Posts Tagged ‘Vince Carter’

NBA Rooks: Diaries … Jared Cunningham

January 8, 2013  ·  10:25AM




By Jared Cunningham, Dallas Mavericks
January 8, 2013
New Year, New Opportunities

This year has gotten off to a great start! I was playing in the D-League with the Texas Legends for a couple weeks last month, and I found out at 7:30 a.m. on Dec. 31 that the Dallas Mavericks had just recalled me. The Legends GM called me to say it was time to go back to the Mavs, and that I needed to be at the gym for practice that morning. That was a great phone call!

When I got to the gym, a lot of people had smiles on their faces. Dahntay Jones even said, “I missed you, rook!” It was a happy moment. I went with the team that afternoon to play Washington. A few of us went out to dinner for New Year’s Eve, and then we got a great win against the Wizards the next day. For us to get that win, it was a great start for our team’s new year.

Things are great. I came back to the team feeling more comfortable handling the ball and making my teammates better. I think the coaches have seen that in me. Getting recalled right before the first of the month, when the New Year hit, really gave me a fresh start to get focused and ready to play with the Mavs. I’m working on my all-around game, learning every day, developing into a better player and taking advice from our team’s veterans.

Vince Carter talks to me a lot and points out things to help me get better. He’s been in this league a long time, and he tells me to fight through adversity. My assistant coach Darrell Armstrong has helped me out a lot, too. It’s been great having two other rookies, Jae Crowder and Bernard James, as teammates, too. We are all in different situations — some playing, some not — but at the end of the day, we are all working hard together.

I don’t really have a New Year’s resolution, but I told myself that I’d come back to the Mavs with a lot of energy and help my team win. I’m really glad to be back with the team.

D-League Experience

I’ll tell you a little bit about my D-League experience, which was really great for me. On Dec. 11, I was ready to leave for a Mavs road trip – bags packed and everything – and when I got to practice, my agent called. He told me I’d be going to the Texas Legends, which is in Frisco, about 30 minutes from Dallas. At first, I was really in disbelief. My agent told me it would be an opportunity for me to get back in shape and play basketball. I knew it would be a new challenge to play with guys I didn’t know in a different environment.

I ended up playing over 30 minutes a game (for seven games), and got to run the point guard position that I should be playing in the future. I had some good teammates looking out for me and trying to help me succeed. It was a lot of pressure, but I had to stay confident and in the right frame of mind. I kept telling myself that I needed to take advantage of the opportunity, go hard and go back to what I know I can do. I talked to my family a lot during that time, and also to my agent. He kept telling me that my time would come and to take advantage of the opportunity to get in shape and get up and down the floor.

During one of the Legends home games, Coach Carlisle came out to Frisco on a Mavs day off to watch me play. That meant a lot to me because I knew they cared about wanting me to grow and develop as a player. Seeing Coach there made me play even harder and focus even more.

The D-League was a good experience for me, but it was definitely different than the NBA. The first couple days I drove about 30 minutes back and forth from Dallas to Frisco. Then I decided to stay in a hotel with some other players from the Legends team so I didn’t have to drive that much. In the NBA, you fly on a charter plane. In the D-League, you fly commercial and take a lot of buses.

It was a very humbling experience and made me realize how fortunate I am to be in the NBA.

Christmas Break

It was a great thing when the Legends coach said we had time off for a few days during Christmas. I caught the first plane to home to Oakland to spend Christmas with my family. We opened a couple presents on Christmas Eve; they were very happy to have me there. And it was very beneficial for me to have fun with my family for a couple days.

I hope you are having a great start to the year! Find out how things are going for me on Twitter @J1Flight and on Instagram at J1Flight.

Jared Cunningham, a 6-foot-4 guard from Oregon State, was the 24th pick in the 2012 NBA Draft, selected by the Cleveland Cavaliers. The Cavs later traded him to the Dallas Mavericks.

