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Kenyon Martin Reacts To Cuban’s Comments

ESPN.com news services

A day after Mother’s Day, Kenyon Martin lobbed a verbal salvo to Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban in defense of his own.

 
Martin, whose mother was verbally confronted by Cuban after Saturday night’s game, said he was going to “take care of it” as early as Monday night, as the Nuggets looked to sweep the Mavericks in their second-round playoff series.
 

“I don’t feel I need to call his name in the media and all that, but it’s a little personal,” Martin said after the Nuggets’ shootaround in Dallas, according to a report on The Denver Post’s Web site. “And I’m going to take care of it.”

The incident, during which Cuban referred to Martin as a “thug” or a “punk,” according to an earlier report in The Post, was part of a raucous postgame scene the NBA said it was reviewing.

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With so much expectations for the Lakers to win this year championship, they’re on the brink of getting knocked off by the Houston Rockets if they don’t win tonight. How will they respond this time? 

With their backs against the wall, its critical for them to win tonights game, otherwise their season will be over in no time. Given that the Lakers are the best road team in the NBA this year, it is no doubt that they’ll be able to win, but how much of an urgency can they show? 

Look for the Lakers to come out strong tonight and with  huge performances by Pau Gasol and Lamar Odom. Odom, in my opinion, was the most valuable player against the Utah Jazz in the first round series. With his versatility to handle the ball and driving to the hoop, there’s no one on the Rockets that can match him.

Seven OTs so far. Game 7 looming. Controversy and clutch shooting. Lead changes: 106. Players climbing new career peaks. Too many moments to count.

When at a loss for words, we turn to our experts for their wisdom.

Seven questions on Bulls-Celtics, one of the greatest seven-game series ever:

1. Best NBA postseason series ever, best first-round series ever, or neither?

J.A. Adande, ESPN.com: Could be the best first-round series, but can’t call the election until all precincts report. If Game 7 is a blowout or a dud, you can’t make this series an all-time best.

And I’m big on stakes, so to be the best postseason series, it’s got to be either the NBA Finals or the de facto Finals. Neither of these teams will win the championship, so ultimately, this series will be only a sidebar to the 2009 playoff story. It sure is great to watch, though.

Chris Broussard, ESPN The Magazine: The only reason this might not be the greatest playoff series in NBA history is it’s a first-round series. It’s hard to call a first-round series the best.

But for sheer drama, for individual performances, for competitiveness, this is the greatest postseason series of all time.

Ric Bucher, ESPN The Magazine: Best NBA postseason series ever — no, but maybe I’d feel different if I had attended the game. For me, best still goes to Warriors over the Mavericks in 2007 — because it was historic (first eighth seed to beat a No. 1 seed in a seven-game series), wholly unexpected and I attended every game.

The Celtics were expected to be vulnerable with Kevin Garnett injured; conversely, it was the underdog Warriors, with Baron Davis limping along, that overcame injury to pull off the upset.

Chad Ford, ESPN.com: I can’t think of another playoff series I’ve enjoyed as much as Bulls-Celtics. I loved the underdog Warriors toppling the Dallas Mavericks in 2007. But I’ve never seen two teams so evenly matched that they can match each other point for point.

John Hollinger, ESPN.com: In terms of drama, this is the best postseason series, but that’s not the only criterion. There’s not enough at stake to put it past the likes of Lakers-Celtics in ’84 or Mavs-Spurs in ’06, just to name a couple of prominent examples.

As far as first-round series go, however, this is clearly the best. Five buzzer finishes in six games? A total of seven overtime periods? Seriously?

Chris Sheridan, ESPN.com: I’ve witnessed so many classics in the early rounds — the Charles Smith Bulls-Knicks game at Madison Square Garden in ’93, the Allan Houston $160 million lucky bounce at the old Miami Arena, Larry Johnson’s four-point play against the Pacers about 6 feet in front of my face, overtime in Kings-Lakers at Arco in ’02, Paul Pierce versus LeBron James last spring, LBJ at The Palace two years ago.

With so many great ones, I don’t think one can be judged as the best.

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A game with everything but talking dogs

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By Bill Simmons

I measure excruciating losses by the amount of time I walk my dog afterward. That’s my ritual. My team gets crushed, I walk it off. The walks usually last for 15-20 minutes. The walk after Game 6 lasted for hours. I think I ended up in Compton.

At one point, Rufus just stopped. He had enough. It was like 9:45 at night. We were in the middle of nowhere. We were like 250 blocks from my house. I think we were on the same street where Ricky Baker got gunned down in “Boyz n the Hood.” Rufus planted his furry butt on a sidewalk and stared me down.

“I’m not going back until you explain to me why Doc put Tony Allen in the game,” I told him.

He kept staring at me.

“We were up by five,” I said. “We had scored on like 10 straight possessions. We were humming. They couldn’t stop us. The series was over.”

More staring.

“Two and a half minutes left and we have the ball. Again, they can’t stop us. So Doc brings in our worst player — our least intelligent player, our most ineffective player, the master of the fantastic drive/missed layup — and takes out Big Baby when he was our second-best player tonight? And all because Chicago went small? SO WE’RE REACTING TO A DESPERATION COACHING MOVE BY VINNY DEL NEGRO!!!!! REALLY, THAT’S WHAT WE DID?????????”

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Garrett W. Ellwood/Getty ImagesChauncey Billups vs. Chris Paul is just one of the playoffs’ sweet point-guard matchups.

It’s the one constant as we proceed into the second full week of the NBA’s second season.

LeBron James, Kobe Bryant and Dwyane Wade might be the consensus top three in the MVP race … but point guards are at the center of almost every playoff series.

Although we remain fully on course for a Finals showdown pitting Kobe against LeBron on the game’s biggest stage for the first time, point guards have undeniably dished out the must-see element of the postseason so far, leading us right into a 1-to-8, series-by-series breakdown of the most compelling PG story lines.  (read more…)

SALT LAKE CITY — It took Kobe Bryant only a few minutes to end his shooting slump.

Bryant scored Los Angeles’ first 11 points and once his teammates joined in, the Lakers overwhelmed the Jazz 108-94 on Saturday night and moved within one game of advancing to the second round.

“It was important for me to come out and be a little more assertive,” said Bryant, who scored 38 two nights after one of his worst shooting games in years.Bryant went 16-for-24, erasing any memories of his 5-for-24 night Thursday in the Lakers’ only loss of the series.”We never could get close enough to guard him,” Utah coach Jerry Sloan said. “I think he put everyone on his back and got them off to the way they wanted to play.”He scored in double figures in each of the first three quarters and more than doubled his scoring from Game 4.”Coming off that semi-bad performance — that horrible performance I had in that last game,” Bryant said with a grin, “it feels good to respond with a game like this.”  (read more..)