in your heart that if you can't play, you can't play. But if you do, do it 100 percent.”

That’s exactly what I’m going to do.6

077 KENT SMITH/NBAE/GETTY IMAGES; DOUG PENSINGER; CHRISTIAN PETERSEN/GETTY IMAGES SPORT

S SANGFROID noun; coolness and composure, especially in trying circumstances

I

magine thousands of strangers booing you, “experts”—none of which will ever understand or play the game at a level as high as you—critiquing your game, questioning why you missed the shot or passed up that shot. How even after two championships and twice as many MVPs, there are still doubters. How many of us would wilt under the pressure, crawl into a corner or just fade into obscurity?

Given our tweet-a-second capabilities, possibly no professional athlete has been scrutinized more in the history of professional sports than LeBron James. Yet at 28 and in the public eye since the precocious age of 16, the King’s crown firmly fits upon his head, with all challenges thrown his way bouncing off him like Jason Terry.

We may not have liked The Decision. He recently may have sent your favorite team packing in the playoffs. But trust us, that hate does no good.

Embrace the reign of the King for what it is—a phenomenon, living up to the hype in every which way and changing the game unlike anyone before.

The comparisons are fruitless. There’s power, smoothness, aggression and grace. The dunks, the blocks, the Js from the elbow, the game-winning 078

treys, the high shooting percentage. There might be nothing he doesn’t do on the basketball court that isn’t a thing of beauty.

Yes, LeBron plays alongside a cast of All-Stars, future Hall of Famers and defensive stalwarts. But he also makes them better, perhaps even more so then they complement his game.

He’s not usually the rah-rah type and won’t jibber-jab in an opponent’s grill. Sure, it’d be cool to see Gary Payton in his prime yammering in his face or watch him take an elbow in the paint from Bill Laimbeer. But even those agitators wouldn’t likely throw LBJ off his game.

The critiques were plentiful after he bolted Cleveland and the jokes were just as bountiful after the 2011 Finals (i.e. “Don’t ask LeBron for change for a dollar: He doesn’t have a fourth quarter.”) Did LeBron sulk during the summers in Akron? No, dude got bigger, stronger, harder to guard, learned new skills and gained that “edge” that Kobe and MJ had that critics thought he lacked.

Think about it: For all the hype heaped on LeBron since being tabbed the “Chosen One,” he’s not only met it, he’s actually surpassed it.—#93 MIKE EHRMANN/NBAE/GETTY IMAGES

TITILLATE

verb; to stimulate by touching lightly

E

veryone who has played the game has experienced it before, if even for a feeting moment: The feeling of being in a zone.

Everything drops, even when circumstances and the best efforts of the opposing defense dictate otherwise. Now imagine if that precarious lightning stayed captured inside the bottle.

A bit hyperbolic, but the sweet-shooting duo of Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson, affectionately known as the Splash Brothers, may as well be shooting into the San Francisco Bay that separates Oakland from San Francisco.

Sons of NBA fathers, Dell and Mychal, Curry and Thompson have the advantage of good genes and even better tutelage to get them to where they are, but there’s no nepotism or preordained order to their success.

Each has honed his stroke through years of training and hard work, repetitively shooting a ball beginning with a Little Tikes basketball hoop, to a Nerf hoop, until they were old enough to follow their dads into an NBA ROCKY WIDNER/NBAE/GETTY IMAGES

arena to get shots up.

While both showed promise at the college level, each had game faws that limited their stock. As fate would have it, their middling status brought the two together, and with it, helped transform the Golden State Warriors into the darlings of the NBA. But back to the golden wrists of Curry and Thompson that tap into the greatest fear of today’s opposing defenses: giving up the effcient threepointer. Curry’s M.O. is a quick and compact stroke, equal parts fast and true with maximum range, oftentimes set up with an underrated dribble move and/or stepback. Thompson is more textbook precision and tactician, fnding space in the defense before squaring up with bent knees, elbows forming perfect 90-degree angles, lining up on target, before the ball leaves the thumb, forefnger and ring fnger.

The results for both usually sopping wet—a good thing since the nets are usually left scorching in their aftermath.—#2 079

U USURP

Verb; to seize and hold by force

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T

he beard is groomed. The body is ft. The mind is focused.

Kevin Love came into this season with a dapper new look and a determined new edge. He may come out of it with an MVP trophy.

That’s right King James. Mr. double-double is trying to knock you off your throne, and he has the ability to do it.

Coming off a disappointing 2012-13 campaign, where he played only 18 games because of a broken right hand, Love quickly reestablished himself as one of the premier players in the League.

In addition to having a top three player effciency rating (just below LeBron) in the frst two months of the season, Love was also posting numbers that make you open up the history books, averaging around 25 points, 14 boards and fve assists per game.

Three players in NBA history have averaged 26-155 for a season. Their names: Wilt Chamberlain, Elgin Baylor and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

Now you see how serious Love’s MVP campaign really is.

Equally important to the stats, the Timberwolves were actually winning in the early going. The combination of Love, Kevin Martin and Rickey Rubio helped get Minnesota off to a strong start and put it in the hunt for its frst playoff birth since 2004.

Of course the Timberwolves would have to keep winning at a steady pace (hardly a given considering their past) and Love would have to keep posting big numbers for him to have any shot at winning the MVP over LeBron, an upset that would rank up there with Buster Douglas knocking out Mike Tyson.

But Love has posted historical numbers in the past— or have we forgotten about his 53-straight doubledoubles in 2011, the second most since 1974—and looks more determined than ever to prove he can do it again.

He trimmed his previously unkempt beard, arrived to training camp in terrifc shape and quickly reminded people across the League why he’s arguably the best power forward in the game: He dominates the boards on both ends of the foor, can post inside or shoot outside and is one of the best passing big men around, especially on full-court outlets.

Sure, Love isn’t an in-your-face lockdown defender, a knock pundits will surely point to when comparing him to other players in the League, especially James. But neither was two-time MVP Steve Nash and it worked out fne for him.

LeBron James has won four of the last fve MVP awards for a reason and will be considered the best player in the League no matter who wins this year. But with voters potentially tiring of handing him the award every year, they might look elsewhere for greatness, and the new-look Love has ft that mold well early on.

