On Dan Hurley, Lillard and the number zero, tanking, Aldridge, Rutschman and Kwan
Fodder for your sports weekend …
Dan Hurley struggled with comparisons with his father and brother, but now has UConn in the Final Four
• Dan Hurley, who guides Connecticut into the Final Four this weekend, comes from coaching royalty.
His father, Bob Hurley Sr., 75, is a retired high school coach who took St. Anthony High Jersey City, N.J., to a record of 1,185-25 and 26 state titles and earned himself a place in the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame.
His brother, Bobby Hurley, 51, has been head coach at Arizona State since 2015.
As a player at Seton Hall, Dan Hurley was known as “Danny.” He played his first two seasons for P.J. Carlesimo there — as a reserve on a team that won the Big East and reached the Sweet Sixteen as a freshman, a part-time starter as a sophomore — before quitting after the first game of his junior season. Hurley tired of the pressures created by the successes of his father and brother, the latter the star point guard on Duke’s national championship squads of the early ‘90s. “You’re not Bob-bee!” opposing crowds would chant during Danny’s games at Seton Hall.
“When you’re from Jersey City, and your dad is tough as nails, and your brother is toughs nails, and everyone in your neighborhood is tough as nails — for me, I needed to show some vulnerability,” Dan Hurley told The Athletic. “I felt I needed to tell people I was hurting, that I was in a bad way.”
Danny Hurley “was a very good player,” Carlesimo tells me from Houston, where he is handling Final Four pre-game, halftime and post-game duties for Westwood One. “He was a better shooter than Bobby. Bobby was more a true post guard. Danny was more of a scoring point guard.
P.J. Carlesimo says UConn’s Hurley “a better shooter” than brother Bobby
“But it was not easy for him,” Carlesimo says. “When we traveled, he got heckled a lot. Some of the local New York/New Jersey fans wanted more. Danny would probably say today he put too much pressure on himself. We are better now at addressing issues like that. Danny took it upon himself to say, ‘I need to get away,’ and that’s what he did.”
Carlesimo left Seton Hall in 1994 for a three-year stint as head coach of the Trail Blazers. Hurley withdrew from school, moved home and joined his dad as a volunteer assistant at St. Anthony. “During that year, I re-found how much I love basketball,” he says
Hurley returned to Seton Hall and played his final two seasons at Seton Hall under George Blaney, serving as the Pirates’ No. 2 scorer behind Adrian Griffin. Hurley wound up scoring 1,070 points in his 121-game career.
From there, he went from being an assistant at Rutgers to a high school head coaching gig at St. Benedict’s Prep in Newark, to head coach at Wagner, to head coach at Rhode Island, and, in 2018-19, he arrived at UConn.
“All of those programs — even UConn — were a little down, and Danny took jobs that were tough,” Carlesimo says. “He wasn’t afraid of a challenge. He has a great way of relating with the players and a good understanding of the kind of pressures they’re under.”
Carlesimo chuckles when I note Hurley seems a different kind of person and coach than his brother, a raving maniac on the sidelines with the Sun Devils.
“Danny is very vocal, but he has evolved,” Carlesimo says. “People in the East think Danny is crazy. People in the West think Bobby is crazy. You still see a lot of Bobby in Danny, but he has intentionally toned it down, feeling he would get too distracted with officials and hurt his team. He still does at times, but not nearly as often, not nearly as much.”
Carlesimo has called all four of UConn’s NCAA Tournament games.
“Danny tired of getting interviewed for me,” P.J. says. “During a tournament run, you are usually going to have one game where you don’t play well, where you dodge a bullet. (The Huskies) haven’t had that yet. They have destroyed good teams. St. Mary’s is a really good team. Iona, too. What they did to Arkansas and Gonzaga was unbelievable. If they play the way they have been playing, they are going to win the whole thing. ”
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Damian Lillard has lost dozens of games from his career because of the Blazers’ tanking the past two seasons
For several years now, during the introduction of starting lineups of Trail Blazers games at Moda Center, public-address announcer Mark Mason has referred to Damian Lillard as wearing “the letter O.”
That is Lillard’s idea, a way to pay tribute to a career path that has carried him from his hometown Oakland to Ogden, Utah (Weber State), and Oregon.
Historically, though, NBA rules call for players to wear a number, not a letter.
So I emailed Tim Frank, the league’s long-time and very able senior vice president for communications, to ask if a player wearing a letter instead of a numeral on a jersey is legal, or if Lillard’s has a special dispensation.
“He is number zero,” Frank responded. “The p.a. guy must be trying to be cute.”
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The subject of tanking in the NBA has been a hot item with Blazer fans the past couple of weeks after their team, for the second season in a row, decided that losing and increasing draft odds was preferable to chasing a playoff spot.
Last year, the Blazers were 25-34 when they called off the horses, going 2-21 over their final 23 games. Eleven of the losses were by 30 points or more, including margins of 43 and 50 points. I would argue no NBA team in history has suffered so many lopsided defeats over such a period of play. It was a really bad look for a franchise that made the playoffs 21 straight years from 1983-2003 and had reached the Western Conference finals as recently as 2019.
The Blazers have lost 11 of their last 12 games this season, though tanking didn’t begin in earnest until a 124-96 loss to Chicago on March 24. Presumably that will mean Portland will lose its final 10 and 16 of its last 17 games this season.
