Category: In the News

Mike Monroe: It’s business as usual with Howard to Lakers

Friday couldn’t have been any worse for Spurs fans unless Manu Ginobili had blown out both knees in Argentina’s Olympic semifinal loss to Team USA.

The team they most love to hate landed the NBA’s most dominant big man.

By adding Dwight Howard to a starting lineup that already includes Kobe Bryant, Steve Nash and Pau Gasol, the Lakers zoomed past the Spurs and Thunder to become the best team in the Western Conference.

Andrew Bynum may well have been the best center in the West last season, but he is both injury-prone and churlish. He missed only six out of 66 games last season, but in the previous four seasons he played in only 204 out of a possible 328 games.

In contrast, Howard is a veritable iron man. He missed only seven games in his first seven seasons before missing 12 last season.

Indeed, he had back surgery in April to repair a herniated disk and may not be at full strength when training camp begins in October, but hoping for a slow recovery is a measure of how impactful the deal was.

“Who knows how injured he is,” said one NBA general manager. “He has a back injury. There’s always risk even if you are perceived to win the trade.”

Can Howard really be a major upgrade over a player who scored 16 points and grabbed 30 rebounds when the Lakers handed the Spurs one of their two losses in 17 games in April?

“Bynum is a very good player,” said a Western Conference GM. “He just doesn’t have the explosive qualities Howard has.

“Clearly, the Lakers have been able to get the most physically dominant big man in the league. They had that in Shaq and now it seems as though they have the next legacy and transfer of power.”

The scariest part of the deal for the rest of the West?

Howard will have to prove himself worthy of his new team and teammates. That means a more serious approach — less clowning.

He may call himself Superman, but Howard won’t be the alpha dog on the Lakers. Bryant runs that team, and he’s already made it clear Howard must wait his turn before calling himself “the man” in L.A.

Remember what happened to the last Lakers All-NBA center who called himself Superman and clashed with Bryant?

Shaquille O’Neal had been an MVP and helped the Lakers win three championships, but Bryant saw to it he was traded away.

Howard’s Magic teammates wouldn’t stand up to him when he was being a diva in Orlando. Bryant won’t go along with that, and neither will Nash. Between them, they own three MVP trophies. Howard will have no choice but to fall in line, and a more focused Howard should frighten the entire league.

“Let’s be honest,” said another West GM. “Dwight hasn’t done anything in Orlando. Of course, (Pau) Gasol hadn’t done anything in Memphis when he was traded to L.A. You think wearing that purple and gold uniform made him feel more like a winner?”

Denver also became a tougher stop for every team in the West with Friday’s trade, but that hardly matters to franchises like the Spurs and Thunder that measure success by whether or not they are playing in June.

The Western Conference power structure starts at the top again with the Lakers and threatens what many of us believed had the makings of a new NBA dynasty in Miami.

Don’t doubt for a nanosecond that commissioner David Stern hasn’t already begun to consider the ratings bonanza a Lakers-Heat NBA Finals could produce next June. For all his talk about structuring a collective bargaining agreement that makes it possible for small-market teams to compete with mega markets like New York and L.A., Stern knows the benefits of having his best teams in his glamour markets.

Didn’t he famously declare some years ago that his ideal Finals would be Lakers against Lakers?

mikemonroe@express-news.net

Twitter: @Monroe_SA

Mike Monroe: It’s business as usual with Howard to Lakers

Friday couldn’t have been any worse for Spurs fans unless Manu Ginobili had blown out both knees in Argentina’s Olympic semifinal loss to Team USA.

The team they most love to hate landed the NBA’s most dominant big man.

By adding Dwight Howard to a starting lineup that already includes Kobe Bryant, Steve Nash and Pau Gasol, the Lakers zoomed past the Spurs and Thunder to become the best team in the Western Conference.

Andrew Bynum may well have been the best center in the West last season, but he is both injury-prone and churlish. He missed only six out of 66 games last season, but in the previous four seasons he played in only 204 out of a possible 328 games.

In contrast, Howard is a veritable iron man. He missed only seven games in his first seven seasons before missing 12 last season.

Indeed, he had back surgery in April to repair a herniated disk and may not be at full strength when training camp begins in October, but hoping for a slow recovery is a measure of how impactful the deal was.

“Who knows how injured he is,” said one NBA general manager. “He has a back injury. There’s always risk even if you are perceived to win the trade.”

Can Howard really be a major upgrade over a player who scored 16 points and grabbed 30 rebounds when the Lakers handed the Spurs one of their two losses in 17 games in April?

“Bynum is a very good player,” said a Western Conference GM. “He just doesn’t have the explosive qualities Howard has.

“Clearly, the Lakers have been able to get the most physically dominant big man in the league. They had that in Shaq and now it seems as though they have the next legacy and transfer of power.”

The scariest part of the deal for the rest of the West?

Howard will have to prove himself worthy of his new team and teammates. That means a more serious approach — less clowning.

