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Breaking down Week 11

by Chad Ford

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Also Below: Magic hot for Kwame | Payton rumors get new life | Bulls still not getting to the point | Did Shaq really apologize? | Peep Show

Trade rumors are starting to heat up as we head in to the heart of winter. In Orlando, the Magic are still searching, praying for a big man to right their wrongs. In Seattle, the Sonics are slipping fast and an age-old question is resurfacing. In Chicago, the point guard controversy that won't go away finally might push the Bulls off the fence. And in Los Angeles, a sleeping giant is starting to wake up. But will Shaq's controversial comments toward Yao sink the Lakers' ship?

Magic hot for Kwame

The Magic are close to being good, even without Grant Hill. Can GM John Gabriel make a move before the Feb. 20 trade deadline to push them over the hump?

"To be close is one thing," Gabriel told the Orlando Sentinel. "It shows you're competing. It shows that some things are working. But we need to grab some momentum somehow."

Kwame Brown

Forward-Center

Washington Wizards

Profile

2002-2003 SEASON STATISTICS

GM PPG RPG APG FG% FT%

36 7.9 5.7 0.8 .472 .713

Much was made last week about the Magic's offer of two first-round draft picks for Kwame Brown. The Wizards shot the offer down and reiterated that they had no intention of trading Kwame. Apparently, the Magic aren't taking no for an answer.

The latest, according to the Sentinel, has the Magic possibly throwing in Mike Miller to sweeten the deal. Gabriel believes that Brown is a star in the making and just needs to be free of Jordan's stifling influence to blossom.

If they cannot get Brown, the Magic also like forward Etan Thomas -- at the right price.

"With our team as healthy as it possibly can be [read: Grant Hill], we still believe very much that we're as close as anyone else," Gabriel said. "And if there's a deal out there, we'll make it. But it's going to have to make sense for us."

Other potential big men that could help the Magic this year?

Tyrone Hill

Power Forward

Cleveland Cavaliers

Profile

2002-2003 SEASON STATISTICS

GM PPG RPG APG FG% FT%

29 6.8 9.1 1.0 .429 .733

Tyrone Hill will be an attractive commodity as we head toward the deadline. He appears to have lost his job in Cleveland to rookie Carlos Boozer and Chris Mihm. He's in the last year of his deal and has the experience to help a contender. The Warriors' Danny Fortson is available, but it's doubtful the Magic are willing to swallow the last four years of his deal. And, the Grizzlies are still willing to pull the trigger on a Stromile Swift deal if the Magic ever decide he's worth Miller.

Meanwhile, the Magic are still trying to figure out what to do with Grant Hill. Hill played Friday night but had to leave after just 16 minutes when the pain resurfaced. He played five minutes in the first quarter, seven in the second and four in the third before leaving for good. He had nine points, three rebounds and three assists but turned the ball over five times.

"He just got sore again, so we had to take him out," coach Doc Rivers told Flordia Today. "It is what it is, I guess. I just don't know what to say ..."

Magic weigh possible moves

Jerry Brewer / Orlando Sentinel

Hill hurt as Magic fall to Pacers in OT

John Denton / Florida Today

Hill may not play, but he's not unhappy

Branson Wright / Cleveland Plain Dealer

Payton rumors get new life

The Sonics' ship isn't leaking in more. It's sinking at an alarming rate.

A loss to the lowly "Cadavaliers" on Sunday, their 18th loss in the last 26 games, had coach Nate McMillan wondering if his team had hit rock bottom.

"I've never been involved in a situation like this, as a player or as a coach," McMillan told the Tacoma Tribune. "Regardless of the outcome of this season, or what we do from this point on, we will remember this last month and a half. If we are fortunate enough to get on a winning streak and make a run toward the end, regardless, this will remain a devastating time for us."

The Sonics have already been working the phones, trying to find a legitimate power forward in return for disgruntled point guard Kenny Anderson. The problem for the Sonics is that they're locked in limbo. Are they rebuilding or contending? Depending on who you ask, the answer will be very different.

