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Knowing how much Cal and Stanford like each other, this news can only be seen as a sign of the apocalypse.
BERKELEY, Calif. - California has turned to its biggest rival to find its new basketball coach, hiring former Stanford coach Mike Montgomery on Friday to replace the fired Ben Braun. Montgomery was to be officially introduced at a news conference on campus Saturday, the school said.
Montgomery, who spent 18 years with the Cardinal, has been out of coaching since August 2006 when he was let go after two seasons in the NBA with the Golden State Warriors. He has announced college games and been an assistant athletic director at Stanford while still collecting money from the final two years of his contract with Golden State.
Braun was fired last week after 12 seasons as coach when the Bears missed the NCAA tournament for the fourth time in five years. Montgomery made the tournament his final 10 years at Stanford, winning at least one game each time.
Whether Montgomery could continue that streak at Cal would depend heavily on the decision leading scorer and rebounder Ryan Anderson makes about the NBA draft. Anderson said Thursday he would test the waters by declaring, but would not sign with an agent to leave the option open of returning to school for his junior year.
I never thought it was fair to judge a college coach till he is able to bring in his own recruits.
Montgomery was successful at Stanford, including a final four appearance 10 years ago. Because of that and his over 500 career lifetime wins, I see Montgomery having a reasonable chance at doing well at Cal. I just wonder what diehard Bear fans think about having a former Stanford Cardinal in their midst. Guess it won’t matter if Cal basketball gets invited to the NCAA tournament consistently under Montgomery.
Do you need me to tell you the result?
MIAMI - The Miami Heat had half a team, and even less of a chance against the Golden State Warriors. Stephen Jackson scored 22 points, Al Harrington added 17, Baron Davis had 15 points and 10 assists and the Warriors eased past the severely shorthanded Heat 134-99 on Friday night, handing Miami its biggest loss of a dismal season.
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Miami only had seven available players and was without Dwyane Wade, sidelined by left knee soreness. The Heat played the final 4 1/2 minutes with one available substitute, after Udonis Haslem tweaked a gimpy ankle and retreated to the locker room.
Chris Quinn and Marcus Banks each scored 20 points for the Heat (11-48), who lost for the 30th time in their last 33 games and will take the NBA’s worst record into a doubleheader of sorts at Atlanta on Saturday.
Monta Ellis scored 16 points and Mickael Pietrus finished with 15 for Golden State (38-23), which eclipsed the 100-point mark for the 25th straight game and has won five of its last six. The Warriors also scored more points than anyone managed against Miami all season, topping Chicago’s 126 on Jan. 16.
Shawn Marion had 17 points and 10 rebounds, and Haslem finished with 17 points for Miami.
“Knowing they only had seven players, we just wanted to push the tempo,” Davis said.
The Warriors did that with ease.
Jackson made three 3-pointers in a span of 2:09 late in the opening quarter, setting the tone for Golden State’s night. He and Harrington each connected on four 3-pointers in the first half alone, and the Warriors steadily built what was a 63-51 lead at intermission.
If there was any doubt, the Warriors erased it in the third quarter.
Golden State outscored Miami 37-22 in that period, stretching the lead to 100-73 entering the final 12 minutes, during which the Warriors essentially stayed on cruise control. Ellis had 14 points in the third, when the Warriors shot 73 percent (16-22) from the floor.
Wade could only watch helplessly from Miami’s bench.
Since Wade arrived, the Heat are 33-41 without him, 1-9 this season, but he was hardly the only absence of note for Miami in this one.
NBA rules mandate that a team have eight players in uniform for a game, and the Heat met that requirement; Wade and Earl Barron (sore right knee) were the eighth and ninth men in uniform, although neither played. The rest of the 15-man roster was unavailable because of an array of roster moves, suspensions and injuries.
“Taking all volunteers tonight,” Heat coach Pat Riley said.
Including for the head coaching position. It was recently announced that Riley would miss a few upcoming games in order to scout for the next NBA draft. I predict Riley won’t be back as Heat coach in 08-09.
