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Ron Artest offers to defend his award

Hornets guard David Wesley, left, drives around Heat guard Eddie Jones in their playoff series in New Orleans, Tuesday. PHOTO: AP

Indiana forward Ron Artest challenged Bruce Bowen to a game of one-on-one for the NBA Defensive Player of the Year award Tuesday, one day after Spurs coach Gregg Popovich criticized Artest and Pacers coach Rick Carlisle.

"Tell his coach, `Let's play one-on-one for the award,'" Artest said after practice. "I'll give it to him if he can beat me."

Popovich appeared Monday on a San Antonio radio station and said Bowen was more deserving of the award, which Artest won by a wide margin. Bowen finished fourth in the voting.

"Bruce guards the best player on the other team almost every single night," Popovich said. "Artest doesn't do that. Artest just looks the part. He looks like a big, tough guy. He whacks and gets knocked out of the game once in a while."

Popovich also criticized Carlisle for openly campaigning for his player. Carlisle called voting members of the media to lobby for his player and had two assistants break down film of Artest to come up with supporting statistics.

Ron Artest of the Pacers during a game against the Celtics in Boston, Sunday. PHOTO: EPA

Carlisle said the project showed that Artest held opponents to an average of 9.4 shots and 8.1 points a game when he was matched up one-on-one. The NBA used those numbers when announcing Artest as the winner.

"What a bunch of baloney," Popovich said. "Totally unsubstantiated stats put out by Indiana. The media bought it and then the NBA printed those stats. I am amazed by that.

"We'll never do that," Popovich said of the campaign. "It's not our style. It makes no sense. And we'll certainly not throw out stats that are totally unsubstantiated. There's no way to substantiate them. It's like grabbing four guys off the street and putting them in a film room and saying to come up with some stats on this guy.

"It's just a joke and it really angered me when I saw that the NBA actually printed those stats when they announced the media's choice of Defensive Player of the Year as if they were real stats. There is no such stat."

The comments were posted on a San Antonio television station's Web site and didn't take long to find their way to Indiana, where the Pacers are awaiting the outcome of the Miami-New Orleans series after their four-game sweep of the Boston Celtics in the first round.

Artest said he wished Popovich would have spoken to him directly rather than commenting through the media.

"It's not hard to get in touch with me," Artest said. "All you have to do is call the Pacers office and ask for my phone number. You can speak to me instead of going to the papers."

Carlisle said he thought Popovich never would have made the remarks had he known they would make their way to the Internet.

"I understand where Pop's coming from," Carlisle said. "He has a strong belief in his player and obviously I have a strong belief in mine."

As for his campaigning, Carlisle pointed to the NBA All-Defensive team announced Monday. Coaches vote for the teams, not the media, and Artest's 26 first-team votes were more than any other player. Bowen was also named to the first team, receiving 18 votes.

"The one thing I will agree with Pop on is that the coaches' vote is the most important," Carlisle said. "In the coaches' vote, Ron was clearly the highest vote-getter. It really should make any arguments moot on who the best defensive player was."

Timberwolves 84, Nuggets 82

Kevin Garnett had 27 points, 14 rebounds and five assists Tuesday, helping Minnesota hold off Denver 84-82 for a 3-1 series lead.

Garnett had several heated exchanges with the Nuggets after being pushed around in Game 3, but kept his cool this time. He finished 8-for-17 and was 11-for-15 on free throws to put Minnesota in position to get past the opening round for the first time in eight tries.

"Sometimes you've got to let a sleeping dog sleep and they've been doing a real good job of throwing gasoline on the fire," Garnett said. "We heard the comments, we just sat back, waited for the game and just played. Now we're in position to close this thing out."

Minnesota led by eight midway through the fourth quarter, but Marcus Camby cut it to 76-74 on a 3-point play with 4:43 left that got the crowd on its feet.

The Timberwolves pushed it back to a six-point lead, but Voshon Lenard hit a 3-pointer and had a steal that led to another 3 that made it 81-80 with 1:14 left.

Latrell Sprewell answered with a 3-pointer in the corner, then Nene scored on a dunk to make it 84-82 with 18 seconds left. Sprewell missed two free throws with 12 seconds remaining at the other end. But Andre Miller missed a shot in the lane and Lenard was nowhere close on a turnaround at the buzzer.

"It's been fun. The first two games were kind of boring, then the verbal stuff started in the papers, and it was intense out there," Denver's Jon Barry said. "It's what the players are all about. We played really hard, we just didn't play particularly well."

Hornets 96, Heat 85

In New Orleans, Baron Davis had 23 points and 10 assists, while 13-year veteran Stacy Augmon came off the bench for 17 points, including two shot clock beaters in the final period to help New Orleans down Miami.

Miami, by far the younger team, was hurt by a late mistake by rookie Dwyane Wade, who failed to inbound the ball before the requisite five seconds with 53.6 seconds left and the Hornets leading 88-82.

After that, Miami was forced to foul. New Orleans hit the free throws to pull away.

The series, tied 2-2, resumes Friday night in Miami. The home team has won every game.

LeBron James, Carmelo Anthony and Dwyane Wade were unanimous members of the NBA All-Rookie Team announced Tuesday.

Chris Bosh and Kirk Hinrich also made the first team in voting by the league's 29 head coaches.

James won all six Rookie of the Month awards in the Eastern Conference this season; Anthony won all six in the West.

James, taken No. 1 overall in last year's draft by the Cleveland Cavaliers, is just the third rookie to average at least 20 points, five rebounds and five assists (Oscar Robertson and Michael Jordan are the others). He won the Rookie of the Year award last week.

Anthony led all rookies in scoring average at 21 points and helped the Denver Nuggets reach the playoffs for the first time since 1995.

Miami's Wade ranked among the top five rookies in five statistical categories, while Toronto's Bosh led first-year players in rebounding (7.4 per game) and blocks (1.41), and Chicago's Hinrich led them in assists (6.8).

The second team members were Dallas' Josh Howard and Marquis Daniels, Milwaukee's T.J. Ford, Miami's Udonis Haslem and Washington's Jarvis Hayes.

IN POOR TASTE

The NBA is reviewing a pre-game skit by the Dallas Mavericks to determine if it was demeaning to the Sacramento Kings.

Among the vignettes was a cartoon depicting Kings guard Doug Christie being led on a leash tugged by his wife, and one of forward Chris Webber being showered with money at the University of Michigan.

The skits were used Saturday before Game 3 of the best-of-seven series.

"I got a report late in the day today. All I can tell you right now is we're going to be looking into it," said NBA deputy commissioner Russ Granik, who was attending the Miami Heat-New Orleans Hornets game Tuesday night.
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