Nba 2016-2017 Season! Let's Get It On!

[Guiness]

EXCLUSIVE: Forget the athletes' village, we're staying on a CRUISE LINER! Team USA basketball millionaires reject shared bedrooms for luxury life with spa, shops... and 7ft beds

• Team USA's men's basketball stars arrive in Rio de Janiero tomorrow but are not staying in the athletes' village
• Instead they have chartered the Silversea Silver Cloud, which is normally used for luxury cruising
• It has room for almost 300 guests but will accommodate a fraction of that and is moored under armed guard
• On board stars including Kyrie Irving and Kevin Durant have access to pool, gym, spa and even a cigar lounge
• Special seven foot beds have been installed to give them a comfortable night's sleep
• One official said they would have been pestered for autographs and selfies in the athletes' village
• But two NBA stars are in the village sleeping on single beds - Australians Matthew Dellavedova and Andrew Bogut
• The boat is in the Bay of Rio where construction work is still not complete

By Shekhar Bhatia In Rio De Janiero, For Dailymail.com and Louise Cheer for Daily Mail Australia

Published: 18:16 GMT, 2 August 2016 | Updated: 00:28 GMT, 3 August 2016

 

The millionaire NBA stars will arrive for the Rio Olympics tomorrow to take up residence in this luxury cruise ship and have to negotiate their way through a building site.

The Olympic superstars' boat is moored on the Port of Rio, which is surrounded by workmen drilling, digging and putting the finishing touches to the area immediately in front of the 196-cabin boat.

When players like Kevin Durant, Carmelo Anthony and Kyrie Irving look out of their specially adapted cabins to the port they will view teams of construction workers in hard hats racing against time to complete their work.

But the luxury cruise ship is a far cry from the humble digs their fellow NBA basketballer Andrew Bogut, from Australia, is staying in.

Bogut, who plays for the Dallas Mavericks and was named Australia's richest sport star last year with earnings of $16 million, posted a photo of himself putting together his own shower curtain at the athletes' village in Rio.

 

[Guiness]

Sources: Russell Westbrook, OKC agree to new 3-year, $85.7M deal

1:52 PM CT

• Chris Broussard
• Ramona Shelburne

All-Star guard Russell Westbrook and the Oklahoma City Thunder have reached agreement in principle on a new three-year contract worth $85.7 million, league sources told ESPN.

Westbrook, 27, will sign the contract on Thursday in Oklahoma City, sources said.

Talks between the sides centered on the addition of two more years to Westbrook's current deal, which expires after the 2016-17 season. The new deal calls for an $8.7 million increase in Westbrook's salary for this season, from $17.8 million to the maximum $26.5 million. He would then earn the max the next two seasons.

Only one of those two seasons is guaranteed, though.

 

Westbrook, who has played all eight seasons of his career in Oklahoma City, will have a player option for the third season of the deal that would allow him to capitalize on the league rule allowing players who have completed 10 seasons to earn a larger max salary.

 

In the wake of former MVP Kevin Durant signing with the Golden State Warriors, the Thunder made locking up Westbrook to a long-term deal their primary offseason objective. Oklahoma City removed its qualifying offer to restricted free agent Dion Waiters to free up cap space to offer Westbrook a max extension. Waiters agreed to a deal with the Miami Heat last month.

 

Westbrook had a season for the ages in 2015-16, tying Magic Johnson for the most triple-doubles in the past 50 years with a league-high 18, including six in the month of March.

 

A five-time All-Star and two-time All-Star Game MVP, Westbrook averaged 23.5 points, 7.8 rebounds and 10.4 assists last season and finished fourth in the MVP voting.

 

[chrisray]

GO minnesota Timberwolves

[Guiness]

Russell Westbrook is about to set the NBA on fire

Dan Devine,Ball Don't Lie 16 hours ago

 

Yep, Russ will be staying put and laughing all the way to the bank, after word came down Wednesday night via Adrian Wojnarowski of The Vertical that the All-NBA point guard has agreed to a three-year, $85 million-plus renegotiation and extension of his current contract — a deal that makes all kinds of sense from just about every angle.

