Andrew Bynum openly said the Lakers' system has obvious problems. (Kim Klement/US PRESSWIRE)

ORLANDO — Media day at All-Star weekend is always something of a mess. The reporter-to-player ratio is probably 30-to-1, meaning there is something between a small crowd and a giant mob surrounding every player’s individual platform. Media members who want to talk hoops must compete for precious seconds with reporters who want to ask about video games or travel habits or anything Jeremy Lin-related.

(Speaking of Lin: As a few of us were strolling through a corridor on the way out of the hotel, a conference room door suddenly opened, revealing Lin and a mass of NBA people filming who knows what. I hope that guy gets some rest this weekend.)

All you can do is skulk around, wait for some space to open up at a player’s table, dart into that space and fire away with a question or two you have prepared. When a spot opened up just to Andrew Bynum’s right, I slipped into it and chose the diciest of the three or four Bynum questions I had prepped: “Is there anything to the notion that the Lakers’ offense gets too predictable in crunch-time?”

I expected a polite, boilerplate response. Instead, Bynum said this: “That’s like pointing out the obvious. It’s a problem.” The implications about Kobe Bryant and Lakers coach Mike Brown are clear, and so I asked Bynum if I had heard him correctly. “Yeah, it’s a problem,” he continued. “We have to find some new ways to get things done.”

Some other media day highlights as I skittered from player to player: Read More…

Celtics guard Rajon Rondo is set to appear in his third All-Star Game. (Elsa/Getty Images)

Celtics guard Rajon Rondo has been picked as a replacement in the All-Star Game for Hawks guard Joe Johnson, who will be out with tendinitis in his left knee. All-Star selections tend to rile up folks, and Rondo’s selection over a handful of candidates will do just that.

Two weeks ago, I named Rondo as a reserve on my All-Star team. So, in theory, I’m fine with the selection. But over those two weeks (through Tuesday):

• Boston has gone into a tailspin, losing six of seven to fall to 15-16 and into the No. 8 spot in the Eastern Conference.

• Rondo has alternated brilliant games (67 points combined on 53 percent shooting in back-to-back games against Chicago and Detroit) with five-point stinkers in depressing losses to the Raptors and Pistons.

• Rondo earned himself an inexcusable two-game suspension for tossing the ball at a referee over the weekend. He has now missed nine of Boston’s 31 games, or nearly 30 percent, and if you want to select someone else simply because of durability this season, that’s understandable. You might be lending too much weight to a 30-game stretch during a crazy, compressed season, but the All-Star Game is (in theory) supposed to reward single-season performance.

Here are your non-Rondo candidates:

• Josh Smith. The eighth-year forward appears to be the people’s choice, at least judging by Twitter, and he has played every game for a Hawks team that has needed his all-around skills more than ever in the absence of Al Horford. Smith is putting up the best rebounding and passing numbers of his career, and Atlanta has long depended on his ability to work all over the court on defense.

Read More…

I’ve pleaded before for coaches to stop stepping onto the court, which is supposed to result in a technical foul, at least by the letter of the NBA rulebook. This is one of many stickler rules the officials justifiably ignore, since for the most part, coaches intrude onto the court when there is no action nearby — usually to get one step closer to their point guard as he brings the ball up toward midcourt. No harm, no foul, no technical merited. Things are different when coaches intrude along the sideline when play is unfolding on their end of the court, as Scott Skiles did last season in bumping Miami’s Carlos Arroyo in one of the clips in the post linked above.

Vinny Del Negro committed two ill-mannered coaching sins on Monday night when Golden State’s Brandon Rush hit a go-ahead three in the Warriors’ close win over the Clippers. Del Negro stepped onto the court, but that’s not what stood out to me, as you’ll see in the game’s highlights:

He obviously tried to distract Rush during the shooting motion. He stamps his foot onto the court just behind Rush and clearly yells and/or yaps in Rush’s ear during the shot release.

Del Negro is not the only coach to commit this offense. You’ll  occasionally catch an assistant, seated along the bench someplace, screaming in the general direction of an opposing shooter. Players on the bench do it all the time.

Players on the bench are also largely young men in their 20s and early 30s, taking an in-game break from combat both fun and ultra-competitive. Del Negro is a 45-year-old man who wears suits to work and instructs much younger players. Maybe I’m being an old fuddy-duddy, though I’m more than a decade younger than Del Negro, but I find this somewhere between lame and distasteful. I’m not calling for a technical on Del Negro here, though the rules explicitly do. I guess I just want a certain degree of professionalism from NBA head coaches, and the assistants, too. Read More…

After handing out my “official” midseason awards with the SI.com NBA team on Tuesday, I’ll follow up with a few made-up awards in this space. Here we go.

Most Surprising Teams

Andre Iguodala (center) has led the Sixers to the Atlantic lead. (Fernando Medina/NBAE via Getty Images)

1. Philadelphia 76ers: There haven’t been many true surprises on the team level, unless you’re caught off guard by San Antonio outperforming expectations and Houston solidifying itself in the middle of the Western Conference playoff race. Hot starts from Denver and Portland surprised some league observers (not this one), but they’ve since cooled off because of injuries, schedule and performance issues.

