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Sunday is for columns. The Sunday Click is a weekly trip around the country in search of the best of the NBA columnists the web has to offer. We round out 2007 with talk of coaches, Celtics-Lakers, and too much talent out West... FALL GUY Dave D'Alessandro of the Star-Ledger finds it hard to blame Scott Skiles for the Bulls' disappointing season thus far and believes Skiles has a brighter future than his former team ... Scott Skiles was the first coach to fall this season, which is one of those NBA events that is hilarious without actually being funny, as he may be last on the list of transgressors in the rise and fall of the Chicago Bulls. There's no point in getting emotional about it, which tends to be the case in those cities where the daily mood and dialogue are shaped by whether Tyrus Thomas sprints instead of jogs back on defense. -- Read More But Peter May of the Boston Globe thinks that Skiles just wasn't a good fit in Chicago anymore ... More than a decade ago, Danny Ainge began his first full season as head coach of the Phoenix Suns. He knew whom he wanted as his lead assistant. He had played against him. He had watched him coach in Greece. And he felt that Scott Skiles would be the ideal complement to him on the Suns bench. "I just had a feel when I played against him," Ainge said last week, a day after Skiles was fired as Bulls coach. "I liked his style. He was a bright, bright basketball mind and I thought he would enhance my staff. And he did. I'm still a big fan. Who has coached better over the last three years than he has?" -- Read More IT'S NOT ALL BAD NEWS IN THE COACHING WORLD Sekou Smith of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution lists his top five early candidates for the Coach of the Year award... Has the NBA coaching carousel no respect for the holidays? We couldn't even make it to Christmas without a coach ¡ª Chicago's Scott Skiles ¡ª getting a pink slip. Skiles wasn't even on the preseason hot seat list for coaches. That list, by the way, has been torn up and tossed in the garbage nearly two full months into the season. -- Read More NOT YOUR DADDY'S CELTICS With the Celtics visiting the Lakers tonight (10 p.m. ET, NBA TV), Mark Heisler of the Los Angeles Times talks rivalry and compares these Celtics to those of the past ... What rivalry? The Celtics are coming, all right, and they're no obligatory preseason feel-good story anymore but their old green monster selves. Early as it is, Boston, with a 25-3 record, looks less like the merely great Larry Bird teams of the '80s than the all-conquering Bill Russell teams that dispatched the Jerry West-Elgin Baylor Lakers in six NBA Finals in the '60s. -- Read More POINT GUARD OF THE FUTURE ... AND THE PRESENT David Aldridge of the Philadelphia Inquirer puts a spotlight on Chris Paul ... Despite being an emerging star in his own right, the Hornets' Chris Paul isn't too proud to pick up a few pointers from others - such as rival and friend Deron Williams of Utah. "We know each other so well, and we talk so often, that when I'm at home, and I'm watching League Pass, and I see his ball screen coming, I can sort of tell when he's going to go behind his back, and fake the guy, or cross him over," Paul said last week. "I can sort of see when he's about to score before it happens." -- Read More WESTERN CONFERENCE LOG JAMS Paul could be making his first All-Star appearance this February in his home arena, and if he does, eight-time All-Star and the league's third leading scorer, Allen Iverson could be staying home, as Tom Enlund of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel writes ... In Denver last week, some of the buzz centered around whether Nuggets teammates Carmelo Anthony and Allen Iverson would both be able to find their way onto this season's Western Conference all-star team. After all, both rank among the league's top five scorers and have helped propel Denver to the top of the Northwest Division standings. No one has to tell the Milwaukee Bucks that Iverson and Anthony are both worthy of all-star consideration after that pair picked them apart last week. -- Read More And guard isn't the only position that's stacked in the West. Jonathan Feigen of the Houston Chronicle can list at least 10 centers in the conference that deserve some sort of recognition ... Back when the All-Star ballots were released and San Antonio's Tim Duncan, the best power forward, was listed as a center, the explanation offered was that there just weren't enough centers worthy of mention. Thanks to the influence of the Spurs and common sense, Duncan was returned to the forward list on the online ballots. But as the voting results have been reported, there is another list of centers that is short. -- Read More THE BIG ARISTOTLE IN THE BIG TOP Jan Hubbard of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram has a good description of the situation in Miami these days ... Admittedly, the investigation has been casual, but as far as I can determine, when the Miami Heat arrives in Dallas on Thursday for a game with the Mavericks on Friday, the team plane will not have a Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey logo on the side. Much to the regret of players and coaches, there has been a circus atmosphere surrounding the Heat this season. The team that played so magnificently in overcoming a 2-0 deficit against the Mavericks in the 2006 Finals is a sideshow. -- Read More WAITING BY THE PHONE Chris Webber headlines the list of players that are still available if the situation is right for them, as Scott Howard Cooper of the Sacramento Bee writes ... Just in time for the new year: old faces. The most veteran of the veteran free agents are about to get the wake-up calls they left for 2008, the perfect time to initiate the perfect plan of missing a rigorous training camp and the first couple months of the regular season before riding to the rescue on rested legs. |
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