Pistons discover a Swede surprise in Jonas Jerebko
Vincent Goodwill / The Detroit News

Auburn Hills -- Pistons rookie Jonas Jerebko was a wide-eyed 16-year-old when an NBA general manager came to his hometown for a tournament.

Jerebko made sure the foreigner had every stat sheet available, and even gave him popcorn. Never in his wildest dreams did he think that GM would draft him six years later.

The GM was Pistons president Joe Dumars.

"I just wanted to be there," Jerebko said of the 2003 Eurobasket Tournament, which featured current NBA stars Pau Gasol, Tony Parker and Mehmet Okur. "One game, I got off and bought a ticket and I happened to be next to Joe."

"I didn't know who he was at first but I heard it was Joe.
"I was watching him more than the game."

Dumars remembers a young man running errands for him, but didn't draw the correlation until after draft night.

"Jonas asked me, did I remember the kid that ran errands for me when I was in Sweden," Dumars said. "And I told him, 'Yes I did,' and then I said, 'You can't be the kid?'"

Jerebko, now 22, had a big smile and told him yes...
Continued at
Swede Surprise

Live by the crossover, die by the crossover..or How the mighty have fallen

Pistons' Will Bynum made himself into NBA player

BY JO-ANN BARNAS
FREE PRESS SPORTS WRITER

He braces for the pain by gripping the sides of a barrel-sized cooler. Will Bynum knows the drill: His sore ankles and feet wrapped in tape, Bynum must climb into the icy tub for treatment to begin.

“Freeeziiing!” Bynum says, wincing and smiling at the same time.

Bynum, a backup point guard, is back in the Pistons’ lineup after missing three games because of the right ankle he rolled in Philadelphia on Dec. 9.

That the injury came three weeks after he tweaked his left ankle during a West Coast trip wasn’t surprising: Bynum knowingly put his right ankle at risk by overcompensating for the injured one. That also speaks of his driven personality:

“Everybody’s been playing hurt,” Bynum says with a shrug. “So it means doing extra on my part.”

There’s much we are just learning about Bynum, the former Georgia Tech star from Chicago’s South Side whose career finally has taken flight four years after working out for every NBA team — including the Knicks twice, he said — before being bypassed by each one in the 2005 NBA draft.

Now in his second year with the Pistons, Bynum, who turns 27 on Jan. 4, said he embraces each day by trying to live up to the words of Joe Dumars, who gave him his first big break by offering a two-year deal after the 2008 summer league.

“I think it’s your time,” the Pistons’ president told him. “You can show the world who you really are.”
Pistons' Bynum has overcome challenges in life and basketball

Any old phone book would do, as long as it was thick, and the binding was strong. And then the toe raises would commence -- up, down, up, down -- until Will Bynum reached 1,000.

For much of his childhood, Bynum was shorter than most kids his age. Although he knew he could nothing about his heredity, Bynum, even as a young teen, was determined to be in control of his basketball fate..

Continued at:

Will Power

what's with you being a fan of teams that suck? lol

I know, sometimes I wish I could be a bandwagon fan. I just don't have it in me.

Darko named one of top flops of decade.
Darko Top Flop

Given the Pistons' current anemic record, the fact that we chose Darko with the #2 pick in a draft that featured Dwayne Wade, Chris Bosh, Carmelo Anthony, Chris Kaman,and Josh Howard is REALLY annoying.
This was a mistake of historic proportions.

i am happy that you picked darko...if you didn't then the bulls would had to deal with any of those players more often. but, yea i was pissed off when the heat took wade.

yes that is sickening. the Pistons would be in the midst of a dynasty today if they just had picked the great Dwyane Wade.

thank god that didn't happend...the only thing piston fans should be happy with right now is that they have a coach while the bulls have...a...cheerleader as a coach.

I don't know about a dynasty but I do think the Pistons missed an opportunity for another championship in the past 5 years. Some of that was beyond Dumars' control (Larry Brown getting restless AGAIN) but some of it wasn't.

Detroit did have a good run avoiding major injuries until very recently so it's just one of those things. Everybody has some down years. I'd like to see what we look like if and when we get everyone -or most people- fully healthy. I think Detroit has too many tweener type players.

Did anyone see the Cleveland-LA game?
Derek Fisher is a punk. LOL.
I don't care overmuch for either team but LA must have set some sort of record for whining..

lilo watch the celtics...that team is full of punks.

The Bulls have decided to fire head coach Vinny Del Negro, but they are still looking for a replacement, sources told ESPN The Magazine's Chris Broussard.

The sources say that Chicago's lack of a decision on a replacement is the main thing that is keeping Del Negro employed.

There were internal discussions about John Paxson, the team's executive vice president of basketball operations, coaching the team, but he decided against it.

Chicago also reportedly contacted Doug Collins, who turned down the job as well.

After blowing a 35 point second half lead in a game where you used only 7 players, I would think the coach's head would be on a chopping block. The Bulls aren't in the same league as Boston, LA or Cleveland, but they should be playing better than they are.

yea i can't wait till he gets fired. i still don't know why chicago hired somebody who never coached in his life.

Detroit lost to NY last night. We made David Lee look like an all-star.
Who knows, maybe he is? But I didn't think he was THAT good. It's going to be a long season.

does detroit and chicago play tonight?

Detroit plays Chicago tomorrow at 3 PM.