If he and the Timberwolves keep it up, he’ll be getting ftted for LeBron’s throne, too.—#17

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V VIEWPOINT

noun; a way of looking at or thinking about something

S

portVU has given NBA fans an entirely new view of the sport of basketball. With the statistical insight in metrics and videos now found at the statistical section of NBA.com, fans can glean some of the same insight that NBA coaches, players and scouts use in constructing game plans for their teams. By installing six cameras high in the catwalks of every NBA arena, statistical analysts can chart every movement of the basketball and every player 25 times per seconds. By showing how these actions correlate to game play, NBA fans have an altogether new viewership experience of their game. For instance, did you know Chris Paul leads the League in touches per game, frontcourt touches per game and time of possession by a pretty wide margin? Did you know that with Roy Hibbert protecting the rim, opponents made only 32 percent of their shots SCOTT CUNNINGHAM/NBAE/GETTY IMAGES

against him? Did you realize Chandler Parsons and Gordon Hayward have the highest average speed of 4.3 miles per hour in games? Or that Parsons leads all players in average distance traveled per 48-minute game at 3.5 miles? Perhaps the most innovative fan-friendly creation from the folks at NBA.com and SAP AG is the historic interactive box score, which allows you to click a statistical numeral on the sheet—for example, LeBron’s eight made field goals—and soon you will see video of each one of LeBron James’ eight field goals made. Click on 13 field goal attempts and you will see all of LeBron’s makes and misses; or click 8 rebounds, and see those. The view from your laptop has never been so enlightening, with the groundbreaking video box scores seen only in the NBA. Now you can look at a box score and literally see how the game unfolds. —#21 081

W

WANDERLUST

noun; a very strong or irresistible impulse to travel

M

amba and Melo in gold.

Love in the Big Apple.

LeBron, prodigal son.

Yes, this is the hyperbole you are destined to hear over the next few seasons (and summers). Somehow, the hot stove became the headline grabbing news, not the actual performance on the court.

Now, we follow all of the insiders on Twitter and love to daydream about a good juicy rumor mill trade as much as the next fan. But we’re heading into overkill here folks (we partially blame you, ESPN Trade Machine, for wasting so many hours at work). Maybe a little of the blame goes to the imaginations stirred up when the Big Three joined forces in Miami. Or how the will-he-stay or will-he-go superstar sideshow from the previous few seasons that spawned the hashtags of #Melodrama and #Dwightmare. And heck, we know as much as anyone you gotta move units 082

off the newsstands. But let’s just stop. For the players. For the fans in the small markets. For the love of the game.

When preseason murmurs started of Kevin Durant, who has two more seasons beyond this current campaign on his contract, possibly leaving Oklahoma City for a bigger market, a sunnier locale or a better chance at a title, we just have to put a stop to it.

This season the T-Wolves are rocking with Ricky Rubio and Kevin Love. The young Cavs will be just fne with Kyrie Irving as their focal point. And no matter how quickly Manhattanites can turn on you (in a New York minute), who better to lead the Knickerbockers back to glory than the hometown kid? The League is perfect carrying on this way and for many years to come. Players will always look for new addresses; that’s expected. But when we start projecting where dudes will be three, four years from now when their contracts are up or even projecting when collegiate phenoms will become NBA free agents, it’s just crazy talk.—#93 ANDREW D. BERNSTEIN; DAVID LIAM KYLE; DAVID SHERMAN/NBAE/GETTY IMAGES; EZRA SHAW/GETTY IMAGES SPORT

Brewer

Matthews

Thompson

Daye

Dunleavy

Bryant

Rice

Hardaway

Pressey

Lucas

Rivers

Love

Curry

Henderson

Davis

X XENIA W

Horford

Taylor

Price

noun; the direct effect on a hybrid plant produced by the transfer of pollen from one strain to the endosperm of a different strain

ith 18 current second-generation players in the League this season, “like father, like son” and “a chip off the old block” are expressions that are readily bandied about. Golden State teammates Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson are the poster boys, and sons of Dell Curry and Mychal Thompson respectively. Los Angeles Clippers coach Doc Rivers regularly coaches against his son Austin Rivers on the New Orleans Pelicans, while NBA rookies Tim Hardaway Jr. of the New York Knicks and Glen Rice Jr. of the Washington Wizards share the namesakes of their elders.

The genes have clearly been passed along, and some sons have superseded their father’s careers, including Kobe Bryant (Joe Bryant), Al Horford (Tito Horford), and Kevin Love (Stan Love). Meanwhile, the particular strong suit of the father isn’t necessarily that of the son, as evidenced in skilled shooters like Wesley Matthews (Wes Matthews), Mike Dunleavy Jr. (Mike Dunleavy), and John Lucas III (John Lucas II).

Many expected a fait accompli with the sons of superstars winding up just like dad. The offspring of Magic Johnson or Michael Jordan would have thought to have been destined for on-court greatness, but that was far from the case. Some of these 2.0 versions now have an opportunity to forge their own legacy outside of the fraternal shadow, like Charlotte teammates Gerald Henderson Jr. (Gerald Henderson) and Jeffery Taylor (Jeff

Taylor), or Houston’s Ronnie Brewer (Ron Brewer).

The NBA may only have to wait another decade to see if greatness may be hereditary, as Dwyane Wade’s 9-year old son Zaire has impressed many at a young age. Not to be outdone, Heat teammate LeBron James’ 9-year old LeBron James Jr. is doing the same, but the proud fathers maintain they don’t put them under any pressure to follow after them. But based on previous NBA father-son pairings, in the least, they’re destined for a shot in the League Yet there’s no recipe or formula for how successful a player may be regardless of lineage. What can be ascertained is that by and large former NBA players tend to breed NBA players as shown with Austin Daye (Darren Daye), Ed Davis (Terry Davis), Phil Pressey (Paul Pressey), and A.J. Price (Tony Price). Also, producing a strong sense of pride and accomplishment from all fathers, while their sons follow in their footsteps.

These father-son tandems are by no means the frst and surely won’t be the last: Andrew Wiggins, son of Mitch Wiggins, is pegged for the No. 1 pick in the 2014 NBA Draft. So whether it’s genetics, growing up around the game, hours of practice, or the pressure of being like dad, the number of offspring in the NBA gene pool continues to grow and doesn’t appear to be slowing down anytime soon. It’s a good thing Father’s Day falls during the offseason.—#7

DAVID SHERMAN; ROCKY WIDNER (7); JOE MURPHY; RON TURENNE (2); DICK RAPHAEL (2); GLENN JAMES; RON KOCH; SAM FORENCICH (2); BILL BAPTIST; JON SOOHOO; NBA PHOTOS; DANNY BOLLINGER; NATHANIEL S. BUTLER; LAYNE MURDOCH/NBAE/GETTY IMAGES; RICK STEWART; SCOTT HALLERAN; JONATHAN DANIEL; KEVIN C. COX; STEPHEN DUNN (3); BRUCE BENNETT; BRIAN BAHR; KEN LEVINE/GETTY IMAGES SPORT

083

Y YAW

verb; to swerve off course momentarily or temporarily

084

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he look contained every bit of information about Bob McAdoo that Jack Ramsay1 needed to know. The lean shooting machine2 had tried things the coach’s way, and they didn’t work out. It was back to the McAdoo Method, and everything would be all right.

While coaching the Buffalo Braves,3 the venerable Dr. Jack had a chance to spend four seasons watching McAdoo fll it up. It’s no coincidence that the arrival of both men in the Snow Belt4 triggered the Braves’ move into the postseason. Ramsay was a well-respected coach, and McAdoo was a legendary scorer. Together with Ernie DiGregorio, Randy Smith and the rest of the running, gunning crew, Buffalo piled up the points and traded punches with some of the League’s more established teams. “We were a scoring machine,” Ramsay says. It was showtime before “Showtime.”5 McAdoo was perfect for Ramsay’s system. But Ramsay’s system wasn’t always perfect for McAdoo.