Gary Payton

Point Guard

Seattle SuperSonics

Profile

2002-2003 SEASON STATISTICS

GM PPG RPG APG FG% FT%

36 21.2 4.7 9.3 .459 .693

But a lack of depth isn't the Sonics' only problem. Gary Payton is slowly reverting back to his Terminator ways. He's coldly killing any team chemistry left in the locker room. Second-year stud Vladimir Radmanovic won't play defense. And Jerome James, now that he's healthy, suddenly thinks he's Shaq. James took four fourth-quarter shots despite the fact that the Sonics didn't call a play for him.

McMillan, who's called Payton selfish and railed on Radmanovic's effort, picked on James after Sunday's loss. "Guys are playing with the ball who haven't proven in this game they should be playing in these situations. There is a reason why some guys are open. That comes down to execution on the offensive end of the floor ... and staying within the limitations. Not trying to play hero and do too much."

In short, the chemistry in Seattle looks pretty rotten. The team's three best young players all play the same position, Payton is fed up with losing and a series of financial miscues has the Sonics stuck with three DOA big men in the middle. Something has to give. Will it be Payton?

There are many on the team who still feel that the Sonics won't be able to turn the corner until he's gone. While no one doubts whether he can still play, many within the team think that it's just a matter of time before he either blows up or blows off the organization this summer. Would it be better to get something for him now, before it's too late?

The Chicago Tribune's Sam Smith says a Gary Payton-to-the-Pacers deal could happen. Smith suggests an Al Harrington, Austin Croshere and Jamaal Tinsley-for-Payton swap. While the players would be interesting, the deal won't work financially. Harrington is a base-year compensation player this season, making him almost impossible to trade. Besides, the Sonics are loathe to cut a deal now, unless they're replacing Payton with young superstar type talent. Harrington may qualify, but Croshere and Tinsley probably don't.

More likely, if the Sonics are contending, they should move Anderson for someone like Brian Grant. His contract is outrageous, but he'd be the missing piece to the puzzle in Seattle. Marcus Camby of the Nuggets and Kurt Thomas of the Knicks are also good candidates. If the Sonics are rebuilding, better to keep losing, get a nice lottery pick and use the cap room this summer to try to make a free-agent splash. Moving Payton now will only limit what the team can do this summer.

A new low: Sonics lose to Cavs

Frank Hughes / Tacoma News Tribune

Payton's place: Try Pacers

Sam Smith / Chicago Tribune

Sonics, Payton need to part ways

Steve Kelley / Seattle Times

Bulls still not getting to the point

Jay Williams' injury, and Jamal Crawford's strong play in his absence, has rekindled the preseason debate about who should run the Bulls -- Williams or Crawford.

Jamal Crawford

Point Guard

Chicago Bulls

Profile

2002-2003 SEASON STATISTICS

GM PPG RPG APG FG% FT%

34 7.3 1.9 3.2 .386 .714

Crawford said he's prepared to head back to the bench, once Williams returns, but he has a hard time figuring out how Williams has beat him out for the job.

"I know I can be a starter in this league," Crawford told the Chicago Tribune. "I started last year and we were 4-2. I just have to keep playing and accept my role. But I think we play well when I'm in the lineup."

If nothing else, Crawford's recent run is improving his trade value. However, GM Jerry Krause continues to insist that Crawford's not going anywhere.

"I've said it before and I'll say it again: I'm not interested in trading him," Krause said.

Coach Bill Cartwright isn't helping either. He refuses to play the two guards together, creating a crunch for minutes.

"There's no reason to," Cartwright said. "If we play Jay and Jamal together, what am I going to do with Fred Hoiberg, who's playing pretty well? What am I going to do with Jalen Rose, who's our shooting guard? I think those guys should play."