 

From Westbrook’s perspective, he gets paid more now, gets set up to get paid more later, and gets to hit the snooze button on all those questions about what he’s going to do in free agency.

The reworked pact nets Westbrook a pay raise of nearly $8.8 million for next season, locks in guaranteed new-CBA max money for the 2017-18 season, and gives him a player option for the 2018-19 campaign. Opting out would allow Westbrook to enter unrestricted free agency in the summer of 2018 as a veteran with 10 years of NBA service time. At that point, he’d be eligible for the richest possible maximum salary, one that would pay him 35 percent of a team’s salary cap; according to projections by Bobby Marks of The Vertical, a full max deal at that tier would net Westbrook either $151.3 million (if he signed a four-year contract with a team that didn’t hold his Bird rights) or $203.8 million (if he signed a five-year contract with the team that did).

 

Plus, whether he cares about it or not, Westbrook now becomes a superhero by sheer virtue of deciding to stay in small-market OKC one month to the day after Durant elected to bounce to the big bad Bay Area so he could roll with the villains. As SB Nation’s Tom Ziller notes, all the stuff that has elicited arched eyebrows and hot-takedowns from casual hoops fans and generalist columnists over the years — the primal screaming on the court, the prickly relationship with the media, the crazy clothes, the ostentatious pregame dancing — will now get shoved to the side by the more powerful and more immediate story of Westbrook standing his ground to rebuild and compete rather than racing off to join a ready-made champion. That reading’s not entirely fair to Durant, of course, and it doesn’t paint a complete picture of the circumstances of Westbrook’s re-up, but that’s the way it’ll look, and that’s awfully nice for Russ; it’s rare that you get to make the play that gets you the top possible dollar and the biggest Q Score bump.

 

From Oklahoma City’s perspective, the franchise now knows for sure that it will avoid watching one of its homegrown superstars walk in free agency with no compensation for the second straight summer. General manager Sam Presti and head coach Billy Donovan know that they can enter the 2016-17 season on steady footing with their lone remaining linchpin, and that they can build everything around the pick-and-roll prowess and attacking mastery of their All-NBA point guard. Moreover, with the salary cap projected to rise to $102 million in 2017-18, just under $57 million in guaranteed money sitting on OKC’s books — a number that admittedly doesn’t factor in cap holds for free agents, or possible (though reportedly unlikely) early extensions for 2013 draft picks Victor Oladipo, Steven Adams and Andre Roberson — and plenty of tradable assets on old-cap deals, the Thunder will have some flexibility to pursue complementary talent in free agency next summer and, with Westbrook confirmed in the fold, to make a compelling case for contention.

 

This year’s Thunder no longer profile as title contenders, but OKC’s front office and fans can now feel confident in their ability to remain postseason-competitive in the Western Conference — and, if the basketball gods are real and do truly love us, their chances of locking horns with KD and the Warriors next postseason in what would be one of the most amped-up playoff series in history. And, while this is understandably not where the principals’ heads are at right now, should things nosedive faster and more precipitously than expected in Oklahoma this season, Presti will likely be able to ask for and receive much, much more in trade for a Westbrook who will remain under a suitor’s control for at least one more guaranteed season than he could for a player sure to hit the free agent market at season’s end — the conunudrum he figured to face had Westbrook decided not to indicate an interest in renegotiating his existing deal and sticking around for a while. By sidestepping his most pressing issue, Presti significantly improves his bargaining position if things don’t play out the way he hopes.

Really, though, later for all that financial justification and long-term-investment planning chat. Let’s focus on what’s most immediately pressing and important here:

 

Russell Westbrook is going to incinerate the freaking NBA this season.

