Kritik und Anregungen » rceptions last year

Building something that lasts in the NBA is hard. Even teams on top live in fear of one butterfly flap that might undo everything -- one injury, one trade gone bad, one unhappy player or even a blip of bad timing in the way contracts are staggered.Its amazing how fast things spin out of control, and how long it can take a team to find its bearings again. Teams crave control. They hoard draft picks to decide who gets to wear their uniform and craft five-year plans that make them feel and act as if they are a step ahead. Sometimes they really are! Play a couple of things wrong, and suddenly youre reactive and desperate, flailing one move behind everyone else.The Dallas Mavericks busting up their 2011 title team to chase free agents wasnt on its own a mistake. Those dudes were mostly fogies, and Tyson Chandler, the one core guy at the outer edge of his prime, has been up and down since signing with the Knicks. You cant control a free agents choice, especially when incumbent teams can outbid you, but it wasnt nuts to think some big name would take the Mavs money -- particularly given Mark Cubans cozy relationship with power agent Dan Fegan.But the Mavs have mishandled most of the things they do control. They traded down in drafts to save money, traded out of them and whiffed on most of the picks they did make. Donnie Nelson, the teams GM, begged Cuban to draft Giannis Antetokounmpo at No. 13 in 2013, but the Mavs instead traded down five spots to open up a few hundred thousand bucks in extra cap space for Dwight Howard. They ended up drafting Shane Larkin at No. 18 as part of a deal that sent away their first-round pick from the year before.Fewer teams had cap room then, but the Mavs could have picked 13th and found other ways to dump money in a pinch.Team building is hard, and it requires major luck somewhere along the way. Most picks below the lottery yield back-of-the-rotation guys or total busts. But to sustain success, you eventually have to hit on a few of them. Roddy Beaubois, the No. 25 pick in 2009, might have turned into a hit had foot injuries not ruined his career. Justin Anderson, the 21st pick last year, looks like a hoppy and versatile wing perfect for the modern NBA. The hits dont have to be Kawhi Leonard at No. 15, or Draymond Green in the second round. One or two Jae Crowders will do.The Mavs had the real Jae Crowder, and included him (plus this years pick) in their ill-fated gamble for Rajon Rondo. Boston got Brandan Wright in that deal, too. Crowder and Wright will earn $12 million combined next season, about 60 percent of Kent Bazemores likely salary. Dallas was brilliant to snag Al-Farouq Aminu on a minimum salary in 2014-15, but then let him walk to Portland to carve out max cap space for DeAndre Jordan.Dallas sacrificed a lot of good under-27 players in the pursuit of great ones, and the odds got worse when the cap boom gave everyone space.?Chandler Parsons is the latest such casualty. He went from bro-in-chief to outcast in record time, and no one will say exactly why. His knee issues certainly frustrated the Mavs, especially given the timing of flare-ups; Parsons appeared in just one of Dallas 10 playoff games over the past two seasons.The Mavs decision that Parsons is no longer a max player offended him, and the market has proved Parsons right; Memphis has offered him a max contract pending a physical that promises to be one of the most suspenseful moments of this free-agency period.Parsons didnt find a groove in Dallas until January, and hes a minus defender. But hes a high-IQ guy who shot 39 percent from deep in Dallas and can shoot, pass and dribble across both forward spots. Hes never made an All-Star team, and hes not a foundational piece. No one knows how his right knee will hold up going forwardBut Parsons is good, and the Mavs cant afford to let good 27-year-olds walk away without a Plan B. Their Plan A appears to have been a double-barreled signing of Mike Conley and Hassan Whiteside, but that left them once again at the mercy of variables they cannot control. Stud free agents want to see players with whom they can grow, but the Mavs have mostly punted on such players to pursue stud free agents.We know by now what Plan B is: Dallas has a list of canny veteran free agents they can nab after everyone has picked over the market, and they will mesh better than any of us expect. Dirk Nowitzki is a rising tide on offense, and Rick Carlisle is one of the greatest coaches in NBA history.It is hard, and perhaps impossible, to bottom out when you have someone as great as Nowitzki. Maybe it is time to try, one way or another. Before the Jordan hostage situation a year ago, Cuban said he had planned to tank had Jordan spurned Dallas. Its unclear how hed have done so without ordering Nowitzki to have some long-overdue surgery, but perhaps its time to do it now.Like it or not, that is a tried-and-true path you can control: lose a lot of games and take a shot at drafting a superstar. That is why Sam Hinkie scorched the earth in Philadelphia -- to eliminate as many of those noisy variables as possible, and draft over and over in the spots with the best chance of turning out a Nowitzki.You can get superstars without doing