Found on FIBA

Chad Prewitt (mi.) erzielt im Schnitt 3,8 Punkte für die Artland Dragons.

11.03.2010
Dragons vor schwerer Aufgabe in Frankfurt



Den Frust über das Verpassen des EuroChallenge-Viertelfinals wollen die Artland Dragons am kommenden Wochenende in Energie umwandeln. Die Mannschaft von Dragons-Headcoach Thorsten Leibenath tritt in der Beko Basketball Bundesliga am Samstag, 13. März, ab 18.30 Uhr bei den Deutsche Bank Skyliners Frankfurt an. "Das wird ein schweres Spiel, da Frankfurt zu den besten Heimmannschaften der Liga gehört", … [
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Gefunden auf Basketball-Bundesliga

Toronto Sun

Only once this season has a Raptors opponent scored more in a quarter than the Sacramento Kings did Wednesday night.

A 43-point third quarter had the Raptors not just back to the porous defence of late February and early March, but all the way back to November and early December when teams such as Atlanta regularly were running up big scores on the Dinos.

Combined with the 23 points the Raptors managed at the other end in that third quarter, it was the most one-sided quarter of the season.

It all added up to an ugly 113-90 loss, and some tough questions for a team that is looking squarely at a battle just to squeak into the NBA playoffs.

Fittingly such a sieve-like effort earned the Raptors a move in the standings that has brought them within sniffing distance of ninth place in the Eastern Conference and, potentially, another year of watching the playoffs.

Both the Charlotte Bobcats and Miami Heat have now caught the Raptors in the standings, meaning the next step down is ninth.

Toronto Sun

“I think we just got very selfish,” Triano said. “We had guys come down and take a shot and I guess other guys are not happy because they don’t touch the ball. We miss the shot, it gets rebounded, they’re on a fast break and it’s a 10-0 run before you know it and we cave after that.”

Triano later softened his tone, but only marginally.

“Guys are tying to do it themselves,” he said. “They are taking it upon themselves to get us back in the game. When it comes down and only one or two guys touching it, the other guys don’t want to set screens, they don’t want to run back on defence, they don’t want to defend or help. That’s where we have to become a little stronger mentally.”

Or, to put it another way, that’s where this Raptors team needs to grow up.

The numbers from the game, while horrible, aren’t even close to the worst thing about the night. That honour would go to how quickly the Raps disappeared after the Kings opened the third quarter on a 12-0 run.

“It’s part of the resolve we need to have. When a team goes on a run, we have to be able to come back and snuff it out by scoring points. We missed a couple and they ran out on us and they have all the confidence in the world and we can’t find a bucket.”

Toronto Star

"Our body language at the start of the second half wasn’t very good. They came out and they went on a run … We never were able to get back into a groove after that," said Antoine Wright, the reserve swingman. "That’s when the selfish play came in. Guys started holding onto the ball a little bit longer. I’m guilty of it as well as everybody else."

Indeed, with two of Toronto’s top three point producers, Bosh and Hedo Turkoglu, continuing to struggle in the wake of respective ankle injuries, Toronto’s offence — a stagnant, selfish concoction that managed just 15 assists on Wednesday — couldn’t compensate for the deficiencies. Bosh was limited to 14 points on 6-for-20 shooting. Turkoglu was even worse, making just 2 of his 8 shots for 6 points.

"I would love to come in and play the ball I was playing before I turned my ankle. But it’s not like that," said Bosh. "I’m trying to get back into the same mode I was in. It’s hard right now. I’m going to get there soon. We’re just at a tough stretch right now.

"It’s just getting a feel for the game. I missed a lot of easy shots today, shots I feel I should make, especially 15 feet and in. I can’t say much about that. They just went out. I don’t get too down about it. I know those shots are going to be there. There’s still plenty of basketball left to play. I just have to step up and make sure I play some decent defence and get some rebounds, and I can help this team out a lot more."