Jay Williams

Guard

Chicago Bulls

Profile

2002-2003 SEASON STATISTICS

GM PPG RPG APG FG% FT%

34 10.1 3.1 5.5 .381 .566

The tensions got a little thicker this weekend when the Chicago Sun Times quoted Williams' father, Dave, as saying that Jay wanted to be traded.

"It got to a point where he said, 'Dad, maybe I need to be traded,' " said David Williams. "I said, 'Wait. You've got to give it a chance.' I asked him if he had spoken to coach Cartwright. He said, 'Dad, he won't speak to me.' I said, 'Go knock on his door. He'll sit down and talk with you.' "

Williams' father said he was shocked by his son's trade suggestion.

"Jason is not a quitter," he said, referring to his son by his given name. (Williams goes by Jay to avoid being confused with the Memphis Grizzlies' Jason Williams.) "For him to mention trade suggested he was considering giving up."

Williams' parents also ripped the Bulls for running the triangle offense and for not having a clear plan to win a championship.

"You need to see people who appear headed in the right direction. Right now, I just can't get a feel for where the Bulls are going. ... What is the plan to correct things?" Aletha Williams, Jay's mother, said. "We've sometimes found ourselves silently saying, 'What are we doing here?' He's trying to work within the triangle offense, which may be a good system, but it has yet to be a good system for him or the players the Bulls have had for the last [five] years."

Cartwright pulled Jay aside Sunday to talk about the article.

"Jay is a man," Cartwright said. "And when you come into this league, you claim certain responsibilities that are yours. I know he wants to do that. I'm certain that if given time, and people leave him alone, he'll be able to do that. But he needs time to learn. I'll say it again, if left alone to grow up and be his own person, he's going to be a good player in this league."

Crawford makes strong case for starting

K.C. Johnson / Chicago Tribune

Bulls rookie Jay Williams looks to Mom and Dad for comfort

Lacy J. Banks / Chicago Sun-Times

Cartwright advises parental discretion

Roman Modrowski / Chicago Sun-Times

Did Shaq really apologize?

Obviously, the L.A. Times, and the rest of the Lakers' adoring media, has accepted Shaquille O'Neal's apology to Yao Ming and moved on.

Yao claims he never gave Shaq's derogatory comments a second thought in the first place.

But many Asians are still furious. Amazingly, Shaq channeling Trent Lott isn't as comforting as we all think it should be.

For those of you who took the weekend off, Insider's column on Friday about Shaq's mocking of Yao did more than stir up the hornet's nest. At various points Friday, both the league office and the Lakers' front office put heat on Shaq to issue a public apology.

Here are a few highlights, for those who missed out (or for those who read just the L.A. Times story that inexplicably left out all the good stuff):

Comment: "I said it jokingly," O'Neal said, "so this guy was just trying to stir something up that's not there. He's just somebody who doesn't have a sense of humor, like I do."

Translation: Irwin Tang, who wrote the AsianWeekly column last week that called Shaq a racist, wasn't the only person complaining about Shaq's comments. Was Shaq implying that Asians lack a sense of humor? Wasn't it Lott who got in trouble recently when he implied that the only problem with his comments about Senator Strom Thurmand was with the people who didn't get the joke?

Comment: "I mean, if I was the first one to do it, and the only one to do it, I could see what they're talking about," Shaq said. "But if I offended anybody, I apologize."

Translation: Other people make Asian jokes too. Only the first guy who makes the joke is a racist. Everyone else is a comedian.

Comment: "I said a joke. It was a 70-30 joke. Seventy percent of people thought it was funny, 30 didn't. ... Over my 11 years in the NBA, I know for a fact that most of you guys are going to write what you want to write, and it's our job to either defend it or just let it go. At times I try to be a comedian. Sometimes I make a good joke and sometimes it's a bad joke. That's just the ups and downs of trying to be a comedian."

Translation: If 70 percent of the population (we have no idea where Shaq actually got these numbers) thinks it's funny, then Shaq can't be a racist.