The Braves used to run a play that called for McAdoo to set a back pick along the baseline for a cutter and then step out to receive the ball. The cutter was to go across court and set a screen for a teammate who would dive hard into the lane. The problem was that by the time the player reached his destination, McAdoo had usually taken a shot. During one timeout, Ramsay tried to slow things down.

T

Despite a quick start in the NBA, Bob McAdoo had to fail before he could succeed.

DOO’IN IT

BY MICHAEL BRADLEY #53

085

favor and a gratifying rebound that reached the top of the basketball world. No matter what happened, McAdoo kept fring, releasing the ball so high that few had any prayer of blocking it. He was a breakthrough player who proved that big men could fll it up just like the guards. The Hall of Fame welcomed him in 2000,9 and stretch fours throughout the NBA owe him a debt of gratitude for stepping outside and lighting it up.

“I could always shoot,” McAdoo says. “But I had to adjust my shot as the competition got better. When I was young, I had a line drive shot, but when taller defenders started guarding me, I had to loop it. I was always practicing and always adjusting to different things.”

“I said, ‘Mac, you have to wait for the screen before shooting the ball,’” Ramsay says. “McAdoo said he would.”

The next time down, Buffalo ran the same play, and McAdoo waited.

The cutter got into the lane. McAdoo passed the cutter the ball. The cutter missed the shot.

“He ran back on defense and looked at me, as if to say, ‘That’s the end of that,’” Ramsay says.

It wasn’t the worst thing in the world to have McAdoo fring at will, especially during those Buffalo days. At a time when 6-9 players like him were expected to be patrolling the area close to the hoop, looking for layups and easy putbacks, McAdoo unleashed that satiny shot of his from everywhere imaginable. His offensive game6 was so complete that he was practically immune to defensive tactics. He could post rivals up, burn them off the dribble, hit turnaround jumpers and baby hooks, come off screens like a shooting guard and launch 20-footers. McAdoo led the League in scoring three times and put up 34.5 ppg in 1974-75, when he won the MVP. He fnished his career with a 22.1 ppg average and converted at a 50.3 percent rate, a remarkable statistic given the volume and distance of shots he put up.

“He’s one of the best big men ever to shoot the ball in the history of the game,” says Heat president Pat Riley, who played against McAdoo and then made use of his many skills during a four-year stretch in L.A. But McAdoo’s career wasn’t just a soundtrack of swishing nets. He suffered through a three-year stretch during which he played for four different teams,7 grappled with injuries and heard harsh criticism about his commitment and desire to win. He rebounded to be a key part of two Laker world championship teams in four seasons and closed his career with a seven-year stint in Italy that made him a hero in Milan.8 The McAdoo story is one of brilliant accomplishment, a quick fall from 086

The arrangement was clear, but that didn’t mean McAdoo had to like it.

When he landed in L.A. in 1981, the forward was hurt and considered by some to be fnished in the NBA. He was overweight and had played just 16 games the previous season with Detroit and the Nets. The Lakers were jelling under Riley, who had taken over the head coaching reins from Paul Westhead 11 games into the season, and they didn’t need another superstar. What they needed was someone to come off the bench and keep the good times rolling when the varsity took a seat. McAdoo was that guy, even if he didn’t want to be.

“Of course it was tough to come off the bench,”10 he says. “I was used to playing 44 or 45 minutes a game and to see that the spot should be yours wasn’t easy. But I fnally came to the conclusion that they wanted me to be with the second unit. It was tough for me.”

McAdoo was playing behind Kurt Rambis, the bespectacled bruiser whose defense-frst (and second, and third…) personality ft well with the Lakers’ collection of stars. Everybody could see the New Guy had more talent than the man he was behind, but Rambis11 ft better, at least at the beginning of games, and McAdoo became the top reserve.

“Kurt was the perfect guy to start for us,” Riley says. “Bob wanted to start. He said to me, ‘I should be in the starting lineup. You’re messing with my money.’”

McAdoo had always started, from his days at Ben Smith HS in Greensboro, NC. Like most kids in the 1960s, he played everything, and football was one of his favorites. But his Uncle Eugene pulled him aside one day and said, “You’re slim, and you’re meant for basketball.” It helped that McAdoo had torn his meniscus playing sandlot football when his father—of all people—tackled him. That—and Uncle Eugene’s advice—led McAdoo to the hardwood full-time, and he harbored dreams of bigtime college ball.

NBA PHOTO LIBRARY; DICK RAPHAEL/NBAE/GETTY IMAGES

When his grades prevented that, he spent a year at Vincennes JC in Indiana. McAdoo was set to transfer to UCLA after his freshman season, but he managed only a 2.9 GPA, and a 3.0 was required for a frst-year transfer. “Imagine me and [Bill] Walton and Jamaal Wilkes on the same team,” McAdoo says. He fnished at Vincennes and landed at North Carolina, where he averaged 19.5 ppg and 10.1 rpg to lead the Tar Heels to the 1972 Final Four,12 where they lost in the national semis to Florida State.

After receiving a hardship waiver to enter the NBA Draft (back then, players had to demonstrate fnancial need to leave school early), McAdoo was chosen second13 overall by Buffalo, which had entered the League as an expansion club in 1970. “My friends from Carolina teased me that I was going to the Snow Belt or Alaska,” McAdoo says. It was cold there, to be sure, but Ramsay had arrived and had begun building a winner.

“Jack was a disciplinarian and an execution guy,” McAdoo says. “He was into physical ftness and didn’t want any heavy-set players. He was a ftness guru. I was fortunate I had a coach at North Carolina like Dean Smith. He was a work guy, and Jack Ramsay was a work guy, too. We did so much running.”

McAdoo didn’t start right away, but by December he was on the frst fve and never returned to the bench. He averaged 18.0 ppg and 9.1 rpg to earn Rookie of the Year honors. But that was nothing compared to the

ANDREW D. BERNSTEIN; DICK RAPHAEL/NBAE/GETTY IMAGES

next three seasons, when he averaged 30.6, 34.5 and 31.1 ppg to lead the League in scoring each time. As McAdoo thrived, so did the Braves, who reached the playoffs every year from 1974-76 and dumped the Sixers in the 1976 frst-round series before falling to eventual NBA champ Boston in the next round. McAdoo led the way and was defnitely one of the League’s most potent forces.

“He was amazing to me,” says Elmore Smith, who played with McAdoo during the 1972-73 season before moving on to the Lakers. “Bob had such confdence. A lot of guys have a lot of work to do when they come into the League, but when Bob came in, scoring was not one of the things he needed to work on.

“I loved playing with him and hated playing against him.”

