NBA RANK

Suspends Magloire, Jerebko

2009-10-10T05:46:00.000-07:00

The NBA announced suspensions for Miami's Jamaal Magloire and Detroit's Jonas Jerebko on Thursday, the result of a brief altercation between the two players in Monday's game in Detroit.

After getting tangled while going for the same rebound in the fourth quarter, the two players fell to the ground, where they each took a swing at each other before being separated by teammates. The incident happened quickly and television replays failed to capture a clear angle of what happened, but in the locker room after the game, Jerebko was quick to admit his involvement.

"He got me, I got him back," he told FanHouse. "That's what happened."

Magloire earned a two-game suspension for instigating the incident; Jerebko, a one-game suspension for retaliating.

Jerebko, a second-round pick out of Sweden, clearly didn't think much of the incident, the type of physical play that happens a dozen times a night in hockey, his native country's favorite sport. He also didn't think twice about retaliating, despite giving up 40 pounds and nine years of experience to Magloire.

"We're rookies, but if you get us, we got to get you back. [It's] Detroit basketball." When asked if he thought he caught Magloire by surprise, Jerebko didn't mince words. "He's a dirty player and that's what he makes a living off of. ... Maybe he thinks he can play with us, but he can't. We're pretty tough out here."

The suspensions will take effect in the first regular-season game each player is physically able to play.

Article of Matt Watson from Fanhouse

Denver race to the championship : George Karl couch?

2009-09-27T17:49:00.001-07:00

Now the Nuggets get to vote. Do they want George Karl as their coach? The decision is in the hands of Chauncey Billups, Carmelo Anthony andhere's a scary thought — J.R. Smith.

Denver is talking NBA championship.

Is Karl, with 933 career victories in the league but no ring, the right man for the job?

Unable to land a new deal he badly wanted, Karl is working in the final season of his contract with the Nuggets. That seems to be the definition of a make-or- break year.

Either the Nuggets win it all, or Karl's fate will be open to debate by franchise owner Stan Kroenke and his merry band of front- office execs.

So I asked Karl: Will the lack of job security change the way he coaches?

"Better not change," an eavesdropping Billups playfully shouted from the back of the room, before Karl could answer.

Hmm. Who's running this team?

Well, in truth, the answer never really changes in the NBA. This is the ultimate players' league, unless your name is Phil Jackson or Jerry Sloan.

"Whether you're a player or coach in a contract year, the best thing you can do is really give your best. That's the bottom line," Billups said. "When you're in a year that you've got to prove yourself and prove your worth, the best thing you can do is cross all T's and dot all I's, and not worry about things out of your control. The only thing you can control is your product."

In a little more than six seasons with Detroit, Billups and his teammates were perennial championship contenders, despite the fact the Pistons went through four coaches.

"Oh, we'll have rough patches during the season. That's a given," Nuggets vice president of player personnel Rex Chapman said. He trusts there is the needed mutual respect between Karl and his players to work through the stickiest of situations.

But the coach in the final year of his contract walks a knife-thin line with a sharp, jagged edge. What happens to Karl now really depends on how hard Kenyon Martin plays for him or if Smith tunes out the coach.

"I've seen it from afar, when a team said, 'Oh, I didn't want this coach anyway.' And I've seen teams say, 'We've got to fight for this guy.' I think it's based on your leadership in the locker room, not with the coaches," Billups said.

"It's my responsibility, it's Melo's responsibility and it's K-Mart's responsibility to keep the players locked in at all times. No matter what's going on in the front office, no matter what's going on in the coach's office, we've got to play for us. Especially with a young team, with poor leadership, it could go either way."

But how will Karl, whose basketball IQ is as undeniable as his mercurial temperament, handle the strain? When the inevitable problems in the locker room arise, he will not have a hammer. There is a well-documented history of serious disagreements between Martin, Anthony and Smith and their coach.

