Author: katadmin

Nowitzki chastises Heat stars’ antics

By Jonathan Feigen
jonathan.feigen@chron.com

MIAMI — Dwyane Wade laughed and explained that he and LeBron James were merely toying with the media.

They were not caught on camera seeming to mock Dirk Nowitzki and the fever he battled in Game 4 by feigning illness. They were setting up the media to blow another Heat story out of proportion.

Nowitzki was not amused.

“I just thought it was a little childish, a little ignorant,” Nowitzki said. “I’ve been in this league for 13 years. I’ve never faked an injury or an illness before. It’s over to me. It’s not going to add anything extra to me. This is the NBA Finals. If you need an extra motivation, you have a problem.

“We’re one win away from my dream, what I’ve worked on for half of my life. This is really all I’m worried about. This is all I’m focusing on.”

That was enough, however, to spark another Heat wave of scrutiny on James and Wade. Getting called “childish” and “ignorant” was just the latest accusation in an unceasing run since they joined forces 11 months ago. But for James, who said the improv was not an issue or worth discussing, there are greater concerns heading into tonight’s Game 6.

After his offensive no show in Game 4 and late-game disappearance in Game 5, a team that celebrated last July as if it won a championship trails the Mavericks 3-2 with James facing different sorts of questions.

In five Finals games, he has just 11 fourth-quarter points — just two in the fourth of the Mavs’ wins in Games 4 and 5. He has yet to score a point when the teams have been separated by five or fewer points in the final five minutes. Nowitzki has 26 in those situations.

Though James has generally said he was playing well and wisely deferring to Wade’s hot hand, he also referred to his “absence offensively.”

“I’ve seen myself being less aggressive at times,” James said. “(Tonight) is another opportunity for me to make an imprint on this series in the fourth quarter and help our team win.”

This is not, however, entirely new.

James’ scoring has decreased, sometimes dramatically, at the end of his playoff runs in five of his six postseasons. This season, he averaged 25.3 points per game in the first three rounds of the playoffs, but just 17.2 in the Finals.

“He will be more aggressive, and we will work to get him aggressive,” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said. “The important thing that he needs from us is to remind him he doesn’t have to play a game that everybody else is expecting. He does not have to answer to other people’s opinions or the critics or the expectations, whatever the storylines may be. He has to help us win.”

Before he became the player most responsible for the Heat’s predicament this season, Nowitzki might best relate to James’ fate, having heard criticism for not playing well enough despite playing well.

“Sometimes when you don’t win, criticism comes with it,” Nowitzki said. “That’s just a part of the game if you’re the star or the face of the franchise. If you win, it’s great for you, and everybody looks at you. And if you lose, you’re going to get hammered. It’s just part of the business. I think we understand that. We’ve been around long enough.

“I got hammered the last 13 years, basically. So hopefully this year I can make the hammering go away for one year.”

James insisted that he has ignored the outside critics.

“Of course, I get on myself,” he said. “I’m hard on myself about wanting to play well, because I feel like that’s what I need to do for my teammates. But to answer questions about what’s written about me or anything like that, I don’t really feed into it. It’s going to be written no matter what, no matter if I play well or not.

“I had a triple-double (17 points, 10 rebounds, 10 assists) last game. I had a bad game in a lot of people’s eyes. I understand that. That’s just the situation I’m in. That’s the bowl I’m in right now.”

And that has been James’ predictament long before he and Wade feigned sniffles in Dallas.

Ginobili ready to rise from the ashes

By Mike Monroe
mikemonroe@express-news.net

These are dark days for Manu Ginobili.

A plume of volcanic ash has descended on most of Argentina since the June 4 eruption of the Puyehue volcano in neighboring Chile, darkening the winter skies, choking cattle in the Pampas and disrupting air travel.

The atmosphere has improved lately in Bahia Blanca, Ginobili’s home city, and the Spurs guard has begun a training regimen he expects will have him physically ready for the FIBA Americas tournament scheduled to begin Aug. 30 in Mar del Plata, Argentina.

Ginobili has been in Bahia Blanca for a few weeks, carefully rehabbing the right elbow he injured in the final game of the Spurs’ regular season. This week, he began weight training; soon he will add running drills and take his first shots on a basketball court since April 29, when the Spurs were eliminated from their first-round playoff series against Memphis.

The physical pain from the sprained right elbow and tiny bone fracture, suffered on April 13, is nearly gone.

“The last time I did the MRI (in mid-May), they told me the bone edema that I had was controlling itself but still needed a little time,” Ginobili said. “The little fracture is almost healed, but I needed more time to get completely healed.

“I am not playing basketball now, but lifting carefully. Running, well, I don’t need my elbow to run. Soon, I will start shooting free throws … and see how it goes.”

Emotional pain from the Spurs’ first-round exit is another story. After a season that produced 61 victories and great postseason expectations, the early elimination sapped Ginobili’s interest in the remaining games.

Time spent watching the NBA Finals?

“None, zero,” he said. “I simply couldn’t take it. I would go online the day after to see what happened, but it hurt too much to watch the games.”

Though he stressed that the Grizzlies eliminated the Spurs “really fair and square,” he contends the Spurs were nonetheless title-worthy.

“I truly believe … if we could have beat them, and been healthy, we could have made it,” he said. “I don’t think we were that much less than OKC or the Lakers or Mavs or Heat. I think we had a shot. Memphis played really well and aggressively and just beat us.”

More importantly, Ginobili is convinced the Spurs remain a future NBA title contender.

“It’s hard to say when a team has its last shot,” he said. “Of course, the Bulls lost Michael Jordan and couldn’t make another run. But we’ve got the same core of players, and nothing changed dramatically, so why not? I believe in our players and our organization, so I believe we do have another shot.”

