NBA Capsules: Mavs' Terry will need surgery after blow to face
DALLAS — Dallas Mavericks guard Jason Terry is scheduled to have surgery Friday after taking an elbow to the face during a game. The team said a timetable for Terry’s return would be determined after the surgery.
Terry’s left eye was nearly swollen shut when he left the Dallas locker room after Wednesday night’s 112-109 victory over Minnesota.
Terry was hurt with 4 1/2 minutes left in the third quarter. He was called for a foul even though he was sprawled on his back with a bloody nose after took a blow to the face from Corey Brewer, who was dribbling toward midcourt when they collided.
After remaining on the floor for several minutes, Terry went to the locker room briefly. He was back in the game before the end of the third quarter and played the rest of the game with a wad of tissue stick out of his left nostril.
Terry, the only Mavericks player who has appeared in all 62 games this season, scored seven of his 26 points after getting hurt. He had a 3-pointer right before Dallas took the lead for good in the fourth quarter, then later stole the ball from Brewer and had a fast-break dunk.
Terry has averaged 17 points, 3.8 assists and 1.2 steals a game for the Mavericks, primarily as their first player on the bench. Terry last season won the NBA sixth man award that goes to the league’s top reserve.
Dallas is home Friday against Sacramento, the first of three games in a four-day stretch.
Brewer was unavailable for comment after Thursday’s practice in Minnesota, but Timberwolves coach Kurt Rambis said he was sorry to hear about Terry’s injury.
"It was completely inadvertent. There wasn’t anything malicious to what Corey did. That’s what the referees saw too," Rambis said. "That’s unfortunate for Jason. That’s unfortunate for the Mavericks as well."
Durant an ‘impossible matchup’ for opponents
OKLAHOMA CITY — Alvin Gentry gets a kick out of the fact that the Oklahoma City Thunder roster lists Kevin Durant at 6 feet, 9 inches tall.
Maybe if he were actually that size — instead of a few inches taller — defenders would have a better chance of slowing down the NBA’s second-leading scorer.
"He’s just a real tough matchup. When you talk about matchups, you look at Kobe and LeBron and Dwyane Wade or Carmelo and then obviously he’s right there," said Gentry, the Phoenix Suns coach. "Of course, the thing that they don’t have that he has is he’s got such length. He’s almost a 7-foot guy. That’s the bottom line."
Durant’s size and athleticism have made him nearly impossible to guard, certainly over the last couple of months. He can maneuver around just about anyone tall enough to match his lanky frame, and he can simply shoot over shorter opponents, no matter how closely they guard him.
He has scored at least 25 points in 32 of his last 34 games, including a stretch of 29 in a row that was the longest streak since Michael Jordan did it on the way to his first NBA scoring title during the 1986-87 season.
Gentry recalled seeing Durant standing next to the Suns’ 6-foot-10 center, Amare Stoudemire, during the All-Star game and noticed that Durant was actually taller. Combine that with Durant’s wingspan and it’s hard to find anyone who can get a hand in the way of his jump shot.
"I don’t think you care who you put on him. What you can’t do is you can’t duplicate what he is, and that’s a 6-11 guy with length and speed and shooting ability and ball-handling skills and things like that," Gentry said. "The closest guy is probably George Gervin, and he probably wasn’t anywhere close to being as athletic as Durant is."
Durant was the NBA’s Rookie of the Year two seasons ago but his numbers from then pale in comparison to what he’s doing now. He averaged 20.3 points in that first season with the Seattle SuperSonics and was scoring 21.1 points per game in his first 12 games under P.J. Carlesimo last season in Oklahoma City.
Scott Brooks took over for Carlesimo and last season moved Durant from shooting guard to small forward, his numbers have taken off. Durant scored five more points per game in the final 62 games of last season and is now averaging 29.7 points this season — one-tenth of a point behind NBA leader LeBron James. He has been averaging more than 31 points since Christmas.
