Wayne Embry didn’t take long to start making moves.
Less than one week after taking over as the Toronto Raptors interim GM, Embry traded centre Aaron Williams to the New Orleans Hornets for two second-round draft picks.
“We are a team in transition and need to play our young guys,” Embry said in a release Tuesday. “Out of respect to Aaron, I thought it best for him to be with a team where he has a chance to play and that is in a playoff hunt.”
The Raptors will get a second-round pick in 2006 that originally belonged to Miami and New Orleans’ second-round choice in 2009.
Not sure if tonight’s “SportsCenter” will show it, but New Jersey’s Vince Carter missed a dunk tonight against the Pistons for the ages — taking off from the foul line, VC muffed the attempt at posterizing Tayshaun Prince and nearly ended up in the 5th row. “He wanted to make Prince his Frederic Weis,” intoned Marv Albert, who did admit a minute later having been fed that line by a producer.
Though the Lakers are roughing up the Knicks at MSG this evening, there is a silver lining for New York. At halftime, Larry Brown’s team is on pace to hold Kobe to under 60 points.
Of course this isn’t going to happen, and of course the Knicks are (probably) better off with Brown than without (or with Lenny Wilkens or Herb Williams or Don “Undisclosed Location” Chaney), but I’ve got to wonder — if any other team lost their last three games by 65+ points to three not-great teams, wouldn’t that team have been said to have quit on their coach? Bob Weiss lost his job in Seattle for some much less awful showings by the Sonics. Of course, he was being paid less and has won fewer championships, and Seattle’s GM isn’t on the cover of the PI every day taking the heat off him via a headline screaming about how bad a dad he is. But the Knicks and Larry Brown really don’t seem to be working at all right now. With a roster that’s almost impossible to blow up due to salaries and no first rounder in 2006, it doeesn’t look so good from my admittedly Nets-centric perspective.
well, every wanderlust Larry implied they’d quit on Monday….and tonight was a disgrace. We’ve been hearing all week how Sam Mitchell’s a putz and the Raptors had no pride allowing Kobe to ring them up for 81. How does getting lit up (even for a historic) total compare to allowing a teenager like Andrew Bynum to score 14 points in 11 minutes?
The lack of effort, the missed assignments — from rookies and vets….unwatchable basketball, seriously. Clyde correctly pointed out that Eddie Curry standing DIRECTLY UNDER THE BASKET is exactly the sort of thing that allows Kwame Brown (not exactly the first guy you think of when words like “hustle” and “aggressiveness” come to mind) to swoop in for the put-back.
Either Zipper Problem Zeke has saddled Larry with far too many uncoachable players, or Brown has never had to teach this many guys at once.