Brandon Roy says he intends to work this summer to come back as a starter for the Trail Blazers next season.
"I'm going to want to push to be a starter and help this team win. The goal doesn't change," Roy said Friday as the Blazers left for the offseason. "I think I definitely want to help this team get in position to win and get out of the first round."
Roy admitted that he thought his season, and possibly his career, might be over while he sat out more than two months treating his chronically ailing knees.
But he said his playoff performancesagainst Dallas, which included a magical 24-point performance in Game 4, has bolstered his hopes for next season. Roy averaged 9.3 points and 2.8 assists and made 22-of-44 shots in 23 minutes a game during the playoffs.
"To be able to come back and play and be able to contribute in playoff games is big for me, big for my confidence, especially going forward," Roy said.
March 2011 Basketball Wiretap
The Bulls resumed practice Friday at the Berto Center, while Carlos Boozer took another day off to rest a turf toe injury on his right foot.
Boozer suffered the injury in the Game 5 clincher against Indiana on Tuesday. His status for Monday's series opener against Atlanta is unknown, but the consensus is he will play.
“It's hard to say, but I'm thinking he will be able to,” coach Tom Thibodeau said. “It's gotten better each day. They've done the MRI. They've done all that stuff. The big thing is he feels a lot better today than he did yesterday, so hopefully tomorrow will be better.”
Forward Taj Gibson often starts when Boozer is out, but he didn't sound concerned, either.
“Knowing Carlos, I know he's going to play,” Gibson said. “I'm ready to jump in whenever coach Thibs needs me.”
A magnetic resonance imaging test (MRI) taken on Friday revealed that Kirk Hinrich suffered a significant strain to his right hamstring with 3:07 remaining in last night’s series-clinching game six win over Orlando, according to head athletic trainer Wally Blase.
Hinrich is listed as doubtful for the Eastern Conference Semifinals series vs. Chicago, which begins on Monday.
Boston Celtics coach Doc Rivers said he remains uncertain when ailing center Shaquille O'Neal will return to game action, but expressed heightened confidence Friday in his potential to do so in an Eastern Conference semifinal series against the Miami Heat.
"He just did a little bit yesterday, maybe some more today," said Rivers. "Really that’s the only update I have. No decision has been made or anything. I’m more confident now that he’ll play in this series. I don’t know when. Maybe [Game] 1, maybe [Game] 2. But I do think he’ll play.”
According to Rivers, O'Neal participated in limited portions of Thursday's walkthrough and there was hope he'd ramp up that workload a bit Friday, but Rivers wasn't sure how much live action he'd see.
"He just did some stuff with [team trainer] Eddie [Lacerte on Thursday]," said Rivers. "Eddie's more confident that he'll play, so that makes me more confident."
Doc Rivers said the Celtics will go through a skeleton practice today, which he later told CSNNE.com involved no contact but would require Shaquille O'Neal to run at full speed.
"That'll be good for him," Rivers told CSNNE.com. "Full speed, no contact is probably the best thing for him right now."
Depending on how today's practice goes, O'Neal would then participate in the team's practice on Friday morning but in a limited capacity.
"He'll practice some, but not all of that practice," Rivers said.
The last time O'Neal took the floor was April 3 vs. Detroit, a game in which he lasted less than six minutes before re-aggravating the injury.
Lakers coach Phil Jackson said after today's shootaround that Kobe Bryant was still limited by a sprained left ankle.
"He's still a guy who's not 100 percent," Jackson said hours before the Lakers looked to close out the New Orleans Hornets in Game 6 of their first-round series.
"I just think it's a matter of where is his physical ability with the ankle. It's not about whether he plays 28 minutes or 38 minutes. That, obviously, it going to put a little more stress on the ankle. I think he can play 40 minutes if he has to."
The primary problem for Udonis Haslem has been recovery.
It takes him two days of rest to recover to recover from one day of hard physical work.
That makes today somewhat of a milestone. Haslem was able to follow up full practice participation Tuesday with the full shootaround session Wednesday morning.