 

The Thunder as a whole won’t be as formidable as they were when KD and Russ rode together, but solo Westbrook — unfettered, unleashed, unquestionably the top dog — will be a sight to behold on its own. Nobody wanted to see Durant hit the shelf in 2014, but his Jones fracture opened the door for the answer to a fascinating and tantalizing question: what could Westbrook do if he was responsible for running, well, everything? The answer: average a shade under 33 points, nine assists and eight rebounds per 36 minutes of non-Durant floor time, post a league-best 11 triple-doubles in 67 games, win his first scoring title and earn a fourth-place finish in Most Valuable Player voting. So, y’know, not bad.

 

With Durant healthy again to start the 2015-16 campaign, most of us expected Russ to take a step back, for his numbers to recede a bit to make room for the returning former MVP. And though his scoring did dip some, from 28.1 points per game down to 23.5, Westbrook averaged a career-best 10.4 assists and 7.8 rebounds per game while once again leading the NBA with 18 triple-doubles, tying Magic Johnson for the most triple-doubles in a single season in the past 50 years. And, once again, he was incredibly potent when Durant sat, averaging 29.5 points, 11.1 assists and 9.1 rebounds per-36 with KD off the floor, with Oklahoma City outscoring its opposition by five points per 100 possessions in Russ-but-no-Durant minutes, according to NBAwowy.com.

Westbrook has ranked in the top five in both points created for teammates via direct assist and percentage of teammates’ baskets on which he notched the direct assist in each of the last two years. When Durant was sidelined in 2014-15, Westbrook kept Oklahoma City’s big men fed, generating scoring opportunities for Adams, Enes Kanter, Serge Ibaka and Mitch McGary either by giving them the ball in position to produce or getting the ball on the glass, where the Thunder’s relentless offensive rebounders could pounce for putbacks. During that ’14-’15 season, OKC scored an average of 109.1 points per 100 possessions with Westbrook on the floor, a top-three offensive efficiency mark, and dropped to 97.7 points-per-100 when he sat, which would’ve been the league’s fourth-worst. He can be an offense unto himself. He can carry the load, and be Must-See TV while he does it.

 

Now, the flip side of that equation is that the ’14-’15 Thunder went 45-37 and missed the playoffs, due in large part to their struggles defending. An OKC squad that had perennially ranked in or near the top 10 in the league in points allowed per possession under Scott Brooks dropped down below the middle of the pack in defensive efficiency that season, thanks to injuries, heavy second-half reliance on noted pick-and-roll sieve Kanter, and Westbrook’s at-times destabilizing tendency to gamble for momentum-shifting steals. While the offseason losses of Durant and Ibaka hurt, this year’s Thunder, with the hard-nosed Oladipo on-board alongside postseason breakout players Adams and Roberson, could be better positioned to hold up defensively; OKC’s chances of making postseason noise figure to depend heavily on whether or not Donovan can coax a top-10-caliber defensive effort out of his shuffled-up roster.

 

Even if he can, and even if Westbrook is every ounce as incendiary an offensive force as we expect him to be, the Thunder might be drawing dead in a conference likely to be dominated by a Warriors squad that, with Durant in tow, is already breaking front offices’ computer models. That’s besides the point, though. Winning isn’t all that matters. It never was, and it never will be, not when raging against the dying of the light can be so beautiful, so visceral, and so compelling.

Even when we think we know what’s coming, we can still be surprised — see: Games 5 through 7 of both the Western Conference Finals and NBA Finals — and even when the result comes out the way we expected, the journey there can consist of all kinds of moments that thrill, that electrify, that make us feel alive. Few players in NBA history have provided those moments with as much sneer and style as Russell Westbrook, and now, the Thunder’s fate rests on him providing as many as humanly possible. That’s bad news for Oklahoma City’s opponents, and really, really good news for the rest of us.

 

[Kriliin]

Solid pa rin ako sa Lakers. sa season na to, kahit mahihirapan sila maka playoffs, siguro yung kaya nila 7-8 lang kung explosive maglaro si Ingram at consistency ni Russel. After 2-3 Years jan magkakaalaman na sure ako West Contender na yan.