Toronto Star

Remember the other day when I mentioned that there were those in the hierarchy who thought change might be coming to the starting lineup?

I am sure their voices are louder now and should be listened to.

I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the starting lineup in Golden State on Saturday wasn’t Jose Calderon, Antoine Wright, Hedo Turkoglu, Chris Bosh and Andrea Bargnani.

It’s not entirely a knock against Jarrett or DeMar – and Lord knows there’s enough under-performing going on now that everyone shares the blame – but it’s got to be time to do something to see if they can find a spark.

There’s still a quarter of the season to go and that’s plenty of time and they remain right in the thick of a race for fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth.

But the events of the past couple of weeks, plus some private conversations I’ve had with a bunch of people, leads me to believe change is afoot.

And, frankly, I think it should be.

Globe and Mail

Andrea Bargnani scored 20 points for the Raptors, who have lost three straight and seven of eight games. Chris Bosh, DeMar DeRozan and Jarrett Jack all had 14 points.

“He (Evans) just picked us apart, you can’t stop him with one guy,” Toronto coach Jay Triano said. “He’s a tough guard for us and he makes two or three guys have to guard him and when that happens his teammates make shots. Other guys are going to be open.”

The loss dropped Toronto into a seventh-place tie with Charlotte in the Eastern Conference. The Raptors are only one game ahead of ninth-place Chicago.

“We have to get back to winning games,” guard Jose Calderon said. “The good thing about it is that we are still in the playoff loop. We have to try to get better and hopefully it’s in our next game.”

Sacramento Bee

On what the Kings dubbed "Reke-ROY" night, the organizational hype reached a fever pitch in front of an announced crowd 13,412. A cutout of Evans’ face was placed on a stick and turned into a toy for some 5,000 fans, and the first 10,000 were given T-shirts promoting him as the league’s Rookie of the Year.

Evans certainly wasn’t alone in earning the win. After scoring a season-low 81 points at Portland on Tuesday and mustering just 16 second-quarter points to trail 45-40 at halftime, the Kings dominated Toronto 43-23 in a third quarter in which they hit 18 of 24 shots. Kings forward Carl Landry hit his five shots in the period and scored 10 of his 15 points, with the Kings jumping ahead thanks to a 12-0 run after the break.

Yet Evans did earn the endless praise that continued to surround him. His highlight of the outing came late in the second quarter, when he buried a circus shot from the baseline that went over the glass. The officials conferred, then seemed to bend to the will of the locals in calling the shot good.

Sneaker News

We’ve seen a growing number of sneaker-head NBAers who have shunned the team-appointed shoes and gone into their own collections for in-game gear. Amir Johnson of the Toronto Raptors decided the Air Jordan VI (6) Retro Black/Varsity Red was a worthy pick for Tuesday night’s game against the Lakers. The Black/Varsity Red Jordan VI Retro was the highlight of the January 2010 releases, and Johnson reminds us once again that Jordans are, in fact, basketball kicks. Check out the in-game photos after the jump. via Yahoo!.

Sham Sports

In addition to continuing his basketball career, Bateer has also begun a move towards whatever the Hong Kong equivalent of Hollywood is called. He first appeared in a film called "The Blue Xanadu" back in 2005, and the above monk photo comes from a film called "Bodyguards And Assassins."
Body & Ass is reputedly one of the most eagerly anticipated and expensive films to come out of Hong Kong cinema in a generation, with a hype fuelled in no small part by repeated delays in its release. The trailer certainly makes it look as slick as a baby’s arse, and better still, Bateer’s part is no small cameo. In the film, he plays an outcast monk (obviously), going by the slightly awesome of Wang Fuming, who moonlights as a tofu vendor. There are not enough films these days written about 6′11 monk salesmen, but Bateer pulls the part off with remarkable aplomb, as you can see in this clip where he kills dudes with coconuts and proves to be nigh-on impossible to kill.