After the ’76 playoff breakthrough, big things were forecast for the Braves, even though Ramsay had moved on to Portland, where he would lead the Blazers to the 1977 world title. Buffalo had drafted high-scoring forward Adrian Dantley and had acquired Moses Malone from Portland after the ABA had disintegrated. “We had three Hall of Famers on the roster, and they ended up getting rid of all of them,” McAdoo says. Malone lasted two games, and Dantley played a year with the team. On Dec. 9, 1976, the Braves dealt McAdoo and Tom McMillen to the Knicks for John Gianelli and cash. There may have been more uneven trades in league history but not many. The key ingredient in the swap was the money. “[Buffalo] didn’t want to pay me,” McAdoo says.

Thus began a fve-year stretch that included stints with four teams and saw McAdoo go from a high-scoring All-Star to a part-time player dogged by injury. “It was a miserable, tough time in my life,” he says. “I was

087

STRETCHING THE FOUR

Tall trees that strayed away from the dense forest of the paint used to be an NBA oddity. McAdoo was an early pioneer, but they were rare and made little sense from a pure statistical sense—why have a 6-9-plus player hoisting away a lowpercentage shot that was worth the same two points when a higher percentage one can be had with his height? It wasn’t until the NBA instilled the three-point feld goal in the 1979-80 season that the stretch four concept began to elasticize.

Slowly players like Jack Sikma, Bill Laimbeer, Sam Perkins and Larry Bird began to propagate rosters.

But by and large in the ’80s and ’90s, they were still as common as a championship team not named the Celtics, Lakers or Bulls. In the last 14 years, the position has exploded. Gone are the power forwards (and occasional small forwards) that operated in the paint and ventured to the three-point line only during skirmishes. Netting 10 boards gave way to wetting 10 jumpers. The European imports that made their migration to the League at the turn of the century played a part. Seven-footers like Vlade Divac and Arvydas Sabonis showed a deft touch from outside, and even 7-6 Yao Ming showed range, but it was really Dirk Nowitzki that showed the world how big a weapon a stretch four can really be.

Nowitzki stood at the magical mark of 84 inches with an outside touch that those at any height would be envious of. Having your big man being a threat from outside turned conventional offensive schemes at the time on their sides, making offenses run “outside-in” instead of 50 years of throwing the ball into the low post.

This also freed up creative coaches to open up offenses unimaginable in the past, akin to fve-receiver sets in the football.

But Dirk was merely the blond-haired, one-footed shooting face behind the evolution. Next came the move to adopt newfangled analytics and metrics to the

game. Why take a low-reward/low percentage midrange shot when a shot from a few more feet netted 50 percent more points? Why not have your big man shoot it if he can, especially when he has a lumbering or shorter defender checking him?

Which brings us to now, where every team essentially has a Bob McAdoo on its roster. The days of coaches and fans cringing at the mere thought of their bigs finging an ill-advised three are gone, replaced by cries of why didn’t they shoot the open shot.

There’s an abundance of quality stretch fours in the game now. LeBron James gets a lot of attention, but calling him merely a stretch four is almost an insult as he does so much on the court. His teammate Chris Bosh might be the stretchiest of fours on the Heat for his reliable outside touch that opens up space for LeBron and Dwyane Wade to maneuver. Not just an erstwhile prototype, Nowitzki is still proving to be every bit as effective as he’s slowing down. Kevin Durant gets thrown into the conversation, but he’s simply a tall and long shooting guard. Lumped into the middle pack are guys who can lay claim to the position—New Orleans’ Ryan Anderson, New York’s Andrea Bargnani, Denver’s Danilo Gallinari, Toronto’s Steve Novak, San Antonio’s Matt Bonner, to name a few. All 6-10 and taller, who have no problems incurring roaming charges on their jumpers.

But the best example even has an outside shot of abdicating the MVP throne from LeBron. No player has quite stretched the forward position as much as Kevin Love.

Equal parts inside (as of the frst month of the season, Love was averaging 13.6 rebounds per game) and outside (second in the League in three-point attempts), Love is the best of both worlds, a player who can stretch out his game and still contract back to the paint. Throw in his throwback skill of the outlet pass (no one is even a close second to him) and he’s a perfect mix of old and new power forward.—#2

going through a divorce, lost my father and had had severe foot injuries that required surgery.” Perhaps worse than all of that was the criticism that he didn’t want to play. That, according to those who knew him, was dead wrong.

“I don’t know how many people realize how great a competitor he was,” Ramsay says. “He loved to win, and he felt he could do anything in a scoring way to help his team win.”

“When he came to us, he was all about winning,” Riley says.

It took about a month for McAdoo to get into shape when he arrived in Los Angeles in late December 1981, but that didn’t matter to the Lakers.

Nor did the fact that he averaged just 9.6 ppg and 3.9 rpg during the regular season. In the playoffs, McAdoo was a different guy, scoring 16.7 ppg and pulling down 6.8 boards a night. He also helped out at the defensive end and had a crucial sequence in the Finals against Philadelphia that helped clinch the title for L.A. In the third quarter of Game 6, with the Lakers leading the series, 3-2, the Sixers had chipped away at a 15-point lead and were down by one 088

CHRIS TROTMAN/GETTY IMAGES SPORT; ISSAC BALDIZON; DAVID SHERMAN; DICK RAPHAEL/NBAE/GETTY IMAGES

BONUS POINTS 1. The duo both fnd themselves in the Naismith Memorial Hall of Fame. Ramsay was inducted in 1992 while McAdoo in 2000.

2. McAdoo fnished with 18,787 points over 14 NBA seasons.

3. Before it was the Los Angeles Clippers, the franchise began as the Buffalo Braves.

4. Due to the proximity of the nearby Great Lakes, cities like Buffalo would see an abundance of snowfall due to the lake-effect snow.

5. Other than the frst season (1972-73), when they were 16th out of 17 teams in scoring (103.3 ppg), the Ramsay-McAdoo Braves teams were either frst or second in League scoring.

6. McAdoo led the NBA in total points and points per game for three consecutive seasons (1973-74: 2,261, 30.6; 1974-75: 2,831, 34.5; 1975-76: 2,427, 31.1) 7. All told, McAdoo put on seven NBA uniforms: Buffalo, New York, Boston, Detroit, New Jersey, L.A. Lakers and Philadelphia.

8. McAdoo took Milan to two Italian league championships, the Italian Cup and Euroleague titles.

9. The 2000 Hall of Fame class included Isiah Thomas and legendary women’s basketball head coach Pat Summitt.

10. He averaged 9.6 ppg as a Lakers reserve in 1981-82.

11. McAdoo’s two highest scoring seasons (2,831 and 2,427 points) eclipsed Rambis’ 16-year total of 4,603.

12. Future NBA players George Karl and Bobby Jones were on the Tar Heels squad.

13. The frst pick of the 1972 draft was Portland’s regretful decision to take LaRue Martin before McAdoo.

14. In the 1988 Euroleague fnal, McAdoo scored 25 points to go with 12 rebounds to help the Italians beat Maccabi Tel Aviv, 90-84.