Bata pa naman yung Lakers: Clarkson,Randle,Ingram,Russel,Nance at Zubac.

Di ko lang gusto yung sayang na pera kay Mozgov. Good Move kay Deng.

 

kahit anong mangyare Lakers pa rin ako kahit mag kangkong pa sila!hehe

 

My 2nd team: SA Spurs

My 3rd team: NY Knicks

[jackthereaper]

Hi, MTC newbie here. Watch out for the 'Wolves this season.

[Guiness]

Charles Barkley rips USA Basketball: 'I don’t think they did a good job'

.

USA Basketball is undefeated after Olympic pool play, but the criticism is gaining steam. Despite missing top stars like Steph Curry and LeBron James, USA Basketball brought a loaded roster to Rio. The team has struggled the past three games and enters the knockout round off two straight three-point wins.

 

TNT analyst and Hall of Famer Charles Barkley was part of the 1992 “Dream Team,” and he’s been disappointed with what he’s seen from the 2016 edition of Team USA.

 

Barkley joined Sports360AZ.com’s Brad Cesmat for an interview Tuesday, and he said that Team USA’s struggles are rooted with the very makeup of the roster.

 

He said:

“Well, I hope they win gold. I want always us to win the gold medal. It’s not a good team to put together. I don’t think they did a good job because if you watch all those guys — they’re all good players, don’t get me wrong — they all need the ball.

“If you take away DeAndre Jordan, every guy on that team is a ball-dominant guy. You see them playing a lot of one-on-one basketball. That’s the thing I’ve noticed more than anything. Like, you have to understand when you put a team together like that, you have to have some role players. … But you take a guy like Kyle Lowry, who is a hell of a player, he wants to score. Kyrie wants to score. Kevin wants to score. DeRozan wants to score. So, I think they have been really stagnant offensively.

“When they put that team together in the future, they have to realize we can’t have just really, really great offensive players. They gotta to have players that if they don’t get a shot, they’re not just gonna stand around and mope.”

USA Basketball opens the knockout round against Argentina on Wednesday.

Edited August 17, 2016 by hahnz

[Tres Picos]

Go Spurs Go!

[PutukanNa]

Go GSW parin!

[junix]

still going for the warriors

[*badass*]

warriors all the way!!!

[Hari ng Spakol]

Warriors and Cavs ulit sa Finals.

[Guiness]

USA men's basketball team advances to gold medal game with defeat of Spain

Jeff Zillgitt, USA TODAY Sports

7:59 p.m. EDT August 19, 2016

RIO DE JANEIRO — The anticlimactic outcome of Spain-USA failed to match the pregame hype of their men’s Olympic basketball semifinal game.

Given the USA’s supposed vulnerability after three close victories against Australia, Serbia and France in pool play, this was supposed to be Spain’s best chance of the past three Olympic matchups to beat the Americans.

Even Spain’s Pau Gasol believed that.

 

“That’s just the way I felt. I don’t think they’re playing as well as other times they have played. They’re still a very talented team individually, but I feel like if we would have been a little bit sharper with our shots, moved the ball a little better and boxed out a little more, it’s a two or three possession game and you’re talking about a whole different story.”

 

It was Spain’s once in a lifetime chance and turned out same as it ever was — another U.S. victory over Spain. This time, it was 82-76, and Spain will leave another Olympics without a coveted gold medal. It lost to the U.S. in the final game at the 2008 Beijing Olympics and 2012 London Olympics.

 

The Americans can win their third consecutive gold and extend their eight-year dominance in international basketball with a victory over Serbia on Sunday (2:45 p.m. ET). It is a rematch of the 2014 FIBA World Cup final, which the U.S. won.

 

“We talked about this all summer – to be here in the final game, to win the gold,” said forward Kevin Durant who is No. 2 behind Carmelo Anthony and ahead of LeBron James on the USA’s all-time Olympic scoring list. "We like our chances, so we've got to come out and play with a lot of intensity, and a lot of passion and energy, and we'll be fine."

