EmKingsFan4
Starter
Mark Kreidler: Forget about the dead legs: Peja is blooming this spring
By Mark Kreidler -- Bee Staff Writer
Published 2:15 am PDT Thursday, April 14, 2005
It was such a great theory that you almost hate to see it go down in flames.
Peja Stojakovic kept going pffft during the NBA postseason because he had dead legs, you see, and dead legs are the result of too much basketball, and what he needed to do was quit all that international stuff in the summertime and he'd be fine.
And Stojakovic did that, almost exactly as the Kings asked. He skipped last summer's Olympics, not playing for his home country of Serbia-Montenegro. He mostly set basketball aside.
He also asked for a trade from the Kings and showed up to camp a little out of shape, but let's not get too far off track here. The point is it's April in the first 82-game campaign after the Big Rest, and Stojakovic looks good. He's shooting his highest field-goal percentage - 46 - of any month this season.
He's up to 44 percent in April from the three-point line.
The kind of reputation he is trying to overcome, of course, is mostly made in May. But here in the last gasp of the Kings' regular-season schedule, their star shooting forward appears to have pretty fresh legs and a renewed sharpness from the field.
The whole thing worked, in other words. Unless you count the part about Stojakovic not believing a word of it and even the head coach not being entirely sure.
And if the playoffs go kablooey for Peja Stojakovic once again, he won't have the legs to blame. Or will he?
"I feel good," Stojakovic said Wednesday, "but I feel good (in past playoffs), too. I never looked for any excuse that I was tired or anything. I never said that. My shot wasn't going in, and that's it."
Actually, it's much more than that. It's the stepped-up defense that teams play in the postseason, and opponents' obvious and special focus on shutting down Stojakovic. It's one part nerves, maybe, and, sure, the whole dead-legs issue has to be in there somewhere. At one point, Stojakovic, just a 41 percent career playoff shooter, appeared quite literally not to have taken a rest from basketball in years.
Geoff Petrie, Rick Adelman and the rest of the crew over at Arco Arena couldn't do so much about the other things, but on the subject of rest, they had plenty to say. Both Adelman and Petrie specifically suggested to Stojakovic that he shut things down for a while last year, work only on specific parts of his own game. Let Serbia-Montenegro spin without him for a summer.
Perfectly valid theory - and that makes it all the more interesting that, here and now, Adelman is of the opinion that Stojakovic's renewed performance owes much more to his readjusting to the multiple new realities of the Kings' current situation than to any aspect of his physical condition.
"I think right now he's fresher (than last year), but then again, last season he had a lot of the weight of the team on his shoulders for the first 60 games," Adelman said. "And this season, we've had all the changes with the team and the new people."
It's the coach's perspective that Stojakovic staggered to the finish of last season in part because he was weary of doing so much of the work (along with Brad Miller and Mike Bibby) in the absence of the injured Chris Webber. And Adelman has said for weeks that Stojakovic has been the player most directly affected by the personnel shifts, considering what a huge percentage of his open looks were created by Webber, Miller, Doug Christie and Vlade Divac.
But things are turning. Stojakovic dropped a 35-point performance on Portland earlier this month and is averaging 23.6 points through April's first five games. He has pushed his season field-goal shooting up to 44 percent overall, and while that's well below last season's 48 percent clip, he has begun to find open shots in Adelman's drastically revamped, guard-driven sets.
Miller's impending return could brighten prospects further, and if Stojakovic appears energized and is effective during the playoffs, he can expect to hear that his downtime last summer contributed significantly. Alas, he rejects the notion outright.
"It was my decision not to play," he said of the Olympics. "I had a lot of obligations. I was serving in the (Greek) army. My son was coming. It was not possible to play."
But, while acknowledging that the time away felt good, Stojakovic doesn't see how it applies to the present - "What can 10 (international) games hurt you? You've already played 80-something games before you get to the playoffs" - and, despite everything, he plans to play again for Serbia-Montenegro.
"I will. I will," Stojakovic said. "This summer, we play the European Championships in my country. I still haven't made up my mind, but ... for a country that has been through crisis (of war) like mine has, we are all they've got." That comes later. The NBA playoffs come now. And Peja Stojakovic has a reputation to deal with, one way or another.
http://www.sacbee.com/content/sports/basketball/kings/story/12723685p-13575681c.html
By Mark Kreidler -- Bee Staff Writer
Published 2:15 am PDT Thursday, April 14, 2005
It was such a great theory that you almost hate to see it go down in flames.