that, of course. The Mavs drafted Nowitzki at No. 9. The Spurs turned George Hill, the No. 26 pick, into Leonard, and leveraged Leonard into pole position for LaMarcus Aldridge. (Still: Ground zero of the Spurs dynasty was a blatant tank job that netted one of the half-dozen greatest players who ever lived). The Rockets transitioned from Yao Ming to James Harden while fighting for the playoffs every year.But that middle road is hard, and it requires maximizing every asset --- drafting well and keeping the cupboard stocked for deals. Its why Sam Presti in Oklahoma City keeps turning outgoing stars into younger players and extra draft picks. He knows he cant afford to be left with stars and nothing else. He wants things he can control -- draft picks, younger players on rookie contracts, matching rights. They are hedges against the unknown, a future he can sell to Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook.The Mavs dont have that, and they are running out of time for Nowitzki. Set emotion aside and its probably best for them to part now. Nowitzki can chase one last ring, and the Mavs can bottom out ahead of a loaded draft in a year when everyone else is trying to win. It probably wont happen -- city and player care for each other too deeply -- but it would be the quickest path to a new foundation.The Knicks have their foundation, Kristaps Porzingis, and maybe that is all that matters. For now, Carmelo Anthony is almost their own, younger version of Nowitzki. Hes so good, they cant properly rebuild. Provide Anthony an average supporting cast and youll be around .500. Fail to do so, and all you have is a miserable superstar.The Knicks and Anthony are stuck with each other. The deal he signed in 2014 has a no-trade clause, and a suitor both acceptable to Anthony and stocked with assets the Knicks want just hasnt emerged. There was some internal hope the Cavs might become that team, but then they won the whole stinking thing.Even had the Knicks wanted to trade Anthony before re-signing him, the timing never broke right. Two years before the expiration of his deal in 2014, the Knicks won 54 games and snagged the No. 2 seed; no team would ever trade its star during a season like that. New York predictably slipped the next season, 2013-14, but Anthony was on an expiring contract by then, torpedoing his trade value.And so he were are, in 2016, with the Knicks building a team designed to make the 2012 conference finals. Theyve made a choice: as long as Anthony is in New York, they are going to try to at least be competitive. The Knicks dont really even see another choice. They might feel differently had they not traded so many picks and players in previous win-now moves, including the disastrous Andrea Bargnani deal. They dont have a lot of tools beyond money and a big city.Each of this summers moves is defensible on its own. They flipped Robin Lopez and Jerian Grant for Derrick Rose because the organization needed a galvanizing spark, and because the free-agent market is thick with centers to replace Lopez -- and thin on point guards better than Rose. OK, fine. If things go badly, the Knicks let Rose walk.Theyre about to sign Joakim Noah to a four-year, $72 million deal despite knee and shoulder injuries that have cramped Noahs game since a magical 2013-14 season in which he finished fourth in MVP voting.Again, fine. The Knicks need leadership and defense, and they are not really getting those things from any of their veterans. Noah is a beloved teammate, and he will help a defense that has been wretched almost every season since the Jeff Van Gundy era ended. He can spare Porzingis the brutality of playing center full time, cede the position to him for 10 or 15 minutes per game, and slide into a backup role whenever Porzingis is ready to start in the middle.Noah can facilitate from the elbows and resume setting nasty screens for his old Chicago point guard. He started looking like his snarling, rebound-munching self again in the month before his shoulder gave out last season. He even made some layups. Noah is hungry to prove he can rediscover his peak form, and even 85 percent of that player is damned good.None of these players is ancient, either. If Porzingis makes a leap in Year 2 or 3, the start of his prime might overlap with the very end of those of some other New York players.But zoom out and the vision is murky. Are the Knicks going to run any triangle with Rose, a non-triangle point guard, spotting up in the corner? Are they a fast-break team? Even if they sign another wing shooter -- Courtney Lee, Eric Gordon -- can they provide Melo enough space to rampage on the block with Noah and Rose clogging things up?If they do end up with Gordon, the collective health risk between Rose, Noah, and Gordon is enough to induce some panic dry-heaving.When the Knicks flipped Lopez for Rose, fans crowed about how much cap space New York could open for next summers insane free-agency class. But Lopez turned into Noah on a richer long-term deal, and if the Knicks commit $30 million combined in 2017-18 salary to Noah and Shooting Guard X, they might have only between $30 million and $35 million in cap space next summer -- enough for one mega-max but not for the dream scenario of two.That estimate