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ISSUE 09 AUTUMN 2012
ISSUE 09
S R A W R A T S Can LeBron and the Heat outshine the new look Lakers?
> INSIDE > REGULARS 10 | OVERTIME
Which NBA teams will be playing in London in January, and who will GB women face at EuroBasket 2013?
20 | MARK’S VIEW POINT
What lessons can British Basketball management learn from the Olympics?
44 | GALLERY
Film maker Kevin Couliau lifts the lid on New York’s street basketball scene.
54 | FASHION
Pump up your jump with the art of plyometrics.
60 | MUSIC
Rita Ora is simply Hot Right Now.
62 | WORK OUT Top tips to have you dribbling like a baby.
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> FEATURES
12 | NO GOOD CHARLOTTE
Michael Jordan is staking the Bobcats credibility on an unknown head coach
16 | CHRIS FINCH
The outgoing GB coach reflects on his time in charge in an exclusive interview.
26 | MANCHESTER GIANTS
Will the new-look Giants recapture some of the team’s past glories?
32 | BBL PREVIEW
Can anyone catch the soaring Eagles this season?
36 | NBA PREVIEW
After a summer of big moves, we evaluate who’ll be making noise come play-off time.
> BALLER
22 | ANDREW LAWRENCE
GB’s baby baller tells all about his summer to remember.
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28 | KAREEM MADDOX
How the workload at Newcastle is a “wake up call” for the Eagles’ latest signing, even after Princeton! Top to Bottom NBAE/GETTY Gino DePinto Kevin Couliau FRONT COVER James Boughton/ NBAE/Getty
Follow us on twitter (@MVP_247) and Facebook (@MVPMag) for daily news, exclusive features and competitions.
30 | DONTAYE DRAPER
Real Madrid’s guard wants to bring a Euroleague title home to show Melo.
64 | SCOTTIE PIPPEN
The Bulls legend speaks on LeBron James, and Chicago’s chances this season.
66 | ROBERT PARISH
The chief reveals how close he came to quitting, before joining the Celtics.
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> MVP MAIL
E D I T O R S C H O I C E Most Valuable Letter Prize The editors choice of letter will win a 12 month College Pass for ESPNplayer.com which gives access to all the NCAA Basketball next season including March Madness and the Final Four courtesy of our good friends at ESPN.
Love us? Hate us? Holla at us letters@mvp247.com z OLYMPIC REACTION So frustrated with the Olympics!! I spent weeks before the Games trying to get tickets online – only to fail time and time again as they had, apparently, all sold out. So imagine my dismay and anger as I watch at home on the BBC red button service and see hundreds (possibly thousands, in some cases) of seats sitting empty!!! It’s an absolute disgrace. Helen Barnsfield Well, that was all a bit of an anticlimax! Between our men’s and women’s teams, we picked up one win...in a game that didn’t count for either side. I can’t say I am happy at the results, or optimistic about the Olympics giving basketball any real sort of boost here in Britain. Sigh. Simon Can someone please explain who’s bright idea it was to take Mike Lenzly to the Olympics, when he’d clearly done something seriously wrong to his leg at the USA v GB game in manchester just a week or so before? John Stipe Read our interview with Chris Finch for your answer, John!
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z LAST ISSUE Just wanted to say the cover of your last issue was the best one yet! Keep up the good work MVP!! Junior Big props to Jake Green, Harry Adams and James Boughton for that one! Dear MVP – do you have Becky Hammon’s phone number? Seriously.
Mike I know everyone has the same rant everytime there’s a big basketball event on that gets coverage in this country...but can we PLEASE get rid of John Amaechi as a commentator?!! He is smug, boring, clearly knows very little about today’s players / teams – and is constantly negative, particularly about Team GB! What exactly is he bringing to the table, BBC bosses?? Andrew Toombs Greg Tanner does talk a lot of rubbish on Facebook, but I must admit that his Lakers’ off-season moves predictions were pretty accurate!
Sean Hahahaha – I don’t want to say “I told you so”, but...
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REACTION WINNER
What and awesome, AWESOME Olympics those were. I managed to get to three sessions, and saw some of the best basketball of my life. The atmosphere was amazing too. The GB boys did us proud and, with the odd made shot or call here or there, could have won three of those group stage games. Hats off to Luol, Pops and all the players – and to Chris Finch. Michael Sandmont
GB WOMEN LEARN FRENCH FATE
> Great Britain’s women will have to get past Serbia, Latvia and hosts France in the opening
round of next year’s EuroBasket Women.It is a tough draw for GB, who reached the second round in 2011 and faces the loss of Kim Butler to retirement. The tournament will be held from June 1530, between five different cities in the north and west of the country. Britain, who failed to win a game at the Olympics, was still without a confirmed coach as MVP went to press with Tom Maher out of contract. The future of assistant Damian Jennings is also uncertain after he quit UWIC to take over as head coach of the University of Calgary. The draw for the men’s EuroBasket will be held on 18 November, with Great Britain in the second group of seeds among the 24 teams who will go to Slovenia.