So it does appear that he’s getting closer to returning, perhaps for 8 to 10 minutes off the bench.
That return would also give the Heat an emotional boost, if it came in a home game — like say, Game 1 on Sunday against Boston.
“I think the crowd will go crazy,” Dwyane Wade said. “I think it will be of course on that (level) of Alonzo’s not only because of what he’s going to bring but the appreciation of knowing UD worked night after night, day after day, to make sure that he could be back and prepared for this team.”
His final season in Detroit, Grant Hill had the league’s third-highest scoring average (25.8), behind Shaquille O’Neal and Allen Iverson. At age 27, it’s not an exaggeration to say Hill was LeBron James, the NBA’s most complete player.
“At the time I got hurt, I felt like the game was becoming very easy for me,” Hill said. “I was entering my prime. There was an understanding of the game. I felt the next four or five years would be an opportunity and a time to really make my mark and really go for it.”
Things fell apart for Hill as he approached free agency in 2000. He broke his ankle in the Miami playoff series. The injury dogged him the next four years.
“I don’t think anybody really knows I started to have ankle problems at the end of the 1999-2000 season, probably mid-March,” Hill said. “I was still able to go out and play. I still played well, but I was getting a lot of treatment. It was certainly bothering me. As we got closer to the end of the season, my ankle was really getting worse. I was missing practice. To the point where we had a nationally televised game against Philadelphia and I just pulled myself. My ankle was just killing me. We get back, we get an MRI. They say it’s a bone bruise.”
Hill rested the final three games of the regular season and returned to the lineup for the Miami playoff series.
“It’s still bothering me,” Hill said. “I pull myself in the third quarter. They put me on some heavy medication and we had a long break between Game 1 and Game 2. While I was on this medication I felt great. Obviously it was masking the pain. Went out and played in Game 2 and I felt a pop in the second quarter, continued on in the third quarter and couldn’t go on. When we got back, we found out it was broken.
“I (had been) told everything was fine. I even found out that certain team doctors were questioning whether I was really hurt, thinking I was soft or whatever. This was after I had pulled myself from Game 2 against theHeat. At that time, when I found out I had broken my ankle, as crazy as this sounds, I was relieved. I finally had some confirmation, I finally had proof that I’m really not making it up.”
Hill’s pursuit of victories led him to team up with Tracy McGrady in Orlando. Hill had surgery on his ankle in May. He visited Orlando in July while still needing the help of crutches. He signed a contract in August. By Labor Day, the Magic had him participating in pickup games.
“They had me out there playing,” Hill said. “I might play once a week. My ankle was hurting. I wasn’t really supposed to be out there. I wasn’t supposed to be playing. I’d never really been hurt before so I didn’t know what rehab really was. I’m trying to play. I’m icing all the time. I’m getting through the month, probably playing pickup three or four times in the whole month. We get to training camp, I might have practiced once or twice during camp. I stumble through preseason playing three or four games.”
Andre Iguodala is playing hurt.
The chondromalacia in Iguodala's right knee, a chronic condition that dates back more than 5 years, flared in mid-March.
Had the Sixers been out of the playoff picture, Iguodala would have been shut down.
Instead, he played for the next month. The knee cost Iguodala only the last two games of the regular season, when Sixers management insisted he sit, general manager Ed Stafanski said.
"It hurts, because you can't really lift," Iguodala said. "You go into a jump shot and you feel like it's going to give at times. You feel a pinch. You don't know if the pain is going to come back. You're thinking about it every shot. Every plant. That's probably the toughest."
Carlos Boozer suffered turf toe on his right foot that he said he heard pop and contributed to him sitting for the final 18 minutes, 17 seconds of the Bulls’ Game 5 win over the Pacers.
"We'll just see how it goes every day, try to get the pain out of it," Boozer said. "I'm in a great deal of pain. But I got until the next round starts.
"I told (coach Tom Thibodeau) if he needed me I'd be out there and try to gut it out. He said, 'If I need you, I'll put you in. If not, we'll just try to get it better.'"
Boozer averaged 10 points and 10.2 rebounds in 30:23 for the series.