Karl has mellowed, and now wisely trusts Billups or assistant coaches to get his message to the court. But in a tense situation, will Karl implode? Unlike him, Denver's star players are relatively secure in the knowledge they will be around next year if this season goes sour for the Nuggets in the ultra-competitive Western Conference, where San Antonio, Portland, Dallas and the defending champion Lakers all made significant personnel additions to already loaded rosters.

According to Karl, the last time he faced the possibility of lame-duck status was in 1997-98 with Seattle. And how did that turn out? "We won 61 games," he recalled.

But it wasn't exactly a happily-ever-after ending, because Karl and the Sonics separated, with both parties getting the seven-year itch for a new relationship.

"George Karl has more than 900 games in this league. He's a pro. And we have players who are pros," Chapman said. "Do you think this is a coach who can be somebody he's not? George is going to be who he is."

At age 58, Karl certainly must understand he is beginning to run out of chances for fresh starts in the NBA. So, better make this work in Denver.

"I believe this team can win a championship," Karl said, "and that's my job."

Is the NBA title a fair expectation for a franchise that's never won one?

Maybe not.

But know this: If Denver players get the sense he's not the coach to get it done, Karl will be looking for his next job.

All eyes are on the Jazz's lame duck

2009-09-26T06:54:00.000-07:00

With apologies to the Ringling Bros.' clowns, tigers and elephants at EnergySolutions Arena this weekend, Carlos Boozer will be the ringmaster of a circus all his own today when the Jazz open training camp.

Against all odds, Boozer will return for a sixth season in Utah, after the former All-Star forward decided on June 30 against opting for free agency only to campaign weeks later for a trade.

Instead of heading to training camp with Chicago, Miami or any of the other teams to which he was linked, Boozer finds himself back with the Jazz, returning to familiar if not necessarily friendly surroundings.

Along with Boozer, the Jazz will bring back 11 players from last season's 48-34 team that stumbled to an Jazz Blog
Steve Luhm and Ross Siler offer more insight on the Jazz and the NBA in their blog. The latest:
Media day Friday September 25, 2009

eighth-place finish in the Western Conference and was eliminated by the L.A. Lakers from the first round of the playoffs in five games.

The Jazz's only personnel changes, in fact, were the departures of Jarron Collins, Brevin Knight and Morris Almond and the arrival of first-round draft pick Eric Maynor, a point guard from Virginia Commonwealth.

They will hold training camp Saturday through Wednesday at their practice facility before hosting Denver in Thursday's preseason opener and leaving Oct. 2 to play a pair of exhibition games in London and Madrid, Spain.

At least at the start of training camp, if not the entire season, all eyes will be on Boozer. The Jazz navigated a similar situation two years ago when Andrei
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Kirilenko returned to Utah after demanding a trade at home in Russia.

The Jazz held a meeting with Kirilenko, coach Jerry Sloan and general manager Kevin O'Connor on media day to resolve differences. The matter was largely forgotten by opening night, and Kirilenko remains with the Jazz.

But Boozer might be an entirely different matter. Unlike Kirilenko, he is entering the final year of his contract and went so far as to name Chicago and Miami as preferred destinations in a series of interviews this summer.

O'Connor wasn't sure if he would hold a similar meeting with Boozer as he did with Kirilenko. The issues with Boozer involve a player and organization, as opposed to a player and coach with Kirilenko.

The Jazz are gambling that Boozer's return will benefit the team as a whole, with Boozer forced to produce heading into free agency and prove he is healthy after a season in which he missed 44 games with a knee injury.

At the same time, Boozer is a lame duck in Utah and a potential distraction to a team that played better without him than with him last season.

This summer, the Jazz sold Boozer jerseys for 50 percent off at Fanzz team stores and cut him out of their "Be the X-factor" marketing campaign. O'Connor, though, is fond of saying that the sports world has short memories.

He also believes that the Jazz are in a similar position now as the Lakers were following Kobe Bryant's trade demand two years ago. The Lakers stood their ground with Bryant, acquired Pau Gasol from Memphis and went on to win a championship last season.

The Jazz were prepared to watch Boozer leave as a free agent with nothing in return this summer, but are believed to have since turned down a number of trade proposals deemed insufficient after he opted to play out his contact.

