Dwight Howard says his back is still very sore on some days, and that players sometimes target his back, from Melissa Rohlin of Los Angeles Times: “It takes a while to recover,” he said of his back surgery a year ago to repair a herniated disk. “I’m doing the best I can with what I have. There’s days where I wake up and my back is really tight and sore and there’s days where it feels good. But that’s not going to change right now.” How is it feeling Tuesday, the day before the biggest game of the regular season? “I’m OK,” he said. “Very sore yesterday and after [Sunday’s win over San Antonio] but there’s nothing I can really do about it. That’s going to be there. The position that I play and how I play, guys are always going to find ways to attack my back.” Howard said he thinks players sometimes intentionally push him in the back during games. “Yeah. They don’t purposely try to hurt it, but they’re going to hit me and find ways to hit me,” he said. “There’s nothing I can really do about it but play through it.”
Mark Cuban had high praise for Vince Carter. For the younger players? Not so much, from Jeff Caplan of NBA.com: “I feel bad for Vince. Let me just say that right off,” Mavs owner Mark Cuban said. “Vince is a warrior. All these things I’ve heard in the past about him being soft and not playing hard, [bleep] that. That dude comes out to deliver every [bleeping] night. Even when a game got out of hand, he was busting people for not doing what they were supposed to do. He was cheerleading on the bench. I feel worse for Vince than I do for Dirk.” Carter joined the Mavs prior to the 2011-12 season expecting to help defend the championship and vie for his first… “I’m proud of the effort,” Cuban said of his club that fought back to .500 after falling to 13-23 on Jan. 9. “I’m just not always proud of the basketball IQ. When you see dumb plays, sometimes they look like lack of effort plays when they’re just dumb.” That was a direct shot at the club’s young, first-year backcourt that replaced future Hall-of-Famer Jason Kidd, who ditched Dallas at the last minute for New York, and Mr. Clutch, Jason Terry.
Tim Grover expects Kobe Bryant to come back better than ever from his Achilles injury, from Mike Bianchi of Orlando Sentinel: “Kobe told me the other day,” Grover said on our Open Mike radio show Wednesday. “He said, ‘Listen, I hire you when it’s 4th-and-15 with little time on the clock not for 1st-and-10 (with a lot of time left on the clock). There’s little time on the clock so let’s get this done.’ ” Grover has a new book out entitled “Relentless” that describes how the average person can develop the mental and psychological toughness that great champions like Kobe and M.J. possess. It’s the ability to push through mental barriers that make Grover confident Kobe can get back “not only close to what he once was, but better than he once was.” That’s quite a statement considering Bryant’s age (34), the amount of wear on his tires (17 years in the NBA) and the fact that Achilles injuries have ended the careers of players like Charles Barkley and Shaq. Said Grover: “Kobe is relentless in his pursuit to get himself better and go after the ultimate goal. It’s a mental battle. The mind controls the body; the body doesn’t control the mind.”
Speaking of Grover, he also said that Michael Jordan’s flu game was actually a “poison” issue, from Henry Abbott of Truehoop: “We were in Park City, Utah, up in a hotel. Room service stopped at like nine o’clock. He got hungry and we really couldn’t find any other place to eat. So we said eh, the only thing I can find is a pizza place. So we says all right, order pizza. We had been there for a while. Everybody knew what hotel. Park City was not many hotels back then. So everyone kind of knew where we were staying. So we order pizza. Five guys came to deliver this pizza. I take the pizza and I tell them: “I’ve got a bad feeling about this. … I’ve just got a bad feeling about this.” Out of everybody in the room, [MJ] was the only one who ate. Nobody else had it. And then 2 o’clock in the morning I get a call to my room. Come to the room. He’s curled up in the fetal position. We’re looking at him, finding the team physician at that time. Immediately I told him it’s food poisoning. Not the flu.”
Phil Jackson apparently itching to make a return to the NBA, from Ramona Shelburne and Marc Stein of ESPN: “After nearly two seasons in retirement, Phil Jackson has become increasingly interested in working in the NBA next season, according to sources familiar with his thinking. That doesn’t necessarily mean a return to coaching, as Jackson is known to be intrigued by the concept of moving into management for the first time in his career. But sources told ESPN.com this week that Jackson is “itching” to go back to work after a long spell to recharge since leaving the Los Angeles Lakers’ bench following the 2010-11 season. Sources stressed that there is no specific opportunity in play yet for Jackson, who resisted coaching overtures from the Brooklyn Nets earlier this season and told longtime confidant Charley Rosen in January in a SheridanHoops.com story that he “has no intention of ever coaching again.”
Err.. Dwade already has 3 rings. The one in 06 still counts right?