 

Klay Thompson scored 22 points, Durant added 14 points and eight rebounds and Kyrie Irving had 13 points.

But offense – which has carried the U.S. throughout this competition – wasn’t the story for once. The U.S. defense, which had been exploited by opponents and criticized by reporters, put together its best back-to-back performances.

 

Spain shot 39% from the field, and the U.S. dominated the paint. DeAndre Jordan had 16 rebounds, four blocks and nine points.

“The key to their game was defense,” Spain coach Sergio Scariolo said. “Their athleticism and their size made our offense difficult in most of the possessions.”

After allowing 88 points to Australia, 91 to Serbia and 97 to France, the U.S. has given up 78 to Argentina in the quarterfinals and 76 to Spain.

Playing defense for the entire possession, challenging shots, communication and focus have improved in the knockout round.

 

“We had slippage for three games,” U.S. assistant coach and defensive specialist Tom Thibodeau said. “When you’re looking at those games, you’re also looking at high-powered offenses. You have to analyze where it went wrong. We had to get intensity back into it. But overall, I think the defense has been very good.”

The U.S. isn’t invincible. But it is better than it was a week ago, and an upset loss doesn’t seem as realistic.

 

“We need to continue to play with that effort on the defensive end. With passion like that it's going to be tough to beat us,” Durant said. "Offensively, any given time we can get hot. You see guys making shots all the time. But for the most part, we've got to be ready on the defensive end. The last two games we were really good.”

[Guiness]

One thing every NBA Western Conference team must fix in training camp

By Brett Pollakoff

 

Sep 20, 2016 11:00a ET

It's time

A few NBA teams will hold their media days on Friday, and the rest will do so beginning next week. That means training camps are just about upon us, so with that in mind, here's an introductory look at one thing each team should look to address before the regular season gets going at the end of October. We looked at the Eastern Conference last week. Here's our look at the West. Photo: Thearon W. Henderson

Los Angeles Lakers

With Kobe Bryant gone after 20 spectacular seasons, the youth movement is officially underway in Los Angeles. New head coach Luke Walton will give the keys to D'Angelo Russell, and will use training camp to install his new systems.

Walton has already said that rookie Brandon Ingram, the No. 2 pick in this summer's draft, won't start right away, and that's fine. But training camp and the preseason will be important in terms of preparing him for the long grind of his first NBA season. Photo: Vincent Frank / Sportsnaut / Yardbarker

Phoenix Suns

The Suns are in a similar situation as the Lakers, in that they have a ton of young talent that needs playing time to develop. The problem is the three guys pictured: Brandon Knight, Tyson Chandler and Eric Bledsoe, who are all worthy of a starter's share of minutes.

Head coach Earl Watson will need to determine just how much he'll be able to play budding star Devin Booker, not to mention the team's rookies -- Tyler Ulis, Dragan Bender and Marquese Chriss.

Minnesota Timberwolves

Tom Thibodeau took over as president of basketball operations and head coach this summer, so we can expect the young Timberwolves to improve greatly on defense.

Thibodeau is known for getting maximum effort out of his players, so Minnesota should finish much better than it did a season ago, when its defense ranked just 27th. More interesting to see, though, will be just how much of a leap can be made by the young core of Andrew Wiggins, Zach LaVine and Karl-Anthony Towns. Photo: David Sherman

New Orleans Pelicans

This wasn't a great offseason for the Pelicans on the surface. Ryan Anderson and Eric Gordon both left in free agency to sign with the Rockets, and the team didn't do anything to replace the production of those two key rotation players.

Add in the fact that Jrue Holiday will also miss an indefinite amount of time, and it could be another rough season in New Orleans.

