Tag: Kevin Durant

Spurs rookie gets trial by Durant’s fire

By Jeff McDonald
jmcdonald@express-news.net

OKLAHOMA CITY — During a timeout in the second half Sunday, Spurs coach Gregg Popovich turned to his rookie small forward and uttered words that might have made a lesser man gulp.

“I told him, ‘You’re now going to guard the leading scorer in the league,’” Popovich said. “ ‘And you’re not coming out of the game.’ ”

Offered the assignment of defending Oklahoma City’s Kevin Durant, with no help and no quarter, Kawhi Leonard did not blink. For a 20-year-old learning the NBA on the fly, that was success enough.

Durant, the NBA’s two-time defending scoring champion, finished with 21 points in 28 minutes of a 108-96 Thunder romp, but Leonard at least made the matchup moderately interesting. Durant made five of his nine shots, and did the bulk of his damage from the foul line, where he was 10 for 10.

“I just tried to take it as a challenge,” said Leonard, who at this time last year was defending players in the Mountain West Conference. “You know he’s going to get his points. You just hope to make it tough on him.”

With the game already out of hand, there was little risk in allowing Leonard a trial by fire.

“We wanted him to get experience and see what it was like,” Popovich said.

Leonard didn’t win the battle with Durant, but neither did he give in.

His finest moment came during a first-half stint against Durant, when he forced his Oklahoma City adversary into a trap and a turnover.

Durant had his moments in the matchup as well. One came late in the third quarter, when he buried a 20-footer in Leonard’s face.

“He did a good job,” Popovich said of Leonard. “It didn’t mean Kevin didn’t score, but it was fun to watch.”

WOOF, WOOF: Spurs center DeJuan Blair and his Oklahoma City counterpart, Kendrick Perkins, were issued technical fouls after a dust-up in the second quarter.

“He was just barking, making something out of nothing,” Blair said. “So I barked back.”

For Perkins, whose hot-headedness has become the stuff of NBA legend, it was his third technical already in the young season. It was Blair’s first.

Since each technical comes with an automatic $2,000 fine, Blair said he planned to appeal his foul.

KNEED REST: Blair and point guard Tony Parker left the game in the second half after each taking a knee to the back of the leg.

Both were sore and bruised but could have played had the game still been in reach. Barring a setback, both said they would be ready for Tuesday’s game at Milwaukee.

SEEING DOUBLE: Afforded a season-high 34 minutes, six seconds of playing time, Leonard turned in the first double-double of his career with 13 points and 10 rebounds.

Without the benefit of a normal summer indoctrination or full training camp, Leonard says he is becoming more comfortable with the Spurs’ system by the day.

“Every game is a learning experience for me,” Leonard said. “I’m just trying to listen to what the coaches tell me and learn from each game.”

NBA, players hold another marathon meeting

By BRIAN MAHONEY
AP Basketball Writer

NEW YORK — NBA owners and players were engaged in another marathon session Friday, meeting for more than 13 hours in talks aimed at ending the 148-day lockout in time to save the league’s Christmas Day schedule.

That deadline has created a sense of urgency because the Dec. 25 schedule is traditionally a showcase for the league. This season’s three-game slate was to include Miami at Dallas in an NBA finals rematch, plus MVP Derrick Rose leading Chicago into Los Angeles to face Kobe Bryant and the Lakers.

After a secret meeting earlier this week, the sides returned to the table to try to hash out a deal. Commissioner David Stern has said the league needs about 30 days from an agreement to when games could be played.

Participating in the talks for the league were Stern, deputy commissioner Adam Silver, Spurs owner Peter Holt, the chairman of the labor relations committee, and attorneys Rick Buchanan and Dan Rube. The players were represented by executive director Billy Hunter, president Derek Fisher, vice president Maurice Evans, attorney Ron Klempner and economist Kevin Murphy.