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Animated Stick Figures Recreate Some Of Basketball’s Most Iconic Moments

July 12, 2012  ·  12:04PM

by Micah Hart

Reason #1,723,486 to love the Internet: some one started a thread on InsideHoops.com’s message boards with animated gifs featuring some of the NBA’s greatest moments, recreated by stick figures.

I don’t know who did this, or why, but that’s the beauty of the web. I don’t have to know, all I have to do is sit back and enjoy, and contemplate how awesome/terrifying it is that I can immediately pick out most of the plays being referenced here. By all means help yourself to that thread to peruse the full assortment, but here are a few of my favorites to whet your whistle:

Have we really considered what a post-Kobe Bryant NBA is going to look like? I knew I recognized this play from somewhere, but was having a difficult time nailing down the specific game and opponent. So I did what any good investigative journalist would do, I hit up YouTube. Well guess what, Kobe’s scored on layups like this roughly a billion times. I mean, I know Kobe is an all-timer, but sometimes it takes watching an 11-minute highlight reel of JUST HIS LAYUPS to make you remember how special he truly is. I finally found the play, by the way, it was against the Spurs and it’s at about the 6:45 mark.

Pretty obvious which this is. All I have to say is, whoever created this, you get the shot but not the resulting jump and fist pump?

For my money, still the greatest dunk of all time.

Ohhh, don’t do it to him AI!

Hakeem says he wants to work with Serge Ibaka this summer. Serge, you got a long ways to go before you can pull this off.

And finally:

If anyone has the know how to pull these off, by all means send them over and we’ll do more galleries. It’s the offseason, we have plenty of time to kill.

[Classic Moments in NBA recreated in stickman gif, Inside Hoops]

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Posted in Fun with photoshop, Never gets old / Comments (7) /

Kevin Durant, how do you rate on the Horry Scale?

December 29, 2011  ·  11:32PM

by Micah Hart

Well now, that didn’t take long. I was wondering how far into the 2011-12 season we’d get before someone got nice with the game-winner, and Kevin Durant decided five days was long enough. Works for me! Two straight years on the Horry Scale for KD, and I imagine many more to come.

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 Clippers-Nets game), and celebration, and give it an overall grade on a scale of 1-5 Robert Horrys.

Let’s get this show on the road for the year and see how Kevin Durant rates:

Difficulty

For mere mortals, that’s a tough shot. For Durantula, the 30-foot-fading-turnaround is almost a layup at this point. Still, with only 1.4 seconds to release, and three Dallas defenders rushing at him (well, two Dallas defenders — what you watchin’ there Dirk?), that’s a pretty impressive make.

Game Situation

Vince Carter was nearly the hero tonight, as his 3-pointer gave the Mavericks the lead with under two ticks remaining. As soon as his shot went through, I checked to see how much time was left, saw 1.4, and said to myself, oooh, that’s a little too much clock for the Thunder. Not like VC could help it, but just sayin’.

Importance

It is early in the season, but I’m going to give this one pretty high marks for import. For starters, the Mavericks are the defending champs, and knocked the Thunder out of the postseason in the Western Conference Finals, so that’s a nice little payback shot for OKC. It’s no ring, but it’s a start. Secondly, in a season with only 66 games, every win counts a little bit more — and every loss you can give a potential playoff rival helps as well. The Thunder nearly gave this game away and allowed the Mavs, who had been blown out two straight games to start the season, to find a little rejuvenation. Instead, KD is a killer, and all you’ll see in the standings tomorrow is a 0 in the loss column for the team from Oklahoma.

Celebration

The Thunder have terrific fans, so its no surprise to see them going hog wild. But what makes the celebration great to me is Royal Ivey, Durant’s fellow Texas alum (Hook ‘em!), coming in at the end in a suit to serve as hype man for his incredible teammate.