Denver Nuggets

The Nuggets have some nice young talent in Emmanuel Mudiay (pictured), Jusuf Nurkic and Nikola Jokic. It'll be interesting to see how the team will be able to blend those pieces with the more established Danilo Gallinari and Kenneth Faried, and training camp is a great time to start to figure it out. Photo: Matt Birch / The Sports Daily / Yardbarker

Sacramento Kings

The biggest move the Kings made this summer was installing Dave Joerger as head coach. He'll need to bond with DeMarcus Cousins (pictured) as quickly as possible in order for Sacramento to have its first controversy-free season in several years.

Make no mistake, the Kings are still a bad team from a talent perspective. But if Joerger can start building a culture that Cousins can believe in, it could go a long way in changing the fortunes of the franchise.

Utah Jazz

The Jazz seem poised to make a leap this season. One of the better defensive teams in each of the past two years, Utah added Joe Johnson, George Hill and Boris Diaw this summer. As long as head coach Quin Snyder can use training camp to begin to make the new pieces fit, Gordon Hayward and company should be in good shape. Photo: Darryn Albert / Larry Brown Sports / Yardbarker

Houston Rockets

James Harden actually had a better statistical season last season than he did in the one before where he finished second in MVP voting to Stephen Curry. But his performance was lost thanks to a Rockets season that went off the rails very early on.

Harden admitted there were chemistry issues last season, and now, with Dwight Howard gone and Mike D'Antoni in place as the new head coach, Harden is as focused as ever in getting his team back to the level of playing with the league's elite. Photo: Jason Rowan / Sportress of Blogitude / Yardbarker

Memphis Grizzlies

Mike Conley is the highest-paid player in the NBA, thanks to the five-year, $153 million contract he signed this summer. Memphis also has a new head coach in place, after parting ways with Dave Joerger in favor of longtime Miami Heat assistant coach David Fizadale.

Chandler Parsons agreed to a big-money deal to join Memphis in free agency this summer, so training camp will be important for a new head coach to get his players on the same page for the upcoming season. Photo: Justin Ford

Dallas Mavericks

Dirk Nowitzki may still be the centerpiece in Dallas, but every offseason, the Mavericks surround him with different players in a bid to improve the team.

This summer was no different. Dallas added former Warriors Harrison Barnes and Andrew Bogut in free agency, and training camp will be as important as ever for head coach Rick Carlisle to acclimate his new players and get them familiar with his systems. Photo: Steve DelVecchio / Larry Brown Sports / Yardbarker

Portland Trail Blazers

The question for Portland when training camp begins is simple: Did the team reach its ceiling last season?

The Blazers advanced to the second round of the playoffs, after many predicted them to miss the postseason entirely. Portland went all in on its core, while also adding Evan Turner and Festus Ezeli. Injuries to Blake Griffin and Chris Paul undoubtedly helped the Blazers advance last year, and it'll be interesting to see whether the new additions in Portland make this team more formidable in 2017. Photo: Ezra Shaw

Los Angeles Clippers

A healthy Clippers team should be among the West's top teams. A core of Chris Paul, Blake Griffin and DeAndre Jordan can at times be among the league's best, and Doc Rivers coaching a veteran group makes L.A. one of the more dangerous units.

Oklahoma City Thunder

Kevin Durant is gone, so this is Russell Westbrook's team now. OKC should still be a threat, but training camp will be important in terms of defining Westbrook's role for the upcoming season.

San Antonio Spurs

Tim Duncan retired this summer, so this is Kawhi Leonard's team now. Pau Gasol came to San Antonio in free agency, and with Tony Parker, Manu Ginobili and LaMarcus Aldridge still in place, Gregg Popovich should have no trouble making another contender out of this group of Spurs.

Golden State Warriors

Believe it or not, training camp may be more important for the Warriors than it will be for any other franchise. Golden State won an NBA-record 73 games during the regular season last year, but will be entering the 2016-17 season without five of its key rotation players from the past two seasons.

Eventually, the Warriors may turn into an unfair opponent for the majority of NBA teams. But they'll take more time to figure things out than many people expect.

[The Cunning Linguist]

It's going to be a rubber match in the Finals between the Golden State Warriors and the Cleveland Cavaliers imho.