With an $82 million payroll, the Jazz are set to be luxury-tax payers for the first time, despite late owner Larry Miller's opposition to doing so. If nothing else, the 2009-10 season will go down as the most expensive in franchise history.

The Jazz face many issues with regard to Boozer, who still could be moved before the Feb. 18 trade deadline:

Did the Jazz and Boozer mutually agree to a trade as Boozer asserted this summer? There is no middle ground on this issue. Either the Jazz failed to deliver on a deal or Boozer tried to force his way out of Utah by mischaracterizing their conversations.

What does Boozer's return mean for Paul Millsap? The Jazz made no small investment in matching Portland's four-year, $32 million offer sheet to Millsap. After finishing fourth in the NBA's Most Improved Player voting last season, Millsap wants to be a starter.

Would Sloan consider starting Millsap over Boozer? At times last season, Sloan suggested that his hands were tied in having to start Boozer after his return from injury. Starting Millsap, however, would be another blow to Boozer's trade value.

What about the dynamic between Deron Williams and Boozer? Williams has acknowledged that he and Boozer hardly spoke this summer, while Williams offered a strong endorsement to re-signing Millsap after the Trail Blazers' offer.

As for the rest of the team, the Jazz made only cosmetic changes after one of their most disappointing seasons. Ravaged by injuries at season's start, the Jazz won just two of their final nine games to drop to eighth and draw the Lakers in the playoffs.

They planned for various offseason contingencies only to learn in late June that Boozer, Mehmet Okur and Kyle Korver each would be declining free agency, steering clear of a market depressed by the recession.

That sent the Jazz's payroll skyrocketing; they are in line to pay $12 million in luxury-tax penalties this season. The pain only was compounded in July when Portland signed Millsap to a heavily front-loaded offer sheet.

By deciding to match the supposedly toxic offer, the Jazz had to make a $10.3 million upfront payment to Millsap. But they were able to keep together a young core of players in Williams, Ronnie Brewer, C.J. Miles and Millsap.

The Jazz also signed Okur to a two-year, $20.8 million extension, leaving them with more than $50 million in salary commitments to Kirilenko, Williams, Okur and Millsap alone for 2010-11.

With Matt Harpring out indefinitely and Collins headed to camp with Portland, the Jazz lose two players with a combined 19 years of NBA experience. They are so young this season, Okur will be their oldest player, at 30.

"It's a very young team," O'Connor said. "I think people forget that, with some of the success we've had. If you looked at our lineup [for] the middle 40 games last season, we had four guys [Williams, Millsap, Brewer, Miles] under 25 starting."

Article from Ross Siler

Flip Murray ofert

2009-09-25T14:27:00.000-07:00

Free-agent guard Flip Murray has reached an agreement in principle to join the Charlotte Bobcats.

Murray and the Bobcats have a one-year deal at the NBA's bi-annual exception of $1.99 million, with a formal signing forthcoming as early as Friday, according to NBA front-office sources.

Murray's agent, Mark Termini, confirmed when reached Thursday by ESPN.com that his client is Charlotte-bound.

After averaging 12.2 points last season as an off-the-bench spark for the Atlanta Hawks, Murray also received interest earlier this month from the Denver Nuggets. But luxury-tax concerns prompted the Nuggets, who on Wednesday traded for Houston's James White, to limit their offer to the $1.1 million veteran minimum.

Murray has been regarded as one of the NBA's better sixth men after breaking out in the 2003-04 season as a fill-in for the injured Ray Allen in Seattle, averaging 23.9 points over an 11-game stretch.

The signing of Murray further cements Charlotte's backcourt after Wednesday's signing of restricted free agent Raymond Felton to a one-year, $5.5 million qualifying offer and potentially gives the Bobcats' second unit some needed punch after they finished last in the league in scoring last season.

Felton will become an unrestricted free agent in July after he and the Bobcats could not strike a long-term deal. He averaged 14.2 points and 6.7 assists last season, retaining his spot in the starting lineup even after Charlotte drafted D.J. Augustin.