GREENBURGH, N.Y. — Amar’e Stoudemire went through shooting and conditioning drills on Tuesday before the Knicks flew to Charlotte for their game against the Bobcats.
After the workout — one of several he’s gone through in recent days — Stoudemire wrote on Twitter that he’d “be back soon.”
Just when that is, of course, is unclear at the moment.
According to a source who spoke with ESPNNewYork’s Jared Zwerling, Stoudemire is targeting a return somewhere near Christmas Day.
The NBA recently rolled out a catchy new spot for its special Christmas Day uniforms featuring five of the league’s biggest superstars.
Courtesy of NBAA replica of the Knicks’ special XMas game jersey.
On Monday, the Knicks unveiled a special orange-colored jersey for the highly-anticipated Christmas Day matchup with the Lakers.
The new look was designed by adidas, the NBA’s official on-court apparel partner, to celebrate the league’s 65 years of Christmas Day games. The theme is “BIG Color” uniforms that all 10 teams, including the Lakers, will wear on Dec. 25. They feature a monochromatic color scheme with solid color team logos, names and numbers framed with minimal accent color and a shimmer finish.
Fifteen NBA head coaches spoke at length with NBA.com’s Steve Aschburner recently , and that’s a significant amount to pull in during the slowest point in the offseason. Fifteen coaches, on record, without the benefit of a hectic NBA schedule bringing a new team (and new coach) into a writer’s NBA arena of choice every couple of days. That sort of benefit, apparently, is the only one we can see being created by the NBA’s hectic schedule. Save for making more and more money, it seems, for everyone involved from the top of the skyboxes to the helpers in the parking garage, and all those cagers in between.
This is why George Karl’s ideas for a better NBA, in the most popular pull from Aschburner’s work so far, will never happen. Unless, of course, the NBA decided to lockout its players in a pointless maneuver created to save certain owners from themselves a few months before the next offseason hits and the owners initiate a series of moves bent to circumvent the “help me, we’re broke” rules the NBA put into place. George Karl doesn’t exactly want a lockout-styled season, he told NBA.com, but he wouldn’t mind a shortened term. From Aschburner’s piece :
“I’m sure Commissioner Stern won’t like this, but I think the product would be better if we shortened the season. When we start playing in late October, the people are thinking football. If you could just get us less fatigue [in a shorter season], I think you’d have a better product. When they started on Christmas Day, I thought, ‘This is not a bad idea. This should be the start of NBA basketball … Maybe start Dec. 1 and play 62 games, whatever number they’d come to.”
Commissioner David Stern doesn’t like anyone saying anything short of documenting ascending ratings and the latest NBA Cares project his players just took part in. He’s certainly not going to like a famous NBA coach more or less writing off the first two months of the NBA’s season (including training camp and exhibition time) as football’s foothold, but that’s what Karl just did.
The moment I saw this year’s Christmas Day NBA schedule I was completely blown away at what an odd choice they made with the Celtics.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m pumped for Knicks-Lakers and Heat-Thunder, but the Celtics are playing… The Nets?
You could easily talk me into the Nets getting a Christmas Day game, but they don’t deserve to play the Celtics. The Celtics should be reserved for a more marquee matchup.
And if you read the headline, you know that matchup should be against the Lakers.
Why? Well there are several reasons.
First of all, it’s the best rivalry in basketball. Wilt vs. Russell, Magic vs. Bird, Kobe vs. Garnett—we’ve seen countless amazing matchups between these two legendary teams. At this point, the two are even more recognizable together than they are apart.
Putting the Celtics in New York last year made sense because the Knicks were finally back on the map, and in years past, the Lakers have been locked into games with LeBron James.
For the first time since 2008, the Lakers and Celtics are both available.
And considering the tuneups both teams have made, I’d say having them play each other would be a good test of how much they really improved.
The Lakers added Steve Nash and Antawn Jamison, and may very well bring in Dwight Howard. The Celtics meanwhile have completely revitalized their bench with Jason Terry, Courtney Lee, Jeff Green and Jared Sullinger. Both teams are better than they were last year.
Finally, imagine the ratings bonanza of having the league’s two highest profile franchises playing in the second most important game of the day.
It’s really quite simple. The NBA should have waited until Christmas for a Knicks-Nets “battle for New York” game (which every New Yorker would have watched considering how surprisingly big this rivalry has gotten), then had the Lakers play the Celtics in a prelude to their marquee matchup of the day: Heat-Thunder.
Doesn’t that slate sound more appealing to you than Celtics-Nets then Lakers-Knicks? It sure does to me.
Read more Boston Celtics news on BleacherReport.com
Kobe Bryant can’t think of a better way to enjoy Christmas than to be spending it with Carmelo Anthony and the Knicks. “We actually might win on Christmas Day for the first time ever,” Bryant says.
Despite missing one of the game’s most popular players for a good chunk of the season, the Chicago Bulls will play 26 nationally televised games in 2012-13, including several can’t-miss matchups and a Christmas Day treat against Omer Asik and the Houston Rockets.
Also this year, the regular season will start almost two months earlier (October 30) and will end nine days earlier (April 17) than last season.
SCHEDULE TIDBITS
• NBA Finals rematches: Christmas Day in Miami, Valentine’s Day in Oklahoma City.
From ordering lockouts to scheduling Christmas Day games to determining who has power and who doesn’t, nothing of consequence in the NBA ever happens without David Stern calling the shots.
The Chicago Bulls’ season began with Derrick Rose hitting a game-winning shot on Christmas Day, to lift Chicago over the Los Angeles Lakers 87-86. Ironically enough, their playoff hopes ended when Rose tore the ACL in his left knee in Game 1 of the playoffs. Melissa Isaacson, a columnist for ESPN Chicago compiled a list of ten questions that Bulls fans may ponder during the off-season. After reading the article, I decided to explore a few of the questions and provide my own perspective.