"He’s such a unique player and such a difficult defend," Minnesota coach Kurt Rambis said. "Whether he’s getting double- or triple-teamed, he’s passing the basketball. He can put the ball on the floor, he can attack the basket, he can run, he can shoot long-range shots. The way that he shoots the basketball and the confidence with which he plays, he’s just going to continue to get better and better."
Brooks said he made the move because he wanted Durant — then just beginning his second NBA season — to focus on learning one position and he thought small forward was the most natural fit.
Now, he’s comfortable putting him at three different positions.
"Kevin can score from many different spots, so you don’t have to just single him out at one spot or you can’t just say, ‘OK, this is where he’s going to be’ because it’s quarter to quarter, game to game," Brooks said. "He might have a 3-point game going, he might have a drive game going, a mid-range game, a transition game.
"He’s like a lot of the better scorers in the league. They can score in so many different areas."
When Dallas held Durant to a season-low 12 points and 4-of-18 shooting back in December, veteran Jason Kidd said there was no secret to the Mavericks’ plan of deploying Shawn Marion and Josh Howard against him: "He had some great looks that he normally would make, and we just got lucky."
Three games later, Durant started his run of 29 straight with 25 or more points. That streak ended with a 22-point outing at San Antonio last week, and then Denver found a new way to keep him from scoring on Wednesday night — by building a huge lead and getting Brooks to put him on the bench after he’d scored only 19 points.
With Durant leading the Thunder into the thick of the playoff race, shutting him down has been no simple task.
"He’s a freak of nature," said Kings coach Paul Westphal, who has heard Durant compared to Gervin and Bob McAdoo. "He’s got really long arms, he’s really tall, he’s very quick and he’s got beautiful shooting touch. And he doesn’t get tired of scoring. You’d think you’d say, ‘OK, big fella, you’ve got your 25. Go ahead and relax a little bit now.’ But he doesn’t get tired of it. He can score inside and out.
"I think their team likes for him to score and looks for him in all different ways. He’s going to be a terror in this league for the next 15 to 20 years."
Gentry said he puts Durant in the same category as Dallas All-Star Dirk Nowitzki, a 7-footer with an equally deadly jumper.
"He’s just an impossible matchup," Gentry said. "You can’t get size, strength, quickness on him. So you just do the best job that you can. Obviously, everybody in the league has struggled with it."
-- Jeff Latzke
Thunder send D.J. White to NBDL
OKLAHOMA CITY — The Oklahoma City Thunder have assigned second-year forward D.J. White to their NBA Developmental League affiliate in Tulsa.
White has appeared in eight games for Oklahoma City this season but has not played since having surgery in January to repair a broken right thumb.
White, a former Big Ten player of the year from Indiana, has been sidelined for most of his career since being picked in the first round of the 2008 draft. He missed the first 75 games of last season following surgery to remove a benign growth from his jaw.
White joins rookie Byron Mullens and second-year guard Kyle Weaver in Tulsa. Weaver hasn’t played for the Thunder since he had left shoulder surgery in November.
Oklahoma City has not said whether guard Antonio Anderson would be given a second 10-day contract.
Z wants to go back to Cleveland
CLEVELAND — Zydrunas Ilgauskas has forgiven the Cleveland Cavaliers.
Feeling betrayed after he was traded last month, Ilgauskas wants to return to the only NBA team he has played for to help it win a championship.
Ilgauskas, the towering center known to Cleveland fans simply as "Z," told his agent Herb Rudoy to begin negotiations with the Cavs on March 22 — the first day he can sign.
"The NBA rules do not allow any contract discussions until that date," Rudoy said in an e-mail to The Associated Press. "It is Zydrunas' desire to return to the Cavaliers if a suitable contract can be agreed upon."
It's likely the Cavs will accept him back with open arms. General manager Danny Ferry agonized over the decision to trade Ilgauskas, a former teammate, close friend and the franchise's leader in rebounds and games played, to Washington as part of the deal for forward Antawn Jamison.
Now, Ferry has a chance to make everything right.