Philadelphia’s 20-13 record isn’t even that surprising, considering the Sixers went 38-28 last season after a 3-13 start. But no one expected the 76ers to have the league’s stingiest defense at the halfway point, nor for them to open the season by blowing the doors off everyone and establishing themselves early as the clear-cut No. 3 team in the Eastern Conference. They’ve lost four straight and six of eight as the schedule has sent them on the road at the same time as injuries have decimated their frontcourt. But if their true level of play is close to what they showed during the first 25 games or so, a stretch that included a stirring homestand in which they beat Orlando, Chicago and the Lakers, the Sixers will be a problem in May.

2. (Tie) Dallas Mavericks and New York Knicks: It’s not the results with these teams; it’s the means through which they have arrived there.

The Mavericks, an offensive powerhouse last season, rank only 20th in points per possession. But they’ve managed to go 21-12 behind a defense creeping up on Chicago and Philadelphia in points allowed per possession. Dallas is just a different animal. Shawn Marion defends point guards, and the team’s nominal point guard, Jason Kidd, defends whatever position is convenient that night. The Mavs use giant front lines, with three power forwards, and employ zone principles that confuse every opponent.

As for the Knicks, few teams have ever had a crazier half-season. Their 16-17 record isn’t shocking, but the process has been beyond anyone’s imagination — the stingy defense, the offense that ranks 23rd in points per possession despite two score-first stars and the sudden emergence of a point-guard phenomenon the Knicks themselves nearly gave up on. Absolute lunacy.

Read More…

Greg Oden underwent his third microfracture surgery since entering the league and will miss the remainder of this season plus next season. (AP)

• It is hard to fathom the news that Greg Oden has undergone another microfracture surgery — his third since entering the NBA. Microfracture surgery normally requires a 12-month timetable, but given the complications Oden experienced recovering from his Nov. 2010 microfracture surgery, it seems likely that even in the absolute best-case scenario, Oden will miss all of next season in addition to what remains of this one. The worst-case scenario, one that seems more likely, is that Oden never again plays in the NBA.

There really isn’t much to say at this point. It’s just a sad story, tempered of course by the fact that Oden has earned more than $20 million and can do things like have a family and friends. When Oden’s 2010-11 season ended, the Trail Blazers were still set to control his rights in free agency during the summer of 2011. Oden was in his fourth season, the last of his rookie deal, and he was to be a restricted free agent. The Blazers used those rights to keep Oden on a reduced one-year qualifying offer, and they could have matched any competing offer for him.

The situation is different now. Oden will be an unrestricted free agent after this summer, and it might be time for Portland to move on. They have the maximum-allowed 15 players on their roster right now, and a full six of those players are either barely on the fringes of Nate McMillan’s rotation or out of it completely. The Blazers could use someone capable of playing actual NBA minutes, and so it wouldn’t be a total mind-blower if they released Oden soon.

Regardless, he’ll be on the open market this summer. Will anyone sign him?

Some Oden links:

• Will Carroll, an SI.com contributor, has a very detailed but readable look at what exactly microfracture surgery is, which players have undergone the operation and how their games have changed after it. Read More…

The Knicks cut into the Nets’ lead during the middle of the fourth quarter Monday night using a lineup that did not include Jeremy Lin or any traditional point guard. Then Lin came back into the game, and the Knicks, needing to play almost perfect offense in order to have any chance to win, did this with 5:20 left in the game:

The skill level of the five New York players on the floor here is so high that this set is dangerous even though the three players surrounding the initial Lin/Tyson Chandler pick-and-roll — Carmelo Anthony and Amar’e Stoudemire on the left side, J.R. Smith in the right corner — do not move at all as that play unfolds. Despite that lack of motion, there is a brief moment when Stoudemire is open on the left baseline as Kris Humphries slides into the paint to help on Chandler. And any possession that ends with Melo isolating on Anthony Morrow counts as a well-used possession. Still, you can’t help but ask for more, just as we asked for more off-ball motion from Miami’s stars all of last season.

The challenge of re-integrating Anthony into the Lin Knicks centers on two things: Read More…

None of the recent Pau Gasol trade rumors seem to make sense for the Lakers. (David Sherman/NBAE via Getty Images)

Here are three realities:

• Every good GM is open to trading any of his players, save for perhaps 10 (on the high side) transcendent players who are essentially untradable because of talent, roster fit, salary, marketability or some combination of all of things. Lakers GM Mitch Kupchak told SI.com’s Sam Amick over the weekend that he expects the team to bring its current roster to the playoffs without any major changes. That does not mean Kupchak has punted the idea of trading Pau Gasol, either as a standalone move or the precursor to a Dwight Howard trade.

• The Lakers are a (slightly) below-average offensive team, getting negative production from two positions — point guard and small forward. They have zero reliable depth. Even Matt Barnes’ solid play of late off the bench really just amounts to the Lakers having one productive small forward instead of none.