KNICKS, PISTONS LONDON-BOUND
> The New York Knicks are set to play the Detroit Pistons in a regular season
game at London’s 02 Arena. The fixture, first revealed on mvp247.com, will likely see the two teams meet on Thursday, January 17, with the Pistons giving up a game at the Palace of Auburn Hills. “I would love to come back and play here,” said Knicks forward Carmelo Anthony. “Deron Williams and I were talking about this earlier, about him coming over here and playing last year and the experience he had. If I get a chance I would love to come over here. I’ll do anything to make that happen.” Last spring’s two planned games between the New Jersey Nets and Orlando Magic were cancelled due to the shortened season that followed the NBA lockout. In 2011, the Nets and Toronto Raptors met in back to back ties at The 02 while Manchester’s MEN Arena will host a pre-season game in 2013. Photo Carmelo/NBA
ROYAL DUTIES DELAYED
> East London Royals chiefs are still targeting a place in the British Basketball League for 2013, despite having the
spot for this season taken away less than a month before the new campaign began. MVP understands that the loss of financial backing, which would have funded their switch into the top tier from the EBL, was behind the move. “We will continue to build the East London Royals brand and our place in the local community,” said Royals chief Mark Clark. “With new investment, a community programme and a broader financial base we will develop the East London Royals franchise to a level that will launch in the 2013-2014 season.”
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> 3x3 WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP
England crashed out in the last 16 round at the inaugural FIBA 3x3 Championships in Athens, Greece, losing to eventual men’s semi-finalists Israel.
WordS GREG TANNER PHOTO Fiba
The squad of Devan Bailey, Tayo Ogedengbe, Myles Hesson and Jamell Anderson lost 18-17 following previous wins over Romania and Turkey. Serbia ended up as champions, beating France 16-13 in the decider. The USA won the women’s competition while the French were the mixed tournament victors. London Lions forward Ogedengbe had the consolation of taking bronze in the dunk contest, which was won by Venezuela’s Deivi Añanguren Madriz who jumped over a motorcycle for a perfect score of 30. Meanwhile FIBA secretary-general Patrick Baumann confirmed he will ask for the 3-on-3 format to be included at the 2016 Olympics in Rio, as well as petitioning for an increase to 16 teams in the men’s and women’s competitions. “As a consequence of that, we would have a slightly shorter competition with four groups of four,” he said. MVP
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> CHRIS FINCH
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THE EXIT INTERVIEW Chris Finch helped to take British Basketball from rags to respectability before stepping down at the end of the Olympic Games to focus on his day job as an assistant at the NBA’s Houston Rockets. In an exclusive interview with MVP, he shares his thoughts on his time as Great Britain head coach.
Looking back, how do you feel about the team’s performance at the Olympics? I have spoken to a lot of people who watched us play - from all different places - and they were extremely complimentary of how our team played. They were almost surprised that we gave ourselves the chances that we did. I think there’s some perspective in that. But ultimately, I’m very proud of our guys and how we played. I knew we would play hard and give ourselves the chances. But I am just still left with that aching feeling of wishing we would have won one more game - one of those close games. And, of course, avoided the Australian game meltdown. It doesn’t sting quite as much, because the experience overall was phenomenal. But I still think it’s one of lost opportunity. But it was an unbelievable effort by our guys. If you had your time again, what would you have done differently in that game against Australia? I think there are a couple of things. One is that they’re an extremely physical team - we just didn’t do a very good job of matching that physicality. We made a lot of shots early in the game and played with great confidence when those shots were going in. But when they stopped going in - and they made a few shots and got back in the game - we got a little bit rattled. But I think ultimately we got tired. It was mental and physical fatigue that maybe hit us at one moment. The fatigue came from it being the fourth game - and they were four really hard games in the course of a little over a week. I think our guys just got tired. So what would I have done differently? I think maybe tried to play a little bit of a deeper line up earlier in the tournament. The Mike Lenzly injury was an unfortunate one - because we so desperately needed guards. Maybe we should have replaced him with Ogo Adegboye at the time we had to make the decision. But we felt that Mike would be ready for the second half of the tournament. Unfortunately, he got hurt. Those are some things I think I would have done differently outside of the game that would have helped that situation. But inside the game, we did everything we knew we could do. We called timeouts, we went zone, we got the ball to our key guys. What really hurt us in that game was that we had opportunities to break their run - and we missed lay-ups. I mean point blank lay-ups! Pops missed one. Joel missed one. I think Lu might have missed a free throw in there. Just when we were begging for points to stop the run, we let ourselves down by missing easy shots - shots that we would make normally.
