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HOW DID WEEK 1 SHAPE UP? Better than most players
Sporting News, The, Feb 22, 1999 by Noah Liberman
Scoring was down; injuries were up. The Bulls were bad; the Bucks were good. The schedule was packed; the games were entertaining. OK, maybe that's stretching it. At least the games were played.
When the TV trucks pulled away from the first week of the NBA season, here's what was left:
The 3-0 Bucks were tops in scoring, after finishing 18th last season, though scoring was down nearly five points per game. The 3-1 Timberwolves were surrendering 17.2 points per game fewer than last season. The 1-3 Nets were shooting 11 percent worse than last season.
And seemingly everyone was getting injured, falling to relatively minor maladies that could, nevertheless, eat up major chunks of this 89-day regular season.
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Knicks swingman Latrell Sprewell will miss as many as six weeks with a stress fracture in his left heel. Heat guard Voshon Lenard will miss at least eight weeks with a stress fracture in his left leg. Teammate Jamal Mashburn will miss at least two weeks with a deep bruise to his left knee.
Rockets forward Charles Barkley will miss three to four weeks with a muscle tear in his left knee. Lakers center Shaquille O'Neal played four games before suffering an abdominal pull--an injury that nagged him last season.
And it could continue.
"It will take a month before the stress fractures and muscle pulls drop off," says David Buchanan, a trainer to numerous pro athletes and director of performance at OrthoSport Performance in Naperville, Ill. "During a workout, muscles pull on tendons and those strengthen the bone where they meet. But right now, players' bones aren't dense enough and their muscles aren't supple enough to take the pounding."
A long, uncertain offseason and short training camps carry some blame, but the players share in it--even though it's hard to find a general manager who doesn't say publicly that his team showed up in pretty decent shape overall.
"Everyone is upset about guys coming back totally out of shape. What, we've never seen this before?" Turner Sports analyst Hubie Brown says. "We had guys totally out of shape when we played 82 games."
What the NBA hasn't had since 1948 is a season this short. Players hate it already, but competition overall could improve because most regular-season series are only three games.
"That means these early games are more important," Pistons G.M. Rick Sund says. "If you beat a New York or Miami or New Jersey early, all you need is one more to assure yourself the tiebreaker."
Which could have a trickle-down effect: "It's always easier to go out and play relaxed in the second meeting when you've won the first, and maybe this will make those stretches of three games in three nights a little easier, especially on the road," Magic G.M. John Gabriel says.
Sounds plausible, but also a bit like thinking men trying to make sense out of nonsense.
"There's a theory of chaos," Kings G.M. Geoff Petrie says. "It says that there's an order to things, but we're just not capable of understanding it."
That may be closer to the truth.
Meanwhile, here's a look at some of the surprises--pleasant and unpleasant--of Week 1, remembering these words from Brown: "At this time of the season, before you get excited, you have to ask, `Who did they beat and where did they play the games?'"
Well, the Magic beat the Pistons and Nets on the road, and added home wins against the Celtics and Knicks on the way to a 4-1 start.
It's due in part to the good health and improved outlooks of Penny Hardaway and Nick Anderson, team leaders who had fallen out of favor with critics in the post-Shaq blue period.
"Keeping the chemistry together is something you have going for you as a team," says Gabriel. "In our games, we haven't dominated, but our flow has been very consistent. Led by Penny, it's been very orchestrated, so most of our guys aren't putting themselves at risk for injury, because we don't have to go 110 mph with teammates we haven't run with before."
The 76ers jumped out to a 3-0 start, handing the Pistons their first loss in four games and the Magic their only loss in the first five games. Allen Iverson shot only 15-for-55 in those first three games but went off for 46 points in a 98-94 loss to the visiting Spurs, keying a furious fourth-quarter comeback.
The Sixers are one of a handful of teams leveraging their youth for a quick start.
"A majority of our guys came in in good shape, and a lot of it has to do with being 20, 21, 22 years old--that's where our youth has benefited us," G.M. Billy King says. Sixers coach Larry Brown was able to skip some of the conditioning drills that were a big part of other teams' camps and go right to five-on-five work.
A favorable early-season schedule could help, too. The Sixers play seven of their first nine at home, freeing time to familiarize newcomers Matt Geiger and George Lynch and rookie Larry Hughes with their roles.
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