LA Times

The Raptors mouthed-off to the Lakers, clearly not intimidated by the defending NBA champions.
All of that bothered Lakers forward Lamar Odom to no end, even though the Lakers defeated Toronto, 109-107, on a 17-foot jump shot by Kobe Bryant with 1.9 seconds left.
"Got dudes on the Raptors talking …," Odom said. "They ain’t done …. You know what I mean? As a team, as individuals."
The Raptors have never won an NBA championship.
The Lakers won the franchise’s 15th last June.
The Lakers have the second-best record in the NBA at 47-18.
The Raptors are two games above .500 (32-30) and are seeded sixth in the Eastern Conference.
In Odom’s eyes, the Raptors could act with this cocky attitude because the Lakers allowed them to, because the Lakers have been looking weak.
The Lakers had lost three consecutive games before Tuesday night.
"Our disposition as a team gives like some of these dudes, they feel like they have the right," Odom said about the Raptors. "The way we’re playing as a unit, they got dudes on their team that are talking …. They are like .500.

Cowbell Kingdom

Andrea Bargnani is a lot better than people think and I think he may experience an Andrew Bogut type of emergence in the next two years. Now obviously, they’re two different types of players/big men. Bogut is a defensive force on the inside with a nice post game and a tireless work ethic on the court. Bargnani is a sleek-shooting big man who can stretch the defense like Mr. Fantastic. He was the one Raptors player who gave the Kings problems the entire time. He’s bigger than you’d imagine, which allows him to score inside. If he gets position, especially on offensive rebounds, he’s able to use his size to get an easy putback. And of course, his jumper is so smooth that he’s always a threat to score from outside. If he can get efficient at driving to the hoop, he’ll be dropping 20 every game.

- If the Kings are planning on pursuing Chris Bosh in the off-season, they’re going to have quite a bit of convincing and selling to do. Coming out of the first TV timeout during the first quarter, one of the Kings fans in the crowd screamed towards Bosh, “Bosh, are you coming to Sacramento?” Bosh heard the question and shot back at the hopeful fan, “Hell no!” It was probably a bit of a pipe dream to begin with but this definitely makes you start moving towards Plan B.

Wall Street Journal

When the sun sets in Toronto and the roof of the Rogers Centre starts to glow like giant spaceship, the downtown club district—once a quiet industrial stretch of garment factories—begins to teem with life. Strolling the streets from bar to bar are well-dressed revelers of all ethnicities.

Jarrett Jack, a Raptors guard, says the "mix of people" in Toronto is far more interesting than he sees in most NBA towns. "One girl told me she’s from Hungary and Chile—I’m like, how does that happen?" says Mr. Jack. "You kind of go outside the box here."

"There are certain cities you go to where you want to get there a day ahead and give (the players) a chance to have their fun—and Toronto has become one of those cities," says Raptors assistant coach Alex English.

Full Court Press

On Chris Bosh
“Between Carl (Landry) and Jason Thompson primarily, and help from different places at different times, he had a rough night. Now, we know a player as good as Chris Bosh a lot of times, it’s just because he missed, but we made him work and he did miss. We did a good job of limiting them to one shot and it was primarily Carl and JT.”

T.Jose Caldeford

Stat of the Day: Toronto has wins over Cleveland and Los Angeles already this season, and they’ve blown games against each of those teams that they should have won as well. Regardless, Toronto is one of only 8 teams in the NBA to have beaten the two best teams in the league this season:

The Samsquanch

The Refs should be SHOT or HUNG or STABBED but they should not be let go without consequence.
Now before you go and call me a psycho I don’t mean that literally of course but these refs lastnight were a good example of a major issue in this game. That being, giving the superstars preferential treatment. Kobe was given every chance to get to the line on a variety of phantom calls where he would fall on his own ass and not be in the vicinity of a Raptor but yet the Refs who must’ve had something of LA’s in their pants would call everything against the Raps and basically changed the outcome. This is not acceptable. This is not what fair play is about. This is disgusting.

