Basketball Insiders Week in Review 9/18

New Life For Lance Stephenson

By Moke Hamilton

Labor Day has come and gone, and Lance Stephenson has finally found a home. Now, assuming Stephenson is able to make the New Orleans Pelicans’ regular season roster, the question becomes one of fit and opportunity.

And unfortunately, from the surface, it’s easy to not like the Stephenson acquisition. But it is one that could pay dividends for a franchise that has failed in its attempt to take flight.

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Playoffs or Bust for the Magic?

By Cody Taylor

In Basketball Insiders’ latest podcast from the weekend, one topic discussed was teams that must make the playoffs this season. Many factors played a role in this discussion, such as roster moves that were made with the playoffs in mind and teams that feature talented players.

Teams like the New York Knicks, Chicago Bulls and Washington Wizards were thrown around as teams that must make the playoffs this season. With the Knicks adding a lot of veteran players, the team has gone all in with their roster in order to make the playoffs now.

The Bulls added veteran players in Dwyane Wade and Rajon Rondo with the intent of remaining competitive in the Eastern Conference. The Wizards are an interesting read heading into this season given their recent additions of Jason Smith, Andrew Nicholson, Ian Mahinmi, Trey Burke and others. With John Wall putting up career numbers and with Bradley Beal set to return, do they have enough to compete?

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Larkin Explains His Move to Spain

By Alex Kennedy

In Shane Larkin’s first three NBA seasons, he played for three different teams (the Dallas Mavericks, New York Knicks and Brooklyn Nets) as well as four different head coaches (Rick Carlisle, Derek Fisher, Lionel Hollins and Tony Brown).

This upcoming season, the No. 18 overall pick in the 2013 NBA Draft will play for the Spanish club Baskonia after signing with them this offseason. The 23-year-old point guard will join fellow former NBA players Andrea Bargnani, Roddy Beaubois and Tornike Shengelia on the Spanish squad. Larkin and Bargnani will be teammates for the third straight year, as they also suited up together on the Knicks and Nets.

Over the course of his three-year NBA career, Larkin averaged 5.8 points, 3.2 assists, two rebounds and 1.1 steals while shooting 43.8 percent from the field. Last year, he averaged 7.3 points, 4.4 assists, 2.3 rebounds and 1.2 steals in 22.4 minutes for Brooklyn. His per-100-possession stats were 16.3 points, 9.8 assists, 5.2 rebounds and 2.7 steals. After Larkin completes this season in Spain, the unrestricted free agent wants to return to the NBA.

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Hawks Bracing For Schroder’s Growing Pains

By Lang Greene

Over the past decade the Atlanta Hawks have been one of the NBA’s most successful franchises, making nine consecutive trips to the playoffs in the process. The 2007-08 unit that started the team’s postseason streak was powered by Joe Johnson, Al Horford and Josh Smith. Former All-Star guard Jeff Teague arrived in 2009 and the Hawks have always maintained a sense of continuity.

But the summer of 2016 marks a new beginning in Atlanta.

While Johnson and Smith had already departed for new destinations, Horford and Teague were constants, representing the core foundation of the club’s successful turnaround.  However, Atlanta traded Teague to the Indiana Pacers on draft night in exchange for a lottery pick and Horford elected to sign with the emerging Boston Celtics in free agency.

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Langston Galloway Wouldn’t Be Denied

By Jake Rauchbach

Every undrafted player dreams of building their resume overseas or in the D-League and then eventually working their way up to the NBA. This is almost always the goal, but it seldom becomes reality. However, Langston Galloway has been able to do just that ever since making the most of a mid-year call up during his rookie campaign. Since then, he hasn’t looked back.

After not hearing his name called in the 2014 NBA Draft, Galloway grinded his way through the D-League with the Westchester Knicks and ultimately landed a partially guaranteed contract with the New York Knicks. Galloway had two solid years in New York. He averaged 11.3 points per game in his first year and earned Second Team All-Rookie honors. As a sophomore, he was a steady perimeter presence with a 3.5 to 1 assist-to-turnover ratio in his second year.

Galloway recently signed a two-year, $10 million contract with the New Orleans Pelicans. This brings the Baton Rouge native back to Louisiana to compete in front of his family and friends.

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The Boys of Dunbar

By Joel Brigham

It was summertime in New York City in the early 1980s, and Alejandro Danois was talking hoops alongside some basketball courts the way 12-year-old kids have been doing since the advent of professional sports.

“One day we were out there talking junk about how New York City is the best basketball city because we’ve got these young players like Pearl Washington and Chris Mullin and Walter Berry,” said Danois, now the editor-in-chief of The Shadow League and a freelance sports journalist.

“An older guy who lived in my building pulled me aside and said, ‘Yeah, New York is the king of basketball, but the greatest team I ever saw was this high school team from Baltimore named Dunbar.’ Obviously we were fascinated and wanted to hear about this team. It turns out he had seen them play at the Harlem Holiday Classic in 1981, and he’s like, ‘Dude, everybody on the bench is going Division I.’”

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