Grade

4 Horrys. I’ve already watched this replay about 25 times, and I could watch it 25 more. The ball barely touches the net! Sometimes I give Durant a little grief for settling for long jump shots in these scenarios when he might get something a little easier near the basket, but tonight no such option was available. Didn’t seem to bother him too much, did it? Either way, I’m just glad to have the Horry Scale back.

What do you think?

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Posted in Hey man nice shot, The Horry scale / Comments (30) /

Bragging Rights Bracket: No. 2 North Carolina vs. No. 3 Syracuse

March 23, 2011  ·  2:00PM



by Micah Hart

For the complete Bragging Rights rules and to vote for other matchups, click here. We now continue in the East region, with No. 2 seed UNC taking on The Cuse.

VS

North Carolina Tar Heels

Starters (all stats per 48 minutes):

Marvin Williams, Hawks: 16.9 points, 8.2 rebounds, 2.3 assists, 0.6 blocks, 1.0 steals
Raymond Felton, Nuggets: 20.5 points, 4.8 rebounds, 11.2 assists, 0.2 blocks, 2.2 steals
Tyler Hansbrough, Pacers: 24.4 points, 11.8 rebounds, 1.1 assists, 0.5 blocks, 1.3 steals
Vince Carter, Suns: 23.6 points, 6.6 rebounds, 3.5 assists, 0.4 blocks, 1.5 steals
Ty Lawson, Nuggets: 20.9 points, 4.7 rebounds, 8.5 assists, 0.1 blocks, 2.0 steals

Missed the cut: Ed Davis, Raptors; Wayne Ellington, Timberwolves; Brendan Haywood, Mavericks; Antawn Jamison, Cavaliers (injured); Brandan Wright, Nets

Team synopsis: With Jamison hurt, Hansbrough rides his recent hot streak into the starting lineup for the Tar Heels, which is a good thing for UNC because this team lacks an inside presence otherwise. Lawson and Felton take turns at the point in Denver, but share the backcourt here. Vinsanity may not be the force of nature he once was, but North Carolina will still need him to be the go-to scorer on this team.

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Introducing the Bragging Rights Bracket

March 17, 2011  ·  10:14AM

by Micah Hart

Here’s a popular conversation around this time of year:

Sports Fan A: Oh man, imagine how good School A would be if Player X had just stayed one more year. They might have won the NCAA Tournament!

Sports Fan B: Tell me about it. And look how good School B could have been this year. Player Y and Player Z would both be seniors!

If you watched the two amazing basketball documentaries last weekend — ESPN’s “Fab Five” and HBO’s “Runnin’ Rebels” — you know what I’m talking about.

Nowadays, Chris Webber would never have called his infamous timeout in the NCAA title game because he’d almost certainly have left after his freshman year — as would have Jalen Rose and Juwan Howard. Larry Johnson, Greg Anthony and Stacey Augmon — all of whom were first-round picks in 1991 — returned to UNLV after winning the 1990 national championship. The only guys who have done that recently were Florida’s ’04s of Corey Brewer, Al Horford, Joakim Noah and Taurean Green — and even then, everyone knew they were the exception.

While we’ll never know if Syracuse could have repeated as national champs in 2004 had Carmelo Anthony stayed, or what kind of ridiculous stats Kevin Durant might have put up had he stayed four years at Texas, we do know they became stars in the NBA.

Which leads us to a new series we will be running on All Ball over the course of the next few weeks:

Bragging Rights: The Ultimate Battle for School Pride

The premise is simple:

We want to know which school has the best NBA players. Over the next few weeks, we will pit every school with at least five players currently on active NBA rosters against each other in a hypothetical, March Madness-style, single-elimination bracket.

We’ve seeded the teams (see below), and we’ll roll out a few games each week. You vote for the winners.

We’ll start this afternoon with Stanford vs. LSU.

Why spend your time wondering how good your favorite college team could have been when your favorite players are still in action today? Once a Dukie, always a Dukie, right?

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