The Samsquanch

A gutless performance in the second half.  The Raptors mailed it in during halftime, put on their night caps and went to sleep. Their offense consisted of a lot of standing around and shooting an ill-advised jumper first thing down the court. Bosh was off big time and he kept forcing up that jumper that just wasn’t working. He needed to post up every single time but he didn’t. They needed to get the ball to him in the post, or post up Bargnani or run high ISO for him… they didn’t. They needed to get Jose the heck off the court and out of the arena. They lost to an obviously inferior team and might as well pack it in this season. This ship seems to be sinking faster than Reggie Evans in a above ground pool.

The Zan Tabak Herald

My writing partner put it best. If the ship was pointed in the wrong direction over the last few games, it’s most certainly sprung a leak and is starting to sink. It’s gut check time. Not sure if it’s going to take a team meeting, or a tongue lashing from Jay, but something has to be done to turn this second half around. They did it before and they can do it again. Maybe a little positive thinking is key.

Fan590

Smith Says:
- “Toronto was completely dismantled in the second half.”

Jones Says:
- “Dominating second half by the Kings.”

RaptorsHQ

For me this loss is up there with two others on the season; the November 25th blowout in Charlotte, and the January 11th debacle in Indiana, a game the Raps should have had wrapped up but let slip away.  Both along with a few poundings at the hands of the Hawks, were ugly views of how fragile this team’s psyche can be, and from an outsiders perspective, ones that probably make you wonder if this is indeed a playoff team.

Last night you’d be hard-pressed to look at the 2009-10 version of the Dinos as a playoff club, even in the East.  The talent is there, but much like previous incarnations of this club, what really concerned me is that not a single player looked to step up to rally the troops when the going got tough.  Not Bosh, not Bargs, not the Ottoman…not even Reggie Evans.  You can’t be paying X millions of dollars to your supposed top players, and not get that element of leadership from at least one of them.  This wasn’t the Raptors vs the Mavs or Jazz…this was Toronto taking on one of the least effecient offensive clubs in the league, they should have been able to stop the bleeding.

Found on raptorsrepublic

Were you content after the Lakers loss and thought that since we hung around the champs for four quarters, the next night in Sacramento would be rather easy? I mean, linear thinking dictates that if you almost beat a really, really good team, you should be able to pummel a really bad team, no? NO! It just doesn’t work that way and that’s why I was so upset after Tuesday’s loss – because we had blown our chance at the split. Any NBA team is lucky to split a back-to-back and the chances of that happening on the first night are much greater than the second. After a solid effort in LA, we predictably crumbled in the third quarter under the guise of fatigue. Nothing surprising whatsoever, we’ve seen this happen in Indiana and Milwaukee before and should’ve been expecting it. Part of me is still not over the Lakers loss because believe it or not, that was the winnable game on this back-to-back what with the Lakers returning home from the East, not this one.

To the Raptors credit, they came out with an energy which was entirely unexpected. Andrea Bargnani got the first three Raptor rebounds of the game, two of them offensive, Chris Bosh nailed a mid-range jumper, Jarrett Jack hit a three, DeRozan started off with his usual aggressiveness and even Hedo had a couple drives to the rim. It was as if though we were out to redeem ourselves and nothing would stop us. But oh no, I’ve watched too many Raptor games to jump to any such conclusions and reserved my judgment while calmly taking a sip from my now almost empty Crown Royal bottle.