For now, Ginobili’s focus is the FIBA Americas tournament, where Argentina must finish first or second to qualify for the 2012 Olympics.

A key member of Argentina’s 2004 Olympic gold-medal squad, Ginobili eagerly has awaited the tournament from the moment he learned it would be contested in his home country.

“It is very, very important for me,” he said. “Not only because it gives me the opportunity to play in my last Olympic Games, but also the first time we have played in Argentina in a decade. After all we have accomplished, having the opportunity to play in front of our fans and our people is very important. It is going to be fun. It is just a short time, just nine games.”

Insurance issues must be resolved before Ginobili and other NBA players don their national team uniforms, with a looming lockout of NBA players adding to the confusion.

Would Ginobili play for Argentina, even if his contract weren’t insured against injury?

“That is a really tough decision to make if we arrived at that point,” he said. “We will have to dig down with teammates and friends and make a decision, a really difficult one, and I don’t think that many players are going to be able to play if we don’t find an option for insurance.

“I’m really hoping that the NBPA (players’ union) finds a good, solid insurance company; finds the money that is needed, and we can all think about playing.”

Like many NBA players, Ginobili anticipates a lockout will cost games next season, but he has no plans to play overseas unless the entire season is eliminated.

“If the lockout goes to January and the season is canceled, I might consider it,” he said. “If not, no I wouldn’t.”

An All-NBA choice last season, at age 34, Ginobili knows his NBA playing days are limited but has yet to consider his career’s conclusion.

“I really don’t know,” he said. “Of course, anybody can tell that I played very good last season, especially at the beginning, but I don’t know how I will feel next season or the next few years.

“Everybody knows I don’t have the same legs I once did, but I try to be decisive for my team, be a leader and provide ways for my team to win. I think I can do it for a few years more, but it depends on how I feel physically and mentally.

“If I am as motivated as I’ve ever been, I will keep going, but if not, I will say thanks to everybody and keep going on with my life.”

At the moment, he expects nothing less than a rise from the ashes.

Wade admits Heat simply ‘let one go’

By TIM REYNOLDS
Associated Press

DALLAS — After two days of intense film study and painstaking analysis of the final 14 possessions in their end-of-game collapse in Game 2 of the NBA Finals, the Miami Heat finally came up with the reason why.

It wasn’t a highly technical explanation.

“We let one go,” Dwyane Wade said.

And entering Game 3, the Heat will try to let Game 2 go again. The way Miami sees it, carrying over the stigma of that loss — one of the worst late-game collapses in Finals history — would only doom them again tonight when the scene shifts to steamy Dallas for the first of three games on the Mavericks’ home floor.

Dallas rallied from 15 points down in the final seven minutes to beat Miami in Game 2, outscoring the Heat 22-5 to finish the game and knot the series. Thanks to that win, Mavs fans still may see another NBA title celebration, only this time, by the Western Conference champions and not a Heat team that hoisted a trophy at Dallas after the 2006 finals.

“In the playoffs, it’s a win or a loss. However it comes by, it’s a win or a loss,” Heat forward LeBron James said. “We’ve moved on from Game 2, seen the mistakes we’ve made. Seen some of the great things we’ve done as well. It’s a win or loss. The series is tied 1-1. We never get too high or too low in the series. We haven’t gotten too high or low in the regular season as well.”

Game 3 is crucial for so many obvious reasons, like the Heat wanting not to deal with another stumble and the Mavericks wanting to keep momentum rolling and retain home-court advantage. Statistically, there’s proof that it’s a Texas-sized swing game as well.

Since the NBA went to the 2-3-2 format for the finals, teams have now split the first two games 12 times. In the previous 11, the winner of Game 3 has always gone on to win the championship.

Big whoop, both teams said in response to that one.

“We just can’t let up. We’re not good enough to just relax,” said forward Dirk Nowitzki, who led Dallas’ late-game charge in Game 2 at Miami. “We need to play with an edge at all times in every game. So hopefully (tonight), with the crowd behind us, we’re going to have a great game. Just looking at this one game.”

Heat coach Erik Spoelstra was more succinct.

“I think both teams have bucked a lot of those numbers and odds up to this point already,” Spoelstra said. “We’re a non-traditional team.”

Maybe that’s one of the reasons why the Heat were so loose Saturday.

Players arrived at the arena around noon, most with headphones on as they walked off the bus, bobbing heads in time with the music and nodding to people as they walked by. James and Wade were chatting and laughing, a few players checked out the turf that would host an Arena Football League game later Saturday night and some stretched their arms to tap the goalposts as they walked across the floor where a basketball court will be tonight.

The mood couldn’t have been more different from when they walked off the floor in Miami on Thursday, stunned by what just happened.

“We’re coming home, but we know that’s no guarantee of anything,” Mavericks coach Rick Carlisle said. “We’ve lost at home this year in the playoffs. Now Miami has as well. The venue has significance, but it never guarantees anyone anything. .?.?. The mistake that we’re not going to make is feel like coming home is going to be something that helps get us over the hump. It’s not going to be like that. Both these teams are too good of road teams.”

Including the playoffs, the Mavericks have won 34 road games this season, tops in the NBA. Miami ranks second with 32.

The Heat also haven’t lost consecutive games since early March, winning after all six of their most recent losses by an average of 11.7 points. And in their last 24 games away from home, they’re 17-7.

All good signs for Miami now, given that if it doesn’t win one of the next three in Dallas, the season will end here.

“We’ve been a pretty resilient bunch all year,” Heat forward Udonis Haslem said. “We’ve bounced back every time we’ve been knocked down. I’m expecting the same thing with this situation.”

Dallas has won 12 of the last 14 meetings at home, six of those coming in single-digit games.