ALL BALL NERVE CENTER — Last night in New York City, a handful of NBA franchises looking for a little luck gathered in Times Square to try and beat the odds. That’s right, it’s the annual NBA Draft lottery, where the best of the worst vie for the first pick in the NBA Draft. I showed up and brought my cell phone camera along with me to see what went down behind the scenes.
Let’s get to the pictures …
I arrived in Times Square right around 6:30 p.m. and fought my way over to the ABC Studios, where they shoot “Good Day America” or “Today This Morning” or whatever they call it — one of those morning shows that airs when I’m still asleep. There’s never really a good time to be in Times Square, because it is consistently crowded and busy and bustling, but 6:30 p.m. must be just about the worst time. Add in that it was humid and in the mid-80s today, and Times Square felt a bit like being stuck in a mosh pit. Or at the bottom of a mosh pit. (more…)
On Friday night on NBA TV’s Game Time, guest analyst Baron Davis and the crew had fun with NBA great Rick Mahorn. Check out Mahorn’s style through the years, including some looks directly from his personal collection, and don’t forget to continue the conversation on Twitter using hashtag #NBAStyle…
That’s A Wrap
The season is over for the Detroit Pistons, and I’m happy to say that I have completed my first NBA season. I’m definitely looking forward to many more. Since our team is not in the playoffs, I am going to take this down time to look ahead to next year and how our team can get better and become a winning team.
I’m glad that I was able to finish the season on a strong note, and hopefully that will run into next year as well. In the beginning, I wasn’t playing, but I told myself to stay focused and keep working hard. My confidence has always been high, but when I got the chance to play and I was proud of the level it was at I became even more confident in myself. It is important to not let anything or anybody break your confidence, and I try and live by that motto.
Looking back on my rookie season, there was a lot of learning to be had on my end. You absorb the most in your rookie year, and I tried to take it all in. Now, I plan to take everything I learned from this year and enhance those lessons this summer to come back even stronger for my second year.
Offseason Game Plan
I’ll probably watch some of the NBA playoff games, but I won’t be glued to the TV like I have in past years. I just want to take some time to relax and get my mind off of basketball for a little bit.
This weekend, I’m going to visit my old roommate from Texas A&M who now plays basketball at University of Colorado in Boulder. We don’t have any set plans yet, I am just looking forward to hanging out and having a fun time with friends. From there, I’m going back to my old school, Texas A&M, to see more friends, coaches and teammates. A lot of the guys I played with still go there, and they are great friends who are more like family.
After I take a couple of weeks off, I’m going to get back into working out and training. I’ll be spending most of the summer in Detroit working with our strength coach, trying to get stronger.
I will also be going home to Charleston, South Carolina as much as I can to visit my family and friends. Some of my friends are in other places during the year, but they all come home for the summer, so hopefully we’ll all be able to meet up. I really miss my Mom’s home cooked meals. She actually came to visit me in Detroit last week and she cooked me all kinds of things, including cinnamon rolls made from scratch! Thankfully she made a lot of food, so I had plenty of leftovers! She is a great cook, and makes all different kinds of fish, chicken and pastas. My home cooked meals are definitely the main thing I miss from home other than my family itself of course.
In June, I’m going to have a three-day basketball camp for the local kids in Charleston. I always went to basketball camps as a kid, and I know how much they helped me, so now I want to help the kids from my hometown. I’ll always remember going to camps, making friends there and learning the fundamentals of the game, which I use to this day.
Suit and Tie
I recently had the cool experience of getting my first custom suit. I got fitted at Alton Lane when we were in town playing the Knicks, and then I received my suits when we were back in the area to play Brooklyn. I got two new suits; they fit real nicely and make me look sharp! It was my first experience with being able to hand pick everything from the fabric of the suit, the lining inside the jacket and the small customizations like having my initials on the shirt cuff and inside the my jacket. I ended up getting a charcoal suit with a blue shirt that has pink trim. I also went with a straight formal black suit. I didn’t have a plain black suit before, and I felt like I needed one for formal occasions. I’m not normally a fashion guy, but I like my new suits and they fit great!
That’s about all from me. I want to thank the fans for all of their support throughout the season! I really appreciated it and am already excited for next year. Have a great summer, and don’t forget to follow me on Twitter @Khris22m and instagram at k_mid32
Khris Middleton is a 6-foot-7 forward from Texas A&M. He was selected by the Pistons with the ninth pick of the second round in the 2012 NBA Draft.
Follow All Ball all season for more from NBA Rooks: Diaries …
The Pistons have consistently delivered the hits for us here at All Ball land this season — the dancing usher, the Star Wars send up, Kyle Singler hitting shots both hereand abroad — and they’ve got one last one in the stockade before we put the wraps on 2012-13.
