No. 1: Smart vows to rise above fray, laughs off Butler’s comments — Like another first-round series in the Eastern Conference (Wizards vs. Hawks), the Boston Celtics-Chicago Bulls matchup is getting chippy. At least it is in terms of soundbites and posturing. Boston’s Marcus Smart and Chicago’s Jimmy Butler were the parties who squabbled in Game 4 and for his part, Smart is trying to avoid a personal showdown in the series. Mark Murphy of the Boston Herald has more:
It’s novel, the idea of someone questioning Marcus Smart’s toughness.
The Celtics guard certainly never heard something like it before when, after his brief nose-to-nose chat with Jimmy Butler in Game 4, the Bulls forward later said, “he is a great actor, acting tough. That is what he does. But I don’t think he’s about that.”
“Never,” Smart said after yesterday’s practice about whether anyone has gone there with him before.
Asked about his reaction, Smart looked towards the nearest camera, raised his voice, and said, “Haha.”
Initially asked to comment, Smart made one passing attempt to deflect the conversation, saying, “I laugh at that. This is about Celtics vs. Chicago Bulls, not Marcus Smart vs. Jimmy.
“I ain’t gotta sit here and say this and that, I’m this, I’m that,” he said. “I ain’t that type of guy. My actions speak harder than words. It ain’t hard to find me, so. . . . But right now I’m focused on my teammates and this series.”
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“And you heard him: he said, ‘I don’t think Marcus Smart’s about that life?’ Last time I checked, if you’re going to say somebody ain’t about that life, you should know. Right? But like I said, we’re going to keep this Chicago Bulls vs. Boston Celtics, not Marcus vs. Jimmy.”
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And should Smart and Butler come within a centimeter of each other’s mugs again, the Celtics guard understands that he’ll have to pull himself back.
“I know how important I am to my team, my teammates. They tell me every day,” he said. “So I know it’s going to hurt me more than anybody else. So I have to keep my cool. And I know teams are going to try to get under me because they know how important I am. So they’re going to test me. So I’m just staying focused and doing everything I can to help my team.”
And that is where Brad Stevens would like to leave this especially delicate balance. His team has to play with that so-called chip.
“Our focus is, you have to play with a certain level of intensity, you have to play with a certain level of toughness, but you have to focus on what’s going to help your team win on both ends of the court,” said the Celtics coach. “And that’s that. All that other stuff is not important. We’ve got to focus on what we can control to win the next game.”
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No. 2: Summer of uncertainty looms for Clippers — As our own David Aldridge wrote in his Morning Tip this week, however the LA Clippers’ playoff run goes it is being dampened by Blake Griffin’s injury. That dark cloud is just one hanging over the Clippers, who lost Game 5 at home to the Utah Jazz and now face a potential elimination game in Salt Lake City on Friday. The Vertical’s Adrian Wojnarowski has more on the state of things in Clipperland this morning:
The stars aligned, the best of everything coming. For so long, the core of these Clippers made championship contention an inevitability.
And yet, the inevitability feels like something else now; like the end of an era that never truly was. The Utah Jazz beat the Los Angeles Clippers 96-92 on Tuesday night at Staples Center, moving within a victory of advancing into the Western Conference semifinals.
As Jamal Crawford stood outside the Clippers’ locker room, his coach walked past, slapped his shoulder and tried to sound hopeful: “We’ll get it,” Doc Rivers said.
“Yes sir,” Crawford responded.
For the Clippers, this is dire. Without Griffin on the court, the Jazz are a better team. With Griffin, the Clippers might have lost, too. The Jazz are deeper, better connected and ferociously determined. If this feels like the end for the Clippers, it is truly the beginning for the Jazz.
“We have the formula to play without Blake,” Crawford told The Vertical. “We’ve done it.”
When you start to ask Crawford a question about the togetherness of the team, and say, “If the group isn’t solid, this is where …” Crawford finishes the thought for you. ” … It can come apart.”
“But I think we’re solid,” Crawford told The Vertical. “We were down 2-1 to the Spurs and had to go get a win a couple years ago, and we were down 3-2 and had to go get a win. And we did that. Most of our core guys were in those battles. For us, we can really lean on that.”
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The Clippers never wanted to be the “What if?” team, but they’re on the brink now. As soon as they’re eliminated in the playoffs, they’ll have to start making hard decisions on the future. To think the Clippers can watch Griffin get hurt again, lose in the first round and simply bring back everyone to incur a historic payroll and luxury-tax bill isn’t realistic. Just because Clippers owner Steve Ballmer can afford to pay that immense repeater tax doesn’t make it sensible.