Peja Stojakovic kept going pffft during the NBA postseason because he had dead legs, you see, and dead legs are the result of too much basketball, and what he needed to do was quit all that international stuff in the summertime and he'd be fine.
And Stojakovic did that, almost exactly as the Kings asked. He skipped last summer's Olympics, not playing for his home country of Serbia-Montenegro. He mostly set basketball aside.
He also asked for a trade from the Kings and showed up to camp a little out of shape, but let's not get too far off track here. The point is it's April in the first 82-game campaign after the Big Rest, and Stojakovic looks good. He's shooting his highest field-goal percentage - 46 - of any month this season.
He's up to 44 percent in April from the three-point line.
The kind of reputation he is trying to overcome, of course, is mostly made in May. But here in the last gasp of the Kings' regular-season schedule, their star shooting forward appears to have pretty fresh legs and a renewed sharpness from the field.
The whole thing worked, in other words. Unless you count the part about Stojakovic not believing a word of it and even the head coach not being entirely sure.
And if the playoffs go kablooey for Peja Stojakovic once again, he won't have the legs to blame. Or will he?
"I feel good," Stojakovic said Wednesday, "but I feel good (in past playoffs), too. I never looked for any excuse that I was tired or anything. I never said that. My shot wasn't going in, and that's it."
Actually, it's much more than that. It's the stepped-up defense that teams play in the postseason, and opponents' obvious and special focus on shutting down Stojakovic. It's one part nerves, maybe, and, sure, the whole dead-legs issue has to be in there somewhere. At one point, Stojakovic, just a 41 percent career playoff shooter, appeared quite literally not to have taken a rest from basketball in years.
Geoff Petrie, Rick Adelman and the rest of the crew over at Arco Arena couldn't do so much about the other things, but on the subject of rest, they had plenty to say. Both Adelman and Petrie specifically suggested to Stojakovic that he shut things down for a while last year, work only on specific parts of his own game. Let Serbia-Montenegro spin without him for a summer.
Perfectly valid theory - and that makes it all the more interesting that, here and now, Adelman is of the opinion that Stojakovic's renewed performance owes much more to his readjusting to the multiple new realities of the Kings' current situation than to any aspect of his physical condition.
"I think right now he's fresher (than last year), but then again, last season he had a lot of the weight of the team on his shoulders for the first 60 games," Adelman said. "And this season, we've had all the changes with the team and the new people."
It's the coach's perspective that Stojakovic staggered to the finish of last season in part because he was weary of doing so much of the work (along with Brad Miller and Mike Bibby) in the absence of the injured Chris Webber. And Adelman has said for weeks that Stojakovic has been the player most directly affected by the personnel shifts, considering what a huge percentage of his open looks were created by Webber, Miller, Doug Christie and Vlade Divac.
But things are turning. Stojakovic dropped a 35-point performance on Portland earlier this month and is averaging 23.6 points through April's first five games. He has pushed his season field-goal shooting up to 44 percent overall, and while that's well below last season's 48 percent clip, he has begun to find open shots in Adelman's drastically revamped, guard-driven sets.
Miller's impending return could brighten prospects further, and if Stojakovic appears energized and is effective during the playoffs, he can expect to hear that his downtime last summer contributed significantly. Alas, he rejects the notion outright.
"It was my decision not to play," he said of the Olympics. "I had a lot of obligations. I was serving in the (Greek) army. My son was coming. It was not possible to play."
But, while acknowledging that the time away felt good, Stojakovic doesn't see how it applies to the present - "What can 10 (international) games hurt you? You've already played 80-something games before you get to the playoffs" - and, despite everything, he plans to play again for Serbia-Montenegro.
"I will. I will," Stojakovic said. "This summer, we play the European Championships in my country. I still haven't made up my mind, but ... for a country that has been through crisis (of war) like mine has, we are all they've got." That comes later. The NBA playoffs come now. And Peja Stojakovic has a reputation to deal with, one way or another.
http://www.sacbee.com/content/sports/basketball/kings/story/12723685p-13575681c.html