Rookie Kim English has played in just 40 games this season and although he’s seen an uptick in his minutes the last week or so, he’s mostly a deep reserve on a young Detroit bunch. While minutes are scarce for him this season, English has no doubt endeared himself to his teammates after his karaoke performance a few weeks ago in Minnesota.
With the Pistons in Minneapolis for an April 6 game against the Timberwolves, English and his teammates headed out to Hell’s Kitchen, a restaurant in the city.
It was there that English tried his hand at a Johnny Cash classic, “A Boy Named Sue”, and did nothing but amaze the crowd — which included teammates Jose Calderon, Corey Maggette, Jonas Jerebko, Andre Drummond, Greg Monroe, Rodney Stuckey, Charlie Villanueva and Singler — that was recording the performance on their cell phone cameras.
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No shocker a guy named Kim considers “A Boy Named Sue” one of his favorite songs …
At the trade deadline in February, Jose Calderon was traded from the Toronto Raptors to the Detroit Pistons. Tonight, he visited his former digs, the Air Canada Centre, to presumably prove to old team why they shouldn’t have traded him. After a riveting tribute to his accomplishments moved him and halftime arrived, he…walked to the Raptors’ locker room?
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Unluckily for us, his amnesia was short-lived. Calderon scored 19 points along with nine dimes to topple his former mates and, in a fit of irony, officially eliminate them from playoff contention.
The season is winding down and things haven’t gone so great in Detroit. The Pistons are just waiting to be mathematically eliminated from playoff contention for the fourth straight season and are on pace for their worst winning percentage in four seasons as well. Other than a roster stocked with young talent like Greg Monroe, Andre Drummond, Brandon Knight, Kyle Singler and fan favorite Viacheslav Kravtsov, there have not been a lot of reasons to get pumped about Detroit this season.
But don’t tell that to Shannon Sailes, or as he’s better known to The Palace at Auburn Hills faithful: The Dancing Usher. Since last season, Sailes has made a name for himself by busting out some pretty sharp dancing moves during the Dance Cam segment during timeouts at Pistons home games. We haven’t seen any video proof of this until this season and after seeing it, Sailes joins the aforementioned young core as a reason to take in a Detroit home game.
Our team just got back from London where we played the Knicks last week. It was a great experience! I had never been to London before, so it was nice to see the city, experience the culture and do some sightseeing. It was also a good bonding experience with my teammates. We all went out together and really enjoyed each other’s company.
We left for London Monday night. We didn’t take our usual team plane; we flew out of the main Detroit airport, Detroit Metro, on a chartered plane with more than 150 people. Since it was considered a Pistons home game, we brought a bunch of staff – cheerleaders, stats people and other team employees – over to London with us. Some family members came, so I brought my sister with me.
I was exhausted when we took off, and I slept the whole way pretty much, until we landed at Heathrow Airport on Tuesday morning. Everyone was excited once we got there. When we got off the plane, there were some news cameras around. And as our team walked to get our bags, people were staring at us – a bunch of really tall guys – like we were a freak show! It was pretty funny.
We got our bags, got on the bus and headed to the hotel. We stayed at a Four Seasons, which reminded me of the hotels we stay in here. As soon as we arrived, we ate some lunch at the hotel, which did a good job of Americanizing the food. (I’m a picky eater, so I stayed away from the food I didn’t know.) I walked around a little outside and then our team had a meeting with NBA security. It was basically a meeting to give us warnings about pickpockets and to be careful where we went at night … stuff like that for our own safety reasons.
Then we took a bus to the University of East London for practice. Because they drive on the other side of the road and their signs look different, it was a little weird at first. We practiced for about an hour, a regular shooting practice. We didn’t do too much since we had just come off of a six-hour flight. It was only 4 or 5 p.m. when we got back to the hotel, so we had a good bit of time to do what we wanted. Most of us showered, ate and went straight out again.
My sister and I walked around, ate dinner, enjoyed the night. We had dinner with some teammates at a place called Gaucho, which is supposed to be one of the best steakhouses over there. I’m not a big steak guy, but I thought it was pretty good. Everybody else loved it, so I guess it was very good! We all went out to various spots after dinner and met up at some point, which was a lot of fun.
On Wednesday, we had a 10 a.m. practice at the O2 Arena, where we were playing the next day, and the same place where the Olympic basketball teams competed last summer. We did some shooting, scrimmaging, reviewed scouting reports. Then all of us had a 30-minute interview session with the London media. Our Detroit media guys were there also. After that, me and some teammates — Andre Drummond, Brandon Knight, Greg Monroe and Austin Daye — participated in an NBA Cares event with kids. There were four different stations of basketball drills set up on the court for the kids to go through. I was at the fitness station with Andre and James White from the Knicks. It was good to see the smiles on the kids’ faces; you could tell they were enjoying themselves and happy to be there. Then we went back to the hotel, and since we were all exhausted, most of us crashed and spent the rest of the day sleeping.