The Clippers will start to ask themselves the hard questions: Does five more years of Griffin at a max salary make sense, or does maybe two years of Carmelo Anthony become an option? If Paul starts to take free-agent meetings on July 1 and the franchise needs free-agent guard JJ Redick to wait until Paul makes a decision before it can extend an offer, does Redick simply move on, accept an annual salary in the $17 million-to-$20 million range elsewhere before the salary-cap space dries up on the market?
If the Clippers can’t come back on the Jazz, it is extremely unlikely there will be a management upheaval. What there will be is this: an orderly, exhaustive process on the next steps, because these are a complicated crossroads.
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Between now and Game 6, the Clippers are trying to push back on summer, push the season to a Game 7 on Sunday at Staples Center. They’re holding onto hope from two years ago, from the Spurs series, but that feels like a reach right now. Blake Griffin is gone for the season, and the Clippers are wobbly, vulnerable and walking into trouble on Friday night, walking into the end of something.
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No. 3: Bryant surprised he hasn’t longed for NBA comeback — Few had the career (or, for that matter, final game) that Kobe Bryant enjoyed in his 20 seasons in the NBA. The NBA playoffs are in full swing, a stage on which Bryant delivered some of his greatest moments, yet he tells the Orange County Register’s Mark Medina he hasn’t felt the itch to stage a comeback:
Since retiring a year ago after a 20-year NBA career with the Lakers, though, the 38-year-old Bryant said he no longer misses it. Does that surprise him?
“Yeah, pleasantly so. That means I’m doing the right thing,” Bryant said in a phone interview on Tuesday. “It’s always concerning to feel like that itch comes back and you feel like you’re missing something and you try to scratch that and this, that and the other. I haven’t had that at all.”
Instead of Bryant itching to hold the ball in his hands, considering adding to his 33,643 career points and five NBA championships, he has developed an appetite for digital storytelling with his Newport Beach-based company Kobe, Inc.
“I’ve been so consumed and have had so much fun in putting stories together and putting up techniques,” Bryant said. “Every day to come into the office, to take on and come up with stories and figure out a way to make those stories real by challenging ourselves to come up with techniques that haven’t been done, it consumes me. I just love it.”
After obsessing over his game and the outcome on the hardwood for decades, Bryant has carried that same mindset into the film room.
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Bryant capped his career on April 13, 2016 in the regular-season finale against Utah. That night, Bryant scored a season-high 60 points on 22-of-50 shooting in 42 minutes. Bryant’s final three seasons were the three worst win-loss records in franchise history.
“It’s kind of this roller coaster ride that is a never-ending one,” Bryant said. “But it is about finding acceptance in those difficult times and understanding that the great times don’t last.”
Though those tough times prevented Bryant from squeezing out more production and adding to his five NBA titles, he counted his victories elsewhere. He largely credited his three season-ending injuries for helping him prepare for his post-NBA career. He also called reviewing the Muse film “the best thing that happened to me during the injury” to his right shoulder in the 2014-15 campaign.
“I looked at a finished cut of the Muse film. I didn’t like it at all,” Bryant said. “I felt like it was kind of a branding piece. I was just starting to figure out that I like writing and I like storytelling. I have this film here. Let me redo this film.”
So Showtime granted Bryant permission to rewrite the whole film shortly before its release on Feb. 28, 2015. He cut out the interviews his documentary crew conducted with assorted Lakers and NBA figures. The film featured him staring into the camera, sharing the highs and lows of his professional and personal life. He also featured original music.
“Once I started doing that, I found so much enjoyment in that process,” Bryant said. “Then we built a great team around the young and talented editors that spoke the same language. After that film, I thought I loved doing that. This is what I want to do.”
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No. 4: Hawks, Wizards join in postseason chatter fray — There’s no love lost between the Atlanta Hawks and Washington Wizards in these playoffs. That much has bared itself out with each postgame barb the teams trade with each other. And as Adam Kilgore of The Washington Post notes, that back-and-forth talking is nothing new in postseason play overall:
In the NBA playoffs, though, players and coaches rarely shut up. Rather than existing as the same rote exchanges of information and sound bites they mostly serve as in the regular season, news conferences during the NBA playoffs become performance art. Media obligations multiply, and the statements made — or not made — behind podiums can be dissected and replayed as much the games themselves. Players and coaches use briefings and news conferences to send messages to opponents, referees, teammates or whomever else might be listening.