The Lakers rank 16th in points per possession. They are averaging 102.7 points per 100 possessions, just below the league average of 103. And with rare exceptions, teams like this do not win championships or really compete for them. Of the 44 teams that have made the Finals since 1990, only six have ranked below the league’s average in points per possession. All of those six ranked among the league’s top four in points allowed per possession; four of them ranked as either the first or second stingiest defense in the league.

The Lakers have a nice defense, but not a great one. They rank 10th in points allowed per possession now, and they are on pace to force fewer turnovers per possession than all but a handful of teams in league history.

Put simply: Unless they have another gear, this current Lakers roster does not look like a championship contender. You never underestimate the “another gear” factor on a team that includes Kobe Bryant and two of the league’s very best big men. It was only two years ago that another plodding veteran group loaded with big-name talent reserved just such a gear for the 2010 playoffs. But it’s not unreasonable to suggest Kupchak could improve the current roster’s chances by dealing from a place of abundant strength and getting back a top-flight small forward or point guard. Of course, that place of strength hasn’t been quite as strong since the Lakers’ dealt Lamar Odom — a confusing but ultimately semi-understandable move that drained another creative outside-in offensive player from a roster that has just one left. Read More…

Tim Duncan might need more help defending inside for the Spurs to excel in the playoffs. (Gerald Herbert/AP)

Here comes San Antonio, a winner of 10 consecutive games and the one Western Conference team that you could reasonably argue has been Oklahoma City’s equal all season.

The Thunder lead the Spurs by two games in the loss column and by a single point in victory margin, but San Antonio has played a slightly tougher schedule. John Hollinger’s power rankings give San Antonio a small edge, while Basketball-Reference’s rating system prefers Oklahoma City by a hair. The Spurs, playing unproven youngsters in place of the injured Manu Ginobili, have nonetheless built an offense that ranks sixth in points per possession. That’s a tribute to the greatness of Tony Parker and Tim Duncan, but also to coach Gregg Popovich’s half-court system of motion, screening and (above all else) spacing.

As the Thunder play one nail-biter after another, more executives around the Western Conference are beginning to sense a vulnerability that didn’t exist on Christmas. Every scrap of evidence we have suggests that the Spurs are best positioned to topple that allegedly vulnerable conference favorite in June.

Read More…

• Who is taking shots for the Thunder in crunch time, and what kinds of shots are they taking? One note on Russell Westbrook’s numbers here: Two of the three-pointers mentioned came in one game, against Boston.

• The Celtics will go through periods in which they seem to enjoy giving Rajon Rondo the ball in the post. Thursday’s loss in Chicago was one such period. Beckley Mason on why this can work, and why Rondo is such a strange player.

• The players providing the best value per dollar.

• A really well-done four-minute video of New York fans talking about Jeremy Lin, the atmosphere around Madison Square Garden and Linsanity in general. A fun watch. If I didn’t live in New York, I’d assume a couple of the guys featured are actors portraying exaggerating caricatures of New York fans. But since I do live here, and have covered a handful of New York games in person this season, I can tell you they are in fact actual people. Read More…

This year is a test for everyone, but there are four teams to watch for the remainder of the season — four teams that are either experiencing a temporary internal crisis or playing closer to what is really their true level. If it’s the latter, teams just outside the playoff races or holding a loose grip on the No. 7 or No. 8 spots — the Grizzlies, Jazz, Bucks and Timberwolves — might have reason for encouragement.

A quick look at each:

INDIANA PACERS

Despite Danny Granger's improved shooting, Indiana's offense still lags. (Gary Dineen/NBAE/Getty Images)

The Pacers have lost six of eight to drop to 18-12, ceding that “feel-good threat to Miami and Chicago” status to Philadelphia and falling to a point where New York, Boston and Milwaukee can see them without squinting. Injuries and the schedule are both culprits here, but the collapse of Indiana’s formerly top-shelf defense and the shaky play of its bench are both worrisome trends to monitor.

The Pacers are without George Hill, their best bench player and key insurance for Darren Collison, and Jeff Foster returned from injury only a week ago. They also just finished a stretch of seven games in 10 days that contained one segment of four games in five nights and a separate back-to-back-to-back  that ended Thursday night, with a much-needed win over Deron Williams and the Deron Williams Players.

This Indiana team was always going to win by relying on solid defense to lift a mediocre offense, while hoping internal improvements to that offense might help it win more — and against better teams — later. The offense has remained inconsistent, even as Danny Granger has done the inevitable and rediscovered his jumper. This is a post-heavy team without an elite creator, and it can look very slow on the wrong night.

The Pacers have been neck-and-neck with the Lakers all season in terms of devoting the greatest share of its possessions to post-up plays (per Synergy Sports), and Collison, despite flashes and generally solid play, just hasn’t made a leap as a penetrator or creator. Hill and Paul George can both run the pick-and-roll, but they often do so tentatively, dribbling sideways instead of into the teeth of a defense. Read More…