Nikola Mirotic – who missed the start of the season due to an injury sustained from a practice punch by teammate Bobby Portis – reportedly still wants the Bulls to trade him.
Good new for Mirotic then.
The Bulls are still planning to trade forward Nikola Mirotic
Mirotic has been intrigued with the Utah Jazz, whose coach, Quin Snyder, has a reputation of maximizing offensive talent.
Mirotic can’t be traded until next Monday. He can also veto any trade, giving him say in where he goes.
He’d be an interesting fit in Utah as a stretch four next to Rudy Gobert. The Jazz also have several moderately valuable players who could be used in a trade.
Mirotic has played well since returning, giving him value on his $12.5 million salary with a $12.5 million team option for next season. If Chicago still wants to move him and he still wants to be moved, it’ll likely happen.
The Lakers got a reprieve from thenoise with a 132-113 win over the Hawks last night.
But even that victory included a gaffe by Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, who comically travelled.
Caldwell-Pope’s improvisational skills are… lacking.
Before beating the lowly Hawks last night, the Lakers had lost nine straight to fall to 11-27. LaVar Ball said coach Luke Walton has lost control of the team.
Is Walton’s seat warming?
Ramona Shelburne of ESPN:
Kurt Helin has heard the same things.
And it makes sense. Walton is widely regarded as one of the NBA’s bright young coaches. Though Lakers president Magic Johnson didn’t hire him, Walton – who won a couple titles with the Lakers as a player – fits into the Lakers legacy/family image Johnson is selling. Ball’s criticism might even improve Walton’s job security, as the Lakers might want to avoid the appearance of giving into the publicity-hungry loudmouth.
But don’t expect these questions to go away. Walton has proven he can win with the Warriors and can’t with the Lakers. That puts him in the same class as most NBA coaches. In other words, that puts him in a class that – fairly or not – gets fired fairly often.
Walton’s context matters. The Lakers had a miserable roster last season – blame assigned to since-fired Jim Buss and Mitch Kupchack – and also tanked to keep a top-three-protected first-round pick. The team is again young and unready this season.
But the franchise’s context also matters. Even if the Lakers win their remaining 43 games, Walton would hold the worst record through his first two seasons of any Lakers coach to get a third. They ousted Butch Van Breda Kolff after winning 52 and 55 games reaching the NBA Finals in both his seasons. They fired Mike Brown early in his second season despite a 42-29 record. Even Mike D’Antoni had a much higher win percentage (44%) than Walton (31%), and D’Antoni lasted just two seasons in Los Angeles. Historically, the Lakers haven’t been very patient.
They’ve rarely faced rebuilding, and maybe Walton will get judged by a different standard. But that institutional unfamiliarity with rebuilding might only exacerbate the pressure on Walton.
The Lakers will stand behind Walton until they don’t. It’s the same treatment most coaches get.
And, with most coaches, losing – regardless of the context – is the quickest way to getting fired.
LaVar Ball said Luke Walton has lost control of the Lakers.
That put the coach under the microscope
It also put Lonzo Ball in the spotlight.
If all you value is publicity, that’s great. But the rookie point guard who’s still trying to adjust to the NBA faced some pointed questions.
Tania Ganguli of the Los Angeles Times:
Lonzo was asked if he likes having Walton as his coach.
“I’ll play for anybody,” he said, and later added: “My job is to play basketball. I don’t decide who coaches.”
That’s not exactly a ringing endorsement. It’s how players sometimes sound when they dislike their coach.
It also might be how players sound when they’re caught between a coach they like and a father who just threw that coach under the bus. Hard to say, though. There isn’t much precedent for that.
If Lonzo sticks with this approach, it’s fine. Controlling what he can control is a virtue. But he must stick with it. Once he praises Walton or any other future coach, Lonzo can’t credibly maintain such apathy about his coach. It’ll read as implied criticism.
5 Up, 5 Down is a biweekly column featuring the best and worst from the NBA as it stands on alternating Monday mornings.
There are many happy things happening in the NBA. Gerald Green is here and playing for the Rockets, something I never thought I would see. His hair is incredible, and the fact that Houston has things together and is somehow sort of likable despite combining Chris Paul and James Harden together is sort of unbelievable.
Don’t get me wrong, I love CP3 and Harden is a genuine talent, but their games can be sort of grating to watch night in and night out thanks to their flair for trickery. That’s a nice way of saying it.
In any case, much has gone on since we last talked over the holidays, so without further ado.
5 Up
Gerald Green shows the Rockets are serious
You could have laughed all you wanted to about Houston Rockets GM Daryl Morey admitting that the team is obsessed with beating the Golden State Warriors. Because SECRECY and STOICISM helps keeps your opponents in the dark, right? Just ask any football coach locking down practices and turning on cell phone jammers.