The Lakers' response didn't really go much further.

Lakers GM Mitch Kupchak said in a statement: "The Lakers, of course, would never condone any type of racism, sexism or derogatory comments of any type."

Of course, Shaq has been at this for more than six months. He's done it on national television shows, national radio programs and in the locker room. It's pretty hard to believe that the Lakers heard of this for the first time Friday when Kupchak pulled up Insider. If Wang Zhizhi had joined the Lakers instead of the Clippers this summer, do you think the Lakers would've let any of this go on?

Even David Stern chimed in on the topic on Sunday.

"My reaction was, that sports once again has the opportunity to teach us about how perceived jokes or remarks that we might consider in a normal course are hurtful, harmful and irresponsible," he told the Arizona Republic. "And I think Shaq responded appropriately, and Yao did too. It also shows the power of the Internet, because the remarks were from several months ago, and they got a second life, as they should have, because it gives us the opportunity to use sports to deal with sensitivity."

Some are more forgiving than others. All of that was enough for the Los Angeles media to let it go. After a flurry of articles on Saturday, there was only one article on Sunday (T.J. Simers' piece that claimed he didn't find Shaq's comments offensive) and one today pointing out that Shaq was practicing his apology to Yao in the wrong language. ("Toy-inchee," the word Shaq said he'd say to Yao when they meet on Friday, is Cantonese for "I'm sorry." Yao, like most people in mainland China, speaks Mandarin. "Dui-boochee" is the proper word.)

Just about everyone seems to agree that Shaq isn't a racist. I've talked to numerous people around the league who are close to Shaq, and none of them felt he meant to do harm. But it's pretty clear from the steady stream of e-mail I've been receiving over the weekend that Shaq's comments did plenty of damage.

Here's one who didn't think Shaq went far enough.

"Shaq's initial apology sounds suspiciously like Trent Lott's initial apology. Both were essentially non-apologies and blamed the controversy on those who took offense at a perfectly good joke. Like Lott, Shaq just spent all his breath saying how it's unreasonable for anyone to be offended by what he said. Then he ends with a non-apology apology, apologizing to all those overly sensitive, shrill people who were offended by what he said and essentially putting the blame on the offended listeners rather than the offending speaker. At no point does Shaq say what he said was wrong, that he sincerely apologizes and that he'll try to do better in the future. This 'apology' is garbage."

-- Andrew Cheng, New York

Some think Insider didn't go far enough.

"You were headed in the right direction, but you got lost along the way. Show some backbone, Chad! ... You don't need to be a genius to realize that if it walks like a duck, talks like a duck, and spews racist venom like a duck -- it's a duck. You just have to have some guts to report it that way."

-- Ira Gottlieb, Davidson, N.C.

Of course, in the name of fairness, there were a few who thought Insider bringing the issue to the forefront was more despicable than anything Shaq could've said.

"You are a disgrace for writing that about Shaq being a racist. That is the most ridiculous thing ever."

-- Anthony Steven

Talk about shooting the messenger.

Ironically, while all this was going down this weekend, the New York Times did an interesting story on all-star voting patterns in China. Through Thursday, Yao was leading Shaq, 1,015,018 to 784,920, in the last published count until the starters are announced Jan. 23. Much of the media have, over the past month, accused the Chinese of stuffing the ballot box for Yao.

According to the latest statistics from the NBA, that just isn't the case. About 15 percent of all traffic to NBA.com comes from Asia. Eleven to 12 percent of the all-star ballots come back in Chinese. Yao leads Shaq in Asian voting, but he also leads him in North America by roughly the same proportion.

Old stereotypes die hard.