15. The son with the game most resembling McAdoo’s: Chris Bosh.

when Julius Erving took off on a breakaway. McAdoo caught him and blocked a pair of Dr. J shot attempts to preserve the lead. He later hit a jumper in a key 6-0 run that helped Los Angeles restore order and win it all. “There’s no doubt in my mind we would not have beaten Philadelphia in 1982 without Bob McAdoo,” Riley says.

McAdoo started only one game during his four years with the Lakers and suffered through some injuries, including in ’83 and ’84, when Los Angeles dropped Finals decisions to Philadelphia and Boston. But he was part of the 1985 world championship squad, and after a season in Philadelphia, McAdoo left the NBA and headed to Italy. Some might consider his seven years there a form of basketball exile, but not McAdoo.

He relished the opportunity and was part of two Italian League and Euroleague14 title teams.

“I loved being in Italy,” McAdoo says. “It was the best block of basketball of my life. I was in a great city, Milan, and the team packed arenas everywhere we went. We won championships, and I traveled all over Europe and the Middle East. The lifestyle and the people were great.”

McAdoo retired in 1993, and when two years later Riley took over as coach in Miami, he hired his former player to work with the Heat big men.

McAdoo is still there, taking players’ meal money in shooting competitions and imparting the wisdom of a man who has seen just about everything on the NBA landscape.

“I can help some of the younger players with basketball and life,” McAdoo says. “We’re talking about certain things, and I can teach them.

It’s like I’ve got 15 sons.”15 Who would do well to keep listening to what Bob McAdoo has to say.

089 RON KOCH; ISSAC BALDIZON/NBAE/GETTY IMAGES; RONALD MARTINEZ/GETTY IMAGES SPORT

Z ZYMOSIS

noun; fermentation

T

here’s something brewing in The Palace at Auburn Hills, a sweet smell that hasn’t wafted from the arena in a long time.

Hope.

Much like the city that is represented on their uniforms, the Pistons are looking to revitalize themselves. After a half-decade of mediocrity, the Detroit Pistons are putting the pieces in place to make a comeback and reinvigorate the onceshining franchise. They have a new foundation of young stars to build around for the future and enough talent to compete for their frst playoff spot in fve years.

The latter half of that recipe is predicated on Detroit’s budding frontcourt, which could become one of the best in the League depending on how the young Pistons develop and if the franchise can keep all the pieces intact.

Second-year center/big man forward Andre Drummond is 20 going on 21. He’s got crazy hops and athletic ability for someone in a 6-10, 270-pound package and is only beginning to scratch the surface of his all-around ability. That’s saying something for a guy who had a team-high 21.7 player effciency rating as a rookie.

Fourth-year center Greg Monroe’s next birthday cake will only have a very manageable 24 candles. While not a household superstar, he’s as reliable a big as there is in the game. He doesn’t get injured often and consistently gives the Pistons around 15 points and 10 rebounds per game while also playing steady defense.

Combine those young big men with high-profle offseason acquisitions Josh Smith and Brandon Jennings (neither is over 27) and eighth-overall pick Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, 20, and the Pistons have a strong base of talent to build a winner around.

For a franchise that hasn’t been relevant since the Chauncey Billups090

Rip Hamilton-Ben Wallace-Rasheed Wallace led teams went to six straight conference fnals from 2003-2008, that’s old-school music to Motown’s ears.

The Pistons dipped back into those glory days in the offseason, signing Billups to pass on some of that championship wisdom. The veteran point guard’s presence should help the high-potential yet highly-erratic Jennings mature and allow veteran scorer Rodney Stuckey to play more two-guard, where he’s most effective.

There are still a lot of questions surrounding the Pistons in the present— can new coach Maurice Cheeks get the four stars to coexist?—and the future—can they afford to re-sign Monroe when he becomes a free agent in 2014? They also need to create a winning mentality in a locker room flled with young players accustomed to losing.

But there’s reason to be optimistic in Detroit again as the brew is only begun to percolate. —#17 ALLEN EINSTEIN (3); SCOTT CUNNINGHAM; DAN LIPPITT/NBAE/GETTY IMAGES

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10/10/12 9:40 AM

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CHECKIT 94 SPIN MOVES 96 GOODS 98 GEAR 100 WEAR

SLEIGHING WINTER

For Northerners, the months of January and February mean prime snow season. A pessimist would see blankets of the white stuff as a lighter wallet or a sore back to remove it. An eternal optimist—or at least someone who owns a killer sled like this Hammerhead Pro Snow Sled— would see the powder as an excuse to take a snow day to spend at the nearest hill. Turn to page 96 for more on some high-tech sledding.

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CHECK IT SPIN MOVES

AS TOLD TO CHRISTOPHER CASON #25

Joakim Noah

Joakim Noah is coming off an All-Star and career-best season. Entering his eighthyear, expectations are at their highest for big man and the Chicago Bulls. Never a man for the conventional (Joakim trains in the offseason with friend and famous surfer Laird Hamilton) and a bit of an old soul, when Noah is not snatching boards, being a headache around the rim for opposing offenses and defenses, he’ll be immersed in some of his favorite offthe-court hobbies.

VIDEOGAMES

I like the old-school videogames. The videogames nowadays are way too complicated. I’m definitely a FIFA guy.

MUSIC

It usually depends on my mood. I listen to a lot of reggae music.

Reggae is probably my favorite genre.

What I love about it is there’s a lot of a teaching in the music. It’s righteous music, it’s about youth empowerment, so I learn a lot through the music.

Bob Marley is probably my favorite.

Capleton, Sizzla. I listen to a lot of hip-hop as well. I love Erykah Badu, she’s probably one of my favorites.

I listen to more old-school rap like Snoop, Warren G, Wu-Tang.

TV

I really like Breaking Bad, that’s dope. I love The Wire.

APPS

My iTunes and Uber, where the car comes to you.

HOBBIES

My hammock is my hobby. The bonfire and the hammock is my hobby.

094

ILLUSTRATION: MATT CANDELA; STEPHEN DUNN/GETTY IMAGES SPORT; GARRETT ELLWOOD/NBAE/GETTY IMAGES

Join us

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CHECK IT 01

GOODS

03

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02

01

HTC One Max

The Max’s little brother, the One, was one of our favorite smartphones in 2013, so logically, the hypersized (at 5.9-inches, an iPhone placed on top looks like picture-inpicture) Max would be more to love. For starters, the screen and the built-in speakers are big and powerful enough to fully immerse a movie while on the go and the fngerprint scanner on the back of the phablet will satisfy the security-conscious.

The camera is the same one we lauded in the One and the beautiful body almost the same. Instead of the unibody construction, the rear backing slides off, offering you access to the SIM and MicroSD card. With a device this large, the average single hand will have trouble manipulating it, but if you crave the screen real estate that livens up the functions of a smartphone, then the supersized proportions of the Max will satisfy.

