Ginobili To Sign Extension?

Manu Ginobili and the San Antonio Spurs are close to reaching agreement on a three-year extension that would keep the guard from entering this summer’s heralded free-agent market, league sources told Yahoo! Sports. - Yahoo! Sports

There is a belief that the Knicks could have the inside track on Atlanta's Joe Johnson, whose agent, Arn Tellem, has been friends with Walsh for nearly 25 years. "We're going to get good players," Walsh said. "Better players than we could have gotten in a trade, better than we could have gotten in the draft, other than if you had gotten in the top five. "I've got to believe that the New York Knicks now are in a better position than they were for some time. I wouldn't say two years ago, before that. They haven't been under the cap in a long time." - New York Daily News

Talk about your future. Where are you contractually at this point? Jordan Farmar: I will be a restricted free agent so the Lakers will have a chance to match. My desire is to be a starting point guard. We’ll take it from there. At this point, that doesn’t matter right now. It’s about helping our team win the championship. I would love to be a Laker my whole career. I’ve been a fan my entire life, so it would be special. But I’m not too worried about that right now. - Slam

What do you focus on minute by minute in terms of your development that keeps you grounded in a way that you don’t want to talk about individual awards? What makes you that way? You’re young. A lot of guys come into the league and want to be that player. Kevin Durant: Of course. Of course I wanna be great. Don’t get me wrong. I want to be great. It’s just not something I go into a moment, game or year saying. It’s not something I go into the year thinking I wanna win MVP. I know it’s my third year, but I’ve seen a lot in this league in terms of different things but I’ve grown a lot. Winning awards is for rookies. Winning the Rookie of the Year. I just wanna come in here and win (you can see the pain on his face). I got tired of losing games. Winning is a big enough award for me. Being grounded? It comes from my Mom always teaching me to never be satisfied. I will not brag or boast. - The Starting Five

Wade, who you don't want to anger (remember the 2006 Finals?), is mad because he was watching Sunday's nationally-televised game between Cleveland and Boston and, well, let's let Wade take it from there. "The commentators were already talking about Boston in the second round, whether they're going to meet Orlando or Cleveland," Wade said after Monday's practice. "Certain people forget about the first round. So that's pretty much like you're (defecating) on our team when you say that. So we'll take that and use it as motivation to go out there and prove that even though we're underdogs, we're going to be a team that's going to be reckoned with for seven games." - HoopsWorld

A 5-6 slump hasn't lowered expectations or limited the swagger of the Dallas Mavericks, starting with the man who signs the checks. Owner Mark Cuban oozed confidence during a guest appearance Monday night on Jason Terry's radio show on ESPN 103.3 FM, pointing out that the Mavericks aren't the only Western Conference power that has had problems recently. "Half the teams are sucking wind, and half the teams are playing well," Cuban said. "... The Lakers are getting torched at home worse than we've been the last few games. Oklahoma City has been playing well, but they haven't had an injury yet -- literally, not one single injury of any consequence -- so it'll be interesting to see if they can keep that up. "Utah is playing well, but not as well with [Andrei] Kirilenko out. Denver is struggling. San Antonio is playing well most of the time, when Manu [Ginobili] scores 40. - ESPN

Here’s a sign of progress — Kenyon Martin hanging from a rim. After the Nuggets’ shootaround this morning at Ford Center, the injured Denver forward Kenyon Martin went through his toughest workout since his March 8 PRP therapy on his left knee. Martin worked primarily with assistant coach Jamahl Mosley, a former CU player still in good basketball shape. Martin went at Mosley one-on-one, attacking the basket and even leaping for a few dunks. Martin worked on his outside shooting and free throw shooting. - Denver Post

Al Harrington's run with the New York Knicks is likely over. The team announced that the forward will undergo arthroscopic right shoulder surgery on Thursday and will be sidelined three to four months. The procedure will be performed by team orthopedist Dr. Answorth Allen. - ESPN



Nuggets coach George Karl has finished up his last round of chemotherapy and issued a thank-you to all his well-wishers. In a statement to the team's Web site on Wednesday, Karl said his intense six-week regimen of treatment for throat and neck cancer were the "toughest of my life." - SI

Salmons has enjoyed playing for former Bulls coach Skiles. "I like him; he's an excellent coach," Salmons said. "(Bulls general manager John Paxson) left me a voice mail (after the trade) and said I would enjoy playing for coach Skiles and he's one of the best coaches he has been around. For a guy who has been around some good coaches to say something like that, that's a good compliment. I had a lot of coaches in my career and he's definitely one of the best." - Chicago Tribune

Considering his history of being on winners and his reluctance to go to a losing New Jersey outfit, some might consider it a surprise George doesn't foremost want to sign this summer with a contender. But George said it wasn't because of the record he turned down the Nets. "Really, not going to New Jersey wasn't really because it was a losing situation,'' said George, whose only previous team to miss the playoffs was the 2004-05 Lakers although he didn't play in the postseason last season with the Mavericks due to a knee injury. "You want to go somewhere where a team wants you, where they have plans or they have a way to use you in some way. You don't really want to go anywhere where you're not on the radar.'' FanHouse

Keyon Dooling knows the odds are he won't be around to enjoy the benefits of playing for the deep-pocketed Prokhorov. "They have an option, so there’s a chance I can be here, and there’s a chance I may not be here,'' Dooling said after practice. "That’s the reality of the situation. Obviously, it’s not up to me.'' If it was, Dooling said, he'd want to be back. Definitely. "Of course. That’s a no-brainer,'' he said. - Newark Star-Ledger

It appears that when Charlie Villanueva and Austin Daye turned to Twitter to vent their frustrations Monday evening, they were talking about the same thing. The Detroit Pistons confirmed today that Villanueva and Daye missed a team flight Monday and traveled to Philadelphia on a commercial flight. A Pistons official would not confirm whether the players will be fined, but the team has levied fines to players for being late in the past. Prior to the latest incident, Daye had been fined at least once this season for being late to a team function. - Booth Newspapers

Nearly every NBA champion since 2002 has seen a drop in their overall point production and the production of their bench the following season. "It's definitely a process and it's not easy to do what we're trying to do," Fisher said. "It's the reason why as dominant San Antonio has been the past 10 or 11 years, they didn't ever win back-to-back. What we did earlier in the decade in 2000, 2001, 2002 was special because there weren't any more repeat champions. This is not something where you just wake up and decide you want to win another championship and it's just supposed to happen." - ESPN

Nash is profiled at length in the April 12 Sports Illustrated on newsstands Wednesday. In the article, he said of his time playing for Terry Porter last season, "I think people were misled by that 3 1/2 months, thinking I was going downhill, slowing down. It was misleading, but I was never misled. I knew what I could do. I came back this year, and the ball was back in my hands again."  - Arizona Republic

Hopes seem to be fading that the Lakers will have Andrew Bynum back before the end of the regular season. "I'm just not holding my breath as to a timetable," Coach Phil Jackson said Tuesday, a day after Bynum had an MRI on his strained left Achilles' tendon that Jackson described as "inconclusive as far as any major injury or anything going on." Bynum's return, Jackson said, "is going to take some time and we don't know when. Obviously, we'd like to have him play a couple of games at the end of the season, but (Tuesday) morning I told him, if that's not possible, we'll take whatever we get in the playoffs." - Riverside Press-Enterprise