includes $0 for Rose. He is a risk-free flier primed for a contract year, but thats exactly why Chicago traded him: to avoid the temptation of investing more in Roses knees after one good season.There is a lot of uncertainty between now and next July. The cap for 2017-18 probably will come in higher than the projected $107 million. New York could off-load Kyle OQuinn, Langston Galloway?and any free agent it signs now.But in the bigger picture, the Knicks are using equity to get these guys: a good center on a value contract (Lopez), a semi-interesting point guard prospect (Grant) and cap flexibility. They havent boxed themselves in, but they have exhausted assets they could have used in gain-an-inch moves that might have primed them for something bigger -- something that better fit Porzingis timetable.With Anthony around, they are not going to wait for Porzingis. But there were better ways to straddle the middle ground while still gathering goodies on the fringes that could pay off down the line.Again: Maybe all that matters is that they drafted Porzingis. Any team hoping to get anywhere needs to find a young star somehow. The Knicks have one. The Mavs barely have anyone young. Even for smart teams with good intentions, the NBA can be a hard place. Air Max Pas Cher Chine Paypal . But by the time the game started, the Toronto Raptors forward felt even worse. And, for three quarters, it showed as Gay shot a woeful three-for-13 from the field. Nike Tn Requin Pas Cher . On Mar. 16, coming off a "fight of the year" performance at UFC 154 the previous November, St-Pierre faced Nick Diaz at UFC 158 in what would be his eighth defence of the welterweight title. Using his superior athleticism, St-Pierre cruised to a five round, unanimous decision victory setting up a much-anticipated title defence against number one contender Johny Hendricks. http://www.airmaxpaschersite.fr/ . -- Stanfords Kevin Danser knelt on one knee and hardly moved on the sideline as Michigan State celebrated its Rose Bowl victory and his Cardinal teammates made their way to the locker room. Air Max 270 Pas Cher Chine .com) - The Montreal Canadiens will try to halt their longest losing streak of the season when they host the struggling New York Islanders in tonights clash at the Bell Centre. Air Max 720 Pas Cher Noir . -- Linebacker Myles Jack ran for four touchdowns, defensive end Cassius Marsh caught a scoring pass, and No. Take a look across the college football landscape this preseason, and then think about whom youd zero in on for a preseason All-American team. Tough gig, right?Dont sweat it. We took care of the hard work and the difficult non-Fournette, non-McCaffrey, non-Watson decisions.Heres your ESPN 2016 preseason All-American team.OFFENSEQB: Deshaun Watson, ClemsonIn his first full season as the starter at Clemson, Watson led the Tigers to an ACC title and an Orange Bowl win and nearly pulled the upset over Alabama in the national championship game. In the process, he threw for 4,109 yards, ran for 1,105 more and totaled 47 touchdowns. The performance set a high bar, but as NFL scouts drool over his potential to star at the next level, his sights are clearly set on finishing the run to a national championship first. -- David M. HaleRB: Leonard Fournette, LSUAs a sophomore, Leonard Fournette strung together one of the best seasons in SEC history, with 1,953 rushing yards, 22 touchdowns and an FBS-high 162.8 rushing ypg. The only way for him to top that would be with a Heisman Trophy as a junior -- and that will be within his reach if LSU remains in the playoff conversation deep into November. -- David ChingRB: Christian McCaffrey, StanfordThe NCAAs record holder for all-purpose yards in a season (3,864), McCaffrey was the only FBS player to lead his team in rushing and receiving in 2015. He finished second in the Heisman voting and set a school record for rushing yards in a season (2,019). --?Kevin GemmellWR: JuJu Smith-Schuster, USCThe Trojans primary target hauled in 89 catches for 1,454 yards and 10 touchdowns last season. He was the only Pac-12 player to average more than 100 receiving yards per game (103.9). --?K.G.WR: Mike Williams, ClemsonIn the first quarter of the first game of the 2015 season, Williams hauled in a touchdown pass, took a shove from behind and collided with the goal post. That was the end of his season, as a neck injury sidelined him for the next seven months. Watching his team win an ACC title without him took its toll, but it also is driving Williams to have a huge season in his return to action. Given his 1,030 yards and six touchdowns as a sophomore in 2014, that could mean big problems for opposing DBs. -- D.H.TE: Jake Butt, MichiganTeammates say the 2015 All-American is deceptively fast and uses his body to get open as well as anyone in the country. Equipped with a coaching staff that makes good use of its tight ends, its a safe bet that Butt is on his way to a second-straight season of 50-plus catches. -- Dan MurphyOT: Cam Robinson, AlabamaThe talented left tackle could go wire-to-wire, from the No. 1 prospect at his position coming out of high school to a Freshman All-American to a likely first-round draft pick in next years draft. -- Alex ScarboroughOG: Dan Feeney, IndianaAn