As is the duty of any artist, I must be fair to the picture I am painting so I’ll talk about the positives of the first half before reluctantly treading into the tale of the second. Donte Greene was identified as the target of our offense and DeRozan, Turkoglu and Jack all attacked his side of the court, they back-cut on him, drove at him, forced him to make a rotation and so on. He wasn’t upto it and neither was Spencer Hawes who was at the mercy of Bargnani’s pump-fake for the first half. Bargnani did well in exploiting Brad Miller’s carcass in transition and in the half-court to the tune of 11 rather pretty points. The Kings are pretty thin in the paint and the Raptors did a very good job of going right at them early on, Hawes and Landry aren’t defensive stoppers or shot-blockers by any means and it showed. The ball-movement was steady, the cuts were hard and it was all quite refreshing. Of course, all this changed in the third.

Jack was in attack-mode as usual but unlike the Lakers game where he was getting praised for it, he will receive no such treatment today and that’s because Beno Udrih ate both him and Calderon alive. I have accepted that the $13M/yr we have invested in PGs can’t buy us defense against their quick counterparts, but when Beno Udrih goes off for 24/4/8 on 10-14FG, it feels a bit odd. Odd in the sense that you don’t expect it but here you are trying to explain why a below-average PG scored twice his season average on you. Then again we have a history of letting scrubs get off on us so even that shouldn’t be a shock. Technically speaking, all Udrih did was use a screen around the FT line area to go left or right, stop on a dime and rise for a jumper. He kept the game that simple and it got him 24 points and kept the Kings in it early. Check his shot chart.

The main problem the Kings pose is Tyreke Evans attacking you with the ball, I’m sure the Raptors expected him to get his points and didn’t look to DeRozan as a defensive stopper by any means. What they didn’t expect was Beno Udrih providing the production he did. Evans did get his triple-double of 19/10/10 and was a huge part of that crushing third quarter which we’ll get to. The Raptors needed their superstar to respond to what their star was doing and Bosh didn’t deliver. He had a very poor shooting night of 6-20 FG and there were a lot of sets tonight where we gave him the ball for jumpers as four guys watched, his reads of the double-teams was poor and he looked to get himself off before his teammates. That to me is Chris Bosh at his worst – not only is he not producing, but nobody else gets to score either.

Jose Calderon did a good job in the second quarter, he “pulled a Beno” but hitting a couple jumpers off the high-screen, didn’t concede much defensively and led the Raptors to a 20-16 win of the second quarter. Bargnani (20/6/3 on 8-12 FG) was again instrumental in the frame as he continued to terrorize Hawes. We went into halftime with a 45-40 lead which we were good for. We hadn’t gotten blown out on a back-to-back and that in itself is reason to celebrate. Not that I did, I just calmly got some ice out of the fridge, put a few pieces in a glass and then poured some more Crown on it. Then I waited for the third quarter.

The third quarter started and we immediately wet the bed.

Defensive energy? Gone. Drives to the rim? Hardly any. Jumpers? Hell yes. Effort? You must be joking. We conceded a season-high 43 points in the quarter and got outscored by a full 20 points. The quarter started with the Kings going on a 12-0 run and we never recovered. This span saw two Turkoglu misses, two Bosh bricks, a DeRozan brick and a Jack missed layup. There was no defensive energy, not even the preemptive help that’s made us dead-last in league defensive rating. Udrih and Evans each had 9 in the quarter and instead of buckling down and responding, the Raptors offense resembled anything anything but a team. Bargnani only attempted two shots and made both, I though the Hawes matchup was there to be exploited all night long and we didn’t milk it enough, certainly not to the level they milked Evans and Udrih. Blame Bargnani or his teammates or his coach, you can have your pick. The Kings shot 18-24 (75%) in the quarter equaling the number of field goals they had in the entire first half. Triano called it selfish:

We got very selfish, we had guys come down and take a shot and I guess other guys aren’t happy because they don’t touch the ball. We miss the shot and it gets rebounded and it’s fast break points, before you know it it’s a 10-0 run and we caved after that.

We lost points in the paint 62-42, lost the fastbreak 22-6, lost rebounding 52-33, lost points off turnovers 17-7, and lost steals 7-5. We lost practically every hustle stat against a team that had 11 less wins than us coming into this one and are playing out the string. The stats sure don’t bear out Triano’s belief that there was nothing wrong with our energy.