Then it was game day on Thursday. I got up, went to shootaround, and had some time that afternoon (before the game) to do some sightseeing. My sister and I went to Buckingham Palace, Big Ben, the London Bridge, a popular London shopping center called Harrods. I didn’t buy anything there. My favorite place was Buckingham Palace; knowing the history behind it, that was pretty cool.
The game was exciting – a sold out event! The fans were excited, and it was a great atmosphere in there! They were a little different than American NBA fans because during the game, for the most part, they were kind of quiet. When anybody scored, they got loud and crazy. It was a lot of fun, but I wish we could have gotten the win, wish we could have pulled it out. We had a slow start and when we tried to get back into it, we were a little bit too late. After the game, we had a reception with the Pistons and Knicks players and coaches, some NBA staff and fans that had special passes to get in. Then it was time to go back to the hotel, pack up and enjoy our last night in London. It was cool because players form both teams saw each other out at night.
Overall, the experience was really great and all positive — except for the loss of course! To play an NBA game in a different country and see the game of basketball growing like that, it was awesome! You can tell the fans over there love the NBA game. We got back to Detroit around 1 p.m. on Friday and I’m feeling good!
Hope you enjoyed my play-by-play of our trip to London! Have a great week! Oh, and don’t forget to check me out on Twitter @Khris22m.
Khris Middleton is a 6-foot-7 forward from Texas A&M. He was selected by the Pistons with the ninth pick of the second round in the 2012 NBA Draft.
Follow All Ball all season for more from NBA Rooks: Diaries …
The NBA took its act across domestic waters into London earlier, with the New York Knicks squaring off against the Detroit Pistons. Iman Shumpert made his return. The Knicks won.
Before the game took place, however, Kyle Singler decided to show us why we should never, ever, ever challenge him to a game of H-O-R-S-E: a
No surprise, then, that the Pistons score another “win” in our standings with this great video featuring rookie Andre Drummond and team mascot, Hooper, to promote their upcoming Star Wars night at The Palace of Auburn Hills.
At the end of a thrilling double OT affair against the Detroit Pistons, Joe Johnson took matters in his own hands and sent the Brooklyn faithful home with elation. The game-winner was nailed with right foot on the 3-point line and was set up by Kyle Singler’s lay-up to tie the game at 105 with 5.8 seconds left. Johnson (28 points) also sent the game into a second overtime with a tough floater in the lane. Suffice it to say, it was just his day.
For those that are new around these parts, the Horry scale examines a game-winning buzzer-beater (GWBB) in the categories of difficulty, game situation (was the team tied or behind at the time?), importance (playoff game or garden-variety Kings-Pistons game?), and celebration, and gives it an overall grade on a scale of 1-5 Robert Horrys, the patron saint of last-second daggers.
How does Johnson’s shot Friday night stack up? Let’s take a look.
Difficulty
This shot looked destined for the bottom of the net as soon as it left Johnson’s hands. He inbounded the ball to Deron Williams, who immediately gave Johnson back the ball. Johnson was well-defended on this one…initially. Tayshaun Prince offered some long-armed resistance, but was lost seemingly easy on a nifty stepback. But this is where Johnson earns his keep — he isn’t called ‘Iso Joe’ for nothing. If there is one thing he excels at, it’s getting enough space to knock down a jumper. It’s the type of shot he makes when in a groove. Give him credit for making the long jumper look easy, considering he played almost 52 minutes.
Game Situation
Game knotted at 105 in double overtime. A miss extends game past the 60-minute marker and into another extra period.
Importance
The Nets had lost five of six games heading into Friday night’s game. A loss to the Pistons before hitting road to face Chicago Saturday night would have invited minor panic in Brooklyn. With the Knicks in Madison Square Garden looming next Wednesday, the Nets needed this win badly. Williams wasn’t at his sharpest (17 points, 7-of-17 shooting, five turnovers). So it was Joe who was needed to step up.
It was Johnson’s first such shot in a Brooklyn uniform. What better way to ingratiate yourself with the home crowd than to nail a smooth buzzer-beater on a Friday night?
Celebration
This is Joe Johnson, so don’t expect him to channel Ronny Turiaf. After launching the shot, Johnson already started his victory trot toward his bench. A hop, a run and bump with a teammate and an understated mob later…and we have our celebration. He isn’t owed $89 million over the next four years for his excitability.
Grade
3 1/2 Horrys. As far as game-winners go, this had all the style you wanted. Pretty move. Pretty shot. Great game. Great game where the guy nailing the game-winner carried the offense late. If Brooklyn was down prior to this bucket, we’re looking at 4 Horrys easy.
Catch up on every single game-winning buzzer beater during the season and see how it rates on the Horry Scale.