ESPN.com first team All-American in 2015, Feeney has allowed only one sack in his career and has helped pave the way for a 2,000-yard rusher in 2014 (Tevin Coleman) and one of the nations top all-around offenses in 2015. -- Brian BennettC: Pat Elflein, Ohio StateThe senior thought about joining the flood of Buckeyes who left early for the NFL, but his decision to return could prove invaluable both personally and for his teams chances of returning to the College Football Playoff. Elflein gets a chance to showcase his skills at center after previously starring as a guard, and Ohio State gets a veteran back to anchor the offensive line. -- Austin WardOG: Dorian Johnson, PittJohnson has been a stalwart on the Pitt offensive line since his freshman year, with 27 straight starts entering the season. He is a big reason many believe Pitt has the best offensive line in the ACC. -- Andrea AdelsonOT: Conor McDermott, UCLAA second-team all-conference performer last season, the 6-foot-8, 260-pounder helped the Bruins post their second-lowest sack total in school history (14). He also helped pave the way for former running back Paul Perkins to a second straight 1,000-yard rushing season. --?K.G.DEFENSEDE: Jonathan Allen, AlabamaLeading his team and finishing second in the SEC in sacks wasnt enough.dddddddddddd Allen bypassed the NFL draft to return to Alabama and anchor a defensive line that promises once again to wreak havoc on quarterbacks. -- A.S.DT: Carlos Watkins, ClemsonHis first few years at Clemson were relatively quiet, but a light came on for Watkins in 2015, as defensive coordinator Brent Venables said, and he blossomed into one of the most disruptive interior linemen in the country. Watkins racked up 69 tackles -- eight for a loss -- and 3.5 sacks while helping Clemsons line stuff opposing run games. He even recorded an interception against Appalachian State and returned it for a touchdown. His strength and athleticism have NFL scouts talking him up as a potential first-round draft pick. -- D.H.DT: Malik McDowell, Michigan StateA strong showing in the College Football Playoff launched McDowells national profile to a new level. The Spartans defensive line is now his to control, and the massive athlete will be playing in several spots to wreak as much havoc as possible in opposing backfields. -- D.M.DE: Myles Garrett, Texas A&MThe 2015 Lombardi Award finalist should be in for a huge junior season after compiling 24 sacks and 34.5 tackles for loss in his first two seasons. Get a glimpse of him while you can because hell likely be a first-round pick in the 2017 NFL Draft. -- Sam KhanLB: Reuben Foster, AlabamaSimply put, hes a heat-seeking missile at middle linebacker who has taken out Leonard Fournette and many more in the SEC in his three years at Alabama. -- A.S.LB: Devonte Fields, LouisvilleThe former Big 12 Defensive Freshman of the Year came on strong at the end of his first season with Louisville and finished with 22.5 tackles for loss and 11 sacks. Now in top shape, coaches expect Fields to have an even bigger impact. -- A.A.LB: Raekwon McMillan, Ohio StateCounting the variety of ways the prototypical middle linebacker contributes is a challenge, but McMillan simplifies it with his own evaluation: tallying the number of tackles he misses. That number was in single digits a year ago, and the junior is likely to be even better after another offseason of development. -- A.W.SS: Derwin James, Florida StateThe sophomore could probably be an All-American at safety, linebacker and even defensive end. Florida State will move its gifted defensive back all over the field to take advantage of his unique athleticism and strength. -- Jared ShankerFS: Budda Baker, WashingtonHes the anchor of a Washington defense that yielded a Pac-12 best 18.8 points per game last season. His 49 tackles and two interceptions, along with nine passes defended, earned him first-team all-conference honors. --?K.G.CB: Desmond King, IowaKing tied a school record with eight interceptions last year on his way to winning the Thorpe Award as the nations top defensive back. Then he thrilled Hawkeyes fans by deciding to return for his senior season. -- J.S.CB: Jalen Tabor, FloridaDespite the notoriety All-American Vernon Hargreaves III received last season, there are some around Floridas program who thought Tabor was better and much more consistent all season. Tabor snatched four interceptions in 2015, with two going back for touchdowns, and tied for first in the SEC with 18 passes defended. -- Edward AschoffSPECIAL TEAMSK: Andy Phillips, UtahHe completed 85.2 percent of his kicks last season (23 of 27), including a long of 53 yards. He was a perfect 12-for-12 last season between 30 and 39 yards and added 20 touchbacks. -- K.G.P: JK Scott, AlabamaYou think that pendulum swing of his created some booming punts as a freshman and sophomore? Wait for what comes next, after Scott grew an inch and a half this offseason. -- A.S.AP: Adoree Jackson, USCUSCs first three-way player in nearly 20 years, Jackson is a mainstay at cornerback, but he also returns kicks and punts while moonlighting as a receiver. Last year, he posted 35 tackles and an interception but also caught a pair of touchdowns and returned two punts for scores. -- K.G. ' ' '