But the Warriors are the big target, not only out West but in the NBA. It was always obvious. That’s why it sort of made sense that Gerald Green was a big hit for Houston after he signed with the team in late December. A complete shot in the dark showed that, yes, Morey was serious about being obsessed with beating the Warriors, even if it meant grabbing a former dunk contest champion off the couch to shoot a bunch of 3-pointers. Plus, it just might work.
The continued development of Kyle Kuzma
Our very own Dan Feldman wrote a nice piece about Kuzma recently as we continue to track his progression. Kuzma has stepped out of Lonzo Ball‘s shadow, and is no longer just the Lakers’ “other rookie”. Lakers fans have even become — gasp — reasonable in their All-Star voting, and at last count Kuzma was ahead of Ball and at 9th place in the All-Star ballots.
Gerald Green’s hair
Seriously, this deserved it’s own item on this list. Just look at this masterpiece that reportedly takes two hours to complete:
The Spurs tried to trade for Kyrie Irving
Kyrie Irving has been great for the Boston Celtics this season, and he’s a legitimate MVP candidate. But originally it was the San Antonio Spurs, not the Celtics that came calling for the All-Star guard.
Keep your skeptical hat on, but if Irving really wanted to play for Gregg Popovich that’s a maturation that would be in line with what we’ve seen in short work for Boston. As Kurt pointed out in the article linked above, it’s unclear how the Spurs would have been able to grab Irving and that it would be fascinating to watch a high-maintenance star like Irving play for Pop.
That time Kyrie responded to coaching feedback by saying “that’s No. 23’s job”
OK, let’s hope that maturation thing for Irving has legs to it because if not … yeesh. Irving manages to somehow be one of the most interesting boring dudes in the NBA. He’s an elite scorer and dribbler, but doesn’t have the kind of magnetic personality you expect to go along with the top player on a championship team with those traits. If he didn’t start espousing about the non-spherical nature of the planet Earth we’d probably pay a lot less attention to him.
But now this comes out? My ears are perked.
5 Down
LaVar Ball is at it again
Lonzo Ball’s dad says some dumb things as a means to market screen printed Gildan shirts that apparently have a high rate of never coming to your doorstep should you order one.
Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Lakers have asked LaVar Ball to tone down his criticism of Luke Walton, which Ball failed to do recently in an interview with ESPN. Ball again criticized Walton, and those comments actually made Dallas Mavericks coach Rick Carlisle so incensed that he fired back at ESPN for following Ball around.
An interesting conversation has sprung up regarding journalistic responsibility — especially when Ball says so many things that are blatantly untrue — and the fact that simply publishing Ball’s quotes devoid of context, factual rebuttal, or opposing comments from those involved is likely not the best choice.
These jerseys
Refs not realizing this was a basket by Manu Ginobili
In case you missed this one, here’s what happened. Manu Ginobili attempted an alley-oop against the New York Knicks. The ball promptly went through the basket, and then Michael Beasley tried to take off and start the fastbreak.
Refs didn’t realize what had happened, and had to be convinced by Gregg Popovich yelling at them (even though Pop admitted he didn’t see the play, either) to take a look at the replay. Come on, man. Casual NBA fans already have enough referee fodder.
Ron Baker‘s got a broken face
Uh huh. Uh huh, uh huh, uh huh.
That dunk that Anthony Davis slammed down on Ron Baker — who was valiant both in his attempt to stop Davis’ dunk and for taking a forearm to the face — resulted in a fractured orbital bone for the Knicks wing. We like to see big dunks but we don’t want to see people get hurt. Wait, is this a football blog?
Isaiah Thomas came back and then a bunch of dumb stuff happened
It’s nice that Cleveland Cavaliers guard Isaiah Thomas came back recently after a hip injury kept him out for most the season thus far. He’s played well, and the Cavaliers will definitely benefit from having him on the floor — if they don’t trade him before the deadline, of course.
The main issue is everything that happened after Thomas had his first game back against the Portland Trail Blazers. In playing that game, Thomas had to skip the second night of a back-to-back and thus miss a return game against the Celtics on the road. At his request, the Celtics didn’t run a highlight tape they had planned to put on the video board before the game, instead moving it to the next time the teams play in February. Boo hoo.
But if the hubub about that wasn’t enough, then Paul Pierce decided to jump in with conflicting opinions about whether he wanted the video shown at that Feb. 11 matchup. Pierce is having his jersey retired by the team that night, and initially said he didn’t mind if some attention was given to Thomas. The next day, Pierce was on a preview show and said that he actually did mind it, and would prefer if Boston gave him the Kobe treatment instead.
Thomas said he felt the whole thing was pretty stupid (my reading) and I suppose we will have to wait another month to see if emotions rise high again. Boston fans have to stop flaming IT, man.
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