O'Neal's act groups him with Lott, Rocker

Steve Kelley / Seattle Times

At Center Stage, They Still Manage to Blow Lines

T.J. Simers / Los Angeles Times

Fans in Shanghai Are Voting in the Mainstream

George Vecsey / New York Times

Peep Show

Cavs: Coach John Lucas continues to fuel speculation that Darius Miles may be gone. The play of Ricky Davis and rookie Dajuan Wagner continues to make Miles look like a third wheel. "I'm not sold the three of them can play together," Lucas said. So far, Davis and Wagner have been at their best with undrafted Smush Parker at point guard. But that's not good enough considering the Cavaliers gave up Andre Miller and his all-star pedigree to the Clippers for Miles. "I understand when Smush is on the court, the other two perform better," Lucas said of Davis and Wagner. "But I didn't trade my best player to allow Smush to operate better."

Sixers: Larry Brown is frustrated with the play of Keith Van Horn. "I don't think he realizes what he's capable of doing," Brown told the New Jersey Star Ledger. "I want him hungry enough to demand the ball. It's something you've got to want to do. If you don't want to do that, then maybe I misread his ability or his personality."

Celtics: Vin Baker cried after logging the first healthy DNP of his career on Friday. "We lost the game and I was obviously a little bit more emotional," Baker, whose eyes welled after the game Friday, told the Boston Herald. "I just wanted to be in the grind with the team, and it's a natural emotion. Coach made the decision about going with the smaller lineup, and that's what it was and that's what it is. I love this organization. I love my teammates. I love coach Obie; he's great. And I just want to be a part of our success. If that's wrong, then I'm wrong for feeling that way. And I don't think that's wrong."

Rockets: Yao Ming knows how to scare the [censored] out of the Houston media. One day after spraining his knee Saturday, Yao showed up for practice on Sunday dragging his foot, feigning a bad limp and a pained facial expression. He got a pretty good laugh. So how is the knee? "Pretty good," Yao said in English. "I think I can play."

Pistons: Ben Wallace missed his second straight game with a sore right ankle. He said he'd see how he felt this morning before deciding whether he'd play at Orlando. "We really miss Ben out there," Jon Barry told the Detroit Free Press.

Suns: Penny Hardaway had successful surgery to repair a ligament in his right thumb on Saturday at Good Samaritan Hospital in Phoenix, but he is expected to be out six to eight weeks. That means Joe Johnson is back in the starting line-up. "This is another challenge for me," Johnson told the Arizona Republic. "I didn't like it [coming off the bench], but I didn't complain, didn't really say anything. It motivated me to work harder. I've been getting more time lately [even before Hardaway's exit]. I'm more relaxed, more composed. At the same time, I'm more aggressive at both ends of the floor."

Nuggets: Injured center Marcus Camby is targeting Jan. 20 for his return. "With my first game back being rusty, I wouldn't want [New York] to be my first game," Camby told the Denver Post. "I probably want to start out playing on the road. Hopefully, I'll know something [this] week. It's pretty hard to get practices because the games are coming so rapidly."

Mavs: The reports that French star Antoine Rigaudeau would be joining the Mavs may have been a bit premature. Rigaudeau and his agent are still trying to work out a buyout with Virtus Bologna, the team the 6-foot-7 forward played for in the Italian League. Donnie Nelson, the Mavs president of basketball operations, wasn't sure when Rigaudeau would be able to join the Mavericks. "I don't know if it'll drag on past this week," Nelson told the Fort Worth Star Telegram. "I've got no clue, no idea. ... We're in the proverbial holding pattern at this point."

A passive Van Horn stirs up Brown

Dave D'Alessandro / Newark Star-Ledger

All's well with Baker: O'Brien says center's tears are justified

Steve Bulpett / Boston Herald

Yao laughs off injury, should play

Janny Hu / Houston Chronicle

Barry gets back in form

Perry Farrell / Detroit Free Press

J. Johnson, Jacobsen say they are ready for burden

Don Ketchum / Arizona Republic

Camby eyes return against Wizards

Marc J. Spears / Denver Post

Rigaudeau's status remains uncertain

Dwain Price / Fort Worth Star-Telegram