Plus, with Shaquille O'Neal sidelined for at least another six weeks with a thumb injury, the Cavs need the 7-foot-3 Ilgauskas more than ever.
After being traded on Feb. 17, Ilgauskas never played for the Wizards. He bought out his contract from the club, making him a free agent and clearing him to sign with any other team after 30 days. But despite interest from several playoff contenders, including Atlanta, Dallas and Denver, the 34-year-old wants to return to Cavs, who drafted him in 1996.
Earlier this week, a few of the Cavaliers took advantage of a game in New Jersey to visit Ilgauskas, who has a place in New York's SoHo district. Rudoy said Ferry also stopped in recently to meet with Ilgauskas, who has received hundreds of e-mails and letters from Cleveland fans urging him to come back.
"He has been overwhelmed and deeply touched by the outpouring of support and affection by the fans and by his teammates," Rudoy said. "He hopes to return to bring a championship to the Cavaliers and to the city of Cleveland."
-- Tom Withers
Wife of 76ers’ Iverson files for divorce
ATLANTA — Allen Iverson’s wife filed for divorce the same day the Philadelphia 76ers announced that the All-Star guard would not return for the rest of the season.
Tawanna Iverson said their 8½-year marriage is "irretrievably broken," in papers filed Tuesday in Fulton County Superior Court. She asks for full custody of the couple’s five children, child support and alimony.
The youngest child is 17 months old and the oldest is 15.
After rejoining the 76ers as a free agent in December, Iverson returned to Atlanta in February to be with his family and deal with an undisclosed illness affecting his 4-year-old daughter, Messiah.
The 34-year-old Iverson made a tearful return to Philadelphia eager to prove he wasn’t finished after disastrous stints in Detroit and Memphis. He played his first game back before a sold-out crowd dotted with No. 3 jerseys, but he only showed flashes of his former playmaking ability. He scored at least 20 points six times — including a 23-point effort in a game against the Lakers that turned into a throwback one-on-one duel vs. Kobe Bryant.
The former league MVP and four-time scoring champion averaged 13.8 points in 28 games this season. He started the season with Memphis but only played three games before announcing a short-lived retirement.
He has struggled to recapture his old magic; Iverson said at a Feb. 15 practice that it was emotionally draining to leave his family to play basketball.
Iverson was hobbled by an arthritic left knee and constantly needed it drained. He usually walked gingerly around the locker room after games. His dwindling production didn’t bother his fans — Iverson was voted a starter for the East All-Stars, though he did not play.
Iverson was the No. 1 overall pick in the 1996 draft and spent 10 seasons in Philadelphia before he was traded to Denver in December 2006. He won the MVP in 2001 when he led the Sixers to the NBA finals.
Timberwolves giving Milicic a chance to start
MINNEAPOLIS — The Minnesota Timberwolves are giving newcomer Darko Milicic a chance in the starting lineup.
It’s a brief experiment, while Al Jefferson serves a two-game suspension after his arrest on suspicion of DWI last weekend. Milicic picked up four fouls in Wednesday’s loss at Dallas, along with six points and two rebounds in 14 minutes during his first start of the season.
Jefferson will also sit Saturday against Houston. Coach Kurt Rambis said Thursday that Milicic probably will go back to the bench next week, but praised his progress and potential since arriving in a trade with New York last month.
Milicic says his comfort level and conditioning are increasing, though his current plan remains to return to Europe after the season.
Mohammed, Chandler return to practice for Bobcats
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Charlotte Bobcats centers Nazr Mohammed and Tyson Chandler have returned to practice following injuries.
A team spokesman says both players will be listed as game-time decisions for Friday’s game against the Los Angeles Lakers.
Mohammed has missed the past five games with severe back spasms. Chandler has sat out seven straight games with left foot and ankle pain. The injuries have left recently acquired Theo Ratliff as Charlotte’s starting center.
Big man DeSagana Diop was limited in practice Thursday as he works his way back from a sprained medial collateral ligament in his right knee.