$299

02

Nike+ Fuel Band SE

An improved iteration of the active lifestyle-inducing bracelet engineered by the folks of “Just Do It,” the Fuel Band SE improves on the strength of the previous model— Fuel points as metric that serves as reward and scorekeeping system with your social network—with an improved accelerometer and better water resistance (sweat and the brief shower: ok; swimming: not recommended). Also new is the ability to track specifc activities—say, a pickup basketball game—during the day, making it perfect for the data-obsessed. Charging remains via the USB connector (a single charge could go almost a full week in our tests), and the Fuel Band syncs up with the latest iOS devices that support Bluetooth 4.0 (sorry Android users, as of press time, it’s unsupported). Nike also added a subtle color pop on the underside of the band, but unchanged—for good reason as it never ceases to amaze when it magically appears on the Fuel Band’s face—is the slick LED display and simple one-button control.

$149 096

03

UE Boom

Options for portable speakers are plentiful in the marketplace, so Logitech’s audio-based Ultimate Ears division of the company opted to go with a logical solution based on how they are used. Since most portable speakers are used outdoors, the Boom is a multi-directional speaker, so putting it in the middle of the action guarantees a circular zone of audio coverage. Once connected via Bluetooth, the two 1.5-inch drivers and two 2-inch passive radiators on the Boom can get satisfyingly loud and an additional Boom can be piggybacked, turning them into a stereo setup. Durably built for outdoor use, the compact (size of a water bottle) Boom features a water resistant design and a ring on the end for hanging.

$199

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WHERE TO BUY: HTC One Max: Verizon.com; Cîroc Vodka: ciroc.com; Google Nexus 5: google.com/nexus/5; ANKI Drive: store.apple.com; Apple iPad Air: store.apple.com; UE Boom: ultimateears.com; Nike+ Fuel Band SE: nikestore.com; Hammerhead Pro X Sled: hammerheadsleds.com

06 04

Apple iPad Air

The iPad has been the standard in the tablet category since its introduction in 2010 and since then it’s only seen one major upgrade: the sharp Retina display on the third generation device. The iPad Air doesn’t add much (the innards do feature a peppier A7 processor) but rather takes away: weight and size. A few millimeters is shaved off the width and length and about a third of a pound (.30 to be exact on the WiFi model) is lost, reducing the iPad’s hand fatigue on long sessions.

Starting at $499 05

Hammerhead Pro X Snow Sled

If your winter sledding consisted of a trash-can lid, a plastic toy one or even one of those classic wooden sleds, you’re doing it all wrong. The lightweight chassis of the Pro X is powder-coated aluminum with polycarbonate rear and front skis that are bankable through the patented stainless steel leaf spring steering system. The stretched mesh seat can support up to 200 pounds, and toting it up hills is a cinch as it is light (9.7 pounds) and comes with a carrying strap.

$299

Cîroc Vodka

Cîroc became the “Toast of the NBA” when it signed a multiyear agreement with the NBA, making the ultra premium vodka the offcial vodka of the League. As part of its partnership, Cîroc spokesperson Diddy will launch a campaign to promote responsible celebration with NBA fans.

$39.99 07

Google Nexus 5

The follow-up to the Nexus 4, the 5 continues to be the best pure Android experience in any smartphone. Gone is the beautiful back from the Nexus 4 (full disclosure: we broke the rear glass panel during testing on the 4) and replaced with a rubberized material that offers some protection (at the cost of unsightly smudges) and along with the subtle curves, makes for a very ergonomic ft in hand. The 4.95-inch,1920x1080 display is not the most impressive we’ve seen but it’s plenty bright, with rich colors and details.

The Nexus 5’s pedestrian looks might not impress, but it’s when you delve into the latest Android OS (4.4, KitKat) without the bogging adornments of the hardware makers that the Nexus experience really shines.

08

Anki DRIVE

Older folks would either recoil with frustration or fawn with nostalgia at the primitive slot cars of their youth. The Anki DRIVE futurizes the fun of miniature racecars speeding through the track. The analog spring-loaded trigger control that would send the cars careening off the track if it was squeezed too hard is now replaced with the latest iOS device (iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad) that controls the Bluetoothconnected cars on a roll-able track where they can race and battle (virtual weapons on each car target other racers). The starter set comes with two cars and track, and up to four cars (controllable via live players or an AI that adapts to your play) can race.

Starter kit: $199.95 Expansion cars: $69.95

$349 (16GB) $399 (32 GB) 097

CHECK IT

Jordan

GEAR

Melo M10 Weight: 14.6 oz.

Price: $165

Perforations of the medial and lateral quarter panels provide ventilation.

The upper is a combination of dull-grain nubuck leather for a premium look and synthetics for support.

To celebrate the 10th anniversary of Carmelo’s signature shoe, the Melo script, which made its debut in the first Melo shoe, was brought back in the heel counter that sports a chrome finish.

Dynamic Fit ensures a tight fit, like fingers cradling the foot into the shoe.

The Phylon midsole provides additional cushioning and stability.

Flight Plate technology utilizes a carbon fiber shank plate for torsional stability and energy transfer between heel and forefoot.

Reebok’s most famous Pump innovation reamins true to this day, allowing you to personalize your fit with a few pumps of the air bladder in the tongue.

Solid rubber outsole with multi-directional pattern for durability and traction.

Heel and forefoot Zoom units for zoned lowprofile cushioning.

Reebok

Pumpspective Omni Weight: 15 oz.

Price: $124.99

The upper is Reebok’s new seamless 3D FuseFrame comprised of leather and synthetics to keep weight down while maintaining breathability.

Reebok’s DMX Foam is a flexible, yet stable foam that offers good cushioning and the foam insole molds to your feet over time.

Durable rubber on the outsole gives the player maximum traction, making them ideal for indoor or outdoor hoops.

098

OUR TAKE: Ten shoes in a signature line is quite the milestone. It takes consistency on the court and loyalty with a brand to maintain a line that spans a decade. Whatever your opinion on the Melo line, you have to agree that it has never been afraid to take bold risks. The Melo shoe, much like the Air Jordan line, has always been a fresh blueprint each time around, often having little of the previous shoe’s DNA in the latest iteration. The only recurring theme being that it’s a shoe designed for rugged play, much like Carmelo’s game.

That being said, the M10 surprised us a bit. Judged against the history of the Melo line, the M10 comes off as the most conventional in terms of design. In fact it looks like a hybrid frankensteined from a Super.Fly 2 upper and Air Jordan XX8 SE mid/outsole (identical in every way), which is in no way a disparagement. The SF2 is an excellent performing shoe and we’ve extolled the virtues of the Flight Plate package in our XX8 review. We just had higher hopes for a 10th anniversary shoe that had a Tinker Hatfield sign-off.

Given the hybrid feel to the shoe, it’s no surprise we liked how it performed. As we figured, given the same outsole and Flight Plate, the M10 feels much like the XX8. The Flight Plate makes each push-off on the foot feel like a catapult and lateral movement. The combination of internal sockliner and Dynamic Fit made for a tight fit, so you should consider sizing up. Once the foot is in, the lockdown is incredible as the shoe just fuses into your foot.