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In Hawks-Wizards, Millsap’s quote — “the MMA stuff,” as John Wall said Tuesday — shaped the tone and flow of the series. Markieff Morris, Millsap’s foil, declared Game 2 might be “double MMA.” The officials, perhaps wary of the series becoming overly physical, called an abundance of fouls in Game 2, and Morris has been sidled with foul trouble in three straight games. It led Morris, after Game 3, to label Millsap “a crybaby.”
As the Hawks have quieted down, they have seized a psychological edge. The Wizards have been grumbling about fouls and freighted with foul trouble. The Hawks have exploited their advantage in interior muscle and athleticism while forcing Wall and Bradley Beal to carry an untenable scoring and minutes burden.
“I think a lot of players watch to see what other players say,” Millsap said. “Opposing teams may see what other players are saying. They may give you a little something that you need. They may expose something that they’re doing. I think you can look into that, for sure.”
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For anyone who needed extra reason to pay attention to the 4-5 matchup in the East, the MMA discussion and Morris’s comments provided it.
“They had us on NBA TV a lot,” Millsap said. “I think it brought a little light to our series. As a basketball fan, it’s good to see. It makes it more interesting, more intriguing. It sucks I got to be in the middle of it. It’s not going to escape you. It’s better you embrace it.”
Upon reflection, Millsap would not reveal whether the “MMA” comment derived from emotional or strategic impulses. “I said it because I was in a chokehold on the ground,” Millsap said, breaking into laughter.
No. 5: Olshey says Lillard, McCollum off table in trade talks — Any discussion about the best backcourts in the NBA has to include the Portland Trail Blazers’ duo of Damian Lillard and C.J. McCollum. While neither was an All-Star this season, they have the scoring chops and playmaking skills to hang with the best of the NBA’s best guard tandems. That, and other reasons, have made them untouchable in trade talks for GM Neil Olshey, writes Mike Richman of The Oregonian:
Are Damian Lillard and CJ McCollum off limits or are they like everyone else and open to being dealt?
A: The odds of anything ever coming up of commensurate value is so hard to even fathom. I could give you the trite answer that nobody is untradable, but clearly they are.
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What the formula to make the Lillard-McCollum pairing work, particularly on defense?
It presents a challenge. I don’t think it presents a challenge at the point guard position because either one there we’re not giving up the size we give up at the two guard and on the glass. But it’s my job to fortify the other positions to a point where they’re not as vulnerable when they’re out there together. One of the other things, too. And it depends on how Terry handles the rotation, they don’t play the full 36 together. There’s a lot of time where we’re not as undersize as people think because AC is at the two or Evan is at the two. The two biggest beneficiaries of Nurk from their plus/minus was Noah and Moe. And when you look at the starting lineup suddenly we’re not really undersized. Moe is 6-9, Noah is at or above average for a power forward for teams that are playing smaller and then Nurk, who is 7-foot, 290. We went from being really small with Farouq at 4 with Mason at 5, which exacerbated the undersized backcourt to we’re a little bit undersized at the two in the starting lineup, but we’re at or above league average for position for the three, four and five now. So I think that’s part of it. But I look at it as we’re really blessed and lucky to have Dame and CJ, understanding that it does present some challenges on the defensive end. So it’s my job and the job of the guys on my staff to make sure we support them and make them less vulnerable when we share the floor together. And again when you look at the numbers, we have a top 10 defense post-All-Star break. So clearly there is ways around it. We’ve just gotta keep experimenting. Thankfully before Nurk got hurt it, we had a 25 percent of the season sample size to work with to help us inform our decisions. Not just personnel-wise, but for Terry to figure out how he’s tinker with the rotation and maximizes guys and their abilities.
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SOME RANDOM HEADLINES: Andre Roberson is fully aware of what he needs to work on in the offseason … Did Gregg Popovich leave a $5000 tip at a restaurant in Memphis? … Rajon Rondo is reportedly going to try and play in Game 5 tonight … Atlanta Hawks owner Tony Ressler doesn’t regret the big contracts he gave Dwight Howard and Kent Bazemore last summer … Former New York Knicks and San Francisco Warriors standout Ken Sears died yesterday … With each passing game, Rudy Gobert is looking more and more like himself …