I hate to comment on Turkoglu because there’s nothing positive to say, but since he is our prime free-agent acquisition it’s only fair to give him a review. If I had to measure his performance on a spectrum of sorts, I’d have one end marked ’shite’ and the other end marked ‘utter shite’. I’d say he was somewhere in the middle today, a whopping 6/7/3 on 2-8FG and 3 turnovers, and all this while being matched up against Donte Greene and Omri Casspi. Need I say more, need I really say more? I’ve gone off on Turkoglu enough times already this season and nothing I can say will add anything new to the story. He was crap. That is all. Let’s just hope we sneak into the playoffs and he hits game-winners left and right. If you can stomach it, here’s his post-game interview.

I could talk about Amir Johnson’s zero-filled scoresheet, Reggie Evans running around pretending he’s Dennis Rodman, Belinelli’s pointless late insertion, Antoine Wright’s 0-4 (14/56 for 25% in his last and terrible defense, and other such nondescript events but it’s not worth it and more importantly, not needed for the reader to get an idea of what kind of game this was.

We were down by 15 heading into the fourth and even though that’s far from an insurmountable lead, the body language, the effort and the shot-selection in the first three minutes of the quarter told you that it’s best to turn this one off and finish off the bottle of Crown. This is the second time in less than a space of a week that we’ve been outworked and outplayed by a team that has nothing to play for whereas we’re jockeying for playoff positioning. We are now in a three-way tie for the sixth spot with Charlotte and Miami while Chicago is a game back at the ninth spot. The upcoming schedule for the teams goes like this:

Charlotte: LAC, @ORL, @IND
Miami: CHI, PHI, SAS
Chicago: @ORL @MIA @MEM
Toronto: @GSW, @POR, OKC

It’s conceivable that we’ll only need to go 1-2 in this stretch to still hang on to a playoff since Chicago has got it pretty tough. I’m not really aiming high here but at this point we should just make the playoffs and see where that takes us. How cruel the NBA is? Seems only yesterday that we were chasing the fourth spot which is now Milwaukee’s to do. They have created a 2 game gap between themselves and the 6th seed.

Final word on this game is that it wasn’t hard to predict a third quarter collapse as we’ve done it before and have only won twice on the second night of a back to back. Was it fatigue or was it just the players giving up? I don’t know but I hope it’s the former. I would hate to think that we have effort issues at this stage of the season.

Oh, by the way folks, Udrih was playing so well in the third that his coach kept him in there for the whole quarter! And you know what else? He started the fourth and lived to tell about it!

Found on raptorsrepublic

Michael Jordan (re.) steht den Westfalen weiterhin nicht zur Verfügung.

11.03.2010
"Feuervögel fordern Albatrosse"



Am Samstag erwartet die Hagener Basketball-Fans ein ganz besonderes Spiel: Das scheinbar übermächtige Team aus der Hauptstadt ist zu Gast in der Phoenix-Halle. Sprungball zur Partie gegen ALBA Berlin ist um 20 Uhr. Die Albatrosse spielten in den letzten Wochen, auch aufgrund der hohen internationalen Belastung, eher unbeständig. Dem Pokal-Aus in Bamberg folgte in der Bundesliga zunächst die Demontage des Mit-Favoriten aus Bonn … [
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Gefunden auf Basketball-Bundesliga

11.03.2010
"Besser als Fußball"



Um noch enger, noch intensiver und noch schneller mit den basketballbegeisterten Fans in Kontakt zu treten, ist die Beko Basketball Bundesliga (Beko BBL) seit Kurzem mit einer offiziellen Fan-Seite auf Facebook vertreten. Facebook ist das größte soziale Netzwerk der Welt und hat rund 400 Millionen aktive Nutzer. Das Ziel von Facebook … [
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