The Melo M10 could possibly be the best performing shoe in the series; we only wished it could’ve been more imaginative.—Ming Wong #2

OUR TAKE: Who can forget Dee Brown sneaking a peek through his forearm in the Reebok Pump Omni Lite to win the ’91 NBA Slam Dunk Contest? That indelible classic was an all-around solid mid-cut basketball shoe worn by greats like Brown and Dominique Wilkins. Twenty-three years after its original release, Reebok let Jeremy Sallee, a former college hoops player-turned-designer, remix the cult classic. The Pumpspective Omni combines its latest innovations with the 3D FuseFrame and DMX Foam while keeping the original tongue you know and love so you can pump it up before you take the court.

The upper is Reebok’s new seamless 3D FuseFrame made of leather and synthetics that allowed them to shed unnecessary weight, keep the sneaker breathable, and look clean without compromising performance. They don’t have the best ventilation but the vents in the medium lateral and toe-box will keep you cool enough.

Compared to prior Reebok basketball releases, the Pumpspective feels incredibly light. Reebok’s DMX Foam is a step in the right direction for added comfort and stability. When you cut and shift your weight and balance, the DMX Foam assures a smooth transition so you don’t feel restricted no matter your style of play.

If you have ever hooped in the Reebok Answer IV it has a similar feel but closer to the floor. The extra cushioning, especially in the heel, from the spongy removable insole molds to your feet so grabbing these true to size is advised.

Reebok uses a durable rubber that makes the Pumpspective ideal for both indoor and outdoor play. The highlight of the traction is in the forefront, so if you like to spin or pivot the Pumpspective Omni is going to let you execute those moves flawlessly.

The shoe was originally designed for John Wall before he shifted to adidas so there is definitely a guard-like mentality incorporated into the design and performance but all positions could find the Pumpespective Omni to be suitable as a game day sneaker.— Brandon Edler #36

adidas

SPRINTWEB has shown over the years to be a viable tech, keeping sneakers light and agile, remaining a part of the backstory for adidas.

adiPure CrazyGhost Weight: 12 oz.

Price: $100 To keep things cool, adidas stripped away much of the padding we found in the D Rose 4, instead opting for a thinner mesh tongue made of its Techfit material at the top that breaks out into a more open section near the apex of the foot.

Starting with the Crazyquick and also with the D Rose 4, the outsole design has now crept into almost every facet of the adidas basketball line. Aesthetically, the look gives the Ghost a very dynamic look across the lateral and medial side.

The focus of the CrazyGhost line has always been about speed, and adidas has been able to do that by cutting weight on the design. For the upper, adidas used a lightweight synthetic upper that varies in thickness throughout the design.

Considerate of the guards that will most likely take to the court in the Ghost, the toe box is thickened up to keep the shoe more durable for those sharp turns and for those who like to drag their toe.

OUR TAKE: For those familiar with the adidas basketball line, taking one look at the adidas adiPure CrazyGhost will automatically make you think of the adidas Rose 773 II. The tooling, with the exception of the D Rose signature design cues, is exactly the same. Speaking of the tooling, these ran a little tighter than we would have expected. We usually take to the court in two pairs of socks, but with these, we had to cut down to one. The feeling didn’t last throughout the full length of the shoe, it was mostly restricted to the toe box. Playing in the Ghost felt very similar to the Crazyquick. The cushioning set-up is less than we have all grown accustomed to over the last few years and takes some getting used to, but it does give a better feel for the court and more control than other sneakers on the market. Speaking of control, the traction on the Ghost was way above average. When playing indoors, the rubber is very soft and grips the floor well, though, we can see the softness of the rubber wearing down pretty quickly if you play a lot outdoors. This brings us to the durability. It feels like adidas cut a few corners on the quality of the materials for the Ghost. We understand the shoe sits at the $100 price point and that it is more of a team shoe, but we hoped that the material felt a little better and didn’t look so much like a low-end sneaker. We worry that after a few months playing in these on a regular basis, you will need a new pair. However, we must admit that the toe box held up pretty well to some rough play the last few weeks. Overall, the adidas adiPure CrazyGhost is a good shoe. It isn’t mind-blowing or great, but a good shoe. The traction is nearly perfect and the light-weight, natural movement supplied by the Crazyquick tooling and synthetic leather upper work well for those who prefer more court feel. Breathability is facilitated by the mesh tongue and the vents on the side panel, and the ankle features a nice amount of cushioning that should keep you protected against the rigors of the game. The only issue we have is the material on the upper. The synthetic leather is lackluster at best, which is a shame for a shoe that plays so well on indoor courts.—Jacques Slade #22

Kickin It with Derrick Williams How do you decide which shoes you play in?

I try not to go into it too much. Whatever matches, I just go with. I wanted to do a Twitter type thing—letting people choose what they want me to wear. It’s fun for the fans.

I heard a rumor that you’re not going to wear any retros this year. Is that true?

Yeah, that’s one of my things this year, I’m going to try to not wear any retros. We’ll see how it goes.

Which shoes are on your list of things to wear?

Man, there are so many things. I really wanted to wear the Gary Paytons, but they retro’ed those this season. Maybe I’ll go with the actual original ones just to show a little different side.

What do you wear when you’re not playing?

Everything. Balenciaga, Gucci, Louis Vuitton, I wear Chucks, Vans, a little bit of everything. You can catch me in whatever.

When it comes to shoes, Derrick Williams has you covered.

Growing up with dreams of one day having boxes of shoes delivered to his house, the 22-year-old’s dream came true when Williams became the second overall pick in the 2011 NBA Draft. Even though he has access to whatever shoe his heart desires, the Sacramento Kings forward doesn’t take it for granted. Known for rocking super classic and ultra rare kicks alike, we caught up with Williams to ask him about his shoe game plan for the season.

ROCKY WIDNER/NBAE/GETTY IMAGES

putting out too many of them. I don’t really wear them in the game, I wear them off court.

Favorite Foam colorway?

The Dr. Dooms, the black with the white. The eggplant, the off-purple color. I think the last one I bought were the metallic reds. It’s been a while since I bought a pair.

Which players’ feet do you pay attention to?

You’ve got DeMar [DeRozan], I’m actually good friends with him. We like the same things. We work out with each other in the summers. You’ve got Nick Young, you’ve got Nate [Robinson], he’s always bringing out some stuff. Iman Shumpert, even though he’s an adidas guy.

Where do you hit up when you need shoes?

I go to RIF in L.A. DeMar takes a lot of my size 14s there.

Flight Club, there’s one in L.A., there’s one in New York. I try to stop anywhere where I know a spot.

How does the relationship work with shoe companies?

When shoe-shopping, are you buying 10 at a time?

What are your favorite pair of shoes to play in?

Is it fun for players when fans pay such close attention to what you’re wearing each night?

Some people’s contracts are a little different where they have to wear specific things they give them, but mine is: I’m signed with Nike and, I can pretty much wear whatever [Nike] I want. That’s the great thing about it.

All the Kobes. I’ve been wearing Kobes since I was in middle school. From the Kobe IV, to the Kobe 8. I think the 9 comes out in a few months, but I really like them.

