The Dribble: thursday's Loose Balls

Thursday, October 27, 2005

thursday's Loose Balls

Loose Balls will be a regular column of thoughts and occurrences in the NBA

Danny Granger will rebound, score and block if he finds the floortime and may force the Pacers to make a move
Charlie Villanueva leading all rookies in minutes and scoring while grabbing 7rpg
Mike Sweetney posted a double-double against Minnesota (Garnett was on the bench) and might be breaking out thereby justifying his 9th overall selection
the Celtics, who made the playoffs last year, will try again without trading anyone until things go really sour
Nuggets have carried over last season's turnaround to the preseason and are 6-1
Clipper's Daniel Ewing could be this year's Chris Duhon
Adelman in Sactown doesn't know what to do with Kenny Thomas (who is playing better than Shareef) while Bonzi Wells is yet another candidate for a go-to-guy
Darius Miles/Reuben Patterson are piquing the interest of the Knicks who might fit in and move Quentin Richardson to the SG spot in return for Malik Rose or Maurice Taylor and a youngster meaning the Trailblazers may finally make a move after talking about it for long enough
the 6'11 Rafael Araujo, who could be compared to Adonal Foyle (minus the blocking ability) finds his scoring touch but still needs to work on the rebounds averaging 3.9 pg with his size is forcing the Raptors to not give up on him just yet
Lattrell Sprewell is still unsigned (muahahahaha)
Webber looks like he's feeling better as Ben Maller reports:

"The Sixers celebrated the 19th birthday of guard Louis Williams
a day early, but the veteran Chris Webber got the rookie.
When Williams bent over to blow out the candles,
Webber jammed his face into the ice cream cake.
"I knew it was a setup," Williams said. "They looked
too happy to celebrate it with me. I knew something was wrong."

my condolences to Desmond Mason who got shipped to the NOK Hornets; a team in disarray to say the least and Henry Abbott says it best on his blog:

"Desmond Mason just got traded to the
team with the repeated wickedallegations of mismanagement,
poor attendance, legal trouble, bad record,
and a hometown still digging out from the greatest
natural disaster in America's history"

things you never get used to (even though it goes by fast enough): is a full month of pre-season (Stern is such a tease) where you can never tell if the performances will carry over to the regular season
at least the waiver wire deadline is upon us Thursday 27 at 5 p.m.

10/27/2005 12:12:00 PM | Permalink

Guess what? Villanueva currently leads all rookies during the preseason in scoring (16.9 points) while adding 5.3 rebounds, 1.4 assists and .86 blocks in 30.3 minutes per game. He had 19 points (on 8-of-12 shooting) to go with five boards in just 25 minutes Monday night against the Blazers. Last week he had 24 points and seven rebounds in an OT victory over the Nets, including three clutch free throws in the final seconds to send the game into the extra session.

Posted by BROKXS | 10/27/2005 7:23 PM