Rumors

Chris Fedor: A source tells @clevelanddotcom that #Cavs Darius Garland (back) did not practice today. The Cavs went thru a session at Rice University before leaving for Charlotte.

Twitter

Mark Berman: James Harden (@James Harden) charity basketball tournament at Rice also starring Chris Paul (@Chris Paul) a preview of the #Rockets 2017-18 season

Twitter

The winning team at the hackathon examined the behavior of clubs in the regular season versus the playoffs, and whether any benefited from resorting to "hero ball." The team, comprised of Alex Wainger and Zac Robertson from Columbia University, Ella Kuzmenko from NYU and William Robbins from Pace University, found that changing a team's brand of basketball and decreasing overall passing and increasing the overall number of dribbles on offense resulted in fewer points per possession. For finishing in first, the four received an open invitation to play pickup at Terminal 23, free tickets to an NBA game, a $800 NBA Store gift card and lunch with league staff. In second place was Chris Packard from Stanford University and Senthil Natarajan from Rice University, two writers from Nylon Calculus. Their analysis focused on assessing the defensive versatility and analyzing how players defend against different types of scorers. "With positional versatility valued more than ever, we felt it would be cool to develop a tool to quantify players like Draymond Green who could capably defend multiple positions," Senthil said.

SportsonEarth

All eyes are on him, the Warriors franchise is staked to his shoulders, there is a championship on the line, and Curry has never been better ... or more at peace. "It feels normal, really," Curry said from the middle of the media maelstrom before the Warriors' Sunday practice at Rice University. "I feel comfortable. I feel ready for the moment, and able to kind of just block out the extracurricular stuff that could distract you from the focus on the court. "Pretty content with where we are and just hungry to keep getting better and keep doing what we're doing."

San Jose Mercury-News

The New Orleans Hornets announced today the hiring and promotion of several members of the basketball operations staff. Jimmy Polk takes over the role of Executive Director of Basketball Administration after spending the last two seasons as the Director of Player Contracts and Basketball Administration. The Rice University alumnus joined the Hornets prior to the 2010-11 season as the Director of Player Contracts and Basketball Administration.

NBA.com

These days it is not uncommon for adults to go back to school, to retrain for a career change or prepare for a promotion. Although an exceptional athlete, veteran NBA basketball star Ricky Pierce is no exception when it comes to taking advantage of new opportunities as, at 52, he is back at Rice University to complete a degree he left unfinished. Leaving school for an illustrious pro basketball career that spanned 16 years and included two Sixth-Man awards, Pierce said that now that he has retired from playing the sport, he would like to coach it at the college level. To play, he needed skill. To coach, he will need a degree. "Why'd I retire?" said Pierce, "That's funny, I retired because I got old. Basketball, it was time to go. You can play only so long — 16 years. I've been thinkin' about college coaching. I just have an itch, I was training a lot of players when I retired. I didn't graduate the first time, that's why I'm back in school now."

Ultimate Bellaire

Rice coach Ben Braun has a freshman from Germany on his team, but he knows Jarelle Reischel from Frankfurt probably isn’t going to be quite as talented as the tall, skinny kid Braun recruited from Wurzburg in the late ’90s. Braun, who had a long run at the University of California, was right in the middle of the Dirk Nowitzki sweepstakes when he was considering U.S. colleges in 1997 and ’98. “I recruited Dirk really hard,” Braun said Tuesday at the Conference USA basketball media day. “And at one point, Dirk even committed to play for me back at Cal. Nobody recruited Dirk harder than I did. I visited Germany a couple times, he’d been to our campus and he really liked it. I got to know his coach really well, Holger Geschwindner, and he thought Cal would be a wonderful place for Dirk.”

Dallas Morning News

"Jordan definitely was popular in China, and LeBron definitely is now, too," says Steven W. Lewis of the Baker Institute for Public Policy at Houston's Rice University. "The difference is Yao can speak in Chinese." Lewis briefly consulted with the Rockets on how to market Yao before he arrived. He imagines it will be difficult for the NBA to sustain as deep a relationship with fans in China now that the Yao has retired from play. "The level of the NBA's penetration in China is already significant," Dube says. "But I would expect a fallout, now that you won't have the default, 'How are the Houston Rockets doing?' perspective."

Grantland