How will the pathetic Heat manage to lose next? Stay tuned.
The Professional Football and Baseball Halls of Fame are dominated, as one might expect, by the National Football League and Major League Baseball, respectively. After all, they represent the elite level of their sports. Basketball, on the other hand, has invented a system where high school players, women, and stars of overseas minor leagues are more likely to get in than the National Basketball Association elite. ESPN’s Mark Stein:
The NBA’s dwindling representation in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame and the growing frustration in response have prompted increasing calls for the league to break away and start its own Hall of Fame. But that’s not David Stern’s answer.
Stern himself voiced pointed displeasure earlier this year with the downward trend but has shown no interest in an NBA-only Hall. The league’s commissioner prefers to push for a revamped and more “transparent” selection process with the 48-year-old Basketball Hall of Fame based in Springfield, Mass., which will induct a 2007 class this weekend that features no NBA players and only two honorees with NBA ties: Los Angeles Lakers coach Phil Jackson and legendary referee Mendy Rudolph. “We have always been supportive of the Hall of Fame,” Stern told ESPN.com. “Among the constituent groups, we are its largest financial backer. We were persuaded early on that an all-encompassing Hall of Fame was good for our sport — men, women, high school, college, pro, international and media.”
Questions about a selection process that has historically favored college coaches have grown louder over the past three years, starting in 2005 when neither Joe Dumars (a former NBA Finals MVP who has won championships as a player and executive with the Detroit Pistons) nor Dominique Wilkins (the NBA’s ninth all-time leading scorer) was selected as a first-ballot Hall of Famer. Longtime coach and television analyst Hubie Brown was the only NBA representative in a 2005 class that featured college coaching titans Jim Boeheim and Jim Calhoun, former LSU women’s coach Sue Gunter and Hortencia Marcari, who is considered Brazil’s best-ever female player.
Dumars and Wilkins joined first-ballot inductee Charles Barkley in 2006, but the 2007 class continued a 10-year pattern of NBA slights, with Adrian Dantley and Chris Mullin among the players nominated but not selected. Joining Jackson and Randolph in Friday night’s ceremony are North Carolina coach Roy Williams, four-time WNBA championship coach Van Chancellor, two international coaches (Spain’s Pedro Ferrandiz and Mirko Novosel from the former Yugoslavia) and the 1966 Texas Western team that beat Kentucky to become the first school to win the NCAA title by starting five African-American players.
In the past decade, 25 coaches and nine contributors have been inducted into the Hall of Fame compared to only 20 players … and only four of those 25 coaches were from the NBA. In the same span that Jackson, Larry Brown, Alex Hannum and Bill Sharman were selected, Springfield has inducted eight NCAA women’s coaches, four international coaches and one high school coach. Of the 20 players chosen in that span, only 14 were NBA alumni.
Frustrated by the repeated snubbing of Golden State Warriors coach Don Nelson, who won five rings as a player with the Boston Celtics and ranks third all-time in coaching victories with 1,232, Stern told the New York Daily News in May: “It’s absolutely unacceptable, the [selection] process. It’s troublesome. It doesn’t even bring the NBA in in a rational way.”
Perhaps the biggest source of contention in that process is the fact that Springfield inductees are chosen by committee as opposed to, say, a vote of tenured media members as seen in baseball.
In basketball, there are four separate committees that screen and nominate candidates, one each for North American candidates, females, veterans who have been retired for at least 35 years before being nominated and internationals. NBA players and coaches can thus qualify in only the first of those four categories, giving women and international candidates an advantage because their pools are much smaller on the first step to enshrinement.
It’s simply idiotic to have women and high schoolers in the same Hall of Fame as Michael Jordan and Larry Bird. I’m sorry, championships in the WNBA or women’s college hoops or high school or Venezuela. It ain’t the same ballpark, ain’t the same league, ain’t even the same sport. It’s like comparing the Special Olympics to the Olympics.
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Celtics 24/7 linked with Today’s Links 9/9
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