Tag: coach

Oberto’s hand injury could keep him out of FIBA Americas tourney

Former Spurs center Fabricio Oberto’s chances of playing for Argentina in the upcoming FIBA Americas tournament will hinge on a quick recovery from a recent hand injury.

Oberto sustained  a fibrillar rupture on his left adductor muscle, a long muscle buried deep in the hand that adducts to the thumb, last week. After the injury, doctors plan to limit Oberto’s practice for about two weeks.

But Argentina coach Julio Lamas told FIBA.com that he for use in the FIBA tournament next month. 

“I hope I can count on him for the tournament,” said Lamas, who plans keep Oberto on the 12-man roster even if he can’t play in early games of the tournament.  “I’m not sure he will make it, though.”

Oberto, 36, returned to his hometown of Cordoba, Argentina, for recovery before returning to the team earlier this week.

The Argentina team will play an exhibition Thursday night in Buenos Aires against Venezuela before Lamas trims the roster to 12 players.

Oberto, a member of the Spurs 2007 NBA championship team, was an important member of the Argentina team that claimed the gold medal in the 2004 Olympics in Athens. And his absence from his current team would be a big loss, according to teammate Manu Ginobili.

“We need him,” Ginobili told FIBA.com.

But teammate Leonardo Gutiérrez expects Oberto to contribute to the team.
 
“Oberto will be part of the team,” Gutiérrez said. “He’s a key player and he has to be there even if he plays five, 10 or 15 minutes.”

A heart ailment cut short Oberto’s NBA career after he announced his retirement after five games with the Portland Trailblazers last season. He played with the Spurs from 2005-09.

Oberto worked hard to get back into playing shape and apparently can still help the Argentinian team. It would be a shame not to see him compete at the FIBA tournament because of his recent nagging injury.

Miss ‘Coach B?’ Check out Bonner’s latest video wackiness

Lockout be damned, “Coach B” is at it again.

That’s Matt Bonner, of course, aka Coach B, wacky purveyor of basketball tips and life lessons.

Bonner’s latest video efforts center around promos for a benefit basketball game in Toronto, scheduled for Sept. 10. Bonner is recruiting teams to play in the event. The idea is to raise money for Athletes for Africa and the St. Albans Boys and Girls Clubs.

Cost to enter a team is $500, but teams are being encouraged to raise additional money. The payoff: The top money-raising teams get the right to draft some celebrity players. These include Bonner and Nick Collison, of the Thunder. The real draw, though, is Arcade Fire front man Win Butler, who is both very tall and a bona fide indie rock star. He also happens to count Bonner a good friend.

Here’s a link to a video promoting the event that features Bonner on the art of trash talking.

The man in the middle

With little else going on in the NBA due to this lockout business, the folks at Hoopsworld are in the profiling the league’s various owners.

You know, the guys at least partially responsible for the ongoing labor impasse.

The website’s latest offering, on the owners of the Southwest Division, provides another reminder of Spurs chairman Peter Holt’s prominent place at the heart of the lockout.

As head of the league’s labor committee, Holt will have a big say in whatever deal is ultimately worked out with the players — and by extension how long this stalemate lasts.

Unlike one of his, ahem, , Holt prefers to keep a low public profile. We must use our imaginations to project his approach to the boardroom.

Having purchased the Spurs along with a group of 21 investors in 1993, and claiming a majority share in 1996, Holt is one of the league’s more tenured owners. He’s also one of the most widely respected.

“He runs the tractor business,” Spurs coach Gregg Popovich once said of his owner, “and we run the basketball.”

Though it could be surmised Holt would support a new collective bargaining agreement favorable to small-market teams — since he owns one — the Spurs chairman is generally considered to be one of the more reasonable voices at the labor negotiating table.

There is hope, when talks resume, Holt might act as a buffer against a hardline faction of small-market owners, believed to include Phoenix’s Robert Sarver and Cleveland’s Dan Gilbert among others, bent on bleeding concessions out of the players’ union at any cost.

All of this will play out behind closed doors in the coming weeks and, most likely, months. The league office has prohibited its rank and file from making public comments on the lockout, by threat of seven-figure fine.

Though Holt is a respected voice with a powerful place within the NBA’s ownership ranks, he doesn’t have the power to end the lockout on his own. In a manner of speaking, however, the path toward ending the league’s latest labor stoppage runs through San Antonio.

Through the guy who runs the tractor business.