www.bostonherald.com/sports/basketball/other_nba/view.bg?articleid=1126448&format=textArtest raises Rocket power
By Mark Murphy / NBA Notes | Sunday, October 19, 2008 |
www.bostonherald.com | NBA Coverage
Photo by AP
There is only one way to get Ron Artest and his grating collection of hacks out of your hair.
Trade for him.
“I don’t need to worry about him now,” Houston center Yao Ming said last weekend, smiling at his own joke. “He takes away a lot of pressure.”
On the other hand, that pressure has been redircted, in the most immediate case on the back of Paul Pierce [stats]’s neck thanks to a relatively new Artest ploy - an improvised karate chop as the Celtics [team stats] captain turned into the lane during last Saturday’s preseason game vs. the Rockets in Manchester, N.H.
Later, while attempting to chase Pierce around a pick, Artest chose the most direct route and simply tackled his assignment, falling onto Pierce, who spun back on top of Artest with what any seasoned wrestler would have to admit was a nice reversal.
“He’s very active on every play,” Yao said with amusing understatement. “He’s a very important piece for us. We have traded for a very tough player.”
Toughness is never the issue with Artest, of course.
His ability to settle in, and not allow a dysfunctional personal life to interfere with his basketball life, is always the question.
He never meshed as a King, and his ex-Pacers teammates eventually gave an enthusiastic blessing to his trade out of town.
But he is now flanked by Yao and Tracy McGrady, giving Houston a new Big Three of sorts, with a terrific supporting cast that includes Shane Battier, Luis Scola, Carl Landry, Rafer Alston, Brent Barry and Chuck Hayes.
If ever there was a setting for a fresh start, this seems to be it.
But Artest doesn’t like that way of describing his situation.
“No, this isn’t a fresh start,” he said, shaking his head vigorously. “It’s a great start, not a fresh start. It’s just fun. It’s just refreshing.
“I’m a much better player now, though, I’ll tell you that. I think I’ve become a little more dominant now because of who I’m playing with. But personally I’m better everywhere. I’m shooting better. I’m thinking the game better.”
That’s not to say all is perfect.
Artest, the prototypical “power 3” - a small forward in job description only one who can overpower virtually any assignment - still seems to be a little too in love with his jumper.
But unlike in Sacramento, where the Kings’ deteriorating roster left Artest to do everything and anything he wanted, he can once again specialize.
“Here I can play more defense,” he said. “I’m able to hustle more. I don’t have to save energy or pace myself. I’m not the only post player anymore. The last place I was, I was the only player who could score out of the post.”
The last place he was, winning was a chore, too.
That’s why he feels so refreshed now. Though he appreciates the “Big Three” model that now seems to be in vogue thanks to the Celtics’ most recent title, Artest doesn’t want to draw a parallel between his own team and last season’s Celtics.
“I think we have a little bit more than that,” he said. “You have to look at the way Scola played in the Olympics. We have Steve Francis, too. You don’t know if he can get back to the way he was when he was an All-Star.
“But we have a helluva team. From one to 15, everyone can play. That Pacers team I was on was pretty good, but I’m just not sure that team was as deep as this one. That team had really good players - Stephen (Jackson) and Jamaal (Tinsley) - but I don’t know if that one was as good as what we have here.”
Nor is he intentionally dismissing the Celtics.
Artest made his bones guarding Pierce in three straight playoff series from the spring of 2003 through 2005, earned his place as a bona fide Garden villain, and took notes during the Celtics’ run to their 17th title last June.
Indeed, Artest credits Pierce with helping him to grow.
“He’s cool - I like him,” said Artest. “He always brought it out of me as far as performance goes, with him talking so much trash and going right at you every time.
“Those were great matchups,” he said of those early playoff battles. “Paul could get it going.”
Especially last season, but that is where Artest pulls up.
“What they did is what they did,” he said of the Celtics. “It’s different for us, though. We have to do our own thing.”
Pierce agreed.
“Their formula is not the same as ours,” he said. “But (Artest) is an All-Star. He’s going to bring toughness to that team. He also adds versatility. He just makes them that much more dangerous. I’d say right now that they’re one of the three or four best teams in basketball.”
And as Pierce was reminded last weekend, he won’t find another team with a tougher answer for what he does best.
“Man, that’s some intense matchup,” he said of Artest. “At the time he was with the Pacers, I was one of the premier scorers in the league and he was one of the best defenders.
“He was just as good, definitely, for bringing it out in me. There was nobody else in the league like him.”
That probably hasn’t changed.
International intrigue
The brunt of the economic crisis hit as NBA commissioner David Stern was on a tour of those places he seems to enjoy most - sites of the international game.
But even Stern had to admit upon arriving in London, and before heading off to China, that global expansion has its limits.
Stern said the league anticipated the current crisis and responded by trimming the number of European exhibition sites back from seven in 2007 to four this fall.
“We tried to limit our exposure while at the same time accomplishing our goals,” he said. “To us, four countries is a good thing, and we were probably trying to do too much in past years.”
Coming from Stern, America’s foremost champion of overseas expansion, seemingly sometimes at the expense of the state of the NBA game at home, that is quite an admission.
Either Stern couldn’t help himself, or something radically changed over the next three days, however.
On Oct. 13, he speculated that the league would play one and possibly more regular-season games in London before that city hosts the 2012 Summer Olympics.
D’Antoni begins with ‘D’
Mike D’Antoni has always had a chip on his shoulder where his high-scoring coaching style is concerned.
The rap - supported recently by Phoenix general manager Steve Kerr - is that the Knicks coach doesn’t have enough interest in coaching defense.
That Kerr, the man who ultimately forced D’Antoni out of Phoenix, was the one voicing that criticism was enough to get under the coach’s skin.
“I get a little down because the first thing out of everyone’s mouth is, They don’t play defense,” he said. “First of all, we won (55) games last year, 61 the year before. Sixty-one times we played better defense than the other team did, that’s for sure, because we scored more points.”
It didn’t help D’Antoni that his philosophy annually failed in the playoffs, when defense, naturally, counts the most.
But he’s not buying that argument.
“They take it a step too far and say it doesn’t work in the playoffs,” he said. “We were in two conference finals, and because of suspensions we weren’t in a third one. I think they take it too far and go, ‘Your offense is so good, obviously you don’t play defense.’
“We were all trying to get better defensively,” said D’Antoni. “It doesn’t take a genius to understand that if you’ve got the best offense and you play really good defense you’re probably going to win the championship. That’s what we were trying to do. We didn’t quite get there.”