When was the last season that McGrady wasn't hurt? I wouldn't take a chance on him for his injury record alone. And then the money, too? No way.

Rockets trying to trade Tracy McGrady
Associated Press

Houston -- The Houston Rockets acknowledge they are trying to trade Tracy McGrady, after the two-time scoring champion's representatives asked the team to deal him.

General manager Daryl Morey says the two sides have had "multiple conversations" and that the Rockets "have agreed to look into trade opportunities and have granted him an indefinite leave from team activities."

McGrady was unhappy with his playing time in six games since returning from offseason knee surgery and left the team before two road games over the weekend.

The seven-time All-Star is due to make about $23 million this season in the last year of his contract.

i would take him since this is his last year in a contract...i would trade salmones, hinrich, and tyrus thomas for him.

I don't know. Sometimes those 1 yr deals work but sometimes not. I can't judge another man's pain threshold or work ethic from afar but McGrady just seems like he's been hurt more often than not over the past five years. I wouldn't want Detroit to take a chance on him but it's not like Detroit has many players in demand anyway.

The Nets beat the Knicks for their 3rd win -- did I hear that right???

well that makes me feel better

Detroit is down 15 to Chicago with about 9 minutes left in the game.

man detroit is really terrible...when did they get rid of flip saunders?

Flip's been gone since 2008. After Flip was fired Joe D hired Michael Curry as coach. Curry was not ready for prime time and Dumars fired him over the summer. So now we have Kuester.

Dumars has a lot of goodwill from his playing days and the 2004 championship.
It's also too early to judge Kuester-especially since he hasn't had a full team yet because of injuries.

But that 2004 draft really hurt us. Also Dumars has stocked the team with a lot of guys who may be versatile but don't do any one thing particularly well. Detroit is overloaded with shooting guards/combo guards (Stuckey, Rip, Gordon, Bynum, Atkins) and lacks any muscle up front. We're undersized and overpaid in the front court. We have too many guys that might be good complementary players on the right squad but aren't "go-to" type players.

But no one stays on top -or even near the top-forever and this is just our time to be in the doldrums evidently. Perhaps Joe D. can pull a trade by finding someone extra special stupid to deal with before the deadline...

Report: Wizards Teammates Pull Gun On Each Other
Washington's Gilbert Arenas And Javaris Crittenton Said To Be Arguing Over Gambling Debt On Christmas Eve
NEW YORK (AP)

Washington Wizards teammates Gilbert Arenas and Javaris Crittenton drew guns on each other during a Christmas Eve locker room argument over a gambling debt, according to The New York Post.

Citing an anonymous source, the newspaper reports in Friday's edition that the standoff was sparked when Crittenton became angry at Arenas for refusing to make good on a gambling debt. That prompted Arenas to draw on Crittenton, who then also grabbed for a gun, league security sources tell the Post.

Asked by the Post about the confrontation, Arenas denied pulling a gun on Crittenton.

"This is unprecedented in the history of sports," Billy Hunter, executive director of the Player's Association, tells the Post. "I've never heard of players pulling guns on each other in a locker room."

The Wizards said on the night of Dec. 24 that Arenas had stored unloaded firearms in a container in his locker at the arena and that the NBA was looking into the situation. On Tuesday, Washington, D.C. police said they were investigating a report that weapons were found inside a locker room at the Verizon Center.

Now, the federal government is also involved. Ben Friedman, a spokesman for the US Attorney's Office in DC, tells the Post "we're working with the Metropolitan Police Department on the investigation.

Saunders calls out Wizards after losing, 110-98, to Oklahoma City

By Michael Lee
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, December 30, 2009; D01

After Coach Flip Saunders watched Oklahoma City forward Kevin Durant split the Washington Wizards' defense as if he were driving through cones for an impressive layup on Tuesday, he considered the possibility of putting on a pair of gym shorts. As the night played out, and Russell Westbrook soared for highlight dunks, and Jeff Green and Thabo Sefolosha knocked down uncontested three-pointers, Saunders thought about rounding up people off the street to go against his porous defense.

Saunders tried everything he could to get the Wizards to slow down Oklahoma City -- switching from a zone defense to man-to-man -- and after his team lost its third consecutive game, 110-98, he came to a conclusion: His players cannot stop anyone.

"This team needs a mind-set change," Saunders said. "This team, for the last five years has been known as one of the worst defensive teams in the league. We could take five guys in this room out here and we could have a chance. I think I can go out there on the floor and take anybody on the team, one-on-one at [54] years old, and drive right around them. They can't guard anybody..."

Flip Saunders says team stinks

After a two-day cooling period, Saunders didn't back away from his words, and even applied more pressure to his three captains -- Butler, Gilbert Arenas and Antawn Jamison -- after Arenas said that the team had adopted a "losing mentality" in recent years.

"Gil can say that, but when you have the money that those three guys are making, you never talk about loser mentality," Saunders said about Arenas, Jamison and Butler, who will earn $16.2 million, $11.6 million and $9.8 million this season, respectively. "You're making $20 million; you're getting paid to win. Bottom line. Don't blame it on the guy that's making $300,000. This is a league where you get paid on your production and what your expectations are. It's up to them to change that mentality. They have to carry us."

Butler agreed. "When it all goes back, it's going to fall back on us," he said. "We're the captains, the leaders. . . . We got guys back healthy. We got to lead our ball club to wins.

"We've got to get it done."