Words Greg Tanner PhotoS Mansoor Ahmed
“ I think that (taking Lenzly) was probably a decision that was wrong ”
There were a lot of raised eyebrows when you included Lenzly in the team, given his injury. Did you guys really think he was going to be fit to play? I personally put him through the fitness tests. We knew that he was a long shot to play in game one. But we thought he could play a little bit in game two. And he did - he played a little bit then got hurt. That was an unfortunate one all around - mostly for Mike. His opportunity was very, very limited. But looking back, and second guessing everything, I think that was probably a decision that was wrong. But, at the time, we made that with the best intentions, understanding exactly what the consequences were. A lot of people have also questioned whether you needed Chris Spice (Performance Director) and Ron Wuotila (High Performance Manager) on the bench. Did you? We could have used another coach or two on the bench. But the tricky part was the way our programme was structured and the amount of accreditation we were able to gain for the village, which was also linked to the bench. So it’s not like you could have seven staff on the bench and a different seven staff in the village. It had to be the same staff. Across both programmes we were given a limited number of accreditations. We tried to make do the best that we could. Chris and Ron have obviously been instrumental to the programme - and they had other needs for them to be in the village. But not necessarily on the bench. So it’s just how we did it. If I had to do it over again, I probably would not have felt the need to have a doctor on the bench. I don’t think that’s something we needed. But we needed a doctor in the village. Maybe we could have had him come in and out on a day pass. But in isolation, did any of these things cost us the chance to win that other game? I don’t know. Maybe the totality of all these decisions could have helped. Do you think we did enough to recruit Ben Gordon? Or was it always going to be a waste of time? We did plenty to recruit Ben. I do have some regrets that I wasn’t more aggressively involved in some of the recruitment of him. I did go and visit him in person the summer prior. But he had given every indication that he wanted and was ready to play. Ron Wuotila had seen him several times. Ben had gone through a period of time where he was beginning to ask all the right questions a couple of years ago - to saying he was definitely going to play this year. I was cynical about his commitment - just because, being in the job for seven years, I was cynical about almost everybody’s commitment at one point or another - until they actually showed up and proved to us that they were going to be there!
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> LONDON 2012
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DON’T DREAM IT’S OVER
The USA re-establishes itself as basketball’s true superpower.
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hose experts who thought the United States of America winning gold at the Olympics wasn’t a foregone conclusion clearly forgot to tell LeBron, KD, Melo and the rest of them. Team USA stream rolled their way to Games glory, winning their encounters by an average margin of 32 points. Several records were broken en route - in particular during their annihilation of Nigeria in the group stage. Carmelo Anthony’s 37 points in just 14 minutes of court time, the team putting 156 on the board in one game (49 in the first quarter alone!), the 83 point margin of victory. They may not have been quite as dominant as the ‘92 Dream Team... but they weren’t far off. Spain did give them a decent game in the final - but, ultimately, the Americans proved too strong - vindication, as far as Deron Williams was concerned. “A lot of people doubted us,” he proclaimed. “They said we were too small, we didn’t have any size to match Spain. We proved everybody wrong.” Kobe Bryant, having played his final game for his country, was clearly
moved. “It was very emotional,” he admitted. “Being here for your last goround, wearing USA on your chest, it’s very emotional. I’ve had a great time here. I felt this city [London] has done a fantastic job, and I think the venues were incredible. The support has been incredible.” Not to be outdone by their male counterparts, the USA women made history of their own - winning their fifth straight Olympic gold medal. Candace Parker, who averaged 10.5ppg and 7.8rpg over the tournament, was dominant in the final against France, going for 21 and 11. “[You] don’t remember who scored what points or how many rebounds you had,” she said. “You just remember you won a gold medal and who was on your team. I think that this is just so sweet to get the second one. I was told a lot that Michael Jordan, when he was playing in Chicago, always said it’s easy - well, it’s not easy! You can stumble on a championship once, but it’s really hard to do it twice. And for USA Basketball to do it five times in a row, that’s truly special.” MVP
WordS Greg Tanner PHOTO Matteo Marchi
“ A lot of people doubted us. They said we were too small, we didn’t have any size to match Spain. We proved everybody wrong ” Deron Williams AUTUMN 2012 25
> BBL PREVIEW WordS M ARK WOODS PHOTOS Ville Vuorinen
DOMESTIC BATTLE The British Basketball League season is under way but who will be leaping high or left crawling along the floor?
