The NBA Development League has grown too large to exist only in the West and the Midwest. Next stop: The Northeast – and perhaps someday a piece of the New England-New York rivalry.
The NBA’s minor league increases to 18 teams next season, with one club ticketed for Portland, Maine, and the other also headed East with the location to be announced later this month.
The league has doubled in size over the last three years, but it has had little presence in the East. Its three divisions are the Central, Western and Southwestern, with a team in Erie, Pa. the farthest east.
“I don’t think it hurts to make sure that fans in all parts of the country have the ability to go to a D-League game and watch the players,” D-League president Dan Reed said. “I think we suffer a little bit from fans really not understanding how great our players are and how great our game is, simply because most have not had a chance to go to a game and see that 60 percent of our players are All-conference or better out of college.”
e were multiple franchises to put there, so teams from the West could have true road trips, rather than travel across the country just to play one game.
“There are travel benefits from having teams close by and it also creates rivalries, which is good for the fans and good for the player and good for the overall experience,” Reed said. “We wouldn’t want to put a team by themselves.”
The new entries will take care of that, and as the league continues to grow – Reed said there is no eventual number in mind or timetable to get there – there has been talk of a team landing in Harlem. Plus, it could allow some eastern NBA teams to have more accessible affiliates.
The Celtics currently use Utah, but could switch to Portland next season. A Harlem team would be a natural for the New York Knicks, whose affiliate is all the way in Reno. Reed said expansion has allowed the league to satisfy more of the NBA teams’ geographic requests.
Reed is in his second year as president and said D-League team valuations have quadrupled in that time. Better yet, NBA clubs are increasingly comfortable using it. He counted 72 former D-Leaguers in the NBA this week, and said parent teams are showing more interest in being able to assign more players and gain greater control over their affiliates.
And he looks forward to allowing a new segment of fans to see that success.
chance to actually go to a game and watch it and start following a team nearby to them, I think they’ll start to see that,” he said. “We’ve seen that everywhere we’ve gone. Fans actually watch the games, they come to appreciate how good the basketball is and how good the players are, and then they have a chance to say they were there when.”
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MISSING MARCH MADNESS: The NCAA tournament draws even greater interest in some locker rooms of NBA teams than it does in offices across the country.
The majority of NBA players and coaches played college ball, so they follow their alma maters with a feverish devotion and love of talking smack to an opposing player or teammate whose college is vanquished in the process.
But what about the players who skipped college and went directly to the pros?
For some, like Minnesota point guard Sebastian Telfair, this time of year reminds them of what they missed by forgoing life on campus for NBA riches.
“I’ve been asked this question a lot,” Telfair said. “I don’t know why, but as I’ve gotten older I’ve looked back and looked at the (tournament) and said, ‘Man, I wish I could have seen how I would have done on that stage.”’
After a sensational prep career at Abraham Lincoln High School in Brooklyn, N.Y., Telfair was a lottery pick of the Portland Trail Blazers in 2004.
o at Louisville, which made the Final Four during what would have been Telfair’s freshman season. The Cardinals are the tournament’s No. 1 overall seed this year and have another great chance to make a run, and Telfair will be watching.
“I root for Louisville. That’s my team,” Telfair said. “Guys that went to college, they root for their own team. So Louisville’s definitely my team.”
That’s not the same, Timberwolves rookie forward Kevin Love said. Love only spent one season at UCLA, but it was a memorable one that featured a run to the Final Four for the Bruins.
“I don’t know if I would have followed it the same” if I had skipped college, Love said. “I definitely would have missed college. I wouldn’t take that back. In some ways, I wish I could go back. But being a top-five pick, it’s tough to not leave.”
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MOPs to DNPs: Looking for a can’t-miss NBA pro? Chances are he won’t be the guy accepting the Final Four’s Most Outstanding Player award.
Recent history shows that the star of the NCAA tournament’s big weekend has no guarantee of future success – and some can’t even get on the floor of NBA games.
Of the last 10 Final Four MOPs, only Connecticut’s Richard Hamilton (1999) and Carmelo Anthony of Syracuse (2003) have become NBA All-Stars.
mas, James Worthy, Akeem Olajuwon and Patrick Ewing, all of whom became perennial NBA All-Stars.
Now, with most top players gone before they’ve ever had much college success, the winners are usually great college players who aren’t always even good pros. Mateen Cleaves, who won in 2000 with Michigan State, isn’t even in the NBA, playing in the NBA Development League.
Sean May (2005) and Corey Brewer (2007) have been hurt and unable to prove themselves worthy of being lottery picks.
Last year’s winner, Mario Chalmers from Kansas, has played well for Miami. He gave the Heat a league-high five players who appeared in the NCAA championship game, joining Udonis Haslem, Jamaal Magloire, Luther Head and Daequan Cook.
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POP’S PERSPECTIVE: They almost certainly won’t get the No. 1 seed and they’re no lock to hold onto the No. 2.
Yet, as always, the San Antonio Spurs won’t be too concerned with where they end up, as long as they’re healthy when they get there.
That makes it easier for the Spurs to concede the Western Conference to the Los Angeles Lakers, who built a huge early lead in the standings and have never let anyone close to them.
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The Spurs are better off worrying about what’s behind them. Five teams entered play Friday within 3 1/2 games of them, setting up the possibility that San Antonio could lose its grip on home-court advantage in the first round. Popovich doesn’t seem stressed.
“No one would give away a higher seed if given to them, so you just play each game and try to get better and wherever you end up, you end up,” he said. “We’ve had it both ways and won. I think in the end, the best team wins in a seven-game series whether you have home court or not.
“But if it was offered, no coach would give it away.”
They proved they could do without it again last year, winning Game 7 of a second-round series in New Orleans. So while some coaches might overuse their players while trying to win as many games as possible to guarantee they open at home, Popovich won’t be one of them. It’s why the Spurs didn’t have to rush recently signed Drew Gooden onto the floor before he was ready, why they’ll take the same strategy with the injured Manu Ginobili, and why Popovich could afford to give Tim Duncan a game off this week to rest his knees.
Those four titles show Popovich’s team knows what it’s doing.
at basketball. He gets them geared towards the playoffs. They’ve had success because they really play both ends of the court.”
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AP Sports Writers Jon Krawczynski in Minneapolis and Jeff Latzke in Oklahoma City contributed to this report.
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