He may call himself Superman, but Howard won’t be the alpha dog on the Lakers. Bryant runs that team, and he’s already made it clear Howard must wait his turn before calling himself “the man” in L.A.

Remember what happened to the last Lakers All-NBA center who called himself Superman and clashed with Bryant?

Shaquille O’Neal had been an MVP and helped the Lakers win three championships, but Bryant saw to it he was traded away.

Howard’s Magic teammates wouldn’t stand up to him when he was being a diva in Orlando. Bryant won’t go along with that, and neither will Nash. Between them, they own three MVP trophies. Howard will have no choice but to fall in line, and a more focused Howard should frighten the entire league.

“Let’s be honest,” said another West GM. “Dwight hasn’t done anything in Orlando. Of course, (Pau) Gasol hadn’t done anything in Memphis when he was traded to L.A. You think wearing that purple and gold uniform made him feel more like a winner?”

Denver also became a tougher stop for every team in the West with Friday’s trade, but that hardly matters to franchises like the Spurs and Thunder that measure success by whether or not they are playing in June.

The Western Conference power structure starts at the top again with the Lakers and threatens what many of us believed had the makings of a new NBA dynasty in Miami.

Don’t doubt for a nanosecond that commissioner David Stern hasn’t already begun to consider the ratings bonanza a Lakers-Heat NBA Finals could produce next June. For all his talk about structuring a collective bargaining agreement that makes it possible for small-market teams to compete with mega markets like New York and L.A., Stern knows the benefits of having his best teams in his glamour markets.

Didn’t he famously declare some years ago that his ideal Finals would be Lakers against Lakers?

mikemonroe@express-news.net

Twitter: @Monroe_SA

Buck Harvey: Bronzed: Ginobili, U.S. owe each other

LONDON — Manu Ginobili said he and his teammates know they aren’t as good as the United States. “We know our limitations,” he said, and Luis Scola took that further.

“You don’t need to be smart to know that,” he said, smiling.

That’s why they care about Sunday’s bronze-medal game as much as the Americans will care about their gold one.

“If bronze is the highest we can aim,” said Ginobili, “that’s our game.”

But that’s also why Ginobili and Scola owe so much to the U.S. team that went to Athens in 2004. Maybe Argentina couldn’t have won its groundbreaking gold medal then, no matter how much magic Ginobili had.

Unless the Americans had become as careless as they did.

It’s an NBA world at Olympic basketball, and that was clear after Friday’s game. Kobe Bryant talked for maybe 15 minutes, and the Olympics barely came up. Everyone wanted to know what he thought about the Dwight Howard trade.

Ginobili was asked, too, and he said this: “I’m so happy it happened finally. It’s been such a long soap, how do you say, soap opera.”

He was kidding, of course. Ginobili said he didn’t know the details yet, but he understood the basics.

“I know Dwight got to L.A. and (Pau) Gasol stayed,” he said. “That makes them even tougher. So we will go play them as hard as we always have and try to beat them regardless.”

It’s a parallel to how he’s often seen his national team. The Argentines never had the best talent. But if they played together, and kept at it, wasn’t anything possible?

That’s what happened in 2002 at the World Championships in Indianapolis. Then, Ginobili and Argentina became the first team to beat the U.S. with NBA players.

Most forget what happened the next summer. In qualifying in Puerto Rico, the U.S. routed Argentina by a margin greater than Friday’s 109-83 score.

More emphatic was this: The Americans went on a 21-0 run in the first half, with Tim Duncan starring, and led at the break, 60-27.

Larry Brown called it the best game any of his teams had ever had, and players said they had reversed what had happened in Indy.

“I think everybody’s back on notice,” Jason Kidd said afterward, “that we can play the game the right way.”

A year later in Athens, however, Kidd wasn’t there. Neither were Jermaine O’Neal, Tracy McGrady, Mike Bibby and Ray Allen, all of whom had been in Puerto Rico.

For various reasons — some were even valid — players had opted out. The American program was as unmotivated as the players, and what was left was a mess built around Duncan.

Given that, the Argentines beat the U.S. in Athens in the same semifinal the two were in here. And Ginobili remembered the Americans of 2004 this way on Friday:

“They had lost before (actually twice) and they were a little shaky. I think we faced the game knowing they were a better team than us, but that we had a better chance than we had today.”

The Argentines deserved that gold medal, and they were different, too. They were deeper and bigger than they are now, and they had a young Ginobili just entering his prime.

“We were younger, crazier and disrespectful, probably,” he said.

Still, there is no way a roster of American professionals should lose, not if the best show up, not if they try. As much because of 2004 as anything, USA Basketball woke up and remade itself.

Told what they had done to improve the Americans, Scola thought about it. “I think I should get paid,” he joked.

Ginobili and Scola got paid in another way. They have a gold medal on their résumés, as well as global respect.

Who can forget? Even as they try for bronze Sunday, there was a time when they forced the U.S. to do the same.

bharvey@express-news.net

Twitter: @Buck_SA