A survey of the players and teams making moves in last night's NBA action.
1. Ricky Rubio
Chris Ryan: This is not the most wonderful time of the year. And it shows. Most of the NBA stories you're going to be reading during the last few weeks of the season will concern knee drains, tanking, tightening up defense, shortening the rotation, getting into a postseason mind-set ... you know, "finding out who we really are" kind of stuff. It gets a little LOL-free around here. So when you see something like Ricky Rubio's performance against the Spurs last night, you have to savor the flavor because you know that tomorrow night (or the next night, or the next night), it's going to be you, Frank Vogel, and the harsh realities of this world.
By Zach Lowe at
Garrett W. Ellwood/NBAE/Getty Images
It has been a rough year for Kevin Love and the Timberwolves in basketball terms. Love broke his right hand twice, first doing knuckle push-ups, and then during a game shortly after returning. Love wasn’t himself in those 18 games, shooting just 35 percent, and the Wolves never really had a chance to compete for a playoff spot as injuries claimed just about every rotation player at some point.
But Love’s off-court life has gone well. The NBA awarded him its Community Assist award in December, an honor that comes with $10,000 to the charity of Love’s choice. He selected St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, which cares for pediatric cancer patients around the country and seeks a cure. Cancer has claimed a couple members of Love’s extended family, and that’s in part why he's involved year-round with St. Jude and formed his Spreadlove campaign to raise awareness for breast cancer. Love played a large part in the NBA’s St. Jude Week at the end of February, and he chatted with Grantland in an extensive one-on-one about his charity work, the Wolves’ lost season, the future of the franchise, and Nikola Pekovic’s “aura.”
By Chris Ryan at
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A survey of the players and teams making moves in last night's NBA action.
1. Chris Paul
Because it was a light night of action, and it's a long day of piping-hot unique takes here on the Triangle, I'm not going to weigh you down with a ton of insight. I'm just going to rank players and then attach an appropriate Miami Heat "Harlem Shake" .GIF, because that's exactly what Thomas Jefferson was thinking about when he said, "Sure, I'll do it. As long as I get to dress up like Super Mario."
By Grantland Staff at
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So much amazing is happening, and the Shootaround crew is here to help you keep track of it all. You'll find takes on moments you might've missed from the previous night, along with ones you will remember forever.
Savvy
The Heat rolled in Brooklyn last night, thanks mostly to a 36-14 third quarter and another 24-9-7 night from the best player in the league. It was during that third quarter, though, that Miami’s other superstar got me thinking, and he did it with something he’s done so many times before:
By Grantland Staff at
Andrew D. Bernstein/NBAE via Getty Images
So much amazing is happening, and the Shootaround crew is here to help you keep track of it all. You'll find takes on moments you might've missed from the previous night, along with ones you will remember forever.
A Tale of Two Cities
(GIFs by HeyBelinda)
Earlier this week, one of our copy editors asked me my thoughts on the idea of the Clippers replacing the Lakers as Los Angeles's basketball team. I told him that I was ignoring it. He answered that if he wasn't sure that I was a Lakers fan before, he sure was now.
But after last night's games, I think it's finally time I turned to face the music and the emergence of this "new" Lob City team.
With nine minutes left in the fourth quarter of the Timberwolves’ November 16 loss to the Warriors, a middle-aged couple descended from the stands at the Target Center, ostensibly on their way out. After bypassing the exits, they eventually reached court level and paused behind the Timberwolves’ bench, where Ricky Rubio was perched in a black folding chair. Inches away, but just out of Rubio’s line of vision, the woman posed while her companion snapped a photo.
A security guard stopped them shortly after, stepping in just as the line between excited fans and crazed invaders of personal space was crossed. The two laughed, and turned back into the stands. Turns out, it hadn’t been a stop on their way out. This was a short Ricky pilgrimage, a chance to get close to the point-guard-cum-pop-idol who’s risen to a mythical status among fans in Minnesota over the past eight months.