All-time favorite shoe when you were a kid?

Foamposites. I say that now, but I haven’t bought a pair of foams in a few years and it’s just because I think they’re

Nah, I probably buy like two. I don’t really like to do the bulk where you buy like 10 pairs. I think a lot of people know me just for having more rare and unique type shoes than bulk.

I’ve seen guys that have hundreds of pairs and I have like 100, but I know mine a little bit better than everybody else’s.

Yeah, definitely. It’s part of the game. The evolution of all the shoes, the colorways and all of that. Even just iD kicks. I think this season, you’ll see a lot of those from me: iD some kicks, maybe have a fan or two pick the colorway and I’ll wear those during the game.—Holly MacKenzie #32 099

CHECK IT 01

WEAR

Stance Wade Collection

Much like Dwyane Wade’s fashion sensibilities, the hosiery from his Stance Wade Collection is made up of bold prints and eye-catching patterns that will be sure to gussy up any outft you decide to pair (pun intended) it with.

$14 (per pair) 03

adidas NBA On-Court Collection 01

New this season is a collection of on-court wear for NBA players that are comprised of an updated shooting shirt, warm-up pants and jacket (our favorite of the three) that is distinguished by a clean aesthetic that emphasizes team pride with varsity details.

Jacket: $110 Shooting Shirt: $70 Pants: $65

03

02

Nike Sportswear Air Max 90 Collection

As popular a silhouette as the Air Max 90 is, it’s surprising that Nike has never breathed new life into it with its constantly innovating tech—until now. The AM90 Collection will feature four distinct styles: the AM90 Essential, the OG from 24 years ago in its natural glory; AM90 Jacquard, a lighter version with a one-piece woven upper chieved through cut-and-sew overlays; AM90 Ice, a reinterpretation that features a fused upper with a translucent icy midsole; and AM90 Lunar that also has a no-sew upper with Lunarlon midsole housing the iconic Nike Air.

Air Max Air Max Air Max Air Max

Lunar90: $130 90 Jacquard: $150 90 Ice: $150 90 Essential: $110

04

Under Armour Alter Ego Compression

Take your performance another notch, into superhero proportions with the Alter Ego Compression available in Batman (pictured) Superman or Spider-Man. Actual superpowers not included.

$59.99 04 02

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Under Armour Coldgear Infrared Armour Fleece Storm Hybrid Hoodie

New Balance 710/2000

With the company based in Boston, New Balance is all too familiar with snowy and slushy winter, hence why it came up with the 710 and 2000, both being able to hold up against the elements

Like any good pairing (Mike and Scottie, Jay and Ye), this UA hybrid mixes elements of a warm coat—insulation in the front torso and feece on the sleeves and back—with the ease of a hoodie. An added bonus is the Infrared tech on the inside of the jacket that holds onto heat.

06

710: $99.99 2000: $169.99

$124.99

05

07

Mitchell & Ness Chicago Bulls Championship Collection

The Chicago Bulls dominated the NBA in the ’90s with their six titles, giving Mitchell & Ness plenty of inspiration for its collection that harkens back to the gear the two threepeat teams of 1991-93 and 1996-98 sported.

Crew: $60 T-Shirt: $35

07

08

08

Herschel Supply Little America Backpack Based on the stylings of a classic mountaineering bag, the Little America features a padded laptop (up to 15-inch) pocket and eye-catching heavy-duty rubber closure straps.

$99.99 WHERE TO BUY: Mitchell & Ness Chicago Bulls Championship Collection: mitchellandness.com; New Balance 710 and 2000: newbalance.com; Herschel Supply Little America Backpack: herschelsupply. com; adidas NBA On-Court Collection: adidas.com; Under Armour Alter Ego Compression and Coldgear Infrared Armour Fleece Storm Hybrid Hoodie: underarmour.com; Stance Wade Collection: stance.com; Nike Sportswear Air Max 90 Collection: nikesportswear.com;

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CALL OUT

Known for his scoring, Carmelo Anthony can also pass a bit. Here he is handing out boxes of Thanksgiving turkeys with all the fxins to 800 families in the Bronx at the Madison Square Garden Boys and Girls Club.

The Jazz’s Enes Kanter and Trey Burke play backdrop to a selfe when the team visited patients at the Primary Children’s Medical Center.

MELISSA MAJCHRZAK/NBAE/GETTY IMAGES

After a day of refurbishing the Kennedy Longfellow School, Boston Celtics Kelly Olynyk, MarShon Brooks, Brandon Bass and Jeff Green brought it in with a bunch of students for a job well done.

BRIAN BABINEAU/NBAE/GETTY IMAGES

STEVEN FREEMAN/NBAE/GETTY IMAGES

Members of the Wizards, John Wall, Trevor Booker and Otto Porter greet a double-amputee patient during a visit to the Walter Reed Medical Center in Washington D.C. NED DISHMAN/NBAE/GETTY IMAGES

Even though he’s rehabbing from his torn ACL, it didn’t stop Rajon Rondo from handing out assists—in the form of bags of food—to local Massachusetts residents at the Greater Boston Foodbank.

BRIAN BABINEAU/NBAE/GETTY IMAGES

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STEP BACK

February 15, 2004: 2004 All-Star Game, Staples Center

The pictured West starting frontline of 7-footers Yao Ming, Kevin Garnett and Tim Duncan towered over the smaller East team that had no one over 6-11. The West also had the 7-1 Shaq, 7-0 Dirk Nowitzki and 6-11 Brad Miller on the team.

The eventual MVP that season, Garnett had possibly his greatest NBA season in 2004: 22.1 ppg, 12.7 rpg, 4.6 apg, 2.0 bpg and 1.3 spg. In the All-Star Game, his numbers were just as all-around: 12 points, 7 rebounds, 6 assists, 2 steals and 1 block.

Shaquille O’Neal would finish as the All-Star MVP with 24 points and 11 boards, but the other O’Neal in the East, Jermaine, had a pretty good game as well with 16 points and 9 rebounds.

This would be Tracy McGrady’s fourth and last time representing the East at All-Star. Fittingly, his bluered sneaker combination would also represent his All-Star career. The following season he was traded to Houston where he would team up with Yao for three more All-Star selections on the West squad.

Yao was selected to eight All-Star Games (but only played in six of them) and his 16 points scored in this one was his best scoring game as he went 8 of 14 from the field.

A popular player due to defensive prowess and big hair, Ben Wallace was voted in as the starting center in the East for the second time.

A four-time All-Star (2003-2006), Wallace holds the distinction of the All-Star with the lowest scoring average.

Vince Carter was the leading All-Star vote-getter that year with 2,127,183 votes and finished with 11 points.

The 2004 All-Star selection was Duncan’s sixth consecutive time at the midseason showcase. He would go onto seven straight more years on the West All-Star team and has made 14 All-Star teams.

ANDREW D. BERNSTEIN/NBAE/GETTY IMAGES

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Go all in at adidasbasketball.com

OFFICIAL OUTFITTER OF THE NBA