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It looks a better side but there’s simply LEICESTER RIDERS not enough depth and talent to make a Coach: Rob Paternostro sizeable leap forward. Last season: 2nd Forecast: 12th The Dish: Paternostro has made a virtue of recruiting good imports while GLASGOW ROCKS accepting they will be one-and-dones Coach: Sterling Davis in the BBL. This time, he’s brought Last season: 5th in American guard Zaire Taylor from The Dish: After a disastrous injury-hit Dutch D2 and Spanish combo Jorge season, Davis is gambling on the youth Calvo to fill his backcourt, rookie SF Jay DURHAM WILDCATS of American rookie Donald Robinson, Coach: Dave Elderkin Couisnard and first-year centre John the health of EJ Harrison, and a rotation Fraley. There might also be a wildcard Last season: 11th that has more depth but less proven The Dish: Retaining veteran guard in the shape of Slovakian international talent than in recent years. Gareth Ralph Bucci gives Elderkin some Pavol Losonsky to add strength in the continuity after pledges to upgrade the Murray has evolved into one of the best middle. The other big plus is keeping Brits in the league and Andy Wedemire Drew Sullivan, as part of a partnership CHESHIRE JETS team which was deal last in its debut a useful retention. With a luxurious new with Loughborough University, while Player-coach: James Hamilton campaign. Power forward Andrew home at the Commonwealth Arena, the homegrown stars including Jamell Last season: 6th Keister arrives from going All-Patriot Rocks really need to make an impresThe Dish: Jets’ existence was uncertain League at Holy Cross, small forward Anderson and Barry Lamble will until Hadyn Cook bought the club in Brad Guinane comes from Hilldale Col- sion rather than remaining as mid-table keep the Riders in contention again August. His first move was to ditch lege while swingman Mike Baldarelli is after-thoughts but do they really have – and perhaps with a shot at a John Lavery and install Hamilton fresh out of Assumption. The Wildcats enough to rise up? tangible reward. Forecast: 4th as player-coach and hand him the have lured serviceable guard Keith Forecast: 2nd awkward task of building a team in Page to Durham while keeping Odiba quicktime. Attah and Paul Elderkin.
nother season, another Newcastle four-peat? The Eagles remain the side who everyone must aspire to equal and once again, the road to British Basketball League silverware goes through Tyneside. With East London Royals pulling out on the eve of season, and Cheshire a late confirmation, the bright side is the return of Manchester Giants to the fray. But who will be smiling come April when the campaign comes to its end. Here’s our team-by-team look.
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Fellow 40-something Shawn Myers was lured out of retirement while exMersey guard Chez Marks also joined up. But after losing Lavery’s impressive existing core, it seems unlikely that the oldest team in the league will be bidding for anything other than a pension. Forecast: 10th
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> NBA SEASON PREVIEW
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WordS Greg Tanner PhotoS NBAE/Getty Artwork James Boughton
Do this off-season’s trades mean a Heat v Lakers final is inevitable? We’re going all-clairvoyant and predicting who is going deeper than 82 games, and who is dropping faster than Jedward. HERE ARE OUR MVP RANKINGS.
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> GALLERY
DOIN’ IT IN THE PARK PHOTOS Kevin Couliau & Bobbito Garcia
You will have no doubt seen the stunning photographic skills of Kevin Couliau in our magazine before (if you haven’t then WTF!!!?). Well Kevin has teamed up with New York City streetball and DJ legend Bobbito Garcia to film a new bball documentary entitled ‘Doin’ It In The Park’. History, culture and the social impact of New York’s summer hoops scene - alongside beautifully-crafted cuts from Kevin and Bobbito - set the scene of the game’s widely-recognised Mecca.The still images featured here were taken in and around the NYC streetball scene and during filming. Enjoy.
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> FASHION
PhotoS Antonio Lazania Set Design Kevin Rice
Shelf It Winter stompers; off court and in the cold. The trainers sitting pretty here give you a little taste of what you can expect as the nights grow longer in the world of British bball.
> From left to right: K1X MTP LE, K1X Shellduck Boot, Rocawear/ Fula Hike Fold, Rocawear/ Fula Hike Fold, New Era/ Brooklyn Nets Cap, K1X H1top
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