We all understand the end goal here is to increase the odds for a better position in the May 16 draft lottery. The Blazers are all but assured of ending with the league’s fifth-worst record, which would give them 10.5 percent odds in the Victor Wembanyama sweepstakes. It’s not that much worse than the 14 percent the top three picks have.
Even so, it’s about a one-in-10 shot of landing the 7-2 French wunderkind.
If they don’t get No. 1 but do get a top-five pick, the Blazers will be able to add a talented youngster who should be valuable in the years to come.
But general manager Joe Cronin told us at the start of the season, and again at midseason, that the team is committed to building “a championship roster” around Lillard.
Lillard turns 33 in July. The Blazers had better hurry. Wembanyama, as promising as he is, seems likely to go through growing pains in his first couple of seasons in the NBA. Championship rosters almost never feature rookies or even second-year players such as Shaedon Sharpe.
The Blazers have assets, including New York’s lottery-protected first-round pick this season (currently slotted at No. 23), a wealth of second-round picks and perhaps a trade exception or two.
So maybe they trade a couple of picks — maybe even both of their first-round picks — for a proven big man they so desperately need.
They would probably have to give up Anfernee Simons, who could be replaced by Sharpe as the team’s shooting guard of the future.
Tanking has been going on for decades in the NBA, though the league moved a long time ago to mitigate that by lessening the odds of the team with the worst record getting the No. 1 pick.
I feel for the fans who pay good money to watch what amounts to a G-League team in action through the latter part of a season. Some of them are OK with it. This season, some say they have enjoyed the opportunity to watch Sharpe play big minutes and score 30 points.
But here is another downside to the Blazers’ tank job the past two seasons: Lillard’s legacy.
The Blazers’ meal ticket missed 53 games last season and had abdominal surgery on Jan. 13. If the games were meaningful, I’ll bet he could have come back at least by mid-March, which would have allowed him to play the final 15 regular-season games. This year, he will sit out the last 11 games with no real injury at all. That’s a total of 26 games missed, and, conservatively, 700 points off his career record.
Lillard currently ranks 58th with 19,376 points. With those 26 games, he would be among the top 50 and in the 20,000-point club already. Sure, Dame is about winning championships. But he also cares about how he will be regarded when his career is over. I have no doubt he is extremely unhappy about sitting out one-third of a season in his prime.
I read Shams Charania’s report in The Athletic this week, that Lillard and the Blazers are expected to have “serious talks about what’s next for both sides.”
Heck, Lillard has had a voice in Blazer personnel decisions for some time now.
He is due $216 million over the next four years, and the Blazers have shown no inclination to consider trading him. Will he turn in his “loyalty” card and try to force a trade? We’ll find out soon enough.
It’s a sordid situation, with the Blazers limping to the finish two years in a row and an owner — Jody Allen — who has not spoken once publicly to the fans or media in 4 1/2 years since her brother’s death.
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LaMarcus Aldridge, who announced his retirement this week, is destined for the Hall of Fame
LaMarcus Aldridge made it official this week, retiring from the NBA after 16 NBA seasons. Now he must wait the necessary four years before his induction into the Naismith Hall of Fame.
Aldridge averaged 19.1 points and 8.1 rebounds per game while shooting .493 from the field and .813 from the free throw line. His 20,058 points rank 47th all-time in the NBA and he is 58th on the rebounds list. He also averaged 20.8 points and 8.5 boards in 72 career playoff games.
The 6-11 forward played the first nine of his 16 seasons in Portland; I rank him the third-best Blazer ever behind Clyde Drexler and Lillard. His turnaround jumper and overall post-up game were unparalleled in franchise history. He was four times an All-Star with Portland and three times with San Antonio. Aldridge was voted to the All-NBA second team in 2015 and ’18 and the third team in 2011, ’14 and ’16.
It’s not a slam dunk — there are a few 20,000-point scorers not in the Hall of Fame, including Joe Johnson, Tom Chambers and Antawn Jamison — but I think Aldridge makes it.
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Adley Rutschman couldn’t have gotten off to a better start with Orioles
Adley Rutschman for American League Most Valuable Player?
A bit premature, even after the Baltimore Orioles’ second-year catcher had a game for the ages on his first opening day on Thursday. Rutschman — who joined the Orioles last June — went 5 for 5 with a walk, a home run and four RBIs. The former national player of the year from Oregon State became the first big-league catcher to have five hits on opening day since at least 1900 and, at 25, is the youngest Oriole to homer in his first opening-day at-bat since Cal Ripken in 1984.
The only other catchers to reach base at least five times in a game were Yogi Berra in 1956, Todd Huntley in 1995 and Jason Varitek in 2002.
A prediction from Baltimore manager Brandon Hyde: “He is going to be doing other things that are the first as well.”
But MVP?
Let’s wait a little while on that one.
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And then on Friday night, it was former Beaver teammate Steven Kwan’s turn. The second-year left-fielder became the second player in franchise history with five RBIs in either of the first two games of the season, leading the way to Cleveland’s 9-4 win at Seattle.
Kwan had a two-run double, a two-run single and a sacrifice fly for the Guardians.
Rutschman and Kwan finished 2-3 in AL Rookie of the Year balloting last season behind Mariners centerfielder Julio Rodriguez, who went 2 for 5 Friday night in a losing cause at T-Mobile Park.
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