MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP) -- The Grizzlies are enjoying a day off after wrapping up the franchise's first berth in the Western Conference finals. Good thing, too, because they can use a little rest after all that hard work.
Dwyane Wade may have entered the league less than a decade ago, and his youthful indiscretions may still making national news , but the man has been around for long enough to know how to drag a team to victory. The Miami Heat star worked his 158th playoff contest in Wednesday night?s Game 5, against a Chicago Bulls team he grew up rooting for. And despite a debilitating knee injury that forced him to hit the locker room to ?re-adjust? (read: manually move his right kneecap back into place) during the third quarter, he still had enough to put his Heat over the top, and knock off the Bulls on Miami?s way to its fifth Eastern Conference final in the last nine years.
Wade dunked once in that pivotal fourth quarter, but the biggest damage he did to Chicago?s attack came by way of a loping, veteran style of misdirection movement, setting the Bulls? defenders off course while raised for either in-between drives or long jumpers. Game 5 didn?t provide Wade the finest box score of his playoff career, but the setting and the stumbling blocks were enough to remind Heat fans of what a special player they?ve had the pleasure to have known since 2003.
Former Blazers coach Nate McMillan met with Hawks officials about their coaching position.
The Detroit Pistons have contacted Indiana Pacers' associate head coach Brian Shaw to set up an interview to talk about their head coaching job.
Sure, the book he signed up for Twitter to promote is called "Eleven Rings," but legendary NBA coach/ Detroit Pistons consultant Phil Jackson actually has 13 rings ? 11 earned directing the Chicago Bulls and Los Angeles Lakers, and two recognizing his work as a defensive-minded reserve forward on the 1970 and 1973 New York Knicks.
For many NBA types, rings won as a player would represent the pinnacle of achievement in the sport; in Jackson's case, though, they serve as sort of a precursor and accent mark to the story of his later coaching accomplishments. As such ? and also because they aren't quite as flashy as what came later ? it seems like we don't often see Jackson sporting the rings he won on the floor. One Zen Master Twitter follower wondered what they looked like:
@ philjackson11 Phil can you post a picture of your two Knicks championship rings? I've never seen a picture of them.
? Sean (@sthomas141) May 14, 2013
Jackson, now throwing himself wholeheartedly into social media , was happy to oblige, and do so in a pretty perfectly Phil way:
"here?s the best I can do?the 2 Knick rings are in the front of the picture," Jackson tweeted .
Phil Jackson very clearly wanted Brian Shaw to become an NBA head coach in 2011. Two years later, the process of Jackson getting Shaw a head job is still very slowly moving forward. Vincent Goodwill of The Detroit News two weeks ago The Pistons have targeted a bevy of names to bring in, from former?