When Rubio tore his ACL March 9 and the Timberwolves’ charmed season fell apart, the Spaniard's cult following grew larger than ever before. Even noted curmudgeon Rick Adelman admitted he hadn’t realized Rubio’s full import to the team, both on the court and off. The locker room was quieter, practices became lifeless, and a team that had been convinced it was only getting better was crippled by the belief that it couldn't do so without Ricky. Now, just eight months after surgery, and with Minnesota sitting at 8-8, Rubio’s return looms, and with it, the hope that a team that’s managed to stay afloat without him will leap forward with him. That’s a lot for a 22-year-old who’s played a grand total of 41 NBA games and was falling off last season even before his injury.
The Minnesota Timberwolves, with Kevin Love and Ricky Rubio healthy, projected as a clear playoff team — and one that might have surprised folks by pushing something like 50 or even 55 wins. They were a .500 team when healthy last season, and they upgraded one of the two or three worst wing rotations in the league with Chase Budinger, Alexey Shved, Brandon Roy, and the jack-of-all-trades game of Andrei Kirilenko. Toss in some internal improvement and a full season of Nikola Pekovic producing during minutes in which Darko Milicic generally crapped the bed, and the Wolves looked like a playoff lock.
Alexey Shved has shown during these Olympics that he is an interesting prospect, one who should make the Timberwolves even more exciting to watch. Throughout the men's basketball competition, we've seen the good Shved — a 16-point, 13-assist game against Great Britain — and the bad — getting benched in the fourth quarter of Russia's game against Australia for talking during a timeout. Shved, who is known a little too well for his off-the-court antics, is starting to make a name for himself in the Olympics with his play, especially with his shooting. This has led many Timberwolves fans to ask: What can he do for us next year?
The Timberwolves, especially before Ricky Rubio went down with a season-ending knee injury, were one of the most exciting and entertaining young teams in the NBA. Assuming the Spanish maestro comes back next season to join the double-double machine that is Kevin Love, the walking Direwolf that is Nik Pekovic, the high-flying antics of Anthony Randolph and Derrick Williams and, of course, Michael Beasley (who doesn't know what his own leg feels like), you could safely say that Timberwolves season tickets pretty much sell themselves.
Joakim Noah: The bad news: Making $60 million through 2016 …. and we have no idea if the Bulls can survive offensively playing Noah in crunch time in June. The good news: He's played better after a botched attempt to sabotage his own trade value in the Dwight Howard talks. The great news: It's really fun to Photoshop his hair on other NBA players. As we're going to prove in Part 2 of this column.
Here's the part where we prove it. Below is our collection of Photoshopped NBA players. Feel free to leave your own suggestions for Joakim Noah Hair Pieces (SEE WHAT I DID THERE?) in the comments.
This morning, Grantland investigative journalist Andy Greenwald spotted Ricky Rubio in an L.A. Starbucks. Rubio was eating a fruit salad alone, Greenwald reports. Riveting stuff. Anyway, because apparently, this is what we do now, intrepid Grantland stalker Chris Ryan then stole Rubio's Starbucks cup. (But is it really stealing if it was trash? This is probably a debate for another time.)
As of press time, the whereabouts of Rubio's fruit salad are unknown.
So, what's up, Ricky Rubio! Is it weird that we took a picture of your old Starbucks cup? Does anyone else want this thing? Because I feel kind of dumb keeping it on my desk, but it's MEMORABILIA now. Should we put this on eBay? Also, sorry to my mom. I now regret not changing my diet of Excedrin and Chex Mix. I'll get on that next week.
The most entertaining bad team and the most nerve-wracking good one to do battle. Ricky Rubio brings his ready-for-the-silver-screen game to Hollywood. Chris Paul is still listed as day-to-day. Unless you have a high-stakes craps game, or have recently been involved in a helmet-to-helmet hit with James Harrison, you're watching Dos Lobos take on Lob City. TGIF.