The discussions between representatives of the owners and players are now centered on settling their lawsuits: The players filed an antitrust lawsuit against the league in Minnesota, and the league filed a pre-emptive suit in New York, seeking to prove the lockout was legal.

Because the union disbanded, it cannot negotiate a new collective bargaining agreement, but the settlement talks could lead to that. The CBA can only be completed once the union has reformed.

There are still a handful of issues relating to spending rules for teams that must be worked out — issues that have been an obstacle to a new deal since the lockout began July 1. Players fear that owners’ desires to curb spending by the big-market teams would limit their options as free agents.

Talks last broke down Nov. 14 when players rejected the owners’ proposal that included opening a 72-game schedule on Dec. 15, instead announcing instead they were disbanding the union, giving them a chance to win several billion dollars in triple damages in an antitrust lawsuit.

On Monday, a group of named plaintiffs including Carmelo Anthony, Steve Nash and Kevin Durant filed an amended federal lawsuit against the league in Minnesota, hoping the courts there will be as favorable to them as they have been to NFL players in the past.

The NFL players enjoyed several victories over the owners in federal court in Minnesota, most recently when U.S. District Judge Susan Richard Nelson issued a temporary injunction this summer that lifted the NFL’s owner-imposed lockout. That decision was stayed and eventually overturned on appeal by the 8th Circuit in St. Louis.

The legal system could take months to resolve, so both sides repeatedly have said the only way to reach a deal that would save the season is through bargaining. The 1998-99 lockout reduced that season to 50 games. It was settled shortly after the new year and play started in February.

This season games have been canceled through Dec. 15, but in reality another week probably already has been lost, given the time needed to write and approve a new collective bargaining agreement, have a free agency period, hold training camps and play exhibition games.

NBA players file antitrust lawsuits

NEW YORK — Locked-out NBA players including Carmelo Anthony and Kevin Durant filed class-action antitrust lawsuits against the league on Tuesday in at least two states, moving pro basketball’s labor dispute from the negotiating table to federal court.

Attorney David Boies, who represented the NFL during that sport’s work stoppage and now has been brought aboard by basketball’s players, said the NBA lockout violates antitrust laws by refusing to allow players to work.

Boies also said NBA commissioner David Stern’s ultimatum to the now-disbanded union to accept the owners’ last economic model or face a harsher proposal “turned out to be a mistake” that strengthens the players’ case because it proves that the collective bargaining process had ended.

“If you’re in a poker game, and you run a bluff, and the bluff works, you’re a hero. If someone calls your bluff, you lose. I think the owners overplayed their hand,” Boies said at the players’ association headquarters. “They did a terrific job of taking a very hard line and pushing the players to make concession after concession after concession, but greed is not only a terrible thing — it’s a dangerous thing.”

Dangerous enough to cost the league billions of dollars in damages if players win.

“We haven’t seen Mr. Boies’ complaint yet, but it’s a shame that the players have chosen to litigate instead of negotiate,” NBA spokesman Tim Frank said in a statement. “They warned us from the early days of these negotiations that they would sue us if we didn’t satisfy them at the bargaining table, and they appear to have followed through on their threats.”

Even so, Boies said he hopes it won’t be necessary to go to trial.

Anthony and Chauncey Billups of the Knicks, NBA scoring leader Durant, rookie and first-round Spurs draft pick Kawhi Leonard and Grizzlies forward Leon Powe were listed as plaintiffs in the complaint that was filed in the Northern District of California against the NBA and the owners of its 30 teams. That case has been assigned for now to U.S. Magistrate Judge Donna M. Ryu in Oakland, Calif.

Timberwolves forward Anthony Tolliver, Pistons guard Ben Gordon, free agent forward Caron Butler and Derrick Williams — the second overall draft pick by Minnesota in June — were listed as plaintiffs in a lawsuit filed against the league and owners in Minneapolis, where NFL players had